Jackpot (Tony Valentine series)

by James Swain

  “You took my favorite one.”

  “Lucky me,” Gerry said.

  Chapter 27

  Valentine hiked down the dirt road back to the highway, all the while staring at the face of his cell phone, waiting for a satellite signal so he’d could make a call. Several times the phone lit up like it was working, only to betray him by losing the signal when he tried to call. He’d hated cell phones and always would. Whenever he went to the movies, some guy who couldn’t make the rent was blabbing loud enough to ruin everyone’s good time. He stared at the one clutched in his hand.

  “Come on, you crummy piece of junk,” he said.

  He came to a rise in the road, and as he reached the top, saw the cell phone light up. Was it really working, or just trying to torture him? He stopped walking and waited for the signal to disappear. When it didn’t, he began to dial Bill Higgins’ cell phone number, thinking it would be best if he had Bill tell the police what had happened, rather than trying to get a police operator to believe him.

  He heard the call go through, then saw a car racing across the field in the distance. It was their rental, and it was coming towards him.

  “Higgins here,” he heard Bill say.

  Valentine considered running, then realized there wasn’t enough time. Instead, he retreated several steps, then lay down on his belly in the tall grass, keeping his head up so he could watch the car, the cell phone pressed to his ear.

  “Tony, is that you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, watching the rental bump across the field. His vision wasn’t worth a damn anymore, and he strained to see how many people were inside. It looked like two, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Where have you been?” Bill said. “Bronco escaped from jail; every cop in Reno is hunting for him. I tried to call you, but your cell phone was turned off.”

  “He hijacked my rental and kidnaped my son,” Valentine said.

  “What?”

  Valentine explained how Bronco had abducted them, then told Bill the getaway route they’d taken. Bill repeated it back to him, word-for-word. Valentine was still watching the rental approach as Bill finished.

  “How did you get away?” Bill asked.

  “My son saved my ass,” Valentine said.

  The rental was a hundred yards away. Valentine stared at the driver’s side, and saw Gerry manning the wheel. Bronco was in the bucket seat, and had the shotgun stuck against Gerry’s neck. He got a good look at Gerry’s face. His son looked flat-out terrified, and Valentine’s heart did the funny thing it did when he was faced with a situation out of his control. His doctor called it a flutter, but Valentine had always thought it was God’s way of reminding him that life was rarely fair.

  The rental flew past, then disappeared down the road. Valentine slowly rose and dusted himself off, the cell phone still to his ear. He started to walk toward the highway.

  “You there?” Bill said.

  “Barely,” he said.

  Chapter 28

  “You’re a liar,” Bronco said.

  Gerry stared at the dirt road through the rental’s dirty windshield. There was not another car in sight. He had planned to flash his brights at the next car he saw, and alert them so they’d dial 911 on their cell phone. But that option suddenly seemed like a bad idea: Bronco was acting like he was going to kill him the first chance he got.

  “What are you talking about,” Gerry said.

  “Look at these clothes I’m wearing.” He shoved the shotgun’s barrel into Gerry’s chin. “Look at them!”

  Gerry glanced at the clothes Bronco had taken from the trunk and exchanged for Klinghoffer’s uniform. The pants were black, the shirt a white Brooks Brothers with a button-down collar. They were old man’s clothes, and Bronco looked ridiculous in them.

  “What about them?” Gerry said.

  “These aren’t your clothes.”

  “Sure they are.”

  “You think I was born yesterday?”

  “The day before,” Gerry said.

  Bronco cuffed him in the side of the head. The car swerved dangerously over to the side of the road, nearly flipping. Gerry quickly straightened the wheel.

  “These are your old man’s clothes,” Bronco said. “The monkey’s paw was in your father’s suitcase. He took the monkey’s paw from my house, didn’t he?”

  Gerry resumed staring at the road. Still no sign of another car. If he’d learned anything from the rackets, it was that there was always an angle to exploit. This angle had run its course, and he said, “That’s right. My father said it was the nicest one he’d ever seen. He asked the cops in Las Vegas if he could take it, and add it to his collection of cheating equipment. You had so many of them, the cops said sure.”

  “So you made up that stuff about being a scammer to save your neck,” Bronco said.

  Gerry glanced at his captor. “That part was true.”

  “Bullgarbage.”

  “I was a bookie in New York for ten years. I’ve only been clean for a little while.”

  “Tell me who the last person was you scammed.”

  Gerry told Bronco about scamming the Daily Double at Tampa Bay Downs, while helping his father expose the horse that had been silked. He glanced at Bronco while he spoke, and saw the same surprised look in his captor’s eyes as he’d seen in his father’s two days ago. He guessed Bronco had never heard of silking, either. By the time he’d finished, they’d reached the main highway. Bronco made him hang a left, and a short distance later, another left.

  “Where we going?”

  “Back to Reno,” Bronco said.

  Gerry remembered the route they’d taken from the jail, and this wasn’t it. He watched Bronco reach across the seat, and remove the pack of Marlboros tucked in Gerry’s shirt pocket. Bronco banged one out, then offered Gerry one.

  “Sure.”

  Bronco lit two cigarettes from the same match, and shoved one into Gerry’s mouth. Bronco smoked his cigarette while studying him. “Let me get this straight. You and your old man were hired by the track to catch some cheaters. While you were there, you saw another scam going on, and you bet money on it, and took the track for six grand.”

  “That’s right,” Gerry said.

  “Why didn’t you bet more, and make a killing?”

  “It’s a small track.”

  “And you were afraid it would get noticed.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bronco blew smoke at him. “How do I know you ain’t bullgarbageting me again?”

  “The winning stub’s in my wallet.”

  Bronco pulled Gerry’s stolen wallet from his pocket, and extracted the winning stub. Gerry had kept the stub as a memento. In his bar in Brooklyn, he’d framed the first hundred dollars he’d ever made as a bookie, and he’d planned to frame this stub to signify that his days in the rackets had come to an end.

  Bronco took his time studying it. Then he removed the money from the wallet, and counted it on the seat. Forty dollars in wilted bills.

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Bronco asked.

  “What do you mean?

  “You won six grand. Where’s the rest of the money?”

  Gerry didn’t think Bronco would believe he’d given the money back. He pointed at the photo section of the wallet. “In there.”

  “You keep it hidden, huh?”

  Bronco opened the photo section and saw a smiling picture of Yolanda taken when she was a third-year medical student at New York University’s School of Medicine. He stared long and hard at the photo.

  “She got it,” Gerry said.

  Something resembling a smile crossed Bronco’s face, but it didn’t last very long. Still holding the wallet, he said, “You won the money at the track two days ago, but you told me you quit the rackets.”

  “I quit the day I ripped off the track. That night, actually,” Gerry said.

  “Why?”

  That was a hell of a good question. Why had Gerry quit? He could say his old man shamed him into it, but
that wasn’t the truth. He’d done it because his life had gone down a different road, and he needed to change, or risk turning his life into a train wreck. The truth was, he’d finally been forced to grow up. That was why he’d quit the rackets.

  “Turn the page,” Gerry said.

  Bronco shot him a blank stare.

  “Look at the next picture in my wallet.”

  Bronco flipped to the next picture. It was of Lois, taken a few days ago, his baby daughter lying on the rug in his father’s house, the same rug Gerry had lain on as a baby.

  “I quit because of her,” Gerry said.

  Bronco stared long and hard at the photo.

  “Didn’t want her growing up thinking her old man was a crook, huh?”

  Gerry nodded, surprised Bronco would understand. Then he remembered the woman’s clothes hanging in his closet in the house in Henderson. Maybe in his past there had been a family.

  Bronco tossed the wallet into Gerry’s lap. He pointed up the road. They were on a deserted stretch except for a convenience store sitting off to the side. Even from the distance Gerry could read the neon Budweiser sign shimmering in the window.

  “Here’s the deal,” Bronco said. “You’re going to take your forty bucks, and make it grow.”

  “I am?”

  “That’s right. Otherwise, I’m going to kill you.”

  Bronco quickly explained the scam. The convenience store, like many in Nevada, had a row of slot machines in the back. Bronco had checked the store not long ago, and discovered an old Bally among the machines. The Bally had a unique feature: A player could stick his fingers up the payout chute, and hold the door open. This turned a small payout into a large one. Since the machine paid out a jackpot roughly every thirty pulls, Bronco believed Gerry’s money could be turned into a quick profit.

  “I’m going to stand outside, and watch you,” Bronco said. “Do anything stupid, and I’ll come in and shoot you, then rob the place.”

  They were sitting in the car, parked outside the store. The midday sun beat down unmercifully on the rental’s windshield. Behind the counter, a teenage girl with braces on her teeth, probably still in highschool.

  Gerry said, “What about her?”

  “I’ll kill her, too.”

  Gerry stuck his hand out. “Give me the money.”

  Bronco took the wilted bills off the seat and laid it onto his palm. “The machine probably has a sensor for overpays. If you leave the payout door open too long, the candle will come on, and an alarm inside the machine will go off.”

  “The candle?”

  “The white light on top of the machine,” Bronco said. “That’s the candle. They start blinking when something’s wrong.”

  “How long will it take for the sensor to come on?”

  “Ten seconds, more or less.”

  “More or less? What if it’s less? What if the alarm goes off?”

  “Then I’ll have to kill you,” Bronco said.

  Gerry got out of the rental and so did Bronco. Bronco went to the corner of the convenience store, and stood there and smoked his cigarette, one eye on the road, the other looking inside the store. The shotgun hung at his side, hidden from the street and from the girl working the counter. The guy knew all the angles.

  Gerry entered the store. As he came in, the girl behind the counter smiled and said hello. Her face had the wonderful freshness of someone on their first job. He handed her his money and asked for change.

  “You okay, mister?” she asked.

  He looked at himself in the mirror that was directly behind her. He saw his face, which was white, then saw Bronco staring at him while blowing smoke rings. He looked back at the girl. Real young, sixteen if she was a day.

  “Fine,” he said. “Quarters please.”

  She handed him a plastic bucket filled with quarters. “Play the machine on the very end. It’s been paying off lately.”

  Gerry walked to the back of the store. The slot machines hugged the wall, and took up about a fourth of the available floor space. There were probably as many slot machines in convenience stores and bars in Nevada as there were in the casinos. Gerry found the old Bally, and started to feed in a coin.

  “No, not that one,” the girl said, hanging over the counter. “The machine on the end.”

  Gerry felt sweat march down his back. He tried to ignore her, and the girl came out from behind the counter, and walked over to where he sat. Grabbing him by the arm, she led him to the machine on the end.

  “This one. I think the guy who adjusts it screwed up.”

  Gerry sat down at the machine. She stood beside him with her arms crossed, and he saw no other choice than to put two quarters into it, and pull the handle. The machine was themed after Star Wars, and space-age sounds serenaded him as the reels spun. When they stopped, two bars lined up, and realized he had a winner. He looked at the payout bar on the side of the machine. He’d won ten bucks.

  He cashed out, and walked with her to the front. He stopped by the cooler, and plucked out a pair of ice-cold Cokes. Paying for them, he handed her one.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Darlene.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  Darlene took a swig of soda, belched and covered her mouth in embarrassment.

  A cell phone rang behind the counter. Darlene answered it, and started yakking to her boyfriend. Gerry went back to the Bally and resumed playing it. Within a few minutes, he hit a small jackpot and stuck his fingers up the chute and hit the cash out button on the machine. Quarters flowed into his hand. He counted to eight, then pulled his hand out.

  He continued to play while Darlene spoke on her cell phone, hitting two more small jackpots and stealing three times as many coins during the payout. By now, the hopper was filled with quarters, and he grabbed a plastic second bucket off the machine and filled it, then put the remaining coins into his pockets. When he went back to the counter, Darlene was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Well, look at you,” she said.

  His total win came to a two hundred and thirty-eight dollars. He walked outside and handed Bronco the money. Bronco peeled off five dollars and handed it back to him, then stuffed the rest into his pocket.

  “Go buy me some nail polish,” Bronco said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Just do it.”

  Gerry came out a minute later with a cheap bottle of nail polish that Darlene had tried to talk him out of buying. He handed Bronco the bottle.

  “Get in the car.”

  Chapter 29

  Bronco made him drive to a sprawling storage facility on the outskirts of town. A sign said that air-conditioned units were available by the month or year. The facility was surrounded by chain link fence, and Bronco told him the code to open the gate.

  Moments later they were inside. Bronco pointed at a unit and Gerry braked in front of it. They both got out. Bronco punched another code into the keypad by the door, all the while holding his shotgun on Gerry. The sliding door went up, and Gerry stared at the brand new Ford Taurus sitting inside the unit.

  “We’re going to exchange cars, and park yours in here,” Bronco said.

  “Whatever you say.”

  They exchanged the two cars. As Gerry pulled the rental into the unit and killed the engine, Bronco slipped out of the car.

  “Been nice knowing you,” he said.

  Coming around to the driver’s side, he pointed the shotgun at the side of Gerry’s head, then closed one eye and took dead aim.

  “Got anything you want to say?”

  Gerry shut his eyes, and tried to think of what he wanted his dying words to be. It didn’t really matter, yet somehow it did. He had to say something, only, he couldn’t, his body gripped in fear. Thinking about dying always did that to him.

  “No.”

  “That’s what you want to say?” Bronco asked.

  “No, I’m just…”

  “Spit it out, god damnit.”

  “�
� scared, man. I’ve got a wife and kid. She’s three months old.”

  “Say goodbye to them.”

  Gerry choked on the words. It had taken him a long time to realize that all he really wanted out of life was a woman who loved him, and a child to call his own. And now they were being taken away from him. It was the worst form of robbery, and he shut his eyes and started to cry. Bronco cursed him.