Mr. Lucky

41

Valentine led Gaylord into the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee. The sergeant fell into a chair, his body language indicating that the last thing he wanted to be doing on a Sunday night was dealing with a murder. That was the problem with homicides. They always came at the wrong times.

Valentine excused himself, went into the bathroom, and called Mabel’s house on his cell phone. His neighbor answered and, hearing the concern in his voice, quickly assured him that she, Yolanda, and his granddaughter were safe and sound.

“We’re taking precautions,” Mabel said. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said.

When he returned to the kitchen, the coffee had finished brewing and Gaylord had laid several folded sheets of fax paper out flat on the kitchen table. Valentine saw yellow highlights on every page, along with notes written in meticulous script in the margins. The sergeant waited until he had a steaming mug in his hand before speaking.

“You mind my asking you a personal question?”

“What’s that?” Valentine said.

“Why go back to work after retiring? The money?”

“My wife died. She used to keep my social calendar.”

The sergeant stared into the depths of his drink. “There’s a message there, isn’t there?”

“It’s nothing you can prepare for,” Valentine said.

Gaylord looked up at him. “The loss of a spouse?”

“Loneliness.”

The sergeant put his mug on the table. He hadn’t even tasted it. Picking up the fax paper, he read from it. “The manager of a 7-Eleven about fifty miles north of here found a body behind his store an hour ago. The victim was a Hispanic male, late thirties, about six feet tall and a hundred and ninety pounds. He’d died from a gunshot to the forehead. The policeman who arrived on the scene said the victim was still warm when he touched him.”

“No ID?”

“No. His pockets were picked clean. And get this. His fingerprints were gone. Burned away with some type of acid.”

“They didn’t take out his teeth, did they?”

“I already figured out who he is.” Something resembling a smile crossed Gaylord’s face. He probably got the opportunity to solve a real crime about once a year. He picked up his mug and sipped his coffee, extending the moment. “I figured the guys who dumped him weren’t driving around with acid in their car. I contacted the major credit-card companies and asked them to pull up any recent purchases of acid at any home improvement or auto-parts stores in the past few hours. I cast a net of a hundred miles from the 7-Eleven.”

And hit pay dirt, Valentine thought. Since 9/11, creditcard companies had become one of law enforcement’s biggest allies. If a cop knew a suspect’s purchasing patterns, he could follow the suspect across town or across the country.

“I got a number of hits,” Gaylord went on, “but one stood out. A man named Angel Fernandez purchased a can of boric acid at a Home Depot about thirty miles from the 7-Eleven a few hours ago. He also bought cleaning fluid. He paid for the items on his Visa card.

“Now here’s the interesting part. The credit card was a corporate card issued to employees of a company called AGM. Stands for Asset Growth Management. They’re out of New York.”

“Sounds like a brokerage house,” Valentine said.

“They are. I got Visa to send me the names of the other AGM employees who have cards.”

Gaylord spun one of the faxes around. It was from Visa and contained the names of fifteen people. One name had been highlighted in yellow: Juan Rodriguez. “You said the guy you shot was named Juan, so I assumed this was him.”

“Did you check to see if he had a record?”

Gaylord handed him another fax. It was a rap sheet for Juan Rodriguez and included a grainy mug shot. It was the same guy Valentine had shot in Ricky’s driveway.

“He’s a drug dealer,” Gaylord said. “Works out of Miami, connected to several cartels in Colombia. You shot a real bad dude.”

Valentine felt the invisible knot in his chest loosen. Gaylord was telling him to forget the rubber bullets; he’d shot a menace to society. He pointed at the remaining faxes on the table. “Can I look at these?”

“Be my guest.”

Valentine read the page with the names of the AGM Visa cardholders. His eyes locked on a name at the top. “Stanley Kessel,” he said. Gaylord read it upside down.

“Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Was he before your time?”

Gaylord shot him a hurt look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Stanley Kessel is from Slippery Rock. He’s a childhood friend of Ricky Smith’s. Mary Alice Stoker said Stanley once stole money from her purse. Said he was a bad apple.”

Gaylord gave it some thought. Had his brain been an engine, Valentine imagined he would hear the gears shift. “Stan Kessel. Yeah, I remember that little weasel. In his senior year, he got caught stealing the answers to the SAT tests. They had to cancel the tests in the whole state. I heard he moved to New York, made a killing in the stock market.”

“Does he have family here?”

“His parents are long gone.”

“His name is at the top. My guess is, this is his company. Why do you think he sent four thugs to intimidate Ricky Smith?”

“Because Stanley’s involved.”

“Has to be,” Valentine said.

As a kid, Valentine had admired a man in his neighborhood named Ralph Coker. He was a plumbing salesman and always drove nice cars. Coker’s son Eddie and Valentine had played together. One day, Eddie had taken Valentine to his father’s office. There had been a desk and a phone. Nothing else. “Where’s your father’s chair?” Valentine asked.

“They don’t give him one,” Eddie said. “They want him out selling.”

Gaylord’s office at police headquarters reminded him of Ralph Coker’s. A desk, a phone, a computer, and no chair. There was a chair against the wall, and Valentine guessed it was for guests. He sat in it while Gaylord worked his computer. The sergeant’s thick fingers were a blur across the keyboard. The computer responded with beeps and funny noises that, put together, resembled music.

Gaylord went into NCIC, a national registry of criminals that every law enforcement agency in the country could access. He typed in Stanley Kessel’s name and hit enter.

“Don’t you ever sit down?”

“Yeah. In the car and in front of the TV. This is exercise.”

NCIC came up with nothing. Gaylord went to Google and again typed in Kessel’s name. This time, he got a number of hits, and Valentine watched him scroll down the list, then select one and click on it with the mouse.

“You were right,” Gaylord said. “Kessel is the president and founder of AGM. I found a story from the Wall Street Journal about him. Says he’s a self-made millionaire. Specializes in market making, whatever the hell that is.”

“That’s a broker who takes companies public on the stock market.”

“Must be lucrative.”

Valentine leaned back in his chair. He felt the cold from the concrete wall seep into his neck. It cleared his head and let him see the real picture. Stanley Kessel was a smart guy who’d started his own company. Ricky Smith was a loser who stayed home and played loud music. Stanley was running the show, not Ricky.

“How many miles from here did you say they dumped the body?” he asked.

Gaylord lifted his eyes from the computer screen. “Fifty. Why?”

“Can you do a record search of the nearby towns?”

“Sure. What am I looking for?”

A house on the edge of town, or a large apartment. Someplace where the larcenous citizens of Slippery Rock could congregate and practice ripping off a casino. Every gang had one.

“A place in Stanley Kessel’s name,” he said.