“I love long stories.”
They went into the bedroom. Nick pointed at the couch in the room’s main sitting area. Valentine lay the bat on the floor, then sat down and watched his host pull up a chair. When Nick spoke, his tone was somber. “Things have been kind of hairy lately.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Yeah.”
“Mind explaining?”
Nick leaned in close. “I got a call this morning from the FBI. A stripper at the Pink Pony got murdered last night. She used to come into my casino and cash in chips. Claimed guys gave them to her for dances.
“FBI says they want to come in and review all my surveillance tapes, which means closing down my surveillance control room for a few days. They specifically want to see if this stripper ever cashed in a chocolate chip.”
“A five-thousand-dollar chip?”
“Yeah. The Acropolis doesn’t hand many of those out. I told the FBI that. Know what they said? If I didn’t cooperate, they’d take my gaming license away.”
“Can they do that?”
Nick threw his arms in the air. “That’s a good fucking question. FBI says that the U.S. Patriot Act gives them the right to shut me down if I don’t cooperate.”
“You going to do it?”
“I don’t have any other choice,” Nick said. “I talked them into waiting until Monday, so I don’t lose my weekend business.”
“You the only casino in town they called?”
“They’re threatening a bunch of us. And all over the same thing. Chocolate chips.”
“So she was laundering them.”
“That would be my guess,” Nick said.
Valentine looked at the baseball bat lying on the floor. Then he looked at Nick. “Why did you threaten me, anyway?”
“You once told me you were tight with the FBI. I figured they sent you to check up on me.”
It was funny how people interpreted things. Valentine had never been tight with the FBI. He’d known Peter Fuller, the bureau’s director, since his early days in Atlantic City. He couldn’t utter Fuller’s name without cursing, and he guessed Nick had misconstrued that to mean they were tight.
“I’d never spy on you,” Valentine said.
Nick leaned back in his chair. “Want to do a job for me?”
“Not really.” His host grimaced, and Valentine said, “I need to find my son.”
“Where is he?”
“Bart Calhoun’s card-counting school. Wherever that is.”
Nick scratched his chin. “Calhoun is a hard man to pin down. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll find Calhoun if you figure out how Lucy Price ripped me off.”
“You think she’s a cheater?”
“She’s a slot queen and has a history of losing. This is the first time she’s played blackjack, and she won twenty-five grand. Those don’t go together.”
Valentine thought back to his encounter with Lucy Price. He would not have pegged her a cheater. He said, “I’ll look at the surveillance tapes, if you think it will do any good.”
“So we have a deal?”
He nodded, then said, “I could also use a room in your hotel.”
“Done,” Nick said.
They sealed the deal with a handshake. There was a light tapping on the bedroom door. Nick said, “Do you mind, we’re having sex?” and a giggling Wanda entered balancing a tray of food on her upturned palm.
“Here you go, Nicky,” she said proudly. “Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, and baloney sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Your favorite lunch.”
She placed the tray on the coffee table, and Valentine noticed that her breasts, which were barely contained by her low-slung top, had several bread crumbs sprinkled on them. Nick pointed at the crumbs and said, “Is that dessert, baby?”
A harsh look clouded Wanda’s face. Leaning over, she gave him a resounding slap in the puss, then marched out. Nick blushed as he picked up one of the soup bowls.
“She doesn’t like it when I talk crude around company. Pass the salt, will you?”
9
At one o’clock that afternoon, Pete Longo was released under his own recognizance by the Metro Las Vegas Police Department, having been suspended without pay from the force, and having been advised that he was considered a prime suspect in the murder of Kris Blake, the stripper he’d been having an affair with.
Being named a suspect didn’t surprise Longo. His alibi from the previous night had yet to check out. It would, since it involved two other cops he’d been drinking with. They would corroborate that he hadn’t been at Kris’s townhouse at the time of her killing. And then he’d be clean.
Only clean was a relative term. The shame would be still there. From that, he knew there was no escape.
He lived halfway between Las Vegas and Henderson, in a new development a stone’s throw off the Boulder Highway. It was a decent neighborhood, with monthly block parties and friendly dogs that didn’t need to be tied to chains. And the schools were good. Both his daughters had seen their grades go up.
He lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Pulling up the driveway, he felt his face go flush. He’d called Cindi from the station house and spilled his guts to her. Better for him to tell her than some newspaper reporter, he’d thought at the time.
Now he wasn’t so sure. His clothes were piled in the middle of the front yard. Next to them was an open suitcase. The message was clear.
He got out and started to pack his things. At the bottom of the pile he found his one good suit all balled up. Cindi was really pissed.
He put his knee to the suitcase to shut it and realized he was shaking. Except for the time he’d puked in the punch bowl at his high school prom, he’d never been more humiliated in his life. The curtains over the living room window were fluttering, and he glanced up. Were his daughters inside spying on him? He tried to imagine what they were thinking.
Back on the highway, he started to calm down. His daughters would eventually come around. They’d forgiven Clinton, hadn’t they? Cindi was a different story. He couldn’t see them mending this bridge.
He drove into Henderson. It was one of Las Vegas’s bedroom communities, with shopping malls and subdivisions sprouting out of the desert every week. It also had casinos, but they didn’t make much money. The locals knew better.
He pulled into a fast-food drive-through. Ahead of him, two punks in a BMW were razzing an employee inside the restaurant. He punched his horn, and the driver sauntered over. A sixteen-year-old wearing designer clothes. “What’s eating you?” he snarled.
Longo showed his badge. “You are. Leave.”
“But we haven’t gotten our food.”
“That’s the price for being assholes.”
Longo ate lunch in the parking lot. He loved Vegas, couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But it could happen. Somehow it had never occurred to him that by having an affair, he could lose everything in his life that mattered.
His cell phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket and stared at its face. It was Jimmy Burns, his former partner.
