Funny Money

35 Tattoos

Valentine did not want to start their relationship with a lie, so he asked Kat to get dressed, then told her everything that had taken place in the past twenty-four hours, including how the Mollo brothers had been turned into cinders the night before. Brushing out her hair, she said, “Well, I guess they got what was coming to them.”

He sat on the bed buttoning his shirt. Nothing he’d said had fazed her, and he guessed the great sex had something to do with it. It had certainly bolstered his own spirits.

The Saturn’s engine was slow to turn over. Kat gunned the accelerator and the car rose from its slumber. “Normally, I don’t bring guys I’ve just met to my house,” she said, “but with you I’ll make an exception.”

Valentine thought she was joking. Then he remembered that Kat had a twelve-year-old daughter she was raising by herself.

“Thanks,” he said.

She lived in a rented bungalow in Stargate, a sleepy burg five miles south of Atlantic City. The town was still reeling from the last recession, the hundreds of millions being skimmed off the casinos by the state not filling a single pothole or planting a much-needed tree. The promise of a better tomorrow had never been kept, and probably never would.

Her house sat on a dreary street with tiny, fenced-in yards. She eased the Saturn up the concrete slab that served as her driveway and killed the engine.

“It’s not much, but I call it home.”

Valentine touched her arm.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t ever have to apologize about your life to me.”

She leaned over and kissed him. It felt just as good as the first time, and it didn’t wear off until they were standing on the porch and she let out a shriek.

The front door had been kicked in and leaned precariously against the door jamb. Making her stand back, he drew his .38 and entered the house.

The rooms were small but clean. He saw no pulled-out drawers, or upturned furniture, or anything that might suggest vandals. A strange odor lingered in the air, the smell reminding him of burnt marshmallows.

Coming onto the porch, he said, “Looks okay,” and she ran past him and headed for the bedroom, emerging moments later with a strongbox in her arms. She dumped its contents onto a couch. Money, most of it twenties, poured out.

Valentine helped her count it. Twelve hundred and forty bucks. He saw the anxiety vanish from her face.

“It’s all here,” she said.

“How about your jewelry?”

“I wear it,” she said, “but the TV’s still here, and the VCR and my computer.” She started to stuff the twenties back into the strongbox. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t they take anything?”

“Beats me. What the heck is that smell, anyway?”

“I thought it was you.”

“Me?”

“You didn’t light a cigarette?”

Valentine shook his head. He had two cigarettes left and had decided that when they were gone, there would be no more. He cased the place again.

Kat’s house was filled with old-fashioned bric-a-brac, just like his place in Florida, and he went around sniffing pots of flowers and other things known to occasionally produce a bad odor. The smell was strongest in the kitchen, so he checked the various appliances capable of starting a fire.

The stove was off, as was the coffee maker and toaster. Stymied, he rifled through the garbage can. Kat entered the room. “Why’d you turn off the radio?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

The radio, a white retro Sony, sat on the counter beside a Betty Crocker recipe box. He pulled it away from the wall, and found a dime-size hole in one its speakers. Squinting, he saw where the bullet had gone through the wall and made a peephole onto the backyard.

“I leave it on all the time,” she said, peering over his shoulder. “There’s a jazz station I like.”

“WQRX?”

“That’s the one.”

“You dig Sinatra?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

Now he was truly in love. He put the radio back in its spot.

“Okay, Mr. Detective,” she said. “Why would a burglar shoot my radio out?”

A burglar wouldn’t shoot your radio out, he thought. Burglars came through windows, or back doors, and if they didn’t find something worth stealing, left their mark in some way — like stealing a beer from the fridge, or pissing on a woman’s underwear. That was the mentality of people who robbed houses, their patterns as predictable as the weather.

And burglars didn’t enter houses with their guns drawn, as the intruders who’d entered Kat’s house had done. Entering the kitchen, they’d been startled by a voice on the radio and had mistakenly shot it out.

“Wait a minute,” she said, sitting behind the wheel of her car a minute later. “You’re telling me these burglars were planning to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He could think of only one logical answer.

“Because you know me,” he said.

“Jesus, Tony.”

He thought of the other people in his life who might be targets. Taking out his cell phone, he hit Power, and found that the battery had gone dead.

“Where’s the closest pay phone?”

She drove to a 7-Eleven on the next block. The pay phone was in the back of the store by the bathrooms. Feeding quarters into the slot, he dialed Davis’s cell number.

“Hello?” the detective said.

“Hey, Eddie,” he said.

With horns blaring in the background, Davis pulled off the road. “Who the hell is this?”

“Tony Valentine,” he said.

There was an uneasy silence. Then Valentine remembered: He was supposed to be dead.

“This is Richard Roundtree, isn’t it?”

“Valentine! You’re not dead?”

“Never felt better.”

“There are three bodies down at the morgue...”

“It’s a long story. Look, I need to ask you a question. Have you been home recently?”

“What?” the detective said.

“Yes or no?”

“No, not that it’s any of your—”

“Go home right now and see if you weren’t broken into.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” He read Davis the number printed on the pay phone. “Call me back and see if I wasn’t right.”

The phone went dead in his hand.

Kat came into the store, bought a bottled water, and struck up a conversation with the weirdo manning the register. The guy was downright scary-looking, his face pierced with black pins, his hair a mix of lollipop colors. She didn’t seem bothered and happily chatted away.

Valentine loitered around the pay phone. Ten minutes later, the phone rang. Lifting the receiver, he said, “Was I right?”

“They shot my goddamned dog,” Davis seethed.

“What?”

“Had this dog since I was in college. They busted down the back door, and Bruno must have attacked them.”

“Any of your neighbors see them?”

“Yeah. They fit the description of Coleman and Marconi.” Davis paused. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“They were at the top of my list. Did your neighbors call 911?”

“Call 911? I live in a black neighborhood, Tony. Whatever Coleman and Marconi say happened, that’s what the police are going to believe.” He paused again. “You haven’t explained why they’re after me.”

“Because they think I made the scam at The Bombay and then told you.”

“You’re saying I’m fucked,” the detective said.

“Yes, I’d say you’re fucked.”

He could almost hear Davis thinking. “Maybe I’d better call in sick, and go hang at my girlfriend’s.”

“I would,” Valentine said.

Davis recited his girlfriend’s phone number. Valentine wrote it down on the palm of his hand, then hung up.

Behind the register, the weirdo had taken off his shirt and was displaying the colorful array of tattoos adorning his upper torso. Each was of a famous wrestler — the Hulkster, the Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin — and the weirdo did tricks with his muscles that made them come to life, with Kat ohhing and ahhing at the appropriate moments. Valentine hooked his arm into hers and bolted from the store.

“Let me guess,” she said when they were on the road. “You don’t like body art.”

“You didn’t see me sporting any tattoos, did you?”

“Can’t say I looked that hard.”

“They’re crude. Some religions think they’re blasphemous.”

“Name one.”

“Okay. The Jews. I knew a Jewish guy who had a tattoo. He died, and his wife wanted him buried in a Jewish cemetery. So they cut his arm off.”

She made a face. “I was thinking of getting one. Lots of women wrestlers have them.”

He gave her a look that said this conversation would go no further. She stared at the road.

“So what did they do with the arm?” she asked a few minutes later.

“I guess they buried it in a Gentile cemetery.”

“Very funny,” she said, punching him in the shoulder.