Wild Card

Chapter 21

Leaving work that night, Valentine remembered that he was supposed to bring food home for dinner. It was Wednesday, which meant Chinese take-out. To stay within their budget, he picked up a quart of wonton soup and three egg rolls to go with the chow mein Lois made at home. It made dinner special, and didn’t cost a lot of money.

He drove to a strip mall in Margate and parked in front of Lo’s Imperial Palace. He’d been coming here every Wednesday for years, and was not surprised when Sam Lo met him at the door with his order. He started to make small-talk, only Sam cut him off.

“You wife call five minutes ago,” Sam Lo said. “Go home now. Pay me later.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Your wife crying,” Sam Lo said.

“What happened?”

“Somebody break into your house. Sound real bad. You’d better hurry.”

Valentine drove down Margate’s quiet streets faster than he should have. Pulling onto his block, he saw a pair of police cruisers parked in his driveway, and was relieved to see there wasn’t an ambulance with them. He parked on the street and ran inside. A uniformed cop named D’Amato met him in the foyer.

“Is my family okay?”

“Yes,” D’Amato said.“Your wife’s in the kitchen and your son’s with a neighbor.”

“Is the house wrecked?”

“Pretty much, I’m afraid.”

Valentine didn’t want D’Amato telling him any more. He had to see for himself, and walked through the foyer into the dining room, and stared at the wreckage. His house was a disaster area. Everything of value had been turned upside-down, and smashed with some type of blunt instrument. The credenza his mother had given them as a wedding present lay on the floor, its sides battered, with every piece of his china removed and shattered. The dining room table, another wedding present, had been chopped up with an axe, and lay on the floor like discarded pieces of kindling.

He entered the living room. Paintings and family photographs had been pulled off the walls, their frames fractured; tables and chairs split in half. Then, he checked the other downstairs rooms. They were also ruined, and he wondered if a small tornado had somehow ripped through his house. He walked back to the foyer where D’Amato stood.

“How about the basement and the upstairs?”

“The same,” D’Amato said.

“Anything not destroyed?”

“They spared the breakfast table,” D’Amato said.

Valentine found Lois sitting at the breakfast table, her face buried in her hands. He touched her shoulder, and she jumped up and stuck her head against his chest and began to sob. They had never had much money, and she treasured the few things of value they had. “I brought Gerry home from school, and found the place like this,” she said. “He was so upset, I sent him next door. They destroyed his record collection and his phonograph.”

“You think it was other kids?”

“I don’t think kids would use knives to rip out the stuffing in the mattresses in our beds, do you?”

Valentine blinked. In the living room he’d seen where the burglars had kicked a wall in, and the significance of the act hadn’t registered. Holding his wife’s shoulders, he said, “No one was hurt. We can always replace this stuff. Remember that.”

Lois looked up into his face.

“With what money?” she said.

They heard the back door open. D’Amato’s partner stepped into the kitchen. Valentine had seen him down at the station house before. His name was Dolce, and he had a friendly face and an easy-going manner. Seeing them, Dolce took his hat off.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Dolce said.

Valentine mumbled the word thanks.

“I walked the property and had a talk with your neighbors on both sides,” Dolce said. “No one appears to have seen anything.”

“How about in the alleyway behind the house?”

“Nothing,” Dolce said.

“So these burglars waltzed in during the middle of the afternoon, destroyed my house, and no one saw a thing,” Valentine said.

“One of your neighbors was in the basement doing laundry. The other is sick, and was sleeping.”

Valentine lived on a busy street. Someone had seen something. Only no one was coming forward. It confirmed his suspicions, and he said, “Do you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be with my partner if you need me,” Dolce said.

Valentine took a glass from the cupboard, filled it with cold water, and handed it to his wife. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Lois held the glass with trembling hands and took a long swallow. “Is that what you tell people who’ve been burglarized?”

“No. I tell them I’m going to find the people who did it, and make them pay.”

“You have to know who they are first.”

“I know who did this,” he said.

Lois put the glass onto the table. “You do?”

“Yes. Now promise me you won’t repeat that to these officers.”

A look of uncertainty crept into her face. “Okay,” she said.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He went to the kitchen door and opened it. Stepping outside, he shut the door behind him. The weather had turned bitter, yet he did not feel the cold, nor hear the howling wind, the bam bam bam of his heart blocking it out. He hurried across the backyard, tripping over Gerry’s outdoor toys — stuff he and Lois planned to give away once they accepted that Gerry was no longer a little boy — and stopped at the fence.

In the corner of his yard sat an ugly concrete bird bath. The previous owner had left it because it was too heavy to move. He stared at the spot in the ground where he’d buried the Prince’s address book, and, just a few nights ago, the surveillance tape from Resorts. The ground around the bird bath was undisturbed. He felt his heart beat return to normal, and turned back toward the house. He had to deal with this right now, or he had to walk away. There was simply no other choice.

He crossed the yard and saw Lois step onto the back porch.

“I want to know who did this to us,” she said.

“Nucky Balducci,” he replied.