Wild Card

“The school principal called me,” Lois said. “Gerry is hanging around with a group of older kids accused of gambling and selling pot.”

“What?”

“We’re not selling pot,” his son declared.

“I said, stand up.”

“We’re not. I swear —”

“Stand up.”

Gerry rose guiltily from his chair, and Valentine stared in disbelief at his son’s wardrobe. A black leather jacket, white tee shirt, jeans, and a pair of pointy-toed boots that locals called fence-climbers. He looked like a punk.

“Where are your school clothes?” Valentine asked.

“These are his school clothes,” Lois answered. “He’s been changing them every day in the gym. Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.”

“All the kids do it,” his son said.

“And if all the other kids jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?”

Gerry smirked. “Probably.”

Valentine wanted to start yelling. Or take off his belt and whip the bejeeus out of him. Things that his own father had done that he’d never forgotten. But he was not about to follow in his father’s footsteps. Going into the kitchen, he grabbed his son’s school bag and brought it into the dining room, dumping its contents on the table. Out fell a pack of cigarettes, candy bars, a glossy hot-rod magazine, and a gold necklace.

“How much allowance do we give you a week?” Valentine asked.

“Fifty cents,” Gerry mumbled.

“Let me guess, you took a job bagging groceries at the A & P and forgot to tell us.”

“Hey,” his son said, “it’s just some stuff.”

“Stuff costs money.”

Gerry swallowed hard. “It’s not what you think.”

“You weren’t selling pot?”

“No, sir,” his son replied.

“We have a meeting with the school principal first thing tomorrow morning,” Lois said.

“You’d better not be lying to me,” Valentine said.

“I swear Pop, I’m not.”

“And those clothes are gone.”

“Yes, sir.”

His son looked truly remorseful. Valentine glanced at his wife. Lois nodded her head, satisfied. He started dropping his son’s loot into his school bag when a bulge in a side pocket caught his eye. It was the paperback novel he’d seen Gerry reading the night before, The Catcher in the Rye. The book’s cover was coming off, and he flipped it open, and read a few lines. Looking up, he caught his son’s fearful gaze.

“When did J.D. Salinger start writing porno?” he said.

Chapter 14

Izzie missed Betty.

He missed her soft cooing voice, and the taste of her cheap lipstick mingling with the smell of her hair and her sticky skin. He missed her throaty laugh, and the liquid heart-stopping sensation of having sex with her. Having sex with Betty, Izzie had come to the conclusion that no movie or book had ever gotten it right.

Izzie missed her so much, he decided to call her one night during a poker game in the house he and his brothers had rented in Ventnor, a fancy suburb just south of Atlantic City. Excusing himself, he’d gone upstairs, and used the phone in the extra bedroom to call her apartment. Betty answered on the fifth ring, still sound asleep.

“Hey baby,” he said.

“Who the hell is this?”

“It’s me, Izzie.”

“You crummy bastard!”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you’re sorry! Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Izzie glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was two A.M. They’d been bringing suckers to the house every night from Resorts’ casino, and he’d forgotten what normal hours were. “I’m sorry. I missed you so much, I had to call.”

“You left me at that convenience store,” she shouted into the phone.

The receiver was jammed into the crook of Izzie’s neck, leaving his hands free to stack the cards he would