'Touche,' he said. 'I appreciate your taking care of him.'
'My pleasure. You know, he eats like you.'
'With his hands?'
'No! The way he addresses his food. Mealtime was obviously serious business in your house. Are you having a good time out there?'
'It could be worse.'
'You sound miserable. Are they paying you?'
'Like a king,' he said.
'Well, then stop complaining.'
'Who's complaining?'
'You were about to start. I looked at the weather report in the paper. It said it hit a hundred and twelve in Las Vegas yesterday.'
'It's dry heat. You remember to feed the bird?'
'Feed the-' Mabel's voice got caught on the words. Hesitation, then, 'You don't own a bird!'
'No, but I had you going. Hey, I got your message. Did you come up with a new ad to replace the last one?'
'I sure did,' Mabel said. 'I faxed it to your hotel an hour ago.'
'You did?' Valentine glanced at the phone to see if the message light was blinking. Sitting up, he said, 'The front desk hasn't called. Look, let me hang up and check. If it didn't come in, I'll call you back, and you can fax it again.'
'Gerry helped me,' she informed him.
He put the receiver back to his ear. As far as he knew, his son hadn't helped anyone in years. 'Come again?'
'He came up with the concept. He's a very clever young man. I think it's my best yet.'
'Better than the 'tattooed man seeks tattooed lady' ad you ran in the religious section of the paper?'
'It's light-years ahead of that.'
This he had to see. Saying good-bye, Valentine slipped on his loafers while trying to picture Gerry writing an ad. Maybe Mabel was the dose of reality his son needed. She had certainly done him a world of good.
Going into the living room, Valentine was looking for his plastic room key when a man wearing a cowboy hat stepped out of the kitchen and pointed a.380 Magnum in his face. He was tall and rangy, with yellow hair past his collar and ice-cold eyes.
'On your knees,' the cowboy said.
Valentine sank to the floor. The icy tiles sent an unpleasant sensation up his legs. He watched the cowboy reach into his breast pocket.
'Look familiar?'
In his hand was Valentine's honeymoon snapshot.
'Yeah,' Valentine said.
Holding a corner of the photo between his teeth, the cowboy ripped the snapshot in half, then in quarters. Valentine watched the pieces float to the floor, remembering that day on the Steel Pier as if it were yesterday.
'I've got a message from Frank Fontaine,' the cowboy said.
'I'm all ears,' Valentine said.
The cowboy flashed a lopsided grin. 'Fontaine wants you to know that he's got a flag in every state. You know what that means, old man?'
Valentine nodded. It meant that Fontaine had gangsters he could call in every city in the country who'd do a job for him, no questions asked. He watched the cowboy reach into his pocket again.
'Look familiar?'
This time, he was holding Valentine's address book.
'Yeah,' Valentine said.
'Leave town by tomorrow,' the cowboy said. 'Or Frank will make a call, and someone you love will get hurt. Get it?'
'Got it,' Valentine said.
The cowboy made him go into the bathroom and shut the door. The bathroom phone had been ripped out of the wall. Valentine dropped his pants and checked his Jockeys. Still dry.
'Stay in there a while,' the cowboy said.
'You got it,' Valentine replied.
He pulled his pants back on and sat on the toilet. Having nothing better to do, he mulled over Fontaine's threat. Why hadn't Fontaine just whacked him? The only answer he could come up with was because Fontaine didn't want that kind of heat.
Which could only mean one thing: Fontaine planned to rip off the Acropolis one more time.
Five minutes later, Valentine emerged from the bathroom. His honeymoon snapshot was still on the floor. Retrieving it, he slipped the pieces into his breast pocket. Two pieces of Scotch tape and it would be as good as new.
He cased the suite, just to be sure the cowboy was gone. Then he sat down on the bed and came to a decision.
He wasn't going to run. If he did, he might as well quit the consulting racket and learn to play shuffleboard or bingo or whatever it was retired people did in Florida. He couldn't be in Fontaine's back pocket and be any good at what he did.
No, he was going to stay and track Fontaine down. Most of his friends, he was not worried about; many were cops and could take care of themselves. Two people who weren't cops-Mabel and Gerry-he was sure he could keep out of harm's way until Fontaine was in the arms of the law. There could be only one reason why Fontaine was threatening him-because he was scared. Not just of getting caught, but of losing. His pride was at stake, and his reputation.
And so was Valentine's.
17
Roxanne was busier than a one-armed paperhanger, the line of guests waiting to check in twenty deep. Valentine had forgotten that Tuesday night was the Holyfield title fight, and he grabbed a table in Nick's Place and waited for her to go on break.
His heart was still pounding from having a gun shoved in his face. There was no worse experience, unless the gun happened to go off. Roxanne appeared and joined him at the table.
'I heard you did a Chuck Norris out at the airport,' she said when their drinks came. She sipped her Chardonnay and made a face. 'I didn't peg you as a martial arts expert.'
'I spent nearly twenty years working inside casinos,' he said, sipping his tap water. 'Guns don't work with that many people around.'
'Is that why you took it up?'
'Yes.'
'Let me guess: You're really the quiet type.'
Valentine smiled. His heart had finally stopped racing and he felt himself starting to relax.
'That's me. You want something else to drink?'
'That's okay.'
Roxanne gave him a dreamy, faraway look. She looked older than the other day, the wrinkles showing through when she was tired, and for some reason it made him like her even more, the chasm between them not as big as he'd first thought.
'How long you've been working for Bill?' he asked.
'About a year. Bill told me you figured it out.'
'Does anyone else know?'
