He swallowed hard. The polite thing would have been to call, and tell her he was running late and not to wait for him. But he hadn’t done that. He considered taking out the photograph of his bloodied son and showing it to her, only that was what a kid in the sixth grade would do, beg forgiveness and ask for sympathy at the same time. He needed to take his medicine like a man, and said, “No, I just forgot about our lunch date. It was wrong of me, and it won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”

The look on her face said she wasn’t buying it. She looked incredibly sexy when she was angry, and he guessed if he told her so, she’d slap him right across the face.

“Look, Tony,” she said, “you’re my life support system right now. Every story I’ve gotten in the past two days has come from you. Understand?”

He wasn’t sure that he did, but nodded anyway.

“My job and my career are on the line,” she went on. “I’m depending upon you to come through. On top of that, I’ve decided that I really like you.”

“I like you, too,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I can’t turn into your shadow, or be a puppy dog that waits for its master to come along and toss it a bone when he feels like it. I’ve got too much pride for that.”

He stared down at the white tablecloth. If anything good had come out of this job, it was meeting her, and now that was going up in flames. He looked up into her eyes.

“Let me make it up to you.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Let me try, anyway,” he said. “I feel very bad about this. I don’t mean to lead you and Zack around. I’m not that kind of guy.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I just…”

“Suffer from short-term memory loss?”

No matter how old he got, Valentine was never going to use his age as an excuse for bad behavior.

“I get preoccupied sometimes,” he explained. “It drove my late wife crazy. She used to make me write appointments on my hand so I wouldn’t forget them.”

“On your hand? I used to do that as a little kid.”

“Hey,” he said, “it works.”

Gloria leaned forward, and gave him another hard look. Her own look was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and he sensed that she wanted to believe him, and get things back on track, only she wasn’t going to let him wound her a second time.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll give you another chance.”

Valentine took his hand, and placed it upon her hand resting on the table.

“I won’t let you down,” he said.

45

Gerry Valentine had decided that people who couldn’t fit in anywhere else, fit in just fine in Las Vegas.

Take the four goons working for Jinky who’d been beating the daylights out of Frank, Vinny, and Nunzie for the past two hours. As enforcers went they were laughable, and did not know the first thing about getting someone to talk. Rule number one was that you never used your bare fists to hit someone, because knuckles usually broke before jaws did. Rule number two was that if you started out by hitting someone hard, they’d never cooperate with you. But these guys had never been to that school, and after two hours of abuse, two of them had broken hands, and no one had spoken a word.

“How’s your face feel?” Gerry asked Vinny, who’d been dragged in his chair to where Gerry was sitting, his face a bloody pulp.

“My nose is broken, my teeth are broken, and I can’t see out of my left eye,” Vinny said through horribly swollen lips. “But you know me, I can’t complain.”

Gerry forced himself to smile. Even in the worst of times, you had to find reasons to smile. He looked across the warehouse at Nunzie and Frank. The goons were beating up Nunzie, and making Frank watch. They still were asking the same question—“Which one of you shot Russ Watson in the parking lot?”—and neither Nunzie nor Frank had uttered a peep in response.

“You think Nunzie will crack?” Gerry whispered.

Vinny shook his head. “Not the Nunz. He’s solid as a rock.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Vinny asked.

Gerry stared at the steel door across from where they sat. Sunlight seeped through the bottom and had formed a small puddle of light. Twenty minutes ago, Jinky Harris had driven his wheelchair through that door, and moments later they’d heard a car drive away. Not having Jinky around had bothered Gerry. He could talk with Jinky, maybe strike some kind of bargain. He couldn’t do that with the guys he’d left behind.

“What plan?” he asked Vinny.

“The plan to get us out of this rat hole,” Vinny said.

“I don’t have a plan.”

“So, come up with one. You were always the man with the plan when it came to disaster relief.”

“I was?”

“Yeah. Remember the time I owed that money to those gangsters in Atlantic City? You came up with the best plan.”

“I did?”

Vinny spit something onto the floor, and Gerry watched it roll past his feet and stop. It was small and white. A tooth.

“Yeah,” Vinny said, making himself talk so he wouldn’t be scared. “I borrowed five grand from two gumbas who ran the Italian Men’s Social Club on Fairmont Avenue. I was supposed to pay them back on Wednesday at noon, only I wasn’t going to have the money to pay them back until Saturday. You remembering this?”

Gerry was watching two of the goons take turns whacking Nunzie in the kisser. Nunzie had a neck like a weight lifter and his head hardly moved from the blows.

“A little,” he said.

“So, I called you up, and you came up with the best plan.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“You knew two squares who worked at a bank,” Vinny said. “They had short hair and wore blue suits and neckties. You called them, and talked them into helping me out. They agreed to meet me on Wednesday at a few minutes before noon in the parking lot of Harold’s House of Pancakes where I was supposed to be paying off the gumbas.”

One of the goons connected with a solid right cross. Nunzie let out a soft grunt, the sound being amplified in the warehouse’s high ceiling.

“You left a part out,” Gerry said.

“I did?”

“Yeah. I also told you to buy the bank guys attaché cases and dark sunglasses to wear so they’d look like FBI agents.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Vinny said. “It was a nice touch.”

“Thanks.”

“So, I pull into Harold’s at a minute before noon on Wednesday, and the gumbas are sitting there in their Caddy, waiting for me. I hop out of my car holding a brown paper bag stuffed with crumpled newspaper—”

“I think that was my idea, too.”

“It was, and as I’m crossing the parking lot, the two bank guys jump out of their car holding their attaché cases. They stopped me, pulled out their wallets, and shoved them in my face. I never understood that part.”

“They were supposed to be showing you their badges,” Gerry explained. “You know, like they were FBI agents.”

Vinny looked stunned. “So that was what it was about. Well, they hustled me across the parking lot, shoved me into their car, and we drove away. I was in the backseat with the paper bag in my lap, and saw the gumbas standing in the parking lot by their Caddy with these looks on their face. It was fucking priceless.”

“Did you give them their money?”

“Oh yeah,” Vinny said. “On Saturday I went to the club and paid them off. They took me aside and said, ‘We saw what happened. You took it like a man.’”

“You made two new friends.”

“That’s right. So, come up with a plan like that.”

Gerry stared at the ceiling. Bound to a chair in a warehouse in the middle of the desert and Vinny was telling him to come up with a plan to let them escape. If he had that kind of power, he wouldn’t have gotten himself in this situation to begin with.