Mr. Lucky (27 page)

49

V
alentine went out onto the front porch to wait while Ricky packed his clothes. The cat, which had been preening around Ricky, followed him outside and did its little dance. He scooped it up in his arms.

“Traitor,” he said, rubbing its head.

The lawn was empty of cars, and the police cruisers were also gone. He would have to call Gaylord and explain what had happened. The sergeant would be happy to hear that he wasn’t going to have to arrest the gang. Valentine wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, but he didn’t live here. He started to unclip the badge from his shirt, when he heard a voice call his name. He walked around the side of the house and found Mary Alice Stoker sitting on a swing.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“The whole time,” she said. “I was on the porch. I heard your speech.” She patted the spot beside her on the swing. He sat beside her and made the chains sing. “I once lived in this house. I can still walk the grounds without getting lost.”

“Who brought you here?”

“A neighbor. She was involved.” She pushed the ground with her feet, and the swing went backward. “You were very kind with them, considering what they did.”

“I was more than kind,” he said.

“How so?”

He took her fingers and placed them on the badge still clipped to his shirt.

“When did that happen?”

“Last night. It’s only temporary.”

She patted him on the knee. “You are a good man, Tony Valentine. But there is something that’s bothering me.”

“What’s that?”

“Your friend in Las Vegas, Lucy Price. Why did you abandon her?”

He felt like an invisible dagger had been plunged into his heart. His dream from an hour ago was still rumbling around in his head. He’d been in a car with Lucy but still couldn’t prevent her from crashing. The moral had been clear: He couldn’t alter the course of Lucy’s life, or the misfortune she might cause others. No one could do that but Lucy. He started to get up from the swing and saw the blind librarian stiffen.

“Please don’t run away from me as well.”

He sat back down and waited for her to resume. The swing had stopped moving.

“As a cop, you know how to help people. But as a person, you’re misguided.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So straighten me out.”

A secret smile crossed her face. She placed her hand on his sleeve and left it there. “You told me a story yesterday about two cops who were summoned to a domestic disturbance. Instead of arresting the young man causing the problem, one of the cops tried to talk some sense into him. The young man hit the cop in the face with a hammer, and the cop’s partner shot him dead. You told me that the cops had made a mistake. Had they arrested the young man, neither of those terrible things would have happened.”

“That’s right.”

“But you left out an important part,” she said. “You didn’t factor in all the other times that those two cops were able to talk sense into someone and keep them from venturing down the wrong path. How many times do you think those two cops did that?”

Valentine shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“A lot?”

“Sure. It comes with the job. You get to play Solomon all the time.”

“Exactly. Cops have to make life-altering decisions every single day. And what I’m telling you is this: That one tragedy you described to me doesn’t cancel out all the good things those two cops did. Evil never cancels out good. It only eclipses it and makes us not see it. But the good remains. It’s always there. It is the thing that makes the human experience worth having.”

The front door of the house opened, and Ricky and Polly stepped outside. Mary Alice heard the sound, and her grip on his sleeve intensified. “The bad deed that Lucy Price committed does not negate the good deed that you did for her. Nor should it stop you from continuing to help her. In the end, you will prevail, just like you did today.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” she said.

It was something one of the little kids he’d met in her library might say. Ricky and Polly were standing on the porch, looking for him. Valentine got their attention and pointed at Ricky’s Lexus sitting in the carport. Ricky and Polly walked across the yard and climbed into it.

“I need to go. Can I give you a lift home?”

“My neighbor is picking me up at noon and taking me back to school,” she said. “May I ask where you’re going?”

“New York. I’m going to put Stanley Kessel in jail.”

“I’d like to ask you for a favor. I hope you won’t be offended.”

“What’s that?”

“I have a picture in my mind of what you look like. May I touch your face and find out if my picture is anything like the real thing?”

“First tell me what your picture looks like.”

“I most certainly will not.”

He found himself staring at her. He’d avoided doing that, as if staring at a blind person was somehow cheating. What he saw was a woman of great character and moral courage. Taking her hand from his sleeve, he brought it to his face and allowed her fingers to run across the contours of his life. Done, she lowered her hand.

“Good luck in New York,” she said.

The Lexus had a phone in the dashboard that let Ricky make plane reservations from Charlotte to New York for later that night. The drive to the airport was about two and a half hours, and Valentine got settled in for the ride, then called Gerry on his cell phone.

“I’m in the Hattiesburg airport, boarding my flight,” his son said. “I said my good-byes and got the hell out of there. Lamar wants to hire us, but I don’t know.”

“Had enough of Gulfport?”

“That’s an understatement. They’re calling my section. Got to run.”

“Wait a second,” Valentine said, having remembered what had been bugging him since that morning. “Did they catch Huck’s retarded brother?”

“Not since I last talked to Lamar.”

“When was that?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. He asked me to call him from the airport and let him know I’d gotten there safe and sound.”

“And the north Florida cops haven’t caught him.”

“No. Look, Pop, the poor guy’s retarded. If he’s running around in the woods, he’ll probably end up dying from exposure.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” Valentine said.

“You know what I mean. What’s bugging you?”

“When I was a cop in Atlantic City, several guys on the psycho ward at the hospital took off one night. They weren’t very hard to find.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m dead serious, Gerry. Think about it.”

“I’m going to lose my seat, Pop. I’ll call you when I’m back home.”

The connection went dead. His son sounded pissed off. Valentine didn’t like to scare him, but something wasn’t adding up. If Florida cops were good at anything, it was tracking people. They knew how to hunt and used their skill as well as anyone.

He leaned back in his seat and felt his eyes start to droop. The memory of that night in Atlantic City flashed through his head. He and his partner Doyle had gotten one of the psychos in their car, and the guy kept climbing out. He was as slippery as an eel, and every time he got away, he’d laugh hysterically at them. It had been a long night.

The Lexus swerved to avoid something in the highway. Valentine’s eyes snapped awake. People with mental conditions were difficult to take out in public. So why had Huck brought his retarded brother along? He flipped open his cell phone and called Gerry back.

“Pop, we’re starting to taxi.”

“Did it ever occur to you that the Florida cops don’t know what Huck Dubb looks like?”

“But they identified him.”

“What if the retarded brother was told to say ‘I’m Huck’?” Valentine said. “What if he has some credit cards in his pocket with his brother’s name on them? What if the retarded brother is a plant? Just because Huck’s a redneck doesn’t mean he’s stupid, Gerry.”

“Pop, you’re scaring me.”

Valentine looked at his watch. Nearly noon. Nine hours had passed since Huck had gotten pulled off the road. Plenty of time to find another set of wheels and make it down to Palm Harbor. He said good-bye to his son, hung up, and punched in Yolanda’s number.

“Please be home,” he prayed as the call went through.

50

H
uck Dubb sat in a pizza delivery car and stared at Gerry Valentine’s house in Palm Harbor a block away. It was noon, the street deserted. He’d commandeered the car a half hour ago from a shopping center where the pizza maker was located. The driver had been sitting in the car, counting his money, when Huck had stuck a gun through his open window. The driver had given Huck the keys and even thrown in his stupid hat for good measure.

Huck had stolen cars every hundred miles during his trip down from the Florida Panhandle. It had made the trip longer, but also safer. Changing cars every couple of hours made it impossible for the law to get a bead on him.

He stared at the address on the card he’d stolen from the registration desk at the Holiday Inn in Gulfport. The address on the card and the one on the mailbox were the same, but something didn’t feel right about the place. It was a quaint New England–style clapboard house and not what he’d expect an Eye-talian to be living in. Taking the driver’s cell phone off the seat, he called information and got the operator to verify the address for him.

A Palm Harbor sheriff’s car materialized in his mirror. Huck felt his heartbeat kick into high gear. It had taken him nine hours to get here after leaving Arlen behind. For every minute of that nine hours, he’d thought about how he was going to punish Gerry Valentine’s family. Cut and strangle and shoot was how he’d decided to kill them. Thinking about it had put a fire in his belly as powerful as any he’d ever felt.

Digging into his pocket, Huck removed his cash and pretended to be counting it while the sheriff trolled past. On the backseat of the car were boxes of pizzas in insulated bags. The food made the interior of the car smell real good. Huck lifted his eyes and saw the sheriff idling beside him. He smiled at the man behind the wheel.

“Hey, Officer, how’s it going?”

“Can’t complain,” the sheriff replied.

“Nobody listens. Want a free slice? I got a pie that went undelivered.”

The sheriff smiled and said no and drove to the next block. Huck watched him park in front of Gerry Valentine’s house and climb out of his vehicle. The sheriff walked around the house and then got back in his car and drove away.

Huck smiled to himself as he started up his engine. The police up in the Panhandle must have figured out that Arlen wasn’t him and alerted the police down here. In a way, he was happy he’d run into the sheriff. Now he knew to be on his toes—and that Gerry Valentine didn’t keep a dog running around his property.

He parked in the spot the sheriff had vacated. As he killed the engine, his stomach growled. He hadn’t put anything in his mouth since leaving Gulfport, and the pizza on the backseat was calling him. First things first, he told himself.

Getting out, he removed one of the insulated boxes from the backseat, then opened the trunk and removed the short-barreled shotgun he’d brought from his grandmother’s house. He stuck the shotgun beneath the box. It was just small enough to stay hidden.

He walked up the front path, wondering how foolish he looked in his coveralls and the pizza driver’s hat tilted rakishly on his head. At the front door he stopped and peered through a wire mesh screen door onto a porch. Baby toys were scattered across the floor. His breath caught in his throat. What did the Old Testament say? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. With his free hand, he rapped on the screen door.

When no one came out, he tested the knob and got it to turn. He pulled the door open and stepped inside the porch. It was small and cozy, with newspapers scattered on the furniture. He glanced behind him on the street. Still quiet as a church.

“Anyone home? Pizza delivery.”

He could hear music inside the house. It had a Latin rhythm that made Huck instinctively tap his foot. He tested the front door and found it unlocked. He opened it and slipped inside the house of the man who’d killed his three sons.

Huck had been a criminal since he was eight. He’d learned from his daddy, who’d made ruckus juice out of a still in the back of his house and sold it for a buck a gallon to the blacks and farmhands. If he’d learned one lesson from his daddy, it was that you had to move fast. Whatever the crime, speed was key. Everything else was secondary.

He put the pizza box on the floor. The music was coming from a room off to his right. Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. He drew a hunting knife from the sheath hanging beneath his shirt, then walked down a short hallway and entered the room. More baby toys scattered on the floor, a crib in the corner. Gerry Valentine was a proud new daddy. It made Huck that much more enraged. Then it hit him what he’d do. He’d kill the wife and take the kid. That would put a knot in Gerry’s colon for the rest of his life.

He walked into the center of the room and looked for a picture. He didn’t want to end up killing the goddamn cleaning lady. In the corner of the room was a small desk with a computer in its center. On its ledge was a family photo. He got close enough to make out Gerry and the woman in his arms. She was a real beauty.

Gloria Estefan’s singing was getting to him. He liked Latin music, especially to dance to. What people back home called cutting the rug. He found the stereo and turned the music up. He was about to ruin another man’s life. It made him feel incredibly powerful. He went into the hallway and walked to the foot of the stairway. He listened hard for a few moments, thought he heard a noise. He put a foot on the stairs, then halted. He needed to be sure she wasn’t downstairs, or risk letting her get away.

He went to the end of the hallway. It cut to his right, and he stuck his head around the corner. The hallway led to the kitchen in the rear of the house, and he squinted at Gerry Valentine’s wife standing at a sink in the kitchen with her back to him. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and stood motionless at the sink. He guessed she was cleaning dishes.

He pulled his head back around the corner. Knife or gun? He decided on the gun. It was quicker. He’d rush into the room, shoot her, and be done with it.

Payback time.

Mabel Struck was serving homemade eggplant lasagna to Brownie and Little Pete when the telephone in the kitchen rang. She’d invited them to lunch after they’d agreed to help her, then learned from Brownie that neither man ate meat. So she’d found a vegetarian recipe online that looked easy to make.

“Will you excuse me?” she asked.

“Of course,” the two retired carnival men said.

“Please start without me. I don’t want your food to get cold.” She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. After all the work they’d done—and so quickly!—having them for lunch was the least she could do. “Hello?”

Her caller was the chief of the Palm Harbor police department. He told her the news, and Mabel leaned against the wall and brought her hand to her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ll be right over.”

The chief didn’t think that was a good idea. There was a lot of blood in the house.

“I’m coming anyway,” Mabel said.

She put the phone in its cradle before the chief could reply. Her head felt light, and she stared out the window at the gloriously sunny afternoon. It seemed unfathomable that something so horrible could happen on such a beautiful day. She found herself wishing Tony was here, so they could go across the street together. Only, she couldn’t lean on Tony for the rest of her life. Sucking in her breath, she went to the back door and pulled it open.

Yolanda sat on the back stoop, rocking the sleeping baby in her arms. Lois had started wailing a few minutes ago, and Yolanda had brought her outside so Brownie and Little Pete wouldn’t have their eardrums ruined. The younger woman looked up at her.

“Is everything all right?”

“Our trap worked,” Mabel said.

Yolanda rose from the stoop. “Are the police there now?”

Mabel nodded. “Your neighbor heard a shotgun blast and dialed 911.”

“Did they catch him?”

“Yes. He shot himself in the foot. The police think…”

“What?”

“They think he might die.”

Yolanda grabbed Mabel by the wrist and looked her in the eye with a steely gaze. “Don’t feel sorry for him. He was going to hurt me and my baby.”

“I know. It’s just—”

“He got what was coming to him.”

It was exactly what Tony would say, and Mabel found herself nodding. Cradling the baby in her arms, Yolanda hurried inside with Mabel right behind her.

Three Palm Harbor sheriff’s cars and an ambulance were parked in front of Yolanda’s house. Yolanda identified herself to the uniform in charge and asked to be let inside. The sheriff stared at the baby in her arms, then at Mabel.

“She’s with me,” Yolanda said.

“It ain’t pretty,” the sheriff warned her.

“Please let us in,” Yolanda said.

The sheriff led them inside the house. Everything looked normal until they reached the rear hallway that led to the kitchen. The floor was sheeted with blood, the sight of it so unsettling that Mabel felt her breath go away. If it bothered Yolanda, she didn’t show it.

Mabel stared at the door at the end of the hallway. That morning, Brownie and Little Pete had painted a trompe l’oeil on it that showed Yolanda standing at the sink with her back to the door. The painting was poor compared to those at the Showtown, but the bad light in the hallway hid the imperfections. Huck Dubb must have been looking at it when he fell.

“Where is he?” Yolanda asked the sheriff.

“Out in the ambulance,” the sheriff replied. “He hit the trip wire your friends ran across the floor, and blew his foot clean off. We’re trying to find a hospital that will take him.”

“Why bother?” Yolanda said.

Mabel could no longer stomach the blood and left the house. There was a massive oak tree on the front lawn, and she stood beneath its cool shade and tried to regain her composure. The ambulance’s back doors were open, and she watched the EMS team work on Huck Dubb. He was a big man and looked like a beached whale lying on his back. No matter how horrible a person he was, she didn’t want to see him die.

Then she looked at the gang of sheriffs standing by the curb. They were talking and laughing and enjoying the beautiful day. And they were eating something. Her vision was poor, and she had to stare before she realized what it was. Pizza.

Staring up into the clouds, Mabel thanked God for looking out for them.