Wild Card

Chapter 2

Valentine’s shotgun flew into the air, and melted into a hedge. His hand screamed with pain, and he brought it up to his face. A bullet had gone through his palm as clean as a paper punch. Falling to his knees, he saw black pools appear before his eyes.

“Help me,” Doyle gasped.

Valentine twisted his head. Doyle lay a few feet away, his thigh shredded by a bullet. The other detectives were scattered around him. No one was moving. The Prince shoved the little boy into the building, then stepped outside, and began executing them.

He capped Crowe between the eyes, stepped over his body, and did the same to Brown, his movements calm and efficient, like he had ice cubes in his veins. Then, it was Mink’s turn. Mink had taken a bullet in the leg, and lay sprawled on his side. The Prince put the Uzi’s smoking barrel against his cheek. “I don’t like to kill brothers,” the pimp said, “but with you, I’m gonna make an exception.”

“Please, don’t,” Mink whispered.

Valentine always carried two guns. The snub-nosed .38 was beneath the vest, and out of reach. He drew the derringer strapped to his ankle, and pumped two bullets into the pimp’s stomach. The Prince staggered backward into the apartment and disappeared. Valentine rose on wobbly legs, and saw Freed do the same. Freed’s thigh was bleeding, and he found his shotgun on the ground, pumped it, and entered the apartment dragging his wounded leg.

“Wait for back-up,” Valentine said.

Freed ignored him, and went in.

Valentine knelt beside his partner. Taking a snot rag out of his pocket, he ripped it in half. With one piece he plugged Doyle’s wound, with the other, his own.

“My stomach,” Doyle moaned.

“You get shot in the stomach?”

“Fucking french fries.”

Valentine expected to hear sirens at any moment, then remembered where they were. He started to go to the car to call for an ambulance when Doyle grabbed his leg. His partner had a stricken look on his face, and Valentine knelt down beside him.

“Crowe lied to us,” Doyle said.

“What do you mean?”

“We were chasing the Prince twenty minutes ago. He couldn’t have taken a shot at them.”

Doyle was right. Freed’s story was bullshit. Cops lied all the time, but not to each other. They had stepped into something.

The Uzi rang out inside the apartment. Valentine ripped away his vest so he could get at his .38., then stood up.

“Hang tough.”

“Be careful,” Doyle said.

The apartment’s doorway was wide open, and Valentine stuck his head through, and saw Freed lying motionless at the bottom of the stairwell with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Valentine guessed the Prince had been hiding at the top of the first floor stairwell when Freed had come in. Daylight was streaming into the building, and he could see that no one was hiding up there now.

He climbed the stairs with Doyle’s words ringing in his ears. The building had four floors, and at the top floor he paused to catch his breath. His left hand had gone numb, and he wondered how bad the damage was. The sound of someone inside an apartment throwing a deadbolt made him jump.

“Stay inside,” he called out.

“Yassah,” a woman’s voice said.

The Prince had left a trail of blood, and he followed the drops down a hallway to a corner apartment. Light flickered behind the peep hole. The Prince got off a round, but not before Valentine emptied his .38 into the door. He heard pounding footsteps and kicked the door down, then stepped into a dingy apartment with a radio playing in one of its rooms. It had a shotgun layout similar to the apartment he’d grown up in, and he went down a hallway to the kitchen. An open window led to a fire escape. He could hear the Prince on the roof.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said.

Spinning around, he discovered an elderly black man in a wheelchair. “Where did you come from?”

“I live here. I pray you’re the police.”

“That’s right. Why did you let the Prince into your apartment?”

The elderly man’s arm twitched, and the wheelchair came forward. “He’s my daughter’s boyfriend. She stupidly gave him a key.”

Through the open window they heard the violent whup-whup of a police helicopter hovering overhead, followed by several rapid bursts of the Prince’s Uzi. Valentine put his face to the window, and watched the helicopter fly away to safety. He turned back to the elderly man. “What’s your name?”

“Sampson.”

“Mr. Sampson, I need to reload my gun, only my hand is wounded. Can you—”

“Help you? Afraid not.”

Valentine let out an exasperated breath. Staying in the apartment with an empty gun was an invitation to disaster. Only he didn’t feel right leaving Sampson, either.

“Is there anyone here who can?”

“Just my grandson.”

“Please get him.”

Sampson sent his wheelchair into reverse and went down the hallway. Braking at a bedroom doorway, he said, “Bernard, come here,” and a skinny tyke wearing Batman pajamas emerged. The resemblance to the old man was uncanny, right down to the mud brown eyes. Together, they entered the kitchen.

“This man needs our help,” Sampson said.

The boy gave him a hostile stare. “You a cop?”

“That’s right.”

“Screw you.”

Valentine motioned Bernard towards him. The boy held his ground, and Valentine said, “There’s a bad man on the roof. I need to stop him. Will you help me?”

“Prince isn’t bad,” Bernard said.

“Yes, he is. He just shot six policemen.”

“Bet none of them was black.”

The boy was maybe ten, and already had no use for white people. Valentine looked him in the eye. “One of the men was black. His name is Mink, and he has a son named Marcus. He goes to Atlantic City High with my son.”

“And Prince shot him?”

“That’s right.”

Valentine saw the gears shifting in Bernard’s head. He decided to take a chance, and handed the boy the .38., then explained how to open the chamber, and reload the weapon. Bernard stared at the gun like it was a bomb.

“Do it, Bernard,” Valentine said.

Bernard pursed his lips. “You ain’t lying to me?”

“No. Prince is bad.”

Sampson nudged the boy with his chair, and whispered to him.

“Okay,” Bernard said.

Valentine removed six bullets from his pocket and gave them to the boy. When Bernard was finished reloading the .38, Valentine made him and his grandfather go down the hall and hide in a bedroom. Then, Valentine went to the window leading to the fire escape, and started to climb out. Hearing footsteps on the metal stairs, he pulled himself inside and pressed his face to the window.

The Prince was coming down. For some reason, he’d taken off his shoes, and Valentine watched him materialize in pieces — first his dirty feet, then his blood-soaked pant legs, and finally his upper torso — while steadying the .38’s barrel against the window. When their eyes met, Valentine shot him.

The Prince flew backwards onto the fire escape, the bullet entering an inch below his heart. He lay motionless on the steps, and Valentine climbed out the window and pried the Uzi from his grasp. The Prince’s eyes were fading, and Valentine leaned in close.

“Remember me? I was chasing you over at the casino.”

His eyelids flickered. “Sure. You... run fast.”

“What’s the deal with you and Crowe?”

“You dunno?”

Valentine shook his head.

“They sent Crowe and Freed to get their little book back,” the pimp said.

“What little book?”

“In my pocket.”

Valentine rifled the Prince’s pockets, found a wad of cash and put it back, then found a black address book, and thumbed through its pages. It contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of two dozen men. All were Italian and lived in the New York area. Next to each of their names were the dates they’d visited Atlantic City in the past eighteen months.

“Who are these guys?”

“Crowe and Brown work for them,” the pimp whispered.

“Mobsters?”

“Yeah...”

“What were they were doing?”

The Prince’s eyes shifted, and Valentine realized he was staring at something in the distance. Turning, Valentine saw the neon outline of Resorts in the distance, the garish colors fading in the early morning dawn. He looked back at the pimp.

“They got a scam going on?”

“Yeah...”

The Prince grasped Valentine’s sleeve. On his face was a look that Valentine had seen before; of a man about to die, wanting to come clean. In a hoarse whisper he said, “They’re stealing a million bucks a day.”

“What? How?”

“Got an arrangement...”

“Inside the casino?”

“Yeah...”

“With who?”

The Prince stared straight up at the sky. The sun had risen, and a ray of light rested on his face. Valentine waited for him to continue, then saw the life leave his eyes, and realized he was dead. Slipping the address book into his pocket, he closed the Prince’s eyelids with his fingertips, allowing him one final courtesy before his soul went to the place that cop-killers went. Then he climbed off the fire escape, and went outside to help his partner.