Deadman’s Poker

He swallowed hard. The polite thing would have been to call, and tell her he was ru

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, Vi

“How’s your face feel?” Gerry asked Vi

“My nose is broken, my teeth are broken, and I can’t see out of my left eye,” Vi

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.

Vi

“Glad to hear it.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Vi

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 Vi

“The plan to get us out of this rat hole,” Vi

“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?”

Vi

“Yeah,” Vi

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,” Vi

One of the goons co

“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,” Vi

“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.”

Vi

“Did you give them their money?”

“Oh yeah,” Vi

“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 Vi