Funny Money

by James Swain

  The last time he'd made love had been eighteen months ago.

  He'd done it with his wife on the couch in the living room of their new home in Palm Harbor. The couch had been delivered that morning, and its addition had made the house complete. It was the beginning of their new lives; like a pair of kids he and Lois had stripped off each other's clothes and done the wild thing.

  It had been great. So much so, they'd gone to bed after dinner and made love again, then fallen asleep wrapped in each other's arms.

  The next morning, he'd lain in bed and run his fingers through Lois's hair, hoping she'd wake up wanting to do it one more time. Only she hadn't.

  The autopsy had revealed that his wife was suffering from degenerative heart disease. Lois had always been in touch with her body, and Valentine figured that she'd known something inside of her wasn't working right. Only she'd said nothing, wanting to get settled in before seeing a doctor.

  Whatever the reason, she had spared him from news he felt certain she knew was bad.

  Later on, he'd realized a terrible thing. He'd instigated the sex, something he did from time to time, his choice of venues not always appropriate. Lois never complained, and sometimes had more fun than he did.

  Only this last time, it had been all him, and he could not help but think that the exertion had added a strain to her already fragile heart, and that it had killed her.

  Which made him what? A carnal killer? It ripped him apart to think that his cravings had destroyed the thing he loved the most in this world. The guilt had hung heavy on his soul, and made the idea of having sex impossible.

  Until now.

  Had someone been staying next door, Valentine guessed they'd be banging on the walls about now, he and Kat having more fun than civilized people were supposed to have. It was sex with fireworks in the background, the kind of sex you heard about, read about, saw on the big screen, but never got to experience firsthand, the problem not with your plumbing or your mate, but just the situation itself. It was sex with a wild, unbridled glee tacked on to it, a smoldering fire suddenly doused with buckets of gasoline.

  He tried not to think of Lois, and for the most part he succeeded. But her memory crept up a few times, and he found himself imagining her in the place she now inhabited, judging him. Any other time, it would have stopped him cold, only he was too far gone to care.

  “What are you thinking,” Kat whispered a half hour later.

  The blankets were off the bed and the lamp from the night table lay on the floor. Valentine stared at the cheap popcorn ceiling, his lungs aching for a cigarette.

  “I'm thinking I'd better up my life insurance if I'm going to hang around with you.”

  “Come on, be serious.”

  “I haven't felt this good in a long time,” he admitted.

  “Tell me something about yourself,” she said a short while later. “Something no one else knows.”

  He turned on his side and looked at her. He didn't have a lot of secrets—what you saw was pretty much what you got—and had to think about it some.

  “And don't make something up,” she added.

  “Okay,” he said after a lengthy pause, “I'll tell you a story that I never told anyone.”

  “What's that?”

  “I once let a cheater go.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Kat propped herself up on an elbow. “I'm all ears.”

  “Back when Atlantic City first opened, the casino owners didn't know what they were doing. Hustlers liked the town so much, they'd called it a candy store.

  “One night, I was standing in the blackjack pit at the Sands. A woman in a motorized wheelchair came in. She was about seventy, and her name was Justine. She told the pit boss she'd been in a car accident, gotten a settlement from the insurance company, and wanted to play some blackjack. The pit boss cleared a spot at a table, and Justine started playing all seven hands, a hundred bucks a bet.

  “Woman was a real character. Chain-smoking, drinking whiskey, calling the pit boss and the dealer ‘Honey' and ‘Sweetie.' Everyone loved her, until she started winning.”

  “How much did she win?”

  “After an hour, she had all the dealer's chips.”

  “How much was that?”

  “Around twenty grand.”

  “Was she cheating?”

  “Well, I thought she was.”

  “How come?”

  “It didn't pass the smell test. If she'd only played one hand, I would have said beginner's luck. But she played all seven. It felt like a hustle.”

  Kat giggled. “The smell test. I like that.”

  He touched his nose. “Still works pretty good.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The dealer gets more chips, and Justine goes back to work, bam, bam, bam, and just beats him silly. And then she innocently asks, ‘Can I bet more?'

  “She's already betting the table limit, so the pit boss asks the shift manager. The shift manager wants to win his money back, so he says sure. Then he turns to me and says, ‘You agree?' Well, I didn't agree. So I grabbed a drink girl—”

  “Cocktail waitress.”

  “—sorry, and I took a glass of water off her tray. I'd come up with a theory of what Justine was doing, and I decided to test it.”

  Their bodies had finally cooled down, and Kat covered them with a blanket. “Which was what?”

  “Blackjack is hard to play, especially if you're talking. And Justine was talking to everybody. I couldn't figure out how she was keeping track of all her cards. And then it hit me. She wasn't playing her hands.”

  “Who was?”

  “The wheelchair. There was a computer hidden in the motor. Justine was entering the cards on a keypad, then looking at a digital readout. So I went and spilled my water on her. The next thing you know, the wheelchair starts smoking.”

  “Is having a computer illegal?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Then why did you let her go?”

  “It was strange. I looked at her, and she looked at me. She was scared. I had a feeling it was the first time she'd ever broken the law. I said, ‘Learned your lesson?' And she nodded. So I looked away, and she ran out of the casino.”

  “Did you get in trouble?”

  “No. The computer melted, so all the evidence was destroyed. I later got grilled by my captain, but I got out of it.”

  “How?”

  “I told him I'd doused her with holy water.”

  Kat punched him in the arm. “You're horrible,” she said.

  35

  Tattoos

  Valentine did not want to start their relationship with a lie, so he asked Kat to get dressed, then told her everything that had taken place in the past twenty-four hours, including how the Mollo brothers had been turned into cinders the night before. Brushing out her hair, she said, “Well, I guess they got what was coming to them.”

  He sat on the bed buttoning his shirt. Nothing he'd said had fazed her, and he guessed the great sex had something to do with it. It had certainly bolstered his own spirits.

  The Saturn's engine was slow to turn over. Kat gunned the accelerator and the car rose from its slumber. “Normally, I don't bring guys I've just met to my house,” she said, “but with you I'll make an exception.”

  Valentine thought she was joking. Then he remembered that Kat had a twelve-year-old daughter she was raising by herself.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  She lived in a rented bungalow in Stargate, a sleepy burg five miles south of Atlantic City. The town was still reeling from the last recession, the hundreds of millions being skimmed off the casinos by the state not filling a single pothole or planting a much-needed tree. The promise of a better tomorrow had never been kept, and probably never would.

  Her house sat on a dreary street with tiny, fenced-in yards. She eased the Saturn up the concrete slab that served as her driveway and killed the engine.

  “It's not much, but
I call it home.”

  Valentine touched her arm.

  “Let's get one thing straight,” he said.

  “What's that?”

  “You don't ever have to apologize about your life to me.”

  She leaned over and kissed him. It felt just as good as the first time, and it didn't wear off until they were standing on the porch and she let out a shriek.

  The front door had been kicked in and leaned precariously against the door jamb. Making her stand back, he drew his .38 and entered the house.

  The rooms were small but clean. He saw no pulled-out drawers, or upturned furniture, or anything that might suggest vandals. A strange odor lingered in the air, the smell reminding him of burnt marshmallows.

  Coming onto the porch, he said, “Looks okay,” and she ran past him and headed for the bedroom, emerging moments later with a strongbox in her arms. She dumped its contents onto a couch. Money, most of it twenties, poured out.

  Valentine helped her count it. Twelve hundred and forty bucks. He saw the anxiety vanish from her face.

  “It's all here,” she said.

  “How about your jewelry?”

  “I wear it,” she said, “but the TV's still here, and the VCR and my computer.” She started to stuff the twenties back into the strongbox. “I don't get it. Why didn't they take anything?”

  “Beats me. What the heck is that smell, anyway?”

  “I thought it was you.”

  “Me?”

  “You didn't light a cigarette?”

  Valentine shook his head. He had two cigarettes left and had decided that when they were gone, there would be no more. He cased the place again.

  Kat's house was filled with old-fashioned bric-a-brac, just like his place in Florida, and he went around sniffing pots of flowers and other things known to occasionally produce a bad odor. The smell was strongest in the kitchen, so he checked the various appliances capable of starting a fire.

  The stove was off, as was the coffee maker and toaster. Stymied, he rifled through the garbage can. Kat entered the room. “Why'd you turn off the radio?”

  “I didn't,” he said.

  The radio, a white retro Sony, sat on the counter beside a Betty Crocker recipe box. He pulled it away from the wall, and found a dime-size hole in one its speakers. Squinting, he saw where the bullet had gone through the wall and made a peephole onto the backyard.

  “I leave it on all the time,” she said, peering over his shoulder. “There's a jazz station I like.”

  “WQRX?”

  “That's the one.”

  “You dig Sinatra?”

  “Doesn't everybody?”

  Now he was truly in love. He put the radio back in its spot.

  “Okay, Mr. Detective,” she said. “Why would a burglar shoot my radio out?”

  A burglar wouldn't shoot your radio out, he thought. Burglars came through windows, or back doors, and if they didn't find something worth stealing, left their mark in some way—like stealing a beer from the fridge, or pissing on a woman's underwear. That was the mentality of people who robbed houses, their patterns as predictable as the weather.

  And burglars didn't enter houses with their guns drawn, as the intruders who'd entered Kat's house had done. Entering the kitchen, they'd been startled by a voice on the radio and had mistakenly shot it out.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, sitting behind the wheel of her car a minute later. “You're telling me these burglars were planning to kill me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He could think of only one logical answer.

  “Because you know me,” he said.

  “Jesus, Tony.”

  He thought of the other people in his life who might be targets. Taking out his cell phone, he hit Power, and found that the battery had gone dead.

  “Where's the closest pay phone?”

  She drove to a 7-Eleven on the next block. The pay phone was in the back of the store by the bathrooms. Feeding quarters into the slot, he dialed Davis's cell number.

  “Hello?” the detective said.

  “Hey, Eddie,” he said.

  With horns blaring in the background, Davis pulled off the road. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Tony Valentine,” he said.

  There was an uneasy silence. Then Valentine remembered: He was supposed to be dead.

  “This is Richard Roundtree, isn't it?”

  “Valentine! You're not dead?”

  “Never felt better.”

  “There are three bodies down at the morgue . . .”

  “It's a long story. Look, I need to ask you a question. Have you been home recently?”

  “What?” the detective said.

  “Yes or no?”

  “No, not that it's any of your—”

  “Go home right now and see if you weren't broken into.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” He read Davis the number printed on the pay phone. “Call me back and see if I wasn't right.”

  The phone went dead in his hand.

  Kat came into the store, bought a bottled water, and struck up a conversation with the weirdo manning the register. The guy was downright scary-looking, his face pierced with black pins, his hair a mix of lollipop colors. She didn't seem bothered and happily chatted away.

  Valentine loitered around the pay phone. Ten minutes later, the phone rang. Lifting the receiver, he said, “Was I right?”

  “They shot my goddamned dog,” Davis seethed.

  “What?”

  “Had this dog since I was in college. They busted down the back door, and Bruno must have attacked them.”

  “Any of your neighbors see them?”

  “Yeah. They fit the description of Coleman and Marconi.” Davis paused. “But you knew that, didn't you?”

  “They were at the top of my list. Did your neighbors call 911?”

  “Call 911? I live in a black neighborhood, Tony. Whatever Coleman and Marconi say happened, that's what the police are going to believe.” He paused again. “You haven't explained why they're after me.”

  “Because they think I made the scam at The Bombay and then told you.”

  “You're saying I'm fucked,” the detective said.

  “Yes, I'd say you're fucked.”

  He could almost hear Davis thinking. “Maybe I'd better call in sick, and go hang at my girlfriend's.”

  “I would,” Valentine said.

  Davis recited his girlfriend's phone number. Valentine wrote it down on the palm of his hand, then hung up.

  Behind the register, the weirdo had taken off his shirt and was displaying the colorful array of tattoos adorning his upper torso. Each was of a famous wrestler—the Hulkster, the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin—and the weirdo did tricks with his muscles that made them come to life, with Kat ohhing and ahhing at the appropriate moments. Valentine hooked his arm into hers and bolted from the store.

  “Let me guess,” she said when they were on the road. “You don't like body art.”

  “You didn't see me sporting any tattoos, did you?”

  “Can't say I looked that hard.”

  “They're crude. Some religions think they're blasphemous.”

  “Name one.”

  “Okay. The Jews. I knew a Jewish guy who had a tattoo. He died, and his wife wanted him buried in a Jewish cemetery. So they cut his arm off.”

  She made a face. “I was thinking of getting one. Lots of women wrestlers have them.”

  He gave her a look that said this conversation would go no further. She stared at the road.

  “So what did they do with the arm?” she asked a few minutes later.

  “I guess they buried it in a Gentile cemetery.”

  “Very funny,” she said, punching him in the shoulder.

  36

  The Four Kings Approach

  Valentine needed a car.

  Kat drove him to the Hertz lot at Bader Airport, and he rented a Mustang. As he turned the car o
n, Van Morrison's “Tupelo Honey” came blaring out of the radio's speakers.

  He parked next to Kat's Saturn and got into her car. Kat was on her cell phone telling the principal at her daughter's school why she was pulling Zoe out. She hung up.

  “What a pencil dick. Zoe's already missed so many classes, what difference will another day make?”

  He took out his cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Is that a little question or a big question?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do I mind if you smoke in my car, as in right now, or do I mind if you happen to smoke, as in all the time?”

  He showed her the two remaining cigarettes in his pack. “I've got these to go, then I'm back on the wagon.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He lit up, then exhaled a dark plume. When the cigarette was nearly gone, Kat spoke.

  “You haven't told me what you're going to do.”

  No, he hadn't. He'd told Kat what he wanted her to do, which was fly to Florida with Zoe and hole up in his house until this thing played itself out. It was the best he could offer, and he'd been relieved when she'd said yes.

  “You don't want to know,” he said.

  “Tony . . .”

  He filled his lungs with smoke. Knowing it was one of his last cigarettes made it taste that much better. He stared across the lot into the rental car office. “I need to find out how The Bombay's getting ripped off. Frank Porter knows, so I'm going to make him tell me.”

  “Make him how?”

  “I'm going to use the Four Kings approach.”

  “It sounds ugly.”

  “You ever been to Fremont Street in Las Vegas?”

  “I've never been west of the Mississippi.”

  The cigarette was nearly out. He smoked it until he tasted the filter, then snuffed it in the ashtray. “When people think of Las Vegas, they think of the Strip, and all the big casinos. But the original Las Vegas is on Fremont Street. Locals call it old downtown. The casinos here are old-fashioned joints.