Valentine killed the stereo. His son was listening to the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. He and Lois had seen the movie at a drive-in, and thought it gave working-class Italians a real black eye. He parked himself on his son’s bed.
“Lights out.”
“I was doing homework, you know.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Gerry slid the book onto the night table. So far, puberty had been kind to him. He was growing like a weed, and his skin was unblemished.
“Your mother said you got your report card today.”
“It wasn’t so hot. I left it downstairs on the kitchen table. You have to sign it.”
“How bad?”
“Three Cs, two Bs and an A in gym.”
“That the only class you showing up for?”
A hurt look crossed his son’s face. “I’m trying, okay?”
“You still getting headaches?”
“Every day.”
Since entering junior high school, Gerry’s grades had taken a precipitous nosedive. He claimed that all the reading was giving him headaches, so they’d taken him to an eye specialist. A hundred bucks worth of tests had revealed his son’s eyesight to be 20/20. Valentine tucked him in, then tousled his son’s hair. “It will get better.”
“That’s what mom said. Are things okay with you and her?”
Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “Everything’s fine.”
“You seem really uptight. And you’re smoking cigarettes again.”
“Are those bad signs?”
“Yeah. It means something’s bothering you. I don’t want to be one of those kids who gets shuttled around on weekends.”
Valentine’s own parents had broken up when he was a teenager, and his life had never been the same. He lay his hand on his son’s stomach. Nature had only let them have one child, and he loved his boy more than anything in the world.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Now, go to sleep.”
He switched off the light on the night table. Outside his son’s window he could see the spot in the backyard where he’d buried the Prince’s address book. By hiding it, he’d figured he’d stop thinking about it, but so far it hadn’t worked.
“You sure everything’s okay?” Gerry asked.
Valentine kissed his son’s forehead in the dark. “Positive.”
Chapter 7
The telephone call came at seven the next morning.
Gerry had left to catch the bus. He was a drummer in the marching band, and went to practice at the high school three mornings a week. Valentine sat at the kitchen table, staring at his son’s dismal report card while munching on a piece of toast.
Lois answered the phone on the third ring. She was at the kitchen counter, preparing her husband’s lunch. Money was tight, and he bagged it whenever he could.
“Can I tell him who’s calling?” She stuck the receiver into her shoulder, and lowered her voice. “It’s some guy pretending to be Nucky Balducci.”
“Tell him to get stuffed and hang up.”
“It sort of sounds like him.”
Enoch “Nucky” Balducci had run Atlantic City’s rackets for forty years. As a kid, Valentine’s mother had told him that if he didn’t behave, Nucky would climb through his bedroom window, and slit his throat. “You think it’s Doyle?” he asked.
“Could be,” Lois said.
Valentine took the phone from his wife. “Hey buddy, what’s up?”
“We need to talk,” a gruff voice said.
“Who’s this?”
“Your wife fucking deaf? This is Nucky Balducci.”
He saw Lois staring at him. Had his adolescent fear of Nucky registered on his face? “How do I know this is Nucky Balducci?” he asked.
“Your father has a tattoo with your mother’s name stenciled on his ass,” the man growled. “That good enough for you?”
They agreed to meet at the foot of Lucy the Elephant in thirty minutes.
