good punch.”
“You're talking a Glock pocket rocket,” Sparky said. “Leaves an exit wound the size of your fist.”
“That sounds about right,” Valentine said.
Backing up his wheelchair, Sparky took a Glock off the shelf and held it up to the light. It was a small gun, the barrel lovingly polished. He turned it over several times in his hands, then handed it to him.
Valentine reached for his wallet.
“It's yours,” Sparky said.
He started to say something about not coming here for charity, but Sparky cut him short.
“He was my friend, too,” the paralyzed cop said.
Valentine pocketed the Glock.
“He was everyone's friend,” Valentine reminded him.
4
Gerry
Valentine awoke the next morning at seven, the sunlight streaming into his motel room. Wrapping himself in a blanket, he went and cracked a window, then sat in a chair listening to the waves pound the shore while remembering how he and Doyle had often ended their shifts by walking the beach. Sometimes, they kicked off their shoes and stuck their feet in the water, two flatfoots cooling off. The memory was made vivid by the lingering taste of yesterday's cigarette, and he cursed himself for smoking it.
For breakfast, he ate the remains of last night's Chinese take-out. Out of nostalgia, he'd picked a cheesy motel off Pacific Avenue to stay in. The Drake. Efficiencies, rooms by the day, week, or month; HBO and Showtime; no dogs. What more could a man want?
The banging on his door was loud and frantic. Taking the Glock off the night table, he slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat hanging in the closet. Then he went to the door with the blanket hanging from his shoulders.
Through the peephole he spied his son, his hair peppered with silvery flakes of snow. Physically, they had a lot in common, but that was where the similarities ended. He went and hid in the john. The banging continued.
“Come on, Pop,” his son bellowed through the door. “I saw you looking at me.”
“Who's me?”
“Gerry.”
“Gerry who?”
“Gerry your fucking son, the apple of your eye, the product of your loins.”
Valentine opened the door. Gerry smiled, stuck his hand out. He was dressed in a somber three-piece suit and a tie. He'd lost the annoying little earring and shaved away the stubble he called a beard.
“The funeral was yesterday,” Valentine informed him.
Gerry had cried all the way from New York, or so he said. Doyle had been like an uncle to him, Guy and Sean like brothers, Liddy his surrogate mom. He made it sound like he'd spent every weekend at their house, and not with the dope-smoking lowlifes Valentine remembered so vividly.
“So how'd you find out where I was?” Valentine asked over pancakes at the IHOP down the street.
His son made a face, his mouth dripping maple syrup.
“I'm just curious, that's all,” Valentine said.
Gerry kept eating, the look becoming a frown. The restaurant was deserted, the snow keeping everyone home. In the kitchen a radio was playing Sinatra, New Jersey's favorite son.
Valentine said, “You want me to figure it out by myself?”
“Go ahead.”
“Mabel told you. Now, I didn't give her my number, but I did call her, and since she has caller ID, she must have scribbled the number down. You called, and she gave you the number. Bingo.”
“Why you making a federal case out of it,” his son said belligerently.
“You could have called my cell phone.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
“Even when it's me?”
“I still wanted to pay my respects,” his son said. “Hey, you going to eat your bacon?”
Valentine glanced at the grisly strips on his plate. During his last checkup, the doctor had heard a swishing in his neck and determined his carotid artery was getting clogged. Someday, he would need to have it scoped, which sounded like no big deal, except two percent of patients had a stroke on the operating table and never came back.
“Why, you still hungry?”
Gerry frowned again. Valentine could never get him to admit anything, not even what day of the week it was.
“No,” his son said.
“Then why do you want my bacon?”
“I just don't want it to go to waste, that's all.”
“You still sending money to those starving kids in Africa?”
“Aw, Pop, for the love of Christ . . .”
Their waitress slapped the check down, then gave Valentine the hairy eyeball. She'd been lingering by the cash register eavesdropping. No doubt she'd figured out the bloodlines, and was now painting Valentine out to be a jerk for playing rough with his son.
Valentine removed his wallet. “Can you break a hundred? It's the smallest I've got.”
“Hey, Harold,” she yelled into the kitchen, “can you break a C-note for Donald Trump?”
A bullet-headed man stuck his head through the swinging kitchen doors, said, “Nuh-uh,” and disappeared.
Valentine laid his Visa card atop the check.
“We don't take credit cards,” she said.
He slid the check toward his son. “Cover this, okay?”
Gerry dug his wallet out. It was made of snakeskin and looked like something Crocodile Dundee might have owned. He dug around in the billfold, then said, “No.”
“You don't have ten bucks?”
“No,” he said again.
“Where's your money?”
Meeting his father's gaze, he said, “I lost it, Pop.”
Gerry owned a bar in Brooklyn, did a brisk business running a bookmaking operation in the back. He always carried a fat bankroll. Better than a ten-inch prick, he'd told his father, who'd slept with two women his entire life.
“How much?” Valentine asked.
“Fifty grand.”
Their waitress had dropped all pretense and was hanging on every word. Her name badge said
“Dottie, how about a little privacy?”
She ignored him. “Did you really lose fifty grand, kid?”
Gerry lowered his head shamefully. Valentine slapped a hundred onto the check.
“I'll come by later for the change,” he told her.
Snow had hooded the cars, and they walked to the corner of Jefferson and stopped at the light. A half-block away, the surf pounded the desolate shoreline.
“Okay,” Valentine said. “Let's hear it.”
