Wild Card

Chapter 18

Valentine felt a gentle tug on the lapel of his bathrobe and opened his eyes. Lois stood over the couch, all dressed for work, the living room awash in sunlight.

“Hey, sleepyhead, rise and shine,” she said.

She took his half-finished glass of milk into the kitchen, and came out a minute later with a steaming cup of coffee. Valentine sat up on the couch, and let the coffee bring him back to the real world. His wife sat down beside him.

“Any luck with the surveillance tapes?” she asked.

Valentine stared at the video monitor’s blank screen. He’d stayed up until three A.M. watching Crowe, Brown, Mickey Wright and the Prince standing by Resorts’ entrance. He still wasn’t sure what the four men had been doing together.

“I need you to do me a favor, and take Gerry with you to work,” he said.

Gerry was still on suspension from school, and since Valentine was at home, it made sense that he should watch him. His wife made a face.

“Would you mind telling me why?” she asked.

“Doyle’s coming over to discuss a case. I don’t want Gerry overhearing us.”

Lois frowned. She was a special ed instructor at the Atlantic City School for the Deaf. The last time she’d taken Gerry to work, his inability to sign had made for a long day.

“Must be a serious case,” she said.

“Real serious,” he said.

Doyle came to the house at lunch time, and brought corned beef rye sandwiches. While they ate, Valentine played the surveillance tape he’d watched the night before. Doyle’s eyes were sharp, and he immediately made Crowe, Brown, Mickey Wright and the Prince standing at the front door.

“For the love of Christ, what are they doing together?” his partner asked.

“I don’t know. I want to make a copy of it. Did you bring the VCR?”

“Yeah. It’s in my car.”

Doyle went to his car, and got a VCR he’d borrowed from the casino. He hitched it up to the back of the video monitor, and made a copy of the tape.

“What are you going to do with it?” Doyle asked.

“Bury it in the backyard with the Prince’s address book.”

“But it’s evidence. You need to show it to Banko, or we could get screwed.”

Valentine understood what Doyle was saying. If someone in the department found out they were withholding the tape, they were finished as cops.

“But what’s it evidence of? We still can’t prove anything. We need to figure out what’s going on before we start shooting our mouths off to Banko.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We need to start watching Mickey Wright.”

Doyle ran his fingers through his thinning hair. One of the annoying aspects of working in a casino was that everyone was watched, even people in surveillance. If they spied on Mickey Wright, the other people they worked with soon notice it.

“I think we’re risking our careers,” his partner said.

Valentine gave him a no-nonsense stare. “Four men died at the Rainbow Arms, and three of them were hanging out with Mickey Wright. I want to know why. Don’t you?”

Doyle shook his head in resignation. His conscience had been eating at him since day one. “I think this thing is bigger than us, Tony. That address book was filled with the names of New York mobsters. Do you really want to tango with those guys? We could end up with horse heads in our beds. Or worse.”

Valentine had already thought it through. They were in too deep to quit. He had killed a man over that stupid address book, and he wanted to know why.

“I’m not afraid. Are you?”

Doyle shot him an exasperated look. “All right, already. We’ll spy on Mickey Wright.”

Sparks steakhouse on New York’s tony upper east side was where you went to talk business, and eat a good steak. It was a mob joint, and had no windows on its bottom floor. Every day, the owners checked the dining room tables for bugs and hidden microphones before opening their doors. And, the food was good.

Sparks had a number of rules. Women were not welcome, unless they were draped on the arm of a local hoodlum. Men were required to wear jackets and ties, no exceptions. And, you were not supposed to raise your voice in anger, although it sometimes happened.

It was noon, the restaurant packed with hoodlums from each of the five boroughs. At his usual corner table sat Paul “The Lobster” Spinelli with two of his soldiers, Gino Caputo and Frankie Musserelli. Gino had elephant ears, Frankie six fingers on his left hand. Someday, these would be the two men’s nicknames, if they lived that long.

The Lobster was wrestling with a five pound monster flown in that morning from Maine. His bib was splattered with melted butter and tiny bits of white meat. He ate like a man going to the electric chair. The Lobster knew he was a spectacle, and he didn’t care. “These Philly fucks are messing with the wrong people,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I’ll whack every one of them if they don’t stay out of Atlantic City.”

The Lobster snapped open a claw, and a piece of shell flew onto a nearby table.

“Hey,” he called to the adjacent diners. “Any meat in that?”

The claw was dutifully examined.

“No,” the man at the table said.

The Lobster resumed speaking to his men. “I hate Philly. You know what I’m saying. It’s a rat prick town. I went twenty years ago. Nothing to do.”

Gino was eating a plate of garlic meatballs. He speared one with a fork, and ate it in small bites while sipping on a glass of draft beer. “I took my kids last year. My son looks at the Liberty Bell and says, ‘The crack in my ass is bigger than that.’”

The Lobster snorted and slapped the table.

“I love kids,” he said.

“Dumb fucking town,” Frankie added.

The Lobster lowered his voice, and his soldiers conspiratorially leaned in. “If those Philly fucks don’t pull out of Atlantic City, we’re going to drive over there and kill them in their fucking beds. We can’t let them muscle in on this thing we’ve got going.”

“In their beds,” Frankie said, like he wanted to be sure.

“Isn’t that what I just said, you dumb shit?”

“I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

“Don’t ever make me repeat myself.”

“No, sir.”

“What did I just say?”

“That I should never make you repeat yourself.”

“That’s right. And don’t forget it.”

“What about Nucky Balducci?” Gino asked.

The Lobster had lost his appetite and tore off his bib. He extracted an Arturo Fuente Opus X from his pocket and viciously bit off the end. A waiter appeared with a light, and the cigar’s tip glowed a bright orange. “What about that dumb wop?”

“I thought he was running things in AC,” Gino said.

“Nucky runs the nickel-and-dime crap,” the Lobster said. “This is out of his league. I sent Vinny Acosta down. He’s running the AC operation now.”

The Lobster spent a few minutes enjoying his cigar, oblivious to the stifling haze it was creating inside the restaurant. Three years ago, on November 5^th, 1976, one day after New Jersey voters voted to legalize casino gambling, New York’s five mafia families had congregated in the back room of a restaurant on Carmine Street in Little Italy. A single topic had been on the agenda: The opening of Resorts’ casino in Atlantic City. At the meeting, it had been decided that The Lobster would run the Atlantic City operation, with the five families splitting the profits. The Lobster was the natural choice for the job. He’d made his bones in Las Vegas in the fifties, and knew how to rip off a casino.

The Resorts’ scam was a huge moneymaker for the mafia, and was netting the five families three million dollars a month. Eight more casinos would be opened in Atlantic City in the next three years. Each would be shaken down, and the operation set up. The projected take was twenty-seven million a month, almost a million bucks a day. It was enough money to make the Lobster’s head spin.

“Life is fucking good,” he proclaimed.

The Lobster paid the tab, then flirted with the twenty-year old hat check girl before venturing outside. The air was chilly, and he took his time tying his scarf, enjoying the last few puffs on his cigar. Gino and Frankie dutifully trailed a few steps behind.

Tossing the cigar into the gutter, the Lobster stepped out of the restaurant’s shadows into the sun-drenched afternoon and sucked in the invigorating air. His black Lincoln town car was parked at the curb, its engine idling. He considered taking a short walk, then decided against it. Exercise had never appealed to him. Opening the passenger door, he started to climb into the town car, then heard pounding footsteps on the sidewalk. His head instinctively snapped at the sound.

A skinny Italian kid with pimply skin and wearing a tan leather jacket was running towards him. The Lobster immediately recognized him. It was one of the Andruzzi twins from Philly, come to assassinate him.

“Frankie! Gino!” he cried. “Get him!”

Frankie and Gino jumped in front of their boss, at the same time drawing their weapons. Before they could get off a round, the Lobster heard a dull popping sound, and saw his bodyguards crumple to the sidewalk. A set-up, he thought.

The Lobster had always suspected he’d die this way. His belly full of rich food, the taste of a cigar in his mouth, his guard down. The price for being a glutton. He glanced over his shoulder just to be sure. The other Andruzzi twin stood behind him, aiming a gun with a silencer directly at his face. Nearly a million bucks a day, the Lobster thought, and joined his Gino and Frankie on the sidewalk as he was shot dead.