Wild Card

Chapter 6

Lying in bed that night, Valentine used a deck of playing cards to show Lois some of the cheating techniques Bill Higgins had tipped that afternoon. They were like magic tricks, and his wife lay beside him, mesmerized. She wore no clothes, and his heart did the funny thing it always did when she was naked.

He didn’t think there was a more beautiful woman in Atlantic City. Her skin was as fine as porcelain, her soft green eyes as enchanting as emeralds. As a teenager, she’d won every beauty pageant she’d entered — Miss Ventnor, Miss Steel Pier, Miss Mermaid, Miss Atlantic County — while being pursued by every hot-blooded guy on the island. They’d met over a Bunsen burner in an eleventh-grade biology class, and he’d never gotten over the fact that she’d chosen to spend her life with him.

“You learned all that in one day,” she said.

He nodded and put the cards away. He could tell Lois liked his new job. He was learning things, and he wasn’t getting shot at. And, he was home at night at a decent hour. Like every other woman in Atlantic City, the recent killings had put a healthy dose of fear into her. He turned off the light and they lay in the dark, sharing the silence.

“Are the police any closer to catching this killer?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I don’t hear about that stuff anymore. The casino is its own little world.”

“You sound resentful.”

“I think I could catch this guy, if Banko would give me a chance.”

“Did you ask him?”

“About a dozen times. He keeps telling me no.”

“Do they have any leads?”

His wife knew him too well. Valentine had talked to the lead investigator on the case and asked the same question. So far, the police had hit a stone wall.

“Not yet. They think someone local is responsible.”

“Why do they think that? Couldn’t a tourist be behind it?”

“Tourists stay around the casino. The killings are taking place around the island. The fact that there haven’t been any witnesses means the killer is probably someone we all know. We’re seeing him, but we’re not making the connection.”

“Oh.”

They fell silent and watched a gibbous moon cut a sphere through the window. Valentine started to drift off when a noise snapped him awake. The music coming out of their son’s bedroom had gone up several decibels, and he got out of bed to investigate.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He tapped lightly on his son’s bedroom door, then entered. The lights were on, and Gerry lay in bed with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye propped on his chest. The room’s walls were covered in posters of rock bands, and his son’s clothes were scattered across the floor along with the other items that made up a thirteen year old’s world.

“You having a Beatles’s reunion in here?”

“It’s the Bee Gees, Pop.”

Valentine killed the stereo. His son was listening to the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. He and Lois had seen the movie at a drive-in, and thought it gave working-class Italians a real black eye. He parked himself on his son’s bed.

“Lights out.”

“I was doing homework, you know.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Gerry slid the book onto the night table. So far, puberty had been kind to him. He was growing like a weed, and his skin was unblemished.

“Your mother said you got your report card today.”

“It wasn’t so hot. I left it downstairs on the kitchen table. You have to sign it.”

“How bad?”

“Three Cs, two Bs and an A in gym.”

“That the only class you showing up for?”

A hurt look crossed his son’s face. “I’m trying, okay?”

“You still getting headaches?”

“Every day.”

Since entering junior high school, Gerry’s grades had taken a precipitous nosedive. He claimed that all the reading was giving him headaches, so they’d taken him to an eye specialist. A hundred bucks worth of tests had revealed his son’s eyesight to be 20/20. Valentine tucked him in, then tousled his son’s hair. “It will get better.”

“That’s what mom said. Are things okay with you and her?”

Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “Everything’s fine.”

“You seem really uptight. And you’re smoking cigarettes again.”

“Are those bad signs?”

“Yeah. It means something’s bothering you. I don’t want to be one of those kids who gets shuttled around on weekends.”

Valentine’s own parents had broken up when he was a teenager, and his life had never been the same. He lay his hand on his son’s stomach. Nature had only let them have one child, and he loved his boy more than anything in the world.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Now, go to sleep.”

He switched off the light on the night table. Outside his son’s window he could see the spot in the backyard where he’d buried the Prince’s address book. By hiding it, he’d figured he’d stop thinking about it, but so far it hadn’t worked.

“You sure everything’s okay?” Gerry asked.

Valentine kissed his son’s forehead in the dark. “Positive.”