Jackpot

don’t accept any ifs, ands or buts from anyone who says I can’t. I’ll make the determination whether she’s stable enough to talk to me. Understand?”

O’Sullivan looked surprised, then mad. Just as quickly, it all vanished, and he put his professional face on. He picked up the phone on his desk, and punched in a number.

Chapter 15

O’Sullivan drove them to the Washoe Medical Center. While Gerry and Bill waited in the lobby, Valentine went upstairs to interview Karen Farmer.

Psych wards in hospitals were depressing places. Valentine’s mother had ended up in one before she died, his father’s years of abuse having finally taken their toll. Walking down the hall to where Karen Farmer was being kept, a little voice inside his head told him to turn around, and go back to the lobby. Let Bill interrogate her, the voice said.

He stopped outside the ward. There was no shame in walking away. He’d learned that from a book by Ernest Hemingway called Death in the Afternoon. It was about bull-fighting, and Hemingway talked about famous matadors who’d run away from bulls they didn’t like the looks of. He started to walk away when the door opened, and a woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform stepped out.

“Mr. Valentine? We’ve been expecting you. Please come in,” she said.

Valentine followed her through the psych ward with his eyes downcast. Out of the corner of the eye, he appraised the room. Most of the patients were strapped down, like his mother had been. A man wearing a maniacal grin hissed at him.

“We put Karen on anti-depression medication this morning, and she appears to be doing better,” the nurse said. “I told her that she was going to have a visitor, but didn’t say who you were. No point in upsetting her.”

“Thanks.”

His voice was barely a whisper and the nurse shot him a concerned look.

“Are you all right, Mr. Valentine?”

“Fine.”

Karen Farmer’s bed was in the corner of the large sterile room, and had a view of the parking lot. A metal chair had been placed beside her bed. There was an Ace bandage around her neck and a contusion below her left cheekbone. Her eyes looked sore from crying.

“Karen,” the nurse said, “your visitor is here.”

Karen Farmer glanced at the nurse, then at Valentine.

“Oh, boy,” she said hoarsely. “Another cop.”

The nurse left, and Valentine sat down, and placed his elbows on his knees. It was a neutral pose, intended to put a suspect at ease. “Want something to drink?”

“A cigarette,” she said.

“I wish.”

“You trying to quit?”

He nodded that he was.

“Me, too. Bad for my health.”

He fished the nicotine gum out of his pocket, and offered her a piece.

“Have a piece. It’s the next best thing.”

Karen mumbled okay. He leaned forward, and fed her a piece of gum. When she opened her mouth, he saw that one of her lower teeth was busted. She chewed the gum and made a face. “Ugh. You’re not trying to poison me, are you?”

“You don’t chew it for the taste. Give it a minute to work.”

“Whatever you say.”

Valentine tried not stare at her. She had soft blond hair and bedroom eyes, the kind of girl boys fought over in grade school. She didn’t have a criminal record, and he guessed her late husband had talked her into stealing the jackpot. That was how it usually happened: The husband talked the wife into joining the gang. It hardly ever happened the other way around.

“I’m not a cop,” he said. “I used to be, but these days I’m a private consultant. I help casinos catch cheaters. I took this case because I want to nail Bronco Marchese.”

Karen stared at him. “You want to nail him? Like in the movies? Track him down and rub his face in the ground?”

“That’s right.”

Tears rolled down her face and blood rose like a curtain behind her skin. “Well, so do I. Bronco Marchese shot my husband through the heart.” She stifled a sob and brought her head back against her pillow, which was propped against the wall to protect her from hurting herself. She stared at the ceiling like it was a portal that could take her back in time, and everything in her life would be normal again. When she looked back at him, her face had grown hard. “Bo died at ten-fifty eight in the morning. We were married the day before at eleven o’clock. We weren’t married one whole day.”

“I’m —

“Sorry?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and the tears flew off her face. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. We met in highschool. My first date, my first love. He wasn’t perfect, and neither am I. But, we were perfect together. Know what I mean?”

Valentine stared at the tiled floor. He’d met his own wife over a Bunson burner in an eleventh grade highschool chemistry class. It had lasted forty-five years.

“Yes,” he said.

“Bo was my future. We were going to have a couple of kids. We had it all planned out. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then don’t come in here and tell me how you want to nail Bronco Marchese, you piece of shit cop,” she said, spitting her gum into his face.

Valentine found a sink and washed his face. When he came back to Karen’s bed, he had a pair of soda cans in his hand. He popped them both.

“Promise you won’t do that again, and I’ll let you have one,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Karen said.

He took a long swallow of his soda. He was glad for the walk. He didn’t like being spit in the face, even by someone who’d just lost her husband.

“You know something, Karen —

“What’s that?” she snapped.

“Everyone has a history.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that everyone has reasons for what they do. Want to hear mine?”

She looked out the window beside her bed, her eyes peeled to a moving car in the parking lot, and said nothing.

“When I became a cop in Atlantic City, I was introduced to an old guy named Johnson. I don’t know if that was his first name, or his last. Everyone just called him Johnson. He was a drunk, used to live in the bars. Eventually he got sick and died.”

“This is real uplifting,” she said.

“Right after his funeral, I heard his story. Johnson was a cop during Prohibition. Part of his job was to stop