Davis smiled. It had obviously been bugging him. He stuck his hand out. Valentine shook it. It was a common trick in police work to wait until the end of a conversation to ask a loaded question, and Valentine took a chance.
“So what was Doyle talking to you about, anyway?”
Davis nearly fell for it, then caught the words as they started to come out of his mouth.
“None of your business,” he replied.
Valentine turned up his collar while walking through the parking lot. Eighteen months in Florida and his blood had already thinned out. Hearing footsteps, he turned to see a guy that bore a striking resemblance to Gerry walking behind him. The guy's clothes were old and dirty, and Valentine watched him walk out of the lot and down the street, hands shoved in his pockets.
Sitting behind the Mercedes' wheel, Valentine felt a wave of guilt sweep over him. Why was he trying to solve everyone else's problems while ignoring Gerry? He needed to help his son, no matter how angry his boy made him.
Then he had an idea.
AT&T had a great service that let him get a phone number from anywhere in the country for fifty cents. A minute later he was laying it on thick to a police sergeant at the police precinct near his son's bar in Brooklyn.
“. . . and the next thing I know, some hood named Big Tony Mollo has taken over my bar and is running things.”
“And this Big Tony is no relation, nor in your employment,” the sergeant said skeptically.
“No, sir,” Valentine replied.
“What is your son's relation to Big Tony?”
“The same as his father's.”
“Your son doesn't know him?”
“No, sir,” Valentine lied.
“Why do you think Big Tony took it upon himself to take over your bar?”
“Beats me.”
“You said you were a retired cop?”
Valentine gave him his credentials. He heard the sergeant's fingers tapping away on a computer keyboard, checking him out.
“Here you are,” the sergeant said. “Thirty years on the force. Two citations for bravery. I'm impressed.”
“Just doing the good Lord's work,” Valentine said.
The sergeant reeled off the name of every cop he'd ever known in Atlantic City. Finally he said a name Valentine knew. They traded stories. Satisfied, the sergeant said, “Okay, Tony, so what would you like done with this unwanted visitor on your property.”
“Get rid of him.”
“You don't want us to press charges?”
“Only if he resists. I have no gripe with this guy.”
“That's very decent of you, Tony,” the sergeant said.
“I'm getting soft in my old age,” Valentine confessed.
9
Honey
According to the scuttle at Doyle's funeral, the bomb that had killed him was pretty fancy. A quarter pound of cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, commonly called RDX, attached to a mercury switch. A trucker inside the McDonald's had likened the explosion to overheating a bag of popcorn in a microwave, with pieces of car flying in every direction.
Because Doyle's cell phone had briefly stayed on, Valentine had assumed it had landed behind a bush or beneath a car. He'd also assumed a cop on the scene would find the phone, and a check would have been run to see whom Doyle was talking to. That would have led to the police's contacting him and grilling him to find out what he and Doyle had been talking about.
Only none of this had happened.
Leaving Atlantic City Metro Police headquarters, he drove to the McDonald's where his partner had died, just to see if the police had forgotten to look someplace obvious.
He parked behind the restaurant. Hard as it was for him to spend money, he was starting to understand how people got attached to these cars. Smooth ride, great seats, an unreal sound system. He needed new wheels. Why not a Mercedes?
He took a walk around the property. It sat on a small parcel of land. There was a handful of trees, the rest of the landscape lunar. He decided he wanted to get on a higher elevation. Going inside, he found a pimply kid mopping floors and stuck a sawbuck in his hand. His name badge said
Harold met him behind the restaurant, ladder in hand. Propping the ladder against the wall, he pointed at his watch. “Sixty seconds. Just like we agreed.”
“Right.”
“The clock's ticking.”
Valentine scampered up the ladder. He walked around the roof edge, and to his surprise, saw a cell phone sitting near an air vent. Picking it up, he rubbed its cold blue steel against his pant leg. The explosion had blown its cover off, but otherwise it appeared intact.
A flicker of silver caught his eye. Out of the snow he plucked a silver dollar–size coin. It looked real, only instead of Eisenhower's profile it was stamped with Archie Tanner's grinning mug. Funny Money.
“Hurry up,” Harold called.
He climbed down the ladder. Reaching the bottom, he shoved the items he'd found on the roof into his pocket.
“What did you find?” Harold asked.
“None of your business.”
“You're not going to split what you found?”
“Why should I?”
“I thought we were partners,” the boy said with righteous indignation.
Valentine looked at him scornfully. Harold had carrot red hair and enough rings on his face to hang a shower curtain. A sullen-faced manager came around the corner.
“Harold? What the hell's going on?”
Harold spelled it out to him. Traitor. Walking over to the Mercedes, Valentine got in and drove away.
When you threw in tax and the extra battery the cute salesgirl at the AT&T store talked him into buying, the charger for Doyle's cell phone set Valentine back fifty bucks. It was ridiculous: People were spending a small fortune to do something that only cost a quarter. It was like the four dollar coffee at Starbucks, and ten dollars to see a first-run movie. Someday, everyone would be a millionaire, and a burger would cost a grand.
Sitting in his motel room, he plugged the charger into the wall and Doyle's cell phone lit up in his hand. The salesgirl had thrown in an instruction manual, and he taught himself how to access the phone's memory bank and scrolled through it. It contained six names.
Guy. Sean. Home. Tom. Tony. Honey.
Valentine stared at the last name. Who was Honey? Doyle had never mentioned her. That wasn't like him. Then he had an unsettling thought. Was Doyle seeing someone on the side?
The idea seemed absurd. When it came to women, Doyle was like him: a square. They'd both married their high school sweethearts, both stayed loyal through thick and thin. Only the evidence was staring him in the face.
He pulled a Diet Coke out of a paper bag and popped it. Whoever this woman was, he needed to talk to her. Chances were, she knew something. That was the real reason guys had girlfriends. You could get sex just about anywhere these days. But finding someone to talk to, that was tough.
