Mr. Lucky

48

Polly and Ricky entered the house, holding hands. Ricky looked like he’d been doing a lot of crying, his face a sickening red, his eyes bloodshot. Polly led him into the center of the living room and stepped aside. Her ex-husband stared at Valentine with a look of anguish distorting his face. “Do you know what happened in Las Vegas this morning?” he asked.

“Yes,” Valentine said.

“Helen Ledbetter was my aunt. I…loved her dearly.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ricky pointed behind his back at the twenty-four members of his gang, who he no longer could find the courage to look in the eye. “Will you let them go if I play ball?”

“You ready to do that?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you everything.”

“Will you help me nail Stanley Kessel?”

Ricky nodded his head vigorously.

“Will you come clean with me?”

“I just said I would.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, kid. This wasn’t just about ripping off the Mint. You and Stanley had something bigger in mind. A lot of time and a lot of money went into this. I want to know everything, or no deal.”

Ricky’s answer got caught in his throat. He began to shake, and cried while looking at the floor. He still hadn’t looked at the others. Maybe he never would.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Just let them go. Too many people have died over this.”

Valentine glanced at the rest of the gang. They looked ready to hit the floor running. He’d gotten what he wanted; only, it no longer seemed enough. He wanted his pound of flesh from these people. The cat had returned and was sashaying through his legs. He picked her up and said, “You folks want to get out of here, don’t you? You want to go home and get back to your kids and your jobs and forget this ever happened. Am I right?”

The twenty-four people crowded into the living room nodded as one. It was exactly what they wanted.

“Well, it’s not going to work that way,” he said, “because what happened isn’t going to stay in this room. Sergeant Gaylord will know, and so will his deputies. And they’re going to tell the rest of the people in this community how you scammed a casino while people in a burning hotel across the street were jumping out of windows. You used that tragedy to your advantage, and you know it. And now your neighbors are going to know it, too.”

It was like he’d invisibly punched every single one of them in the stomach. He supposed it was the next best thing to throwing them all in jail. He watched them file dejectedly out of the house, then gave Ricky a hard look. “You’d better not be lying to me, kid.”

Ricky couldn’t answer him. He looked like a man who’d just come home to find his house carried away by a tornado. He was melting down, his life a total loss. Polly stepped forward and put her arms around him. Ricky whispered something in her ear.

“He’ll do whatever you want,” she said.

Valentine continued to stare at Ricky. He trusted him about as far as he could kick him. “Why the sudden change of heart? You decide you want to go to heaven?”

Polly answered for him. “Stanley called Ricky this morning. He threatened to hurt me if Ricky went to the police.”

“You believe him?”

Ricky nodded. Shame affected people in different ways. For Ricky, it was a bucket of cold reality poured over his head. “Stanley’s always had a mean streak,” he whispered.

“He’s the brains behind this, isn’t he?” Valentine said.

“Yeah. Always was.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I was a kid, I ran away from home to be with a carnival,” Ricky said. “I was their sign painter. It was great. One day Stanley shows up. He’d run away from home, too. Only, he didn’t want to paint signs or clean up after the elephants. He wanted to learn how to scam people. He talked me into learning with him.”

“So he corrupted you.”

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Stanley liked to say that it isn’t stealing if you don’t get caught.”

“And it’s been one big joyride ever since,” Valentine said.

Ricky found the strength to look him in the eye. “I tried to back out a bunch of times, but Stanley always pulled me back in. Out in Las Vegas, I told him no, but then the fricking hotel had to burn down.”

“What did the fire have to do with it?”

“Stanley ran across the street when the hotel started to burn. He saw me jump from the balcony and pulled me out of the pool. Then he laid a guilt trip on me and said everyone from Slippery Rock was depending on me.”

“So you caved in and went through with it.”

Ricky nodded, then swallowed hard. “You really despise me, don’t you?”

“I killed three people because of you,” Valentine said. “You’re goddamn right I hate you.”

“What can I do to make things right?”

Valentine looked into his face and sensed that Ricky was finally going to come clean with him. He grabbed three chairs and made Ricky and Polly sit down, then sat backward in one so he was facing them. “For starters, tell me what you and Stanley were up to. Why didn’t you stop after you scammed the Mint? Why rig the lottery and the horse race? And why did you hire a public relations firm to broadcast all this crap to the newspapers?”

“Publicity,” Ricky said. “Stanley was going to make me into a household name.”

“Why? So he could put your face on a box of Wheaties?”

“He wanted to take me public.”

Valentine had lost his appetite for stupid jokes and nearly smacked Ricky in the side of the head. He saw Polly nod, and realized Ricky wasn’t joking.

“How much money did Stanley think he could raise?”

“A hundred million dollars,” Ricky said. “It would go into a hedge fund, which I’d control. I’d pick winners, and the investors would reap the rewards.”

“But the winners would actually be stocks that Stanley was feeding you.”

Ricky put his hand into Polly’s lap. “That’s right. Stanley would buy the stocks early, then sell high. The fund would eventually crash, but by then, we’d all be rich.”

“The classic pump and dump.”

“Yeah.”

“The gang that was just here knew about this, didn’t they?”

Ricky nodded. “That was their payoff. Each of them was going to be allowed to buy ten thousand shares when the stocks opened, then dump their shares when the stock peaked. There were other people in town that knew about it as well.”

Valentine drummed his fingers on the back of his chair. Another piece of the puzzle had slipped into place. “The guys I shot in the bank. They were pushed out, weren’t they?”

Ricky nodded again. “They blabbed about it, so they got voted off the island.”

Valentine saw the cat enter the room and climb into Ricky’s lap. “Do you have evidence of what Stanley was going to do? Did he write up this company he was going to form?”

“Yes. I have everything,” Ricky said.

Valentine pushed himself out of the chair. It was the strangest damn thing. He’d never met Stanley Kessel and had no idea what he looked like, yet still wanted to put him in prison for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was because Valentine had run across so many guys just like Stanley. Grand schemers who sucked innocent folks in, then systematically ruined their lives.

“Go pack yourself a suitcase,” he told Ricky.

“Where are we going?”

“New York City. We’re going to go see the guys who police the stock market.”

Ricky and Polly rose from their chairs. They were still holding hands, and Valentine guessed that Polly had talked Ricky into coming clean. It was too bad they’d gotten divorced. He had a feeling Ricky would have never gone down this road had they been together.

“You can come, too,” Valentine told her.