Mr. Lucky (25 page)

45

W
e lost our witness,” Bill Higgins said.

Valentine closed his eyes and felt his spirits sink. It was eight in the morning, and he was sitting in the kitchen of his house with Gaylord, sucking down coffee. They’d stayed up and traded war stories while waiting for Bill to call. “Don’t tell me she got away,” he said.

“She put a gun to her head.”

Valentine felt his stomach roll over. That made nine dead people in three days. And for what? A million bucks that Ricky Smith hadn’t even collected.

“We searched her house,” Bill said. “She’s Ricky’s aunt on his mother’s side. I found some letters in a desk and an album with Ricky’s picture in it.”

“Any evidence we can use in court?”

“No. She put her purse into the trash compactor before we could get to her. It crushed the miniature camera she used in the scam into a thousand pieces.”

Bill sounded like he was hurting. No cop wanted to cause a suicide. Helen Ledbetter taking her own life would eat at Bill, just as the three men Valentine had killed would eat at him. Opening his eyes, he said, “I’m sorry this happened.”

There was a pause. Then Bill said, “What are you going to do now?”

Valentine removed Ricky Smith’s winning OTB slip from his pocket. He’d been praying that Bill would haul in Helen Ledbetter, and she’d crack and turn evidence on the rest of the gang. Then he’d be able to leave Slippery Rock and go home. Only, life didn’t always work out the way you wanted it to. “I’m going to ask the sergeant who runs this town to arrest everyone who’s involved,” he said.

“Do you have enough evidence to do that?” Bill asked.

Valentine stared at the slip. Every crime had at least one flaw. The slip was Ricky’s, and it was going to put a whole bunch of people in jail for a long time. “Yes. But first I need you to do something for me.”

“Name it,” Bill said.

Gaylord drove Valentine to the police station in his car. It was a four-door Volvo, and Valentine found himself appraising the vehicle. It had a powerful engine and plenty of amenities, but something felt wrong. Then he realized what it was. The car was meant for a family, which meant that if he bought one, Gerry would abscond with it.

They went inside and found the deputy at the front desk flirting with the cleaning lady. Valentine wanted to ask him where he was a few hours ago, but decided he’d already stirred up the pot. They went into Gaylord’s office, and the sergeant shut the door. Paper was coming out of the fax machine, and Gaylord pulled the cover page from the tray and read it. “It’s from your friend in Las Vegas.”

“How many pages is he sending?”

“Twenty-seven, including the cover.”

Valentine removed the five sheets already in the fax tray. Each was a bill from a Las Vegas hotel with a person’s name on it, along with how many days they’d stayed in the hotel, what they’d spent, etc. Bill was faxing the names of everyone from Slippery Rock who’d been in Las Vegas when Ricky scammed the Mint.

Valentine handed the sheets to Gaylord. As more sheets came through, Valentine passed them to him. By the time the machine had spit out twenty, the sergeant was sitting in a chair and the blood had drained from his face.

“I know these people,” he said, sounding shaken. “I go to church with them and my kids attend the same schools and my wife’s in the PTA with…aw, shit, what am I saying?”

“You’re saying they’re your friends.”

The sheets were clutched in the sergeant’s hand. “My best friends.”

Valentine went into the next room and got another chair. He came back and shut the door, then sat next to the sergeant. “I can leave you out of this. It will take me longer, but I can. I don’t want to ruin your life.”

The last of the sheets had come through. Gaylord pulled them out of the tray. His eyes fell on one, and he groaned. “My kid’s pediatrician.” He put the sheets on his desk and tiredly rubbed his face with his hands. “Let me ask you something. How much time are these folks looking at? A year, maybe two?”

“Try four and a half in the federal pen,” Valentine said.

“What?”

“They all committed felonies.”

“But Ricky didn’t collect the money.”

Valentine saw the pleading look in Gaylord’s eyes. Nevada had the harshest laws in the country when it came to cheaters, with conspiracy to steal from a casino as bad as the act itself. Those twenty-six names sitting on Gaylord’s desk—along with perhaps their spouses and friends—were guilty of conspiracy to defraud. They were toast.

Gaylord leaned forward in his chair. His beard had come out, and he looked like he was about to become a werewolf. “I read in the paper a few weeks back about a casino in Las Vegas that had rigged a promotion. They had a raffle and gave away a Mercedes-Benz, a ten-thousand-dollar chip, and a five-thousand-dollar chip. They rigged the raffle so that some high rollers who’d lost a lot of money won the prizes. You hear about that?”

Valentine nodded, wondering where this was going.

“The Nevada Gaming Control Board fined the casino a million bucks, which is a chunk of change. Only, this casino is making a quarter-billion dollars a year. Two of the upper management guys who rigged the game went on to other jobs. The third got promoted.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Valentine asked.

“You work for these people.”

Valentine nearly said
no
. But it was true. He was here in the casinos’ employ, even though he hated every last one of them.

“That’s right.”

“Well, how about we do something similar here?” Gaylord suggested. “We make the people who were involved pay a fine, or do some other kind of community service, provided they give you enough evidence to nail Stanley Kessel and Ricky Smith. Those are the two you want.”

Valentine thought it over. Gaylord was asking him not to rip the guts out of Slippery Rock. For every person he put behind bars, a great many more would suffer. And all because they’d let some fast-talking scumbags talk them into scamming a casino.

“You’re on,” Valentine said.

They shook hands on it. Valentine picked up the stack of faxes from the desk and handed them to him. “Pick out the person in this group who you can talk into helping us.”

Gaylord pulled out the pediatrician. His name was Dr. Russell McFarland. “Russ has too much to lose. He’ll do whatever you want.”

“Let’s go see him,” Valentine said.

Gaylord could be a world-class prick when he wanted to be, just like most good cops. He put the screws to Russ McFarland the moment they were behind the closed doors of McFarland’s office. The doctor worked out of a renovated house a quarter mile from town. It had polished wood floors and was filled with expensive furniture.

McFarland was about what Valentine had expected. Mid-forties, nice clothes, expensive haircut, living high on the hog. Maybe the HMOs had taken a bite out of his income and he’d decided to join Ricky’s gang. Valentine was sorry it was Gaylord putting the screws to him. He hated rich people who cheated. They had the best that life had to offer, yet somehow it was never enough.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” the doctor said, his voice trembling.

“Even rat out your friends?” Gaylord said.

“Yes. Just don’t tell my wife. She thinks I was at my high school reunion.”

Gaylord dropped the stack of faxes on McFarland’s lap. Then he told the doctor what he wanted done.

“You want me to call
all
of them?” McFarland said.

Gaylord slammed his fist on the desk. The doctor jumped an inch out of his chair, then reached for a phone book on the shelf.

“You learn fast,” Gaylord told him.

46

I
t took McFarland an hour and ten minutes to call every person in the stack of faxes. When he was done, he was sweating through his clothes. In between calls, he’d admitted he had a twenty-two-year-old mistress in L.A. who visited him in Las Vegas twice a year.

Valentine was sitting on the edge of the desk. Once, he’d gone to the door and glanced into the waiting room at the gang of little tykes and their mothers waiting to be seen. It had made him that much angrier at the guy. Long ago, he’d accepted that there were people in the world who were rotten to the core. He just didn’t want them to be people who dealt with children. He saw McFarland hang up the phone.

“That’s the last one,” the doctor said.

Valentine remained where he was. McFarland looked around the room. A frightened look crossed his face when he realized Gaylord had left to take a leak.

“Stop looking at me like that,” McFarland said, tugging on his collar.

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like I was something you scraped off your shoe.”

“I want you to tell me something.”

“I did what you asked. Get out of my office.”

Valentine came around the desk and put his hand on the back of McFarland’s chair. Before the doctor could protest, Valentine spilled him onto the floor, then put his foot to the small of his back.

“What do you want?” McFarland said, his face kissing the wood.

“I want to know what kind of doctor you are.”

“I’m a pediatrician.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I’m a good doctor. I just screwed up.”

“Think you’ll screw up again?”

“No, no. Never.” He looked at Valentine with one eye. “I promise.”

“While you’re cleaning up your act, lose the mistress.”

McFarland started to protest, then caught himself. “Okay.”

Gaylord came into the room, rolled his eyes, and immediately walked out. Valentine lifted his foot and followed the sergeant outside to the car.

They went to the town’s only stationery store, and Valentine bought a package of colored construction paper, a marker, and a box of colored thumbtacks. He had Gaylord drive him to Ricky Smith’s place while he made signs. Each one said
MEETING INSIDE HOUSE/LET YOURSELF IN AND TAKE A SEAT
. He finished as Gaylord pulled into Ricky’s drive.

“Make yourself scarce until a few minutes after eleven,” Valentine said, opening his door.

“You want me to come inside?”

“No. Just park out in the street. And have a couple of deputies pull their cars behind yours.” He had one foot on the drive and hesitated. “One other thing. Do you have a spare badge I can clip on my shirt? I think it will help.”

Gaylord searched his glove compartment, then removed his own from his wallet and tossed it to him. “Make sure you give it back, okay?”

“No problem. I like being retired.”

He hopped out and walked toward Ricky’s house. At the first tree in the driveway, he stopped and thumb-tacked one of his signs. He heard the sergeant call his name and turned to see him parked in the street, his window down.

“No rough stuff, okay?”

“What’s your definition of that?”

Gaylord shook his head and drove away. Valentine tacked the rest of the signs around the property, saving the last for the front door to Ricky’s house. Then he went around to the back and let himself in through the kitchen. He took the kitchen chairs and put them in the living room, then rearranged the couch and chairs in a semicircle. Hopefully, anyone who came in would feel at home and take a seat.

He left through the back door and walked across the backyard to his house. At the back door he found Ricky’s cat waiting for him. He bent over, and it jumped into his arms. He’d never been fond of cats, but this one was growing on him. He went inside and fixed it a plate of food.

The rocking chair on the back porch was calling to him. His mind said no, but his body said yes. He fell into it, then checked the time. Nearly ten. He leaned back and shut his eyes. The cat joined him a minute later, and he felt it make kitty biscuits on his chest with its paws. He stroked the top of its head without opening his eyes. Just as he drifted off, he told himself that the sound of the first arriving car would jolt him awake.

He dreamed he was speeding down Las Vegas Boulevard with Lucy Price. The car’s tires were bumping the concrete median. In a loud voice he told her to slow down.

“I can’t,” she said tearfully.

He reached across the seat and grabbed the wheel with both hands. He was not going to let her jump the median and slam into a car filled with tourists. He was going to stop what he knew had already happened. He was going to make the world right, even if it was only in his dream. The car came around a bend and gained speed.

“Slow down,” he shouted.

“I can’t,”
she cried.

He brought his foot across the seat and stepped on the brake. It felt like putty beneath his shoe. The car continued to race ahead. He tried to turn the wheel, but it would not respond. Lucy sat in her seat, crying softly. “You’re too late,” she said.

The strip’s casinos were a blur of harsh neon. He continued to fight with the wheel, then felt the car jump the center median. He shifted his gaze just in time to see the faces of the British tourists in the vehicle they were about to hit. Two men, two women. He wanted to tell them how sorry he was. Only, it was too late.

The sound of his cell phone snapped him awake. He gently pushed the cat off his lap and dug the phone out of his pocket. The caller ID said it was Gerry.

“The cops arrested Huck Dubb a few hours ago,” his son said excitedly.

Valentine found himself staring across the backyard at Ricky’s house. He could partially see the front of the house; over a dozen SUVs and expensive imports were parked in the front yard. He glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes before eleven.

“Where did they find him?” he asked.

“In northern Florida, about fifty miles west of Tallahassee. The highway patrol set up a roadblock, and Huck tried to get away but wrecked the car. His brother somehow managed to escape, but the cops say they should find him in a few hours.”

Valentine saw the back door of Ricky’s house open and a man step outside and have a look around. Ricky’s gang had assembled and were probably starting to wonder what was going on. He needed to get over there pronto.

“Do the Florida cops think his brother is a threat?”

“No,” his son said. “Guy’s retarded. Doesn’t have a driver’s license or any way to get down to Palm Harbor and harm Yolanda and the baby.”

“You believe them?” Valentine asked.

There was a long pause. Valentine guessed he’d just put the fear of God into his son. “Cops aren’t the smartest people on the planet,” he said. “They might have misjudged Huck’s brother. We’re talking about your family here, Gerry.”

“I know, Pop,” his son said, his voice measured. “I talked to Lamar about it. He knows the Dubbs pretty well. The retarded brother is named Arlen. Lamar said the greatest harm Arlen poses is to himself.”

“Meaning what?”

“Lamar said if Arlen got lost in the woods, he’d probably end up dying.”

“Can he use a gun? Did you ask him that?”

“Yes, Pop. Lamar said Arlen would probably shoot himself if you handed him a gun.”

Tallahassee was more than two hundred miles from Palm Harbor. If Lamar was right, then Arlen Dubb’s chances of finding his way to Palm Harbor and hurting anyone were slim at best. “Okay,” Valentine said. “Sorry to alarm you.”

“That’s okay, Pop. I appreciate you thinking it out so thoroughly. I’m going to head out of here. When are you coming home?”

Valentine looked at his watch and saw the second hand usher in eleven o’clock. It was judgment hour, and he rose from the rocker. “Soon,” he told his son.