Wild Card

It was a surveillance camera, similar to the ones inside the casino. It had not been there a few days ago, when he’d come to the Boardwalk, and scoped things out. It was new, and he guessed, had been put there to find him. He imagined Tony Valentine sitting in a darkened room somewhere, watching him.

“Come on, handsome, time’s a wasting.”

The Dresser stuck his tongue out at the camera as Mona dragged him away.

Chapter 43

The phone call from Nucky Balducci came early the next morning.

“We need to talk,” the old gangster said.

Valentine was sitting at his kitchen table, finishing his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The funeral of Marcus Mink had drained him, and he’d slept poorly. Talking to Nucky was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“About what?” he asked.

“Your health,” Nucky replied.

Thirty minutes later, Valentine parked in front of Nucky’s house and killed the Pinto’s sputtering engine. Any day now, he expected the car to catch on fire and die, and found himself hoping it would be soon. Walking up the brick path, he stared at Nucky’s palatial digs. He remembered how impressed he’d been twenty years ago while picking Zelda up for the school dance. She lives in a mansion, he remembered thinking. The fact that Nucky was a mobster hadn’t bothered him at the time. He’d been sixteen, and the size of the house was all that had mattered.

Knocking on the front door, he heard a noise and glanced up. Zelda was watching from a second-story window and clasped her hands together in joy.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said under his breath.

The front door opened, and Nucky ushered him in. The old gangster wore black pants and a black sweater, his traditional colors. It made his bald head look bigger, not that anyone in town had the courage to tell him. Hearing the pounding of feet, Valentine saw Zelda coming down the staircase wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe and pink slippers.

“Tony!” she exclaimed.

He had always felt sorry for Zelda. Deep down, she was a sweet kid, but bore the horrible misfortune of looking exactly like her father. As she bounded across the foyer, he realized she was going to hug him. He let her.

“Hey, Zelda,” he said, kissing the top of her forehead.

“It’s not time for our twentieth high school reunion, is it?” she asked.

Valentine wasn’t sure what time zone Zelda occupied since she’d flipped her wig. The reunion had happened last summer, but he saw no reason to tell her.

“Not yet,” he replied.

“Good. I’m holding you to the first dance.”

I’ll wear steel-toed shoes, he thought. “Great,” he said.

“What’s your favorite Elvis Presley song?”

“Why?”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“A Big Hunk ‘O Love,” he said.

“Oh, you’re such a boy! A Big Hunk ‘O Love it is.”

She flew back upstairs. Nucky escorted him into the den, and shut the slider behind them. “You should really come around more often,” he said.

Valentine let the remark pass. From upstairs he heard horrendously loud music being played on a stereo, accompanied by Zelda’s awful rendition of A Big Hunk of Love. “I got something I thought you’d want to see,” Nucky said.

Nucky crossed the den to the bar, and opened a small refrigerator in the corner. From the freezer section he removed a large plastic bag, which brought around the bar and handed to his guest. It contained a gaping, frozen mackerel.

“That showed up on my doorstep this morning, wrapped in newspaper,” Nucky explained. “Then I got a phone call. Guy says, ‘You need to take a walk on the beach.’ He gives me an address. So I sent a couple of my men.”

“What did they find?”

“Luther. About a hundred yards from Resorts.”

“Drowned?”

“Uh-huh. Luther was strong — you ever see him play for the Giants? Guy was a monster in his prime. Must of taken four, five men to hold him down.” Nucky stared into space. “He was always good with Zelda, you know? Used to bring her little gifts and food.”

“You tell her?”

“No. Can’t risk it. She’s too fragile.”

Luther had been like family to Nucky, and Valentine realized how upset the old gangster was. “Who do you think killed him?”

Nucky filled his chest with air, then exhaled slowly. “The family.”

“Why? You piss them off?”

“Yeah. They told me to pressure you.”

“This is about me?”

“Sure is. They don’t like all the things you’re doing at the casino. It’s making them nervous, so they told me to put the squeeze on you.”

“And you said no, and they killed Luther.”

“That’s right.”

Upstairs, Zelda had launched into Hound Dog, and was rocking the house. Valentine tried to make sense of what Nucky was telling him. If his work at Resorts was scaring the family, then the family had a stake in the casino. Only he and Doyle scrutinized the casino’s financials every day: Resorts was making more money than the three largest casinos in Las Vegas combined, and every penny could be accounted for.

“Who are they?” Valentine asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” Nucky replied.