Mr. Lucky (4 page)

6

A
s small towns went, Slippery Rock was a pretty nice one. The downtown dated back to the early 1800s and still boasted brick-lined streets and streetlamps, and plenty of businesses owned by people instead of faceless corporations. On Main Street there was an old-fashioned ice cream shop, a farmers’ market on weekends, and a movie theater with a Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ. Nine thousand hardworking souls lived here, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.

Now that Ricky Smith was a celebrity, he could not run out and buy a newspaper or loaf of bread without getting stopped on the street. It was strange being recognized after so many years of not, and in his neighbors’ eyes he saw a rainbow of feelings: happiness, envy, downright jealousy, and, in several guys he’d known in high school, quiet desperation. And everyone had peppered him with the same goddamned questions.

“You going to sue the Mint for your money?”

“Probably,” he replied.

“Think you’ll win?”

“Sure,” he said.

“What are you going to do with the money when you get it?”

“Rule the world,” Ricky said.

The truth be known, it was nobody’s business what he did with the money, not that he could convince his neighbors of that. Because he was from Slippery Rock, it was their money, too, and they would spend it vicariously through him whenever they got the chance.

Not having the million dollars he’d won at the Mint did not prevent Ricky from going on a shopping spree. His credit was good everywhere. At Moody’s car lot, the sales manager had welcomed him with open arms.

Moody’s was the only Lexus dealership in the county and did good business. Ricky scoured the lot and quickly settled on a silver Lexus LS430 four-door sedan. It was exactly the statement he wanted to make. The car screamed that he had arrived.

Driving the car off Moody’s lot, Ricky gassed it, and the fuel-injected V8 monster beneath the hood emitted a muffled roar. He headed for the open road. Soon, Slippery Rock’s hilly farmland and wooded fields were racing by his windshield like an accelerated movie.

He’d paid extra for a carousel CD player, and he jumped back and forth between tracks of a bootleg Stevie Ray Vaughan CD recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Vaughan’s screaming Fender guitar ripping a hole in Ricky every time he heard it. Ricky hadn’t appreciated the blues until after his divorce; now he listened every day. A lone, pathetic figure caught his eye, and he pulled the car onto the highway’s shoulder.

It was Roland Pew, the heartthrob of every girl in town ten years ago, pushing a rusty old bicycle with a flat. Ricky had babysat Roland as a teenager and always liked him. He pressed a button, and the window on the passenger’s side automatically lowered.

“Hey, Rolls,” he yelled, “what happened to your car?”

Roland shook his head wearily, indicating another sad chapter in his sorry life.

“You don’t want to know,” he replied.

“Don’t tell me you totaled it.”

“Worse.”

“Can’t be anything worse.”

“I can’t find it.”

“Come on. I’ll give you a lift.”

Roland had changed considerably since Ricky had seen him a month ago. Gone were his ponytail and thick yellow mustache and pirate earrings. Along Slippery Rock’s grapevine Roland’s tale had been a topic of discussion for days. As the story went, Roland had knocked up a local Piggly Wiggly checkout girl named Wanell Bacon, and Wanell had opted to have the kid, inspiring Roland to drink enough Jack Daniel’s to render himself comatose. Awakening a few days later in his uncle’s house, he had discovered himself shorn and shaven.

The aluminum bike folded easily into the trunk. Roland settled in the passenger seat and immediately began touching the upholstery. When they were a few miles down the road he said, “Mind my asking how much you forked over for this little beauty?”

“Seventy big ones. It’s fully loaded.”

“Jesus. What did you do, win the lottery?”

Ricky nearly said
Where you been, stupid?
Only, he knew exactly where Roland had been—sleeping it off at his uncle’s house. Roland’s family was basically illiterate, and news traveled to their part of the world slow, if at all. So Ricky told him what had happened out in Las Vegas. Roland whistled through his teeth.

“It’s about time somebody from here hit the big time,” Roland said. “I guess you heard my news.”

He said it with a trace of irony, and Ricky nodded. Roland’s father had dropped dead back in senior year, and Roland’s luck had been on a downward spiral ever since. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Roland said, “You know what’s got me worried?”

“No.”

“Not being able to provide for my kid. I haven’t had a job in
two years
.”

Ricky stared at the road. He nearly said
I’ll help you,
but people had been saying that to Roland for years, and nothing anyone had done had helped change Roland’s situation. Besides, Roland didn’t want help; he wanted a break, something that would restore his faith in humanity. True to form, Roland began to hum his favorite song, Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” the baneful melody drowning out a signature Stevie Ray six-string rift over a churning rhythm accompaniment. Had it been anyone else, Ricky would have told him to shut up.

A convenience store loomed in the distance, the lot filled with boisterous high school kids. Ricky parked near the front door, letting the engine idle. Inside the store, another high school classmate, Barry Clarkson, stared through the windshield at the car, then at him. Ricky smiled, and Barry turned away to take care of a customer.

The kids in the lot were spraying each other with pop. Watching them, Ricky saw himself and his high school friends twenty years ago, the world yet to drop its thunderous weight upon his shoulders.

He glanced sideways at Roland. His friend was still pawing the upholstery. Everything had gone wrong since Roland’s old man had kicked the bucket. He didn’t deserve the hand he’d been dealt. Ricky touched his sleeve. Roland lifted his forlorn gaze.

“Last night I had this crazy dream,” Ricky said. “In my dream, I’m driving and I pick up a hitchhiker, guy about your age, nice guy, and as we get near town he says he needs a smoke. I pull into a convenience store, and as he’s getting out he says, ‘Want anything?’ So I think about it and say, ‘I’ve got ten bucks burning a hole in my pocket. Get me ten lottery tickets. If we hit the big one, we’ll split the money.’”

“Like you was partners,” Roland said.

“Exactly.” Taking out his wallet, Ricky removed a stiff ten-dollar bill and snapped it before Roland’s world-weary eyes. “Guess what happened then?”

“You…won?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Fifty big ones.”

A look that almost resembled happiness crossed Roland’s face. Ricky stuffed the money into his friend’s hand, then watched him slip out of the car and shuffle nonchalantly into the store. Roland had written the book on being cool, his one great talent.

A car pulled into the spot beside Ricky’s Lexus, the blue-hair at the wheel flashing him a brutal stare. Miss Axe, his high school math teacher two years running, the woman who’d given him D’s and ruined his young life and was still ruining young lives, got out of her car. Seeing him, she came over and rapped on his window. Whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be pleasant, and he hit the volume control on his steering wheel, the car’s eight speakers blasting Stevie Ray’s apocalyptic rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).”

“Mr. Lucky, my left foot,” she said through the glass.

Ricky stuck his tongue out at her.

Shaking her fist, she stalked away and entered the store, his recent good fortune obviously not to her liking. A few moments later, Roland came out and got into the car, the ten Quick Pick Six tickets fanned out in his hand.

“Split the money,” he said by way of reassurance.

“Absolutely,” Ricky said. He saw a slight hesitation in Roland’s eyes. “Want to shake hands on it?”

“No. I just wanted to be sure.”

Ricky smelled beer on his breath, and saw an open can peeking out of his denim jacket. He pointed, and Roland pulled out a Bud tall boy.

“Have some,” Roland said.

Ricky took a long pull and felt the ice-cold suds tickle his throat and expand in his empty belly. He hadn’t had any beer in a week, one of his first resolutions after coming home from Vegas. He took another pull. It was an easy one to break.

“In your dream, which one of us had the winning ticket?”

Ricky shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“I’ve never won nothing in my life.”

“You want me to pick it?”

“It was your dream.”

Ricky pulled one of the lottery tickets out of Roland’s fist. It had already stopped being a game for Roland, and Ricky found himself wishing he had written Roland a check and told him to go rent an apartment and have his baby and get out of the rut he was in. Roland pulled a quarter out of his pocket, and dropped it in Ricky’s hand.

“You do the scratching,” he said.

Every Quick Pick Six ticket had twelve covered boxes on it; the player scratched off the latex, and if six boxes matched, the player won that amount. Ricky took his time, and on his first five scratches, he hit $50,000 circles. He passed the card to Roland and got the tall boy in return. Ricky pointed at the box in the left corner of the ticket.

“That one,” Ricky said.

“You think so?”

“Damn straight.”

Ricky killed the tall boy, seeing Miss Axe come out of the convenience store and shoot him a dagger. He rolled down his window.

“Miss Axe?”

She was fitting her key into her door and turned. “What, Ricky?”

“I love you. I really do, Miss Axe. I always loved you. It’s why I did so poorly in your class. It was you.”

Scowling, she climbed into her car and drove away. Ricky slapped the wheel of his new car, the beer lifting his spirits to impossible heights. Roland frowned, no longer being cool, his anxiety paralyzing him. The coin was frozen in his hand.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just…I don’t know.”

“You want me to do it?” Ricky asked him.

“Yeah,” Roland whispered.

Taking the ticket and the coin from him, Ricky scratched out the box in the corner. It was for $50,000. He showed it to Roland and watched his friend melt into his seat, and close his eyes.

“That was intense,” Roland said.

7

M
abel Struck had seen some strange things during her life, especially during the past two years, running Tony’s business and watching him catch hundreds of casino cheaters. But she’d never seen anything as strange as the item she was now holding, a candy bar worth a hundred thousand dollars.

She was going through the mail while sitting at Tony’s desk. Her boss had left a few hours ago for Slippery Rock, and she’d gone onto his computer and dealt with a dozen e-mails, then started sorting through his mail. It was heavy, and she put the priority letters in one pile, the it-can-wait items in another. The very last letter was a padded envelope. When she ripped it open, a giant 3 Musketeers candy bar fell out. With it was a letter from Ron Shepherd, the head of gaming enforcement for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Hey Tony,

Here’s the $100,000 candy bar for your collection. The store owner copped a plea and will end up doing a year, plus pay back the government for all the taxes he didn’t pay on his ill-gotten gains. I thought I’d seen them all, but this scam takes the cake. Thanks for your help in cracking this one.

Ron

Mabel held the candy bar in her hand. There was a price sticker on it. It cost a dollar thirty, Canadian. Their money was worth about 70 percent U.S., which made the candy bar worth about a dollar. So what made it worth a hundred thousand times that?

She put the candy bar on the desk and stared at it. There was an expression Tony liked to use.
In the know.
It was what differentiated the smart from the dumb. And she wasn’t in the know about this stupid candy bar. It frustrated her no end, and she picked up the phone and called Yolanda, who was across the street cleaning her house. Ten minutes later, Yolanda was standing in the study, holding little Lois against her chest while reading Ron Shepherd’s note.

“I thought you were kidding,” Yolanda said, putting the note down. “What do you think the scam is?”

“I have no idea. You know what frustrates me the most?” Mabel said. “Tony never told me he was doing a job for this man.”

“He probably did it as a favor. Gerry says he does that a lot.”

Mabel heard herself grinding her teeth. Tony had asked her to run his business, and she’d gone about it with the idea that people should be charged for her boss’s services. Yet it didn’t stop him from dispensing free advice and help whenever it suited him.

“At least he could have told me,” she said.

“Maybe he didn’t want to bother you. He thinks you work too hard.”

“Well, sometimes I do. But this is so…interesting.”

“So call him. He’ll be happy to explain it.”

Mabel examined the candy bar again. Ron Shepherd’s note said a convenience store manager was going to serve time. Had the manager covered the candy bar with a towel and pretended it was a gun? No, she decided, it was something infinitely clever; that was why Ron Shepherd had asked for Tony’s help. She glanced up and saw Yolanda holding the phone.

“You want me to call him?” she asked.

Mabel shook her head. “No, I’ll do it.”

Tony’s cell phone was turned off. Mabel left a message and asked him to call back. Her boss picked up his messages sporadically, which meant it might be a few hours, or even a day, before she got an explanation out of him.

Yolanda had to feed the baby, so Mabel showed her out. Shutting the front door behind Yolanda, Mabel suddenly had an idea. She didn’t remember Tony making any trips to Canada recently, which meant he’d probably solved the candy bar scam from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy. Going into the living room, she looked through the stacks of videotapes that were scattered around the room. Tony’s handwriting was hard to decipher—Gerry likened it to the cartoon character Bullwinkle’s—and she squinted at the labels.

She looked through every stack, then the tapes stuck in drawers and cabinets. It wasn’t anywhere to be found. Now she was getting mad. It had to be here somewhere.

On the La-Z-Boy was a yellow legal pad and the remote, Tony’s two main work tools. It occurred to her that the tape might still be in the VCR, and she powered up the TV, then hit play on the VCR. A grainy surveillance of a balding man with bare feet filled the TV screen. It was Ricky Smith at the Mint. She had read about Ricky’s exploits in the newspaper, but wasn’t prepared for what she now saw.

Ricky played like a man possessed. With one hand he bet; with the other, he rolled the dice or flipped over his cards. No movement was wasted.
Bam bam bam!
What made it so amazing was that he didn’t lose. Not once. That wasn’t possible, and Mabel slowly lowered her posterior onto the La-Z-Boy, her eyes fixed on the screen.

According to MapQuest, the town of Slippery Rock, North Carolina, was six hundred and sixty miles from where Valentine lived in Florida, and nowhere near a public airport. So he’d gotten the oil changed in his ’92 Honda and taken to the highway.

He drove in the right lane most of the way, and caught the drivers of passing cars giving him the eye. The Honda was definitely showing its age, the navy blue paint job fading to a less vibrant color. He kept thinking of trading it in; only, the engine still turned over every time he fired it up. What more did he want in a car?

Crossing into North Carolina, he felt his ears pop, and he grabbed MapQuest’s directions off the passenger seat. He’d been a flatlander all his life and hadn’t bothered to check the town’s elevation when he’d printed the instructions off his computer. Slippery Rock was twenty-nine hundred feet above sea level and in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. No wonder it was taking him so long to get there.

He kept his eyes peeled for a gas station. He’d run out of nicotine gum an hour ago, and the craving for a cigarette was killing him. He fiddled with the radio and found local news and Billy Graham saving souls. A Sinatra CD was in the player, but he saved that for special occasions, leaving silence as his traveling companion.

His cell phone rang, jolting him out of a daydream. The caller ID said
HOME
.

“Sick of driving yet?” his neighbor asked.

“Just about,” he admitted.

“Not to say I told you so, but flying to Atlanta would have been much easier.”

“If I didn’t hate airports so much, I’d agree with you.”

“I know, they remind you of medium-security prisons,” Mabel said. “Look, I just had a look at this tape of Ricky Smith, and I’d have to agree with your friend Bill Higgins. Something is definitely not on the square, to use your favorite expression.”

Valentine sat up in his seat. “You think so?”

“I’d bet my hat on it.”

Mabel rarely disagreed with him, especially when it came to his work. This sounded more like a scolding, and before he could answer, she continued.

“I think you need to take a fresh approach to this case, Tony.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You’re still angry at the casino owners in Las Vegas for what they did to Gerry. You have to forget about that.”

He swallowed hard. “Okay.”

“You also have to forget that Ricky Smith jumped out of a burning building,” Mabel said. “You’re letting that cloud what happened inside the casino. The man won eighty separate bets at blackjack, craps, and roulette. He didn’t lose once.”

“People get lucky,” he heard himself say.

Mabel laughed. “Not like this.”

He suddenly felt like an idiot. Mabel had obviously spotted something on the tape. He’d watched the tape again late last night after getting home from Key West. He’d been sleepy and dozed off near the end. “What did you see?”

“The surveillance tape in your VCR of Ricky Smith is actually four tapes spliced together,” his neighbor said. “There’s a time posted on each segment. Did you bother to check them?”

“No.”

“The times are continuous. He was running from game to game in his bare feet. Is that the way winners act?”

The sun was starting to set, and Valentine realized he was smiling. “No, they sure don’t.”

“The whole thing stinks, if you ask me.”

His headlights caught a green billboard on the side of the highway. Slippery Rock was another thirty miles, and he punched the accelerator with his foot.

“You’re a genius,” he told his neighbor.

From the elevated interstate, downtown Slippery Rock looked like something out of a storybook: four blocks square, the red brick streets laid out in a perfect grid, the buildings no more than three stories high, with old-fashioned storefronts and no neon lights. It was a pleasant step back in time, and as Valentine entered town, the bell in the tower of the Old First Presbyterian Church tolled seven o’clock. The roads were slick from a rain he hadn’t encountered, and he inched the vehicle down Main Street while searching for the Century 21 office.

Turning around, he drove through downtown a second time. It reminded him of several bucolic burgs he and his late wife had considered as places to retire to. In the end they’d chosen Florida, but a town like this would have been high on the consideration list. It was so clean it sparkled, and that was always a good sign.

He found the Century 21 office on a side street, the mullioned front window a montage of available homes and condos. Tapping his keys on the front door, he stamped his feet to stay warm. The mountains were always colder. Too bad he hadn’t remembered that when he’d packed. A cleaning lady unlocked the front door.

“I’m looking for Dolores Parker,” he announced.

The cleaning lady shrugged. “Who you?”

“Her seven o’clock appointment.”

The cleaning lady pointed across the street at the Holiday Inn. “Try the bar. Short blond lady. Fast talker.”

He thanked her and crossed the street. Dolores Parker was Ricky’s ex-wife. Her name had popped up in a newspaper article Valentine had found on the Internet. The article said she sold real estate, so he’d called the chamber of commerce and found out where. Making a phony appointment wasn’t entirely kosher, but neither was cheating a casino.

The bar, called the Beef & Brew, was just off the lobby. It was a dark, low-ceilinged room filled with loud people, the loudest of which, a spitfire blonde with inchlong fingernails, stood barefoot on a table while singing the Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville,” the lyrics drowned out by her unappreciative audience. When she was done, Valentine stepped forward and helped her down from the table.

“Thanks, mistah,” she slurred.

“Tony Valentine,” he said, offering his hand. “Your seven o’clock appointment.”

Her hand went up to her mouth, then she giggled, reached out, and pumped his hand hard. “Dolores Parker, nice to meet you. My friends call me Polly or P squared. Let me guess—your flight was delayed. Or was it the roads? They’re horrible this time of year. Well, the important part is you made it to Slippery Rock safe and sound. So how do you like our little oasis?”

“I like it,” he said.

“Well, good!” Slipping on her pumps, she grew three inches, the top of her perky little head reaching Valentine’s chin, and wrapping her arm in his, she let out a loud “See ya later, boys!” and hustled her client out into the cold and rainy night.

He followed Polly Parker to the north side of town. The drive had made him sleepy, and he rolled down his window and let the night air blow in his face. Slippery Rock was a pretty place, but he now remembered why he and Lois had decided against living in the mountains. It was cold six months of the year.

Polly drove her Acura into a cul-de-sac, the modest ranch houses sitting on heavily wooded lots, and he pulled his Honda up a sloping driveway and parked beside her. As he got out, he saw her window come down. She was on her cell phone, and he heard her say, “Hey, Kimberli, it’s Polly. I’m doing fine. Look, I’m showing a client from out of town the Muller place on Willard Court. I’ll call you when we’re done. Bye-bye.”

That was smart,
Valentine thought.
Tell a friend and warn me at the same time.
She got out, and they walked down a narrow brick path to a double-story shingle house.

“Slippery Rock doesn’t have many rentals this time of year,” she said, fumbling with the keys. “Not that the house is bad, it’s just that for the same money, I can get you much better in the next town over.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong with the place and get it out of the way?”

She hesitated, key in the door. “You sure?”

“I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

A noise came out of her mouth that sounded like a purr. Her bloodshot eyes betrayed how hammered she was, the tip of her tongue licking her finely shaped little teeth as she spoke. “Well, let’s see, the roof leaks and the basement floods when it rains and the carpets have a permanent damp smell you can’t get rid of and the street isn’t wired for cable so all you get is three channels and two of them are Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association. And then there’s your neighbor, Hank Ridley. Ridley’s daddy once owned most of this county. Over time, he’d sold off parcels to pay for things he needed, like a new car or a kid’s education, and when he died, the last parcel was willed to Hank, who fancies himself an aging Beat Generation poet. Hank sits around all day and smokes pot and never cleans his place up so you can imagine—”

Valentine had a feeling she was going to give him the town’s entire history. Holding up his hand like a cop directing traffic, he said, “Why don’t you just show me the place?”

“Why, sure!” she said brightly.

Grabbing his arm, she barged inside.

Polly gave him the twenty-five-cent tour. By the time it was over he was almost feeling sorry for her. Seven-thirty on a Friday night and she didn’t have anything better to do than work him over. Several times, he’d tried to get her to open up and talk about herself. Only, Polly wasn’t going there, and by the end of the tour, he realized that he’d wasted her time, as well as his own. They were in the kitchen, and she filled two glasses with water and handed him one.

“So what did you say you did for a living?”

“I’m a retired cop,” he said.