Wild Card

Chapter 7

The telephone call came at seven the next morning.

Gerry had left to catch the bus. He was a drummer in the marching band, and went to practice at the high school three mornings a week. Valentine sat at the kitchen table, staring at his son’s dismal report card while munching on a piece of toast.

Lois answered the phone on the third ring. She was at the kitchen counter, preparing her husband’s lunch. Money was tight, and he bagged it whenever he could.

“Can I tell him who’s calling?” She stuck the receiver into her shoulder, and lowered her voice. “It’s some guy pretending to be Nucky Balducci.”

“Tell him to get stuffed and hang up.”

“It sort of sounds like him.”

Enoch “Nucky” Balducci had run Atlantic City’s rackets for forty years. As a kid, Valentine’s mother had told him that if he didn’t behave, Nucky would climb through his bedroom window, and slit his throat. “You think it’s Doyle?” he asked.

“Could be,” Lois said.

Valentine took the phone from his wife. “Hey buddy, what’s up?”

“We need to talk,” a gruff voice said.

“Who’s this?”

“Your wife fucking deaf? This is Nucky Balducci.”

He saw Lois staring at him. Had his adolescent fear of Nucky registered on his face? “How do I know this is Nucky Balducci?” he asked.

“Your father has a tattoo with your mother’s name stenciled on his ass,” the man growled. “That good enough for you?”

They agreed to meet at the foot of Lucy the Elephant in thirty minutes.

Lucy resided in a park in Margate not far from Valentine’s house. Once, she had been one of Atlantic City’s most famous attractions. Made of timber and sheet metal, she stood sixty-five feet from head-to-toe. For twenty cents, a visitor could climb the spiral staircase in her hind leg, and sit in the basket on her back, called a howdah. These days, Lucy sat unused, the weeds around her long and ragged.

Crossing the park, Valentine spotted Nucky standing beneath Lucy’s tail. The old gangster wore a long winter coat and a black fedora. He was carrying an umbrella, even though it hadn’t rained in days. A scruffy park attendant unlocked Lucy’s hollow leg, then shuffled away.

“You come alone?” Nucky asked.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“Don’t be a wise ass.”

They climbed the spiral staircase and got settled in Lucy’s howdah. A veil of bluish fog hung over the nearby rooftops. Nucky started the conversation.

“Zelda asked about you the other day,” the old gangster said.

“How’s she doing?”

Nucky removed his fedora. He had a shaved head and bulbous, bloodshot eyes. If he wasn’t the ugliest man in Atlantic City, he was in the running.

“Terrible,” he said.

“Still won’t come out of her room?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You should come by. It would cheer her up.”

Zelda Balducci had lost her marbles the day Elvis Presley had died. Locked herself in her bedroom, and kissed the world goodbye. Two years later, she was still in her room. “She likes you,” Nucky added.

Valentine gave him a hard look. His relationship with Nucky was a thin one. His father had saved Nucky’s life before Valentine had been born. Stopped a man from braining Nucky with a shovel, was how the story went. As Nucky had risen up in the ranks of Atlantic City’s underworld, he’d looked out for Dominic Valentine. Valentine had taken Zelda to a high school dance as a favor to his old man, and recalled Zelda stepping on his toes all night long.

“I hear you got promoted,” Nucky said. “Catching cheaters in the casino.”

“That’s right.”

“My first job as a kid was inside this elephant. Lucy was a speakeasy. There was also a blackjack game.”

“What did you do?”

“Cleaned out the spittoons, ran errands.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

Nucky elbowed him in the ribs. “You inherited your old man’s mouth, you know that?”

“Excuse me for asking, but what do you want? ” Valentine said, “If people see me hanging out with you, they might get the wrong idea.”

Nucky stared off into space, then punched his hat with his fist. “There’s bad stuff going down at Resorts. Stuff that could get you hurt.”

He paused, and Valentine realized he was expecting an answer. To act uninformed around Nucky was a mistake, so he said, “I know.”

“I ain’t talking about the stuff you think I’m talking about,” Nucky said.

“What stuff are you talking about?”

“Other stuff.”

“What stuff is that?”

Nucky opened the umbrella and covered them with it. To stop anyone watching with binoculars who knew how to read lips, Valentine guessed.

“I’m talking about stuff you don’t know about,” Nucky said. “Maybe never will know about it. Which is probably for the better.”

“It is?”

Nucky nodded vigorously. “For you, and your family.”

Valentine stared at him. Why was Nucky dragging his family into this? He watched the fog start to lift, the sunlight bleeding through as the day began.

“How much did the Prince tell you before he croaked?” Nucky asked.

So that was why Nucky had asked him here. The Prince.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

Valentine shook his head.

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“You check his pockets?”

There was no love in Nucky’s eyes now. The old gangster wanted to know what had happened to the address book with the names of the New York mafia soldiers.

“No. I don’t roll dead men,” Valentine replied.

Nucky owned two identical Cadillac Eldorados. One was for driving around, the other for parking in front of his plumbing supply store so people would think he was working. Luther, his ex-football player bodyguard and chauffeur, had parked the driving car on the street, and now opened the back door as they came out of the park.

“You ever patch things up with your old man?” Nucky asked.

The question caught Valentine by surprise. “No.”

“I saw him the other day on the street. I took him to a diner, and we talked over coffee. Your father still has a lot upstairs. He hasn’t killed all his brain cells.”

“Glad to hear it,” Valentine said.

“You need to smoke the peace pipe. Make peace.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying you should do it.”

Valentine watched Nucky climb into the backseat. There was a delicate balance in Atlantic City between the crooks, the Jews, the blacks, and the Republican machine, and at the center of it was this man. The passenger window came down, and Nucky peered out at him from inside the car. Valentine realized he was expecting an answer.

“I’ve tried a hundred times.”

“Try a hundred more,” the old gangster said.