Wild Card

“I called the front desk, tried to find out who he was. The penthouse has ten suites, I figured it would be easy to peg him. Only the girl said the penthouse suites are taken by a junket of Asians from Hong Kong.”

“The guy doesn’t exist?”

“Not according to the hotel.”

Anonymous guests in the hotel’s penthouse was nothing knew. Celebrities had stayed in the hotel’s penthouse anonymously all the time. Only the drunk in the tape wasn’t anybody famous. And he was carrying a lot of money hidden in his shirt.

Valentine rewound the tape, and watched it again. This time, he stared at the three guys escorting the drunk. They looked related, with curly hair and bounces to their walk. They reminded him of the Marx brothers, and he found himself trying to place them.

“I’ve seen those guys before,” he said.

“Really? From where?” Doyle asked.

“The Catskill Mountains.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“No. But my wife will.”

“You’re so sweet,” Lois said.

Valentine had followed up his apology of that morning by delivering lunch to his wife at work. He’d brought a New York Delight — fresh bagels, cream cheese with chives, and thinly sliced lox. They sat at a table in the cafeteria amongst the noiseless students, and he saw the light return to her face. She wasn’t angry with him anymore.

Several students came by the table, and signed the word Hello. As a young woman, his wife had modeled for a while, decided she didn’t like it, and gone to work at the school. The school had been a dumping ground for rich parents with deaf kids, and the curriculum was poor. Over time, Lois and other teachers had changed that, and classes now included signing, lip reading, and dealing with emotional problems.

“Remember when we met in the Catskill Mountains as kids,” Valentine said.

Lois smiled with her eyes. “You were so shy.”

“There were three brothers, always doing crazy stuff.”

She made a face. “Why bring them up?”

“I think they might be part of the scam going on at the casino.”

“You saw them?”

“Just on a video tape. Do you remember their names?”

“The Hirsch brothers.”

“That’s it. Hirsch. How well do you remember them?”

“The oldest was always trying to get into my pants. Israel Hirsch and his two reptile brothers, Josh and Seymour. I stayed in my cabin at night just to avoid them. The next year, when we came back, they’d been thrown out.”

“Do you remember why?”

“It was their mother.”

Valentine vaguely remembered Mrs Hirsch. A loud, wildly entertaining woman with a penchant for big hats and flowery dresses. “What did she do?”

“She was cheating at cards,” Lois said. “My mother told me . She played Mrs Hirsch poker and always lost. When she heard she’d gotten caught, she was so mad.”

There had been three things to do in the Catskill Mountains. Eat, see the shows at night, and play cards. Valentine said, “Cheating how?”

“Mrs Hirsch hummed opera tunes when she played. It was a signal to her partner. If she hummed ‘Three Little Maids Are We’ from The Mikado, it meant she was holding three-of-a-kind. ‘The Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ was a straight or a flush. There were more. What were the Hirsch boys doing, anyway?”

“Dragging a guy through the hotel. The guy dropped some money, and one of them stuffed it into the guy’s pocket. It looked suspicious as hell.”

Lois used the last piece of bagel to wipe clean the plastic container the cream cheese had come in. Popping it into her mouth, she said, “That doesn’t sound like the Hirsch brothers.”

“Not the good Samaritan types?”

“They were bad back then. I can’t imagine they’ve changed.”

Chapter 26

Special Agents Fuller and Romero had hit a wall.

Their investigation was going nowhere. Not a single hooker on the island had responded to their fliers, nor had they gotten any concrete leads from the autopsy done of the latest victim, who the Dresser had dumped in their motel room.

Out of frustration, they had decided to change their approach, and focus on males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five living in Atlantic City who’d committed sexual offenses against women. It was scattershot, but their investigation was going nowhere, and they needed to try something different.

Sergeant Banko had supplied them with the arrest records of thirty-eight men in Atlantic City who fit their profile. In order to save time, the agents had divided the records in half, with Romero taking suspects on the south end of the island, Fuller the north. Grabbing his coat off the bed, Romero went to the door of their new motel room.

“I’ll meet you at six o’clock at the pancake house. We can trade notes, and see what we’ve found,” the Mexican agent said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Fuller replied.

“Sure you don’t mind cabbing it?”

They had drawn straws, and Romero had gotten the rental.

“Not at all,” Fuller said.

Romero left. Fuller counted to ten, then went to the window, and parted the blinds. He watched his partner pull out of the parking lot in their rental. Romero had been getting on his nerves, and he was happy to have him out of his hair.