Wild Card

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.”

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.”