Wild Card

Chapter 34

Mona calmed down during the drive to her friend’s place. She’d been turning tricks for twenty years, and understood the strange dance hookers and cops did in Atlantic City. The hookers hated the cops, but understood that they needed them when johns got rough.

Mona’s friend lived on the ground floor of a depressed apartment building on the south end of the island. Garbage everywhere, the windows barred. Since Resorts had opened its doors, there had been a revitalization in Atlantic City, but it had taken place strictly around the casino: Fresh pavement, new sidewalks, plenty of streetlights, everything spit-shine clean. On the south end of the island where people actually lived, everything was still the same.

Valentine recognized Mona’s friend the moment the front door opened. It was Sissy, the Queen of Visine. Sissy’s speciality was to mickey a john’s drink with Visine, then steal his money when he ran to the bathroom with his ass on fire. He’d busted her several times.

Seeing him at the door, Sissy said, “Oh, Jesus.”

She backed into the apartment, and they followed her in. She wore tight blue jeans, and a tee shirt that said, I’M FROM PITTSBURGH, A DRINKING TOWN WITH A FOOTBALL PROBLEM, and had a strung-out look in her eyes.

“I guess you wanna talk,” she said.

“That’s right,” Valentine replied.

Sissy led them down a hall to the kitchen. A hooker’s life could be summed up by the apartment’s empty rooms, and the grease-stained pizza box on the kitchen table. A radio was playing the Bee Gee’s How Deep is Your Love? Valentine lowered the volume, then pointed at the kitchen table’s two chairs.

“Take a load off your feet,” he said. “Both of you.”

The two women sat down at the table. Sissy emitted a little gasp and started to shake. She picked up a pack of Kools, and fumbled trying to light one. Mona reached out and steadied her hand.

“Tell me about the fake finger,” Valentine said.

“You going to throw me back in jail?” Sissy asked.

“Depends if you cooperate. You realize this guy is a killer.”

“Yeah. I’m one of the lucky ones, huh?”

“You sure are,” he said.

“Think I should go play a slot machine?”

“Slots are for suckers. Now tell me about him.”

The cigarette calmed Sissy down, and she passed it across the table to Mona. “The finger was in the glove compartment. It was hollow and flesh-colored. I think there was something stuck inside of it, but I can’t swear to it.”

“Like what?”

“Something white.”

“Was one of his hands deformed?”

“No. I sat next to him in the casino, and we played a slot machine together. I would have noticed if there was something wrong with his fingers.”

“So he had all his fingers?”

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “You gonna bust me?”

Valentine stared into her face. Sissy’s eyes looked like busted panes of glass, and he felt reasonably certain that there were narcotics in the apartment. He didn’t know too many hookers who didn’t use them. The only person Sissy was a threat to was herself.

“Not today,” he said.

The answer made her smile. “You gonna bust Mona?”

“No. The only person I want to bust is the Dresser.” He put his hand on the back of her chair, then knelt down so their faces were level. “I came here to see if I could get you to remember any more details from last night. I’d like to hypnotize you.”

Sissy looked at him with fear in her eyes. “You won’t... you know, take advantage of me while I was under, make me do something I wouldn’t want to, would you?”

Valentine shook his head. He wondered which family member had abused her when she was a kid. He hadn’t met a hooker who hadn’t been.

“Scout’s honor,” he said.

Sissy glanced at Mona. “He okay?”

“He’s the squarest guy in Atlantic City,” Mona said.

“All right. Go ahead and hypnotize me.”

He got a pillow from the living room and made Sissy put it behind her head. Then, he made her tilt her head back and roll her eyes up. A quarter inch of white cornea was visible below each iris. It was a good sign that she was receptive to hypnosis.

“Okay,” he said, “I want you to tell me about last night, what you were wearing, what you had for dinner, the whole nine yards. Play it out in your head like a movie, and you’re the narrator of the movie. Take your time.”

Sissy spent fifteen minutes recounting the events of the previous evening. Up until the point she encountered the Dresser inside Resorts it was pretty boring; then her voice changed, and became strained. “He was making me laugh, giving me a line. The first few minutes with a john, you have to feel him out, make sure you don’t have a Son of Sam on your hands. This guy was ultra-smooth, even if he wasn’t good-looking.”

She described the negotiation, then walking outside in the bitter cold to his car, then him feigning illness and pulling the car onto a darkened side street. “He asked me to open the glove compartment and get his pills. That’s when I saw the fake finger. It was sitting on a deck of playing cards that had the word DeLand printed on its side. My mom’s from Deland, Florida. Anyway, I stare at the finger, thinking ‘How weird is this?’ and then I saw something white and crumpled stuck in its end. It was...” She grit her teeth, working to pull the memory from the recesses of her brain. “...a cigarette butt.”

Her next memory was of lying face-up in the gutter. Valentine slowly brought her out of her trance, and got her a glass of water. Then said, “I want to have an artist come by named Ernie Roe. I want him to draw a composite of the man who picked you up.”

“Okay, detective,” she said.

Valentine motioned to Mona, and she took her handbag off the back of her chair and stood up. Sissy walked them to the front door and undid the chain.

“Guess I should stay inside until this guy gets caught, huh?” she said.

It was the first smart thing Sissy had said.

“I would,” Valentine replied.