Funny Money

“The lady at third base,” Valentine said. “She's as tight as a drum.”

“You're a genius,” Doyle said.

“How much is The Bombay into these crooks for?”

“Six million.”

“Come on, be serious.”

Doyle coughed into the phone. Valentine sat up straight in his recliner. Casinos got ripped off every day—Las Vegas lost a hundred million each year—but it went out the door in dribs and drabs. Big scores happened, but mostly through card counters. As far as he knew, no hustler had ever stolen six million from any single casino. It was too much money.

“You're positive about this,” Valentine said.

“The casino confirmed it. Uh-oh,” Doyle said, starting his engine.

“Something wrong?”

“Looks like I've got company.”

“Who?”

“The European. I made his white van yesterday when he was leaving The Bombay.”

“Get the hell out of there.”

Doyle's tires screeched as he threw the car into reverse. “Shit, the passenger window is going down . . .”

“Get the hell out of there!”

“Someone's pointing something at me. Looks like a transistor radio. . . .”

Valentine started to say something, then heard a loud Boom! that sounded like a thousand doors being slammed. He yelled into the phone, but his partner did not reply. He could faintly hear people screaming inside the McDonald's. He waited for someone to come outside, pick up the phone, and tell him what in God's name was happening.

Then Doyle's cell phone died.

Valentine called every cop he knew in Atlantic City. After ten minutes he found one who was on duty, and got put on hold. He began to pray. In his mind, he knew what had happened. Could picture it as clearly as the hand in front of his face. Yet it took hearing the cop coming back on the line and saying, “Tony, I'm sorry,” before he accepted the fact that his best friend of forty years was dead.

The cop stayed on the line, trying to console him. Valentine struggled to say something, but the words weren't there. His eyes started to burn. Then the room got very small.

Then he put the phone down and cried.

2

Cold

The cemetery was called Sunset Gardens, the manicured grounds new and horrible. The atmosphere was not serious enough, the place better suited for a happy-clappy John Tesh concert, with thirtynothings sipping overpriced wine and talking on cell phones. Getting out of the limo, Valentine heard another pallbearer mumble that Doyle wouldn't have been caught dead in a place like this, ha, ha.

Grunting, the six men lifted the coffin out of the hearse and walked solemnly to the freshly dug hole that would serve as Doyle's final resting place. The cold February air blew hard on their backs. Old-timers called Atlantic City the lungs of Philadelphia, the easterly winds often cruel and punishing. Depositing the coffin on a gurney, they filed out under the funeral director's watchful eye.

Valentine walked with his head bowed, disgusted. Who wanted to be buried in a place that looked like a golf course? He'd buried his wife eighteen months ago and come away hating the business of death. Would you like the thousand dollar pine coffin, Mr. Valentine, or the two thousand dollar polished maple? What was he supposed to say—put her in a cardboard box, she won't care and neither do I? But his grief had been too great, and he'd gotten hosed every step of the way, from the flowers to the tombstone. When he died, he was going to be cremated, his ashes spread on the Atlantic City shore. Simple and efficient, the way death was meant to be.

He stamped his feet to stay warm and listened to Doyle's brother, Father Tom, read to the crowd from the New Testament. Cops and pols and every judge from the past thirty years had come to pay their respects. You couldn't have worked law enforcement in Atlantic City and not known Doyle, and there wasn't a dry eye on the lawn.

He stole a glance at Liddy, Doyle's widow. She looked stricken, like she still could not believe it. A cop's wife for so long, she must have thought that when Doyle retired the risk of his getting killed would end. She'd dropped her guard, and now she was paying for it. Her two sons, Sean and Guy, were doing a good job holding her up. Sean, a redhead, was his old man's spitting image. Guy was more like Liddy, a musician, reflective.

Behind them, confined to a wheelchair, was Doyle's mother Sarah. Back in '74, Sarah had spearheaded the Casinos–No Dice campaign. She'd done such a good job convincing New Jersey voters that gambling was a bad bet that when a referendum did pass four years later, it was isolated to Atlantic City, a town nobody cared about. He remembered the last time he'd seen her. It was the night Doyle had gotten shot, twenty years ago. She'd come into the emergency room to thank him for nabbing Doyle's shooter, who lay dying next door.

Father Tom asked the crowd if anyone wanted to speak in Doyle's memory. Valentine stepped forward.

“Doyle was my best friend. And my partner. I know he's looking down on us and not liking all the long faces. I know a lot of stories about Doyle. This one's my favorite.

“Once, Doyle and I caught a chip thief. The thief's name was Thurman, and he wasn't very smart. Thurman would put his coffee cup on the table next to another player's chips. When the player wasn't looking, Thurman put the cup on the chips and stole one with gum stuck to the cup's bottom.

“Doyle and I caught Thurman and ran him in. Thurman swore he didn't know how the twenty-five dollar chip got stuck on his cup. We realized we didn't have any proof except a used piece of gum, and it was going to be Thurman's word against ours in court.

“Finally, Doyle had an idea. He went into the station house's kitchen and found a metal colander. He put the colander on Thurman's head and connected it with wires to a photocopy machine. While I distracted Thurman, Doyle wrote the words HE'S LYING on a sheet of paper and put it in the copier.

“Doyle had me do the questioning. I said ‘Thurman, did you steal that man's twenty-five dollar chip?' Thurman said, ‘No, sir!' and Doyle pressed the copy button. The piece of paper came out, and Doyle held it up and said, ‘Uh-oh!'

“So I said, ‘Thurman, you've been doing this for a while, haven't you?' And Thurman said, ‘No, sir, not me.' And Doyle pressed the copy button again. This time when the copy came out, it was enlarged to twice its size. Thurman started trembling, and Doyle said, ‘I think we've got our man!'

“Thurman confessed a short while later.”

Among the sea of mourners there were a few sad smiles. Returning to his place with the other pallbearers, Valentine bowed his head. Father Tom finished with the Lord's Prayer, and then the crowd dispersed.

Doyle and Liddy lived in a split-level ranch house in the suburb of Absecon. Cars lined the street, and Valentine parked his rental on the next block. He hadn't talked to Mabel all day, so he turned on his cell phone and dialed his office.

His call went straight to voice mail, which meant Mabel was talking to a customer. “Hey, kiddo, it's me. Hope everything's okay. I'm leaving my cell phone on. Call if you need anything.”

He got out of the rental and hiked it, the cold making him shiver. Finding the front door ajar, he went inside.

The living room was smoky and filled with cops, and he shook hands and slapped backs as he made his way over to a corner where Father Tom was tending to his mother, Sarah. Kneeling, Valentine kissed the elderly matriarch of the Flanagan clan on the cheek.

“It's been too long, Mrs. Flanagan,” he said.

“Mother had a stroke last summer,” Father Tom told him. “She can't speak.”

Valentine stared into the elderly woman's withered face. In her chestnut-colored eyes he saw the old sparkle, all systems on go. Rising, he pumped Father Tom's hand. Ten years Doyle's junior, he'd given up a football