asked if they'd like to sleep with him. The direct approach. Which he now tried.
“I was hoping you could help me.”
The woman behind the glass snorted contemptuously.
“I'm looking for a Croatian guy named Juraj Havelka. He told me to meet him at the Western Union office, but he didn't say which one. Has he been in?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Who? What's this about?”
“His name is Juraj.”
“I'm not good on names,” she replied. “Describe him.”
“About my height, blue eyes, blond hair. Not bad-looking.”
“I wish,” the woman said.
The next Western Union was on Pacific near Bally's Grand Casino. Gerry parked by the door and his father peered inside. Two frumpy women sat behind the glass, both in their mid-thirties.
“They look right up your alley,” Valentine told his son.
“Spare me the compliments,” Gerry patted down his hair and got out. Stopping at the door, he glanced back at the car. Yolanda blew him a kiss.
His son went in, and the two women behind the glass looked up and smiled.
“So how you ladies doing?” Gerry asked.
“Great,” they chorused.
“I was wondering if you could help me out.”
“Sure,” the pair said.
Gerry worked off the script his father had given him. Unfortunately, neither woman had ever heard of Juraj Havelka. They both frowned when he said good-bye.
“Still the charmer,” his father said as they drove away.
The third Western Union office was on the south side of town, a crime-riddled area filled with transients. Gerry parked in front and Valentine stared at the dark-haired Hispanic kid with a pencil-thin mustache behind the glass.
“If you don't mind,” he said to Yolanda.
“This should be fun,” she said.
“Don't let him get fresh with you,” Gerry said.
Yolanda was laughing as she walked into the store. Gerry had never acted jealous until she'd broken the news that she was pregnant. The Hispanic kid behind the glass gave her a smile.
“You Puerto Rican?” he asked.
She nodded. As a rule, Puerto Ricans were pretty good about sticking together, and without any coaxing the kid looked through a batch of receipts and pulled up Juraj's name.
“He was in yesterday. You're a friend of his?”
Yolanda could hear it in the kid's voice: He wanted to tell her something about Juraj. She nodded, then said, “He's my
“I see him or his girlfriend at the supermarket most weekends. They're nuts about fresh vegetables and fruit. I think it's a European thing.”
“Which supermarket?”
“The Waldbaums on Crescent and Hines.”
Yolanda wanted to give the kid a hug, only the bullet-proof glass prevented it. Climbing back into the BMW, she shared her good news and immediately sensed that her fiance and his father had been at each other's throats.
Waldbaums was a brightly lit, forty-thousand-square-foot box of steel and tinted glass. Connected to it was a strip shopping center, at its end a mom-and-pop Italian eatery called Gino's. Gerry edged the BMW into an empty space in the parking lot and they all got out.
“Why don't you two hang out in Gino's while I look around next door,” Valentine said. Taking out his wallet, he handed Gerry two twenties, then started to walk away. He heard Yolanda whisper to his son.
“You want me with you?” Gerry asked.
Valentine turned around, not understanding.
“You know, as backup.”
There was real concern in his son's voice.
“I'll be fine,” he reassured him.
Waldbaums was jammed with shoppers. Stepping through the sliding glass doors, he was approached by a smiling female wearing a turquoise jumpsuit.
“Married or single?” she inquired.
He nearly told her it was none of her goddamned business, but she was wearing a store badge. “Single.”
“Oh. Fresh blood. Your name?”
“Tony. And yours?”
“Louise, thanks for asking.”
“Louise, thanks for asking. That's a nice name.”
She giggled. “You're a cutie.”
“Babies are cute,” he said.
“And what are you?”
“Sixty-two.”
She giggled again. “All right. You're a teddy bear.”
She scribbled his name on a label and slapped it against his chest. “There you go, Tony the teddy bear. Welcome to Single's Saturday at Waldbaums.”
He got a cart and started walking the aisles, getting hit on by women of every shape and size and age group. Women that he'd never have imagined in a thousand years would be interested in him. He hung around the produce department until the female onslaught became too much, and then fled to the liquor store that was part of the supermarket. Not surprisingly, no swinging singles were gathered there.
To kill time, he read the labels on vodka and gin bottles, remembering all the nights his old man had rolled home drunk and terrorized the family, only to wake up the next day remembering nothing. Whoever said booze didn't have therapeutic powers had never seen his father the morning after a bender.
After thirty minutes he'd worked himself into a real funk. Thinking about his old man did that to him. He was ready to leave when he saw Anna stroll into the produce section next door.
He pressed his face against the glass wall that separated liquor from produce. Anna was squeezing the tomatoes, and several hot-blooded males pounced on her. She fended them off, then made her way to the checkout.
He walked to the front of the liquor store. From a cooler he pulled a Diet Coke. Paying for it, he went to the front and stood by the window. Anna strolled out carrying a bag of groceries. Clutching his drink, he went outside.
It had started to snow. Anna was a hundred yards ahead, walking toward a neighborhood that was a borderline slum. He followed her.
A minute later, she entered a run-down apartment house. Stopping at the corner, Valentine reached into his pocket and grasped the .38 resting there. Then thought long and hard about a promise he'd made to Doyle Flanagan in a hospital room twenty years before.
He walked down the apartment house's front path. A flickering light caught his eye. Up at a third-floor window he saw Anna standing at a sink, washing her vegetables. He jerked open the front door.
The apartment foyer was a pigsty, the frayed carpet piss-soaked by drunks. The elevator was out and he took the stairs, kicking beer cans all the way. Another part of police work he did not miss.
He walked the hall and checked the names on the doors. The apartment at the end of the hall had none. He visualized the window Anna had been standing at, and determined he had the right door. He knocked loudly, then stepped to one side, drawing the .38. He heard movement on the other side of the door.
“Yes?” a woman's voice said suspiciously.
