Funny Money

29 Epiphany

The Mollo brothers had set Gerry’s BMW on fire.

His knucklehead son had not bothered to move his car off Atlantic Avenue like his father had told him. So the Mollos had stuck a gas-soaked rag in the tank and lit a match. A fire truck was hosing the BMW down when Valentine got to the scene, the air thick with black smoke.

“No, I didn’t actually see them,” his son was telling the uniform writing up the report. “We were inside, watching TV.”

“Did anyone see them?” the uniform wanted to know.

Gerry glanced at the Blue Dolphin’s manager, who stood nearby, shivering without his coat. The manager looked at the ground, then off in the distance.

“No,” his son said.

“I can’t help you, then,” the cop said. “Your insurance should cover this, if that’s any consolation.”

“I don’t have insurance,” Gerry replied.

Back inside their motel room, it was all Valentine could do to not strangle his son. Gerry was a gambler — horses, sports, cards — but when it came to intelligent gambling, like having insurance, he was out to lunch.

“They’re gonna kill us,” Gerry said, sitting on the bed. He looked up at his father. “Aren’t they?”

Yolanda sat beside him, stroking his hair. “No, they’re not.”

Valentine sat on the bed and put his hand on Gerry’s knee. “How would you two kids like to take a trip? Go away for a while, until this thing blows over?”

His son and fiancée looked up at him expectantly.

“You’re serious?” his son said.

Valentine nodded. Yolanda squealed with delight and hugged his son. Gerry was not so sure, and kept looking at his father.

“On me,” Valentine reassured him.

Outside, the last of the emergency vehicles peeled away, leaving an eerie silence. For a brief moment no one spoke.

“I hear Mexico’s great this time of year,” his son said.

“I had someplace else in mind,” Valentine said.

“Where’s that?”

“Croatia.”

If there was one thing that impressed Valentine about living in the modern world, it was what you could do over the telephone with a credit card. Just about any service could be arranged, any item bought, any mountain moved.

In less than ten minutes he’d reserved two business class tickets to Zagreb, Croatia, on TWA. Why this made him giddy, he had no earthly idea, and he went outside to share his good news. His son and Yolanda were standing by the covered pool, kissing. She was the greatest girl in the world, he’d decided.

“Here’s the deal,” he said when they came up for air. “Your flight’s at eleven tonight out of Newark with a stopover in Paris. TWA has a special lounge for business class, so you can hang out there until the flight leaves, have a drink, or something to eat.”

“You really want us to go to Croatia?” his son said.

“Just for a few days. I need you to check something out. Then you can go wherever you want: Italy, Spain — you name it.” Valentine slapped his hand against his forehead. “For the love of Christ. It just occurred to me, you’re both going to need passports to get out of the country.”

“Got ’em,” his son replied.

Valentine lifted an eyebrow.

“If you didn’t help us out, Yolanda and I were planning to go to Mexico.”

“Haven’t I always helped you out?”

His son hemmed and hawed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

And then Gerry surprised him. He put his arms around his father and hugged him like a son hugs his old man. Valentine hugged him back, his eyes tightly shut. His relationship with Gerry had been like a record stuck on skip for twenty years. Now, finally, the music was starting to play through.

“So what do you want us to do in Croatia?”

Digging into his pocket, Valentine removed the crumbled Western Union receipt he’d palmed out of Anna’s backpack in front of her nose, and handed it to him.

“You’ll be flying into a town called Zagreb. I want you to look up the name on that receipt without drawing attention to yourself. Find out who that person is. I have a feeling it’s a local crime boss, so be careful.”

“So what do you want me to do once I find this guy?”

“Call me.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You gonna leave your cell phone on?”

“Yeah, I’ll leave it on.”

To his fiancée, Gerry said, “My father just stepped out of a cave, and you were there to see it happen.”

“Wise ass,” Valentine said.

Valentine drove them to Newark Airport. He pulled into short-term parking and they got out and exchanged good-byes. Digging into the pocket of her jeans, Yolanda removed a silver coin and handed it to him. Valentine stared at the piece of Funny Money in his hand. “You want me to play this for you?”

“Please.”

“Any particular machine?”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “You decide.”

That wasn’t going to be easy. The last time he’d walked through The Bombay’s casino, he’d needed instructions to find his way around. “And if I win the Suburban?”

“I’ll let you drive it on Sundays,” she said.

God, he liked this girl. Extracting his ATM card from his wallet, he handed it to her and said, “The PIN number is 4273. The account has twenty grand in it. Take what you need.”

“Number 4273,” she repeated, putting the card in her purse. Then said, “What are you going to do for money?”

He showed her the wad of cash in his wallet. Gerry, who’d been standing idly by her side, could not hide his indignation.

“Why did you give the card to her?”

“Come on,” Valentine said. “You think I was born yesterday?”

The drive back to Atlantic City was long and boring, and he glued his eyes to the endless stretch of highway. Each year, thirty-seven million visitors made similar journeys, hoping to have a little fun, maybe catch a dream. Personally, he didn’t see the attraction, but his perspective was different. He could remember when the Jersey shore hadn’t needed the lure of false promises to pay its bills. He caught himself yawning and got off at the next exit.

Circle K had the best coffee for the money; ask any retired person. Paying with the change in his pocket, he got back into the car. Soon the coffee was gone and he was wide awake.

He took out his cell phone. He hadn’t talked to Mabel all day. He started to punch in the numbers, then realized his phone wasn’t turned on. Gerry was right about one thing. He did not embrace all the technological crap being shoved down people’s throats. With the Internet came a flood of porn. With cell phones, more traffic wrecks. And laptop computers were great. Now, no one talked on airplanes. He turned the phone on, and a few moments later it began to ring. He had a feeling it was his son, and answered it.

“I changed my mind,” Yolanda said.

“Which machine?”

“The one near the front entrance. That’s where my sister won the car. Play that machine.”

Valentine tried to envision where that particular machine was. And couldn’t. He found himself remembering back two days ago, when he’d been standing in The Bombay with Porter directing him through his baseball cap.

“Give me a landmark,” he said.

“There are only twelve Funny Money machines,” Yolanda said. “It’s by the front entrance. You can’t miss it.”

“Who told you there were only twelve?”

“The hostess. Gerry asked her if she knew which Funny Money machine had paid my sister’s jackpot last month. And the hostess said, ‘Well, there are only twelve, so it shouldn’t be hard to find.’ ”

Valentine took a deep breath. All his life he’d been having epiphanies, and they always began with his asking himself a question. And the question he asked himself now was, why weren’t the Funny Money machines all situated together, with a big neon sign hanging over them? That was how most promotions in casinos worked.

And the answer that came back was simple. So simple that it explained all the gnawing questions he’d been asking himself since counting the receipts in Anna’s knapsack. The Funny Money machines weren’t all together because it wouldn’t have allowed the employees to rearrange the casino and secretly funnel money out. That was where the missing five million had gone.

“I’ll make sure I put it in that machine,” he said.