“I guess,” she said.
Huck got his clothes out of the dryer. Rolled them in a ball and heard Kitty raise the volume on the TV. She’d live here until her money ran out, he guessed.
“Hey,” she called out. “Come here and look at this.”
“No time,” he said, stuffing his clothes under his arm.
“We’re on TV!” she exclaimed.
“What you talking about, girl?”
“The house is on the TV,” she said. “I changed the channel, and we’re on TV.”
Huck went back into the living room. The TV was a big-screen he’d bought on sale at Sears. He’d had the worst time getting it through the front door. He stared at the picture of his house and the two cars parked on the lawn. The clothes under his arm hit the floor.
“What channel you on?”
“One of the satellite ones,” she said.
He threw open the front door and stuck his head out. Everything looked the same; then his eyes settled on the telephone pole sitting in his yard. A white transformer can was sitting on top of the pole. Kitty shouldered up next to him. Huck pointed at the can.
“When did they install that?”
“Yesterday. Telephone crew came by. They were here awhile. Is the camera in that?”
“Yeah. It’s a pole pig.”
She let out a cry. “Don’t go calling me names!”
“I ain’t calling you names. It’s a pole pig.”
“Stop that!”
Huck ignored her and raised the AK-47 to shoulder height. Pole pigs were law enforcement’s newest toy, the can hiding a high-resolution camera with a telephoto lens. A microwave video transmitter sent the video signal from the camera to a receiver up to a mile away. The can probably had a leak in it, and the leak was getting picked up by the antenna on top of his house. He got the can in his sights and pulled the trigger.
The can shot blue flames. He went back inside and stared at the blank screen on his TV. Then he looked at Kitty. She was crying her eyes out.
“You’re a piece of shit,” she said.
Huck threw her in the bathroom and propped a chair against the door. Outside he could hear sirens, and guessed the police had been waiting for him to come home. He ran outside through the back door. His sons’ four- wheelers were parked in back. He got one started and made its engine bark. Then he ran back inside.
Through the front window he saw four police cruisers burning down the road. He busted out the glass with the barrel of the AK-47 and started shooting. The front cruiser took the hit in its engine and spun crazily off the road. The other cruisers pulled off as well. Huck went to the bathroom door.
“Lie on the floor,” he said.
“Don’t leave me,” she wailed.
He went outside and jumped on the four-wheeler. Miles of dirt trails twisted through the woods behind his house. He drove down one for a minute, then pulled off. In the distance he could hear staccato bursts of gunfire, and imagined the police shooting his house up. The local cops were cowards. They usually hid behind their cruisers and shot blind. He put Kitty’s chances of surviving at fifty/fifty.
“Good luck, baby,” he said, and drove away.
28
Valentine spent an hour on the phone talking to Gerry. He wasn’t sure it did any good. Killing the murderous Dubb brothers had ripped a hole in his son’s psyche.
Valentine knew the feeling too well. Television and the movies distorted how the act of killing another human being actually made you feel. There was nothing glorious or heroic about it, and there never would be.
“Pop, I need to go,” his son said. “Lamar just got a call from the local police. The Dubb brothers’ father is on the loose, and Lamar wants to take me to a more secure place.”
Valentine pushed himself out of the chair he was sitting in. He didn’t want his son to hang up. His boy’s situation had reminded him that there were more important things in life than figuring out how casinos got ripped off. “You keep yourself glued to Lamar Biggs’s side,” he said. “You don’t know who in that town Huck Dubb knows.”
“I will,” his son said.
“You tell Yolanda any of this?”
“Not yet. I wanted to do it in person. Like you used to with Mom after you had to shoot someone.”
Valentine had always wondered if his son had learned anything from him. It was nice to know something had sunk in.
“I’m going to leave my cell phone on,” Valentine said. “Call me anytime you want to.”
“You’re going to leave your cell phone on?” Gerry said, feigning astonishment. “That’s a first. I’m alerting the media.”
And a smart mouth. Gerry had learned that from his father as well.
Hanging up, Valentine went into the living room and browsed through the books left by the previous owners. An entire set of the
He’d left his cell phone on the kitchen table and now heard it beep. Someone had left a message. He guessed it had come in while he was talking to Gerry. He went into the kitchen and retrieved it, and heard Mabel’s cheerful voice.
“Yolanda and I just had the most marvelous time with two flatties in Gibsonton,” his neighbor said. “That’s slang for carnival people. And guess what? They taught us how the Ping-Pong trick works! I’m not surprised it fooled you. Call me at home when you get a chance, and I’ll be happy to explain how it’s done.”
Valentine erased the message and then dialed Mabel’s number. He realized he was smiling. He was always explaining scams and cons to her and could tell she enjoyed knowing something that he didn’t.
“Let me guess,” he said when she answered. “A four-year-old kid could figure it out.”
“Oh, not at all,” his neighbor said. “In fact, I don’t think I would have figured it out myself. The Ping-Pong ball hides the secret.”
He sat down at the kitchen table. “Okay, I give up. What secret?”
“Five of the Ping-Pong balls are frozen ahead of time. Those are the winning numbers. The audience can’t tell that the balls are frozen, because they’re white to begin with. The person who pulls the balls out of the bag simply grabs the cold ones.”
Which meant that the barker at the high school was part of the scam. The smile faded from his face. But what about Mary Alice Stoker? Was she involved, or just a patsy, chosen because she was blind and wouldn’t know that frozen balls were in the bag?
“But the balls weren’t cold when I examined them,” he said.
“That’s the other clever part of the scam,” she said.
He waited and heard her breathing on the line.
“Uncle,” he said.
“Uncle?”
“Yeah. I give up. What’s the other part?”
“The balls warm up in a person’s hand,” his neighbor replied, sounding delighted with herself. “It takes about ten seconds for the plastic in the ball to return to room temperature. It’s an old carnival trick.”
“I bet it is,” he said.
“Oh, I also got the skinny on the gypsies that ran the carnival Ricky Smith lived with. They were called the Schlitzies, and they were real crooks.”
