Wild Card

Chapter 43

The phone call from Nucky Balducci came early the next morning.

“We need to talk,” the old gangster said.

Valentine was sitting at his kitchen table, finishing his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The funeral of Marcus Mink had drained him, and he’d slept poorly. Talking to Nucky was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“About what?” he asked.

“Your health,” Nucky replied.

Thirty minutes later, Valentine parked in front of Nucky’s house and killed the Pinto’s sputtering engine. Any day now, he expected the car to catch on fire and die, and found himself hoping it would be soon. Walking up the brick path, he stared at Nucky’s palatial digs. He remembered how impressed he’d been twenty years ago while picking Zelda up for the school dance. She lives in a mansion, he remembered thinking. The fact that Nucky was a mobster hadn’t bothered him at the time. He’d been sixteen, and the size of the house was all that had mattered.

Knocking on the front door, he heard a noise and glanced up. Zelda was watching from a second-story window and clasped her hands together in joy.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said under his breath.

The front door opened, and Nucky ushered him in. The old gangster wore black pants and a black sweater, his traditional colors. It made his bald head look bigger, not that anyone in town had the courage to tell him. Hearing the pounding of feet, Valentine saw Zelda coming down the staircase wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe and pink slippers.

“Tony!” she exclaimed.

He had always felt sorry for Zelda. Deep down, she was a sweet kid, but bore the horrible misfortune of looking exactly like her father. As she bounded across the foyer, he realized she was going to hug him. He let her.

“Hey, Zelda,” he said, kissing the top of her forehead.

“It’s not time for our twentieth high school reunion, is it?” she asked.

Valentine wasn’t sure what time zone Zelda occupied since she’d flipped her wig. The reunion had happened last summer, but he saw no reason to tell her.

“Not yet,” he replied.

“Good. I’m holding you to the first dance.”

I’ll wear steel-toed shoes, he thought. “Great,” he said.

“What’s your favorite Elvis Presley song?”

“Why?”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“A Big Hunk ‘O Love,” he said.

“Oh, you’re such a boy! A Big Hunk ‘O Love it is.”

She flew back upstairs. Nucky escorted him into the den, and shut the slider behind them. “You should really come around more often,” he said.

Valentine let the remark pass. From upstairs he heard horrendously loud music being played on a stereo, accompanied by Zelda’s awful rendition of A Big Hunk of Love. “I got something I thought you’d want to see,” Nucky said.

Nucky crossed the den to the bar, and opened a small refrigerator in the corner. From the freezer section he removed a large plastic bag, which brought around the bar and handed to his guest. It contained a gaping, frozen mackerel.

“That showed up on my doorstep this morning, wrapped in newspaper,” Nucky explained. “Then I got a phone call. Guy says, ‘You need to take a walk on the beach.’ He gives me an address. So I sent a couple of my men.”

“What did they find?”

“Luther. About a hundred yards from Resorts.”

“Drowned?”

“Uh-huh. Luther was strong — you ever see him play for the Giants? Guy was a monster in his prime. Must of taken four, five men to hold him down.” Nucky stared into space. “He was always good with Zelda, you know? Used to bring her little gifts and food.”

“You tell her?”

“No. Can’t risk it. She’s too fragile.”

Luther had been like family to Nucky, and Valentine realized how upset the old gangster was. “Who do you think killed him?”

Nucky filled his chest with air, then exhaled slowly. “The family.”

“Why? You piss them off?”

“Yeah. They told me to pressure you.”

“This is about me?”

“Sure is. They don’t like all the things you’re doing at the casino. It’s making them nervous, so they told me to put the squeeze on you.”

“And you said no, and they killed Luther.”

“That’s right.”

Upstairs, Zelda had launched into Hound Dog, and was rocking the house. Valentine tried to make sense of what Nucky was telling him. If his work at Resorts was scaring the family, then the family had a stake in the casino. Only he and Doyle scrutinized the casino’s financials every day: Resorts was making more money than the three largest casinos in Las Vegas combined, and every penny could be accounted for.

“Who are they?” Valentine asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” Nucky replied.

The dead mackerel had started to melt, and he followed Nucky into the kitchen and tossed it into the rubbish. Nucky offered him a glass of lemonade. Valentine took a glass of water instead, and drank it in one long swallow. Then he put his hand on Nucky’s shoulder. The old gangster was pushing seventy and was still hard as a rock.

“Vinny Acosta is running things, isn’t he?” he said.

“That’s right,” Nucky said.

“Can’t have two bosses in town, can we?”

“I’d worry about your own problems, I was you.”

“Your problems and my problems are the same.”

Nucky was working on a pink lemonade. He held the glass to his lips and stared out the window onto his spacious back yard. There was a swimming pool and a bocce court and a big piece of cement from the old 50 °Club that contained hand prints and signatures from all the famous celebrities who’d ever worked there. The club had been Atlantic City’s last good time until burning to the ground six years ago.

“You got something in mind?” Nucky asked.

“Yes.”

“Spit it out.”

“Tell me how Vinny Acosta is ripping off Resorts’ casino. I want to nail this son-of-a-bitch, and I think you do as well.”

Nucky put his glass down and laughed under his breath.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just because things go bad doesn’t mean I turn into a giant rat. I took an oath when I joined the mob. Sealed it in my blood. I’ll never go back on my word.”

“Then send me down the right path. Come on, Nucky. For both our sakes.”

Nucky poured the rest of his lemonade into the sink. “You want to talk to someone who knows about the scam? Go talk to your father.”

“My father?”

“That’s right. He knows what’s going on.”

“You told him?”

“He figured it out himself. He’s a smart guy, Tony. You need to make peace with him.”

Every time he got together with Nucky, his old man came up. The problems between them were none of Nucky’s business, not that he could convince Nucky of that. Upstairs, the stereo had gotten stuck on Elvis singing Don’t be Cruel, and so had Zelda, her voice husky and raw. Living with her had to be hell, yet it was obvious that Nucky loved her. It made Valentine think of his relationship with his father. Did he still love him? Somewhere, deep down in his soul, he imagined that he did.

They went to the foyer. The old gangster offered his hand, and Valentine shook it.

“I protected you for as long as I could,” Nucky said.

“Thank you. Say goodbye to Zelda for me.”

Nucky patted him on the shoulder and opened the door. Buttoning up his coat, Valentine ventured outside into the cold.