by James Swain
“Why don't you two hang out in Gino's while I look around next door,” Valentine said. Taking out his wallet, he handed Gerry two twenties, then started to walk away. He heard Yolanda whisper to his son.
“You want me with you?” Gerry asked.
Valentine turned around, not understanding.
“You know, as backup.”
There was real concern in his son's voice.
“I'll be fine,” he reassured him.
Waldbaums was jammed with shoppers. Stepping through the sliding glass doors, he was approached by a smiling female wearing a turquoise jumpsuit.
“Married or single?” she inquired.
He nearly told her it was none of her goddamned business, but she was wearing a store badge. “Single.”
“Oh. Fresh blood. Your name?”
“Tony. And yours?”
“Louise, thanks for asking.”
“Louise, thanks for asking. That's a nice name.”
She giggled. “You're a cutie.”
“Babies are cute,” he said.
“And what are you?”
“Sixty-two.”
She giggled again. “All right. You're a teddy bear.”
She scribbled his name on a label and slapped it against his chest. “There you go, Tony the teddy bear. Welcome to Single's Saturday at Waldbaums.”
He got a cart and started walking the aisles, getting hit on by women of every shape and size and age group. Women that he'd never have imagined in a thousand years would be interested in him. He hung around the produce department until the female onslaught became too much, and then fled to the liquor store that was part of the supermarket. Not surprisingly, no swinging singles were gathered there.
To kill time, he read the labels on vodka and gin bottles, remembering all the nights his old man had rolled home drunk and terrorized the family, only to wake up the next day remembering nothing. Whoever said booze didn't have therapeutic powers had never seen his father the morning after a bender.
After thirty minutes he'd worked himself into a real funk. Thinking about his old man did that to him. He was ready to leave when he saw Anna stroll into the produce section next door.
He pressed his face against the glass wall that separated liquor from produce. Anna was squeezing the tomatoes, and several hot-blooded males pounced on her. She fended them off, then made her way to the checkout.
He walked to the front of the liquor store. From a cooler he pulled a Diet Coke. Paying for it, he went to the front and stood by the window. Anna strolled out carrying a bag of groceries. Clutching his drink, he went outside.
It had started to snow. Anna was a hundred yards ahead, walking toward a neighborhood that was a borderline slum. He followed her.
A minute later, she entered a run-down apartment house. Stopping at the corner, Valentine reached into his pocket and grasped the .38 resting there. Then thought long and hard about a promise he'd made to Doyle Flanagan in a hospital room twenty years before.
He walked down the apartment house's front path. A flickering light caught his eye. Up at a third-floor window he saw Anna standing at a sink, washing her vegetables. He jerked open the front door.
The apartment foyer was a pigsty, the frayed carpet piss-soaked by drunks. The elevator was out and he took the stairs, kicking beer cans all the way. Another part of police work he did not miss.
He walked the hall and checked the names on the doors. The apartment at the end of the hall had none. He visualized the window Anna had been standing at, and determined he had the right door. He knocked loudly, then stepped to one side, drawing the .38. He heard movement on the other side of the door.
“Yes?” a woman's voice said suspiciously.
“It's Peter Diamondis,” he said, doing a bad job imitating the professor's scholarly tone. “I need to talk to Juraj.”
“Peter?” The door swung in, and Anna practically danced into the hall. “How did you—”
Valentine slapped his hand over her mouth and stuck the .38 in her face. Anna's eyes went wide. Pushing her into the apartment, he kicked the door shut.
It was a one-bedroom efficiency with sleeping bags on the floor. In the alcove that served as the kitchen, soup cans and milk cartons filled the sink. He pushed over to the bathroom and kicked open the door. Empty.
“Know what happens if you scream?”
She nodded fearfully.
He lowered his hand. “Where are the others?”
“They left a half-hour ago.”
“When will they be back?”
“I don't know.” Then she added, “They went to the morgue.”
He realized she'd been crying. He pointed at the room's only chair. She sat in it, crushing an empty pizza box.
“Who died?”
“Rolf. Juraj and Alex went to claim his body. How did you know about Peter?”
Valentine pulled a stool out of the alcove and sat down beside her. “I'm asking the questions. What happened to Rolf?”
Anna pulled a nasty-looking hanky from her pocket and blew her nose. “When Rolf didn't come home from work yesterday, Juraj got worried and called the police. Rolf was in the morgue. Someone had shot him.”
“Where did Rolf work?”
“At The Bombay, washing dishes.”
Extracting the pizza box from beneath her, she flung it across the room, hitting the picture on the wall and shattering its glass frame. It was just too much, and she started crying like there was no tomorrow. Valentine got a beer from the refrigerator and made her take a long pull.
“Why do you live like this,” he said.
She gave him a cold stare. “Like what?”
“Like pigs.”
Anna slapped his face. “How dare you call us that!”
Valentine grabbed her arm. “Don't do that again, hear me?”
She did not seem to care that he was holding a gun on her. “We are not rich like you, driving around in a fancy car, wearing nice clothes.”
“At least you could be staying in a decent place.”
“You don't understand,” she said, “do you?”
“No,” he said. “Why don't you explain it to me.”
Anna marched into the bedroom. Standing in the doorway, he watched her pull a knapsack from a closet and drag it past him into the living room. Clearing off the table they ate their meals on, she dumped out the knapsacks' contents.
Dozens of pink slips of paper hit the table. Valentine picked up several and stared at them. They were wire transfer receipts from Western Union. Anna gathered them, and started to arrange them in chronological order.
“Juraj always follows the same routine,” she said. “Once we win money at the casino, he wires it home. It is always that way. He says it saves us from being tempted.”
When she was finished, she handed him the stack. Valentine counted the receipts while noting the sums. They ranged between ten and twelve thousand dollars. Juraj's signature was on the bottom of each. And the recipient was always the same: M. Putja, Zagreb, Croatia.
Anna stood beside him, a defiant look in her eyes. “All the money goes home. We live this way because there is none left.”
Valentine finished counting. There were ninety receipts in all. He quickly did the math in his head. They'd stolen less than a million dollars from The Bombay.
He counted the receipts again, just to be sure.
The apartment was suddenly very warm. He slipped the snub-nosed .38 into his pocket, gathered up the slips, and stuffed them into the backpack. Then he went to the kitchen window and stared down at the snow-covered street.
“How long did Rolf work at The Bombay?”
“Do you believe me now?”
“Answer the question.”
“Three months,” she said.
“And he was feeding you information.”
“Yes. He was our mule.”
“Mole.”
“Yes. We have all known each other since college.” She folded her arms over her c
hest and started to cry. “I'm so . . . afraid.”
“Of what?”
“The people who killed Rolf will find us.”
“So move,” he said.
“We have no money.”
“None?”
“I have two hundred dollars in my shoe.”
“There's some cheap motels on the beach.”
“Will we . . . be safe?”
No, he thought, but I'll sure know how to find you. He went to the front door and opened it.
“Good-bye, Anna,” he said.
It was eleven-forty-five when Valentine walked into Gino's restaurant. His son had an appetite that wouldn't quit, and he was sharing a plate of fried calamari with his fiancée. Putting a gob of tentacles into his mouth, he said, “You want some?”
Valentine said no and pulled up a chair. The table was covered with empty plates and glasses. Hanging out in the supermarket had made him hungry, but now all he felt was numb.
“Something to drink? Coffee?”
Valentine said no. He felt Yolanda's hand on his wrist. He'd already learned she was good at reading thoughts. Their eyes met, and she said, “You okay . . . Dad?”
Valentine wasn't sure. He'd just discovered that everything didn't add up, and that was never okay.
The waitress brought the check. Gerry handed her the twenties his father had given him, then said, “Pop, do you mind helping out, here? I'm a little short.”
Leave it to his son to spend more than he had. Valentine took out his wallet and settled the bill.
27
What Is Sin?
Valentine did not say a word during the drive back to the Blue Dolphin. He walked Gerry and Yolanda to their room, then took the precaution of doing a once-over around the motel. He didn't think the Mollo brothers were stupid enough to come calling in broad daylight, but he'd learned that it was never wise to second-guess Neanderthals.
“I need to go out for a few hours,” he said upon returning to their room. “Promise me you won't do anything stupid, like sneak off to The Bombay to play Funny Money.”
“It was my idea,” Yolanda said.
“And it wasn't stupid,” Gerry cut in. “Yolanda's sister won a brand new Suburban.”
“You know what the odds are of winning a car playing a slot machine?” Valentine asked him. “The same as being struck by lightning . . . twice.”
“It happens, Pop,” his son said indignantly.
Nothing made Valentine angrier than idiot's logic, especially when it came to gambling. Going to the dresser, he opened the top drawer, removed the Gideon's Bible, and presented it to his son.
“Promise me on this Bible that you won't go out.”
Gerry stared at him like he was crazy.
“Do it,” his father said.
It was twenty minutes after one when Valentine pulled the Mercedes into the empty parking lot at St. Mary's Cathedral and killed the engine.
Sitting in the car, he tried to remember the last time he'd stepped foot inside a church. He'd been raised a strict Catholic, going to Mass every Sunday, sometimes twice if his mother thought he needed to say a few more Hail Marys, but as he'd gotten older he'd abandoned the practice and eventually the church itself. He still believed in God and tried to live his life accordingly, but the faith he'd been raised in no longer worked for him. To be a good Catholic, you had to be a penitent or a supplicant, and he was neither. It was that simple.
Slipping into the confessional, he was surprised at how the cold little box had the ability to dredge up a ton of guilt, and he lowered his head in shame. Moments later the tiny window slid open.
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”
“And how have you sinned, my son?” Father Tom asked.
Valentine took a deep breath. He'd decided not to tell Tom about Sparky's dying, simply because he believed he'd done nothing wrong. But there were plenty of other things weighing heavily on his mind, and he proceeded to tell the priest how he'd knocked down Kat, lied through his teeth to Coleman and Marconi, taken Archie Tanner's money for a job he was already planning to do—something which hadn't seemed a sin when he'd done it but sure did now—and had gone to the Croatians' apartment intending to pump a few bullets into Juraj Havelka.
“You've been busy,” the priest said.
Valentine stared at the confessional floor. “There's something else.”
“What's that?”
“I stepped on a guy's hand.”
Father Tom was a mouth breather, and his sharp intake of breath sounded like a small-caliber gun going off. “Please, explain.”
Valentine did, spelling out the scene with Big Tony at the motel as best he could.
“Surely you've hurt people before,” Father Tom said when he was done.
“I stepped over the line,” Valentine said.
“And which line is that?”
He fell silent. The line between what was truly good and truly evil was invisible, yet he'd always known where it was drawn. And he'd stepped over it in a big way.
“The guy was defenseless,” Valentine said.
“But he hurt your son and his fiancée.”
“I stooped to his level. Maybe lower.”
“Have you never done that before?”
He detected a hint of skepticism in Father Tom's voice. Like the sin he was describing was as common as the sun rising. Only Valentine didn't see it that way. He'd lived his life as purely as he could and hadn't inflicted pain unless it was justified.
“No.”
“Then I'm sure God will forgive you this time,” the priest said.
They stood on the front stoop, the wind whipping mercilessly at their faces. St. Mary's was located in a residential area off Route 9 in Swainton, the eighty-year-old church surrounded by apartment houses with Murphys and O'Sullivans stamped on the mailboxes. Black smoke billowed out of nearly every chimney. Across the way, two gangs of kids had joined forces to build a mammoth snowman.
“I need to talk to you about Doyle,” Valentine said.
“So the confession was just a way to get on my good side,” Father Tom said, smiling thinly. “Doyle and I talked often, but rarely about his work.”
“But you spoke a lot.”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I ask about a particular conversation?”
Father Tom's face turned sour. He'd been handsome once, with a ruddy Irish complexion and wavy blond hair, but with age he'd turned gaunt and his hairline had receded. Seeing something across the street he didn't approve of, he clapped his hands and let out a shout. The misbehaving kids scattered in a dozen directions.
“Sorry about that,” the priest said. “Which conversation between Doyle and myself are you referring to?”
“It was a conversation where Doyle blew up. He later wrote you a note and apologized about it.”
Father Tom hesitated. He had come outside without a coat, yet looked perfectly comfortable. All his life, Valentine had seen priests walk around in the winter in street clothes, like God had given them an extra layer of skin for joining up.
“Walk with me,” the priest said.
They took a stroll around the block. At an intersection they found the same hellions Father Tom had disciplined a few minutes earlier hurling snowballs at passing cars. The priest ran into the street and rounded them up while threatening to call their folks. It was fun to watch him work, and the troublemakers marched away with their heads lowered in shame.
Coming back, Father Tom said, “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“If there were more people like you, there would be fewer people like me.”
“Guilt is one of God's most powerful weapons,” the priest said. “Humankind's capacity for sin is nearly unlimited. Without guilt, we'd all run amok, don't you think?”
“Sometimes I think we do run amok,” Valentine said.
They were standing outside a bakery, the smell of pastries scenting the frigid air. The priest lowered his voice. “My brother w
as a good Catholic, loyal to his friends and family, subservient to his creator. Yet he was struggling with personal demons. I've never seen him so . . . apprehensive.”
“What happened?”
Father Tom had to think about it. “One day at lunch Doyle got a call on his cell phone. The caller said something, and my brother said, ‘What is sin?' Then he got very angry. After he hung up, I said, ‘Doyle, don't tell me you don't know what sin is?' And Doyle said, ‘This is a different kind of sin, Tom.'
“I've thought about that conversation many times, but it never made sense. Perhaps you have an idea.”
Valentine shook his head. All Catholics knew about sin. There was mortal, venial, spiritual, carnal, and capital sin. But a different type of sin? He had no idea.
“Was his caller a man or a woman?”
“A man.”
“Did Doyle address him by name?”
Father Tom thought hard. “Bob? No, Barry. No, wait. Benny. It was Benny,” he decided.
“You're sure?”
“Positive. Doyle addressed him several times.”
The only Benny in town was Benny Roselli, a dumb-as-nails ex-cop who ran security at the Wild Wild West Casino. Why would Doyle be talking to Benny about religion?
They walked back to St. Mary's. A young couple stood by the church's front door, their faces flushed with excitement. Father Tom introduced them as the soon-to-be-married so-and-so. They looked so damn happy that Valentine found himself smiling.
“It's been good talking with you, Tony,” the priest said. “Let me know if you find anything.”
“I will,” Valentine promised him.
“And Tony . . .”
“Yes, Father Tom.”
“Try to stay out of trouble.”
The priest's eyes were twinkling, as if knowing what he was asking was impossible.
“And if you can't, come back and see me,” the priest said.
28
Benny
Country-and-western music had never been Valentine's idea of a good time, and the occasions he'd been forced to listen had bordered on cruelty. How the Wild Wild West, Atlantic City's only musically themed gambling establishment, could play such god-awful music and still make money was one of the great wonders of New Jersey. The costumes the blackjack dealers and croupiers had to wear were particularly offensive. White cowboy boots and fringed miniskirts for the ladies, ten-gallon hats and string ties for the gents. It was a regular hoedown.