Gift sense

23

Leaving Hoss and Tiny to guard his smoldering domicile, Nick drove Valentine down the block to a neighbor's gated driveway, buzzed himself in, and parked in the shadows of an elegant Tudor mansion. Behind the house sat a gleaming Sikorsky on a helipad, a blond pilot wearing Ray-Bans posed smartly by the door.

"We'll never reach the Strip by car," Nick explained. "Too many tourists. This is the only way to go."

They crossed the lawn, and Valentine spotted a bald, heavyset man lying on a towel by the pool. A curvaceous miss with red floss riding up the crack in her behind knelt beside him, giving him a rubdown. Nick whistled wolfishly and the woman looked up. The bald man turned his head, ignoring them.

"Who's he?" Valentine asked.

"Some hotshot surgeon," Nick replied. "Dropped a hundred grand playing craps in my casino one night. Turned out he was in debt and couldn't pay his marker. I could've foreclosed on his place, but I figured he's a neighbor, so I let him work it off. His yard man does my lawn, I use his chopper when I want, and I bang his wife when he's out of town."

"You're kidding me," Valentine said.

"Thousand bucks' credit a whack," Nick said, winking at him.

"Hope you didn't give her a house key."

"Stop picking on me."

Nick exchanged high-fives with the grinning pilot. His name was Ken, and when they were strapped in and had headsets on, Ken took the chopper up and made a beeline for the Strip, the colorful casinos spread out before them like an overturned pirate's chest. Valentine had ridden in plenty of choppers and knew the pitfalls of staring at stationary objects for more than a few seconds at a time. You threw up. So he kept his eyes shut and held on to the door.

"I want to show my friend something," Nick told Ken. "Think your boss will mind if we take a side trip?"

Ken laughed loudly.

A minute later, Ken dropped down near a desolate trailer park on the north end of town. Climbing out, Valentine followed Nick down a dusty dirt road that dissected a honeycomb of dilapidated trailers. A shirtless migrant and his snarling dog emerged to stare at them.

After a half mile, the trailer park ended and so did the road. A sea of numbered graves lay before them. It was a pauper's field. The plots were laid out haphazardly, the final punishment for dying broke. Nick zigzagged down a narrow path, walking quickly between graves. Valentine did a tightrope walk behind him as he tried to avoid stepping on the dead.

In the corner of the cemetery sat a manicured plot with a decorative headstone. Kneeling at the grave site, Nick crossed himself and mumbled a prayer. Valentine crossed himself as well, squinting to read the tombstone. James Dandalos "The Greek"