“Is he a relative?” Valentine asked.
Lois kicked him beneath the table. Dick consulted his watch, then blew out his cheeks like Ed Sullivan used to do before he announced a really big act.
“Looks like we’ve run out of time,” the principal said.
Dick escorted the Valentines to the door of his office and opened it. Another pair of anxious parents sat in the reception area, awaiting the sales pitch.
“I’ve got a question,” Valentine said.
“What’s that?” Dick asked.
“How’d you know it was oregano?”
“Excuse me?”
“It smells like pot, and it looks like pot. Did you have a lab test it?”
“Well, no —”
“Let me guess. You fired some up in a pipe, and hacked your brains out.”
Dick’s face turned bright red. The other parents had risen from their chairs and were listening intently to their conversation. Valentine took the psychologist’s card out of his wife’s hand, and tucked it down into the principal’s shirt pocket.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” he said.
Valentine drove home while staring at Gerry in his mirror.
“You were cheating,” he said through clenched teeth.
Gerry stared out the window like he was going to the gas chamber. “It was Lou and Joey’s idea. They said the casino cheats, so there was nothing wrong if we did.”
It was the same excuse used by every cheater Valentine had busted.
Gerry leaned between the front seats. “How much trouble am I in?”
“The school is suspending you for a week,” Valentine said. “You’re also going to pay back the boys you cheated. And, your mother and I want you to bring the boys you cheated to the house, and apologize to them in front of us.”
His son fell back into his seat. His greaser clothes had gone out with the garbage the night before, and he looked like your average thirteen-year old kid again.
“Okay,” he whispered.
Valentine felt his wife’s hand on his knee. He glanced at her, then in the mirror at his son. “You’re going to stop this behavior right now. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“One more thing. Where did you get the marked cards and loaded dice?”
“The
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Gerry. Where did you get that stuff?”
“Some magic shop on Atlantic. Are you going there?”
Valentine said nothing, and drove his family home.
Uncle Al’s Magic & Joke Emporium was located in a dreary shopping center on the corner of Mississippi and Atlantic Avenue. Finding the front door locked, Valentine hit the buzzer, and watched an elfish man wearing a purple fez with a red tassel emerge from behind a curtain. Releasing the dead bolt, he ushered Valentine inside.
Valentine had dabbled with magic as a kid, and the store was a pleasant trip down memory lane. Brightly painted tricks lined the shelves — the Square Circle, Hippity Hop Rabbits, Passe Passe bottles — with smaller mysteries resting in a dusty glass counter. The stuff looked as magical as Uncle Al, who was seventy if he was a day, with extra-thick glasses that made his impish face look child-like. Pumping Valentine’s hand, he said, “Stand up straight, my boy.”
“I saw you on the Steel Pier when I was a kid,” Valentine said.
“Of course you did. They called me the Atlantic City Fakir. Worked the pier for over fifty years. Ask me why I don’t swim.”
Valentine knew a set-up when he heard one. “Why don’t you swim?”
“Because I drowned a hundred and sixty-eight times.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I was doing my act at Fortescue’s beer garden. Whenever business was slow, I’d jump in the ocean, pretend to drown, and get my rescuers to drag me back to Fortescue’s. There was always a crowd. When I recovered, a shill suggested everyone toast my good fortune.”
“That’s beautiful,” Valentine said.
“Thank you. Now, what can I interest you in? A whoopee cushion? Or would you like to learn a simple trick to fool your kid?”
From his pocket, Valentine removed the marked cards and loaded dice he’d gotten from Gerry’s principal, and handed them to the proprietor. “Recognize these?”
Uncle Al examined the merchandise. “Cards came from here. Not the dice.”
