Wild Card

Dick took a brown paper bag from his desk, and placed its contents onto the table. A deck of playing cards and six dice spilled out. “Gerry and two boys in the ninth grade are running a gambling ring. The other two have a history of problems. It appears they talked your son into joining their gang.”

“Can I examine these?” Valentine asked.

“By all means,” the principal said.

Valentine removed the cards from their case. The backs had a busy design, and he held the deck in his right hand, and riffled off the edge with his thumb. Little fluttering birds appeared on the backs of the cards. Bill Higgins had taught him this trick. It was the easiest way to tell if a deck had been marked.

Next he examined the dice. His eyes had gotten used to staring at casino dice, and he could tell these were not clean. The spots on three sides — the one, three and five — were drilled extra wide and filled with metallic paint. They were loaded, and would favor certain combinations more than others when thrown. My son the cheater, he thought.

“Mind if I keep these?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Dick said.

“What about the pot,” Lois said.

“It doesn’t appear Gerry’s involved with that,” Dick said. “It was a scam.”

“A scam? What do you mean?”

Dick took a second paper bag off the desk. From it, he removed a plastic bag filled with a green leafy substance. Dick dropped it on the table dramatically, then gave the worried parents a hard, no-nonsense stare.

“It’s oregano,” he said.

Lois wrinkled her face. She had never experimented with drugs, and looked to her husband for clarification. Valentine said, “And the ninth-graders were selling it as pot.”

“Yes. Ten dollars a bag.”

“But oregano is an herb,” Lois said. “Wouldn’t the kids they sold it to be able to tell the difference?”

“This oregano smells like pot. We think the older boys mixed it with a little bit of pot, so it smells like the real stuff.”

“But it isn’t?”

“No, it’s not.”

Valentine saw the tension melt from his wife’s face. Lying in bed the night before, she’d worried incessantly over the notion that Gerry had broken the law. This new revelation was bad, but it wasn’t as bad. She could live with this, and so could he.

“Gerry will be suspended for one week, the other boys for two,” Dick said. “I want all three boys to pay restitution to the boys they cheated, and the students they sold oregano to. And, I would suggest that your family get some counseling.”

“What kind of counseling?” Lois said stiffly.

“With a psychologist. Gerry has two different faces. The one he wears at home, and the one he wears at school. You need to get to know your son better.”

Valentine nearly told Dick Henry to mind his own business. Doing stupid things was part of growing up, and didn’t mean the whole family was falling apart. Only Lois was giving him the evil eye, and he kept his mouth clamped shut.

Dick handed the distressed parents a business card. It was for a local psychologist who specialized in adolescent behavior and family problems.

“This is who the school uses,” Dick said. “He’s expensive but good.”

“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. The casino cheated me, so I was getting my money back. He tried to control his voice. “I work in the casino, and it doesn’t cheat . The games are clean. I would have told you that.”

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.”