Wild Card

Romaine lowered the ice pack, and showed Valentine the tiny purple map of the United States now imprinted across his forehead. It was funny how bad bruises always resembled something familiar.

“You ought to get a photograph of it,” Valentine suggested.

“A keeper, huh?” Romaine asked.

“Yeah. Did Fossil really fly through the air?”

“Yup. I didn’t know he had a steel plate in his leg.”

“Neither did I. He get it in Vietnam?”

“That’s what he said.”

Valentine went into the den, and saw two vice detectives dismantling the pool table. It was a Brunswick model, and he remembered Izzie begging to let them take the table when Valentine had run him out of town. Izzie had claimed it was his father’s.

Valentine watched the detectives strip away the table’s felt to reveal coiled, rectangular masses of copper wire hiding underneath. It took a few moments before he realized what he was looking at. The pool table was a giant electro-magnet.

Kneeling, he shone his flashlight beneath the table, and saw a suspicious black cable running down one of the legs. With a little bit of searching, he found the cable’s outline in the cheap carpet. It led to a wall, then vanished. He went into the next room, found a closet, and opened it. The closet was empty, except for a green power box hugging the wall. With his flashlight, he saw where the black cable came through the wall, and entered the box. He flipped the box open. It contained a single switch for 220 volts. With one quick surge, the steel coils in the pool table became electro-magnets, and made loaded dice flip. Left on for too long, and men with metal plates flew through the air, and power boxes on the street blew up.

He didn’t want to hang around too long, and went outside and stood on the front lawn. It was cold, and his breath clouded the air each time he exhaled. He stared at the full moon, which looked like a hole in the sky, and imagined the Hirsch brothers sitting in an all-night diner somewhere, laughing their heads off at Fossil and Romaine’s expense.

Thinking about them made him angry. He’d been soft on the Hirsch’s because it seemed the right thing to do — Izzie had spilled his guts out to him, and they’d known each other as kids — but in reality, it was the wrong thing to do. He’d shown weakness to men who preyed on weakness, and so they’d come back, and struck again.

He thought about going back inside, and apologizing to Fossil and Romaine. Neither man was at fault for what had happened. He was. He had screwed up. No wonder Banko wanted him off the force.

Climbing into his Pinto, he pulled off his disguise, and drove away.

Chapter 49

Valentine’s house was as still as a church when he got home. He entered through the back door, took off his coat, and poured himself a tall glass of cold milk in the kitchen. The clock over the fridge said it was two A.M. He drank the milk slowly, knowing it would be several hours before he felt like going to bed.

He tried to relax by watching television. Nothing on was worth his time, and he killed the power and stared at the blank screen. He’d suffered from insomnia over the years, but it had always been over a case he was working on. Never had he feared what he was suddenly fearing now.

He was a cop; it was the only thing he’d ever been really good at. His mind had been made to solve puzzles, and piece things together. And now, that privilege was going to be taken away from him. He could go out on his own, and become a private eye, only that didn’t appeal to him. He’d known several cops who’d become P.I.’s, and overnight they’d turned into reptiles.

Which left him what?

He shook his head. He was starting to feel sorry for himself. Next, he’d be wallowing in self-pity like his old man. Or, he’d accept what had happened, and move on with his life. Losing his badge wasn’t the end of the world. He could always get another job, and support his family. It was that simple.

Pushing himself off the couch, he went into the dining room. Earlier, Lois had laid the family photographs she’d retrieved from the attic across the dining room table. She planned to look at them for a few days, and decide which ones to hang in the house.

“Pick out your favorites,” she’d told him.

Valentine looked the photographs over. There were three that he really liked. His mother at their wedding, where all she’d done was smile; Gerry’s baptism, where all he’d done was cry; and Lois riding a moped during their honeymoon in Bermuda. He stacked them together, then noticed a dusty photo album sitting on the table edge. He flipped the album open, then realized what he’d found. Highlights of Lois’s modeling career.

He picked up the album and returned to the living room. Sitting on the couch, he leafed through the album’s plastic pages. As a teenager, his wife had never wanted for work. Every exhibit and attraction on the Boardwalk had wanted her to be “their girl” each summer. Her stunning looks had always drawn a crowd.