Deadman’s Poker

Valentine returned to Jinky’s office and slammed the door behind him. In anger he raised the cane and smashed a framed photograph of Jinky with a naked stripper hanging on the wall. He had blown it. If he’d handled Finesse right, he could have made him talk, instead of letting his temper take over.

He checked Jinky’s desk a second time, just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. He picked up the phone, and hit the redial button. He got a frantic busy signal and let out a curse. He decided to go back to the club, and see if Bill had gotten Jinky to open up. Gerry’s photograph was lying on the coffee table. As he picked it up, he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. A red smudge on Gerry’s right cheek.

It was too bright to be blood. On Jinky’s desk was a magnifying glass used for reading. Valentine picked up the magnifying glass, and examined the smudge.

It was a woman’s lipstick. A kiss.

Now he had a clue, only he didn’t know what it meant. He went to the minibar behind Jinky’s desk and stole a Diet Coke. He always thought better with caffeine rushing through his bloodstream, and he sucked it down while staring at the photograph. Gerry had called him right after he’d been released from the police station, and said he was going straight to the motel. If Valentine remembered correctly, the motel’s name was the Casablanca. On a hunch he got the motel’s phone number from information, and called it.

“Haven’t seen your son since yesterday,” the manager said after Valentine identified himself.

“He didn’t come around early this morning with his friends?”

“Nope.”

“Mind answering a question for me?”

“Go ahead,” the manager said.

“How far are you from the Metro Las Vegas police station?”

“Two point three miles.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Valentine hung up. Gerry and his friends had never reached their motel. Chances were, they’d been nabbed right as they’d left the police station. A pretty girl had talked them into driving her someplace, and given Gerry a kiss for his trouble. His son had always been a sucker for a pretty face.

He finished his soda still looking at his son’s face. Pete Longo had practically admitted that he had a dirty cop in his department. That cop must have orchestrated this. There was no other way it could have worked so well. He tossed his empty bottle into the trash, then picked up the phone, and dialed the Las Vegas Metro Police Department’s phone number from memory. An operator answered on the fifth ring.

“Let me speak to Detective Longo,” he said.

Pete Longo was having the day from hell. Besides being asked by Bill Higgins to stay out of a major bust, he’d just learned that Jinky Harris had been operating a bust-out joint right under their noses. It was a big black eye for the city, and no one was going to get more heat over it than the police department. His secretary stuck her head into his office.

“Some guy named Tony Valentine is holding on line two,” she said. “Want me to get rid of him?”

“No, I’ll take it.”

The door closed and Longo picked up the mug of coffee that had been sitting on his desk since early that morning and slurped it down. Then he picked up his phone and punched in line two. “This is Detective Longo. Can I help you?”

“This is Tony Valentine,” the caller said. “How would you like to do a horse trade?”

Longo pulled himself closer to his desk. “What are you offering?”

“I think I’ve nailed your dirty cop.”

The words were slow to register. Maybe the day from hell was about to show its silver lining. Longo removed a fresh legal pad from his drawer along with a pen.

“What do you want in return?”

“Jinky Harris won’t tell us where my son and his friends are,” Valentine said. “I want you to promise me that you’ll make this cop talk, no matter what.”

“You want me to hurt him?”

“Just do whatever you have to do. You don’t have to tell me how.”

Longo realized his hand was shaking. He had suspected there was a dirty cop in the department for over a year, and had lost many nights’ sleep over it.

“Give it to me from the top,” Longo said.

“Is that a promise?”

“You have my word,” the detective said.

Longo meticulously wrote down Valentine’s theory of how his son and friends had been abducted outside the station house. When Valentine was finished, Longo read it back to him, making sure the times corresponded to the correct events.

“That’s it,” Valentine said. “A pretty girl was waiting for my son at the station house. She was bait. She convinced him and his friends to drive her someplace, where Jinky’s boys were waiting. That’s my theory.”

Longo thought back to early that morning when he’d released Gerry and walked him to the reception area. He’d done a quick scan of the visitors, like he always did. There hadn’t been any pretty girls sitting on the plastic chairs bolted to the floor. Had she come from somewhere inside the station house? He put his pen down.

“Let me look into this,” Longo said. “Give me a number where I can get back to you.”

Longo wrote Valentine’s cell number on his blotter and hung up. Then he sat at his desk, deep in thought. He had to handle this right, and not make any accusations until he was certain he had the right cop. He pushed himself out of his chair, and walked to the front of the station house with the legal pad pressed to his chest.

The receptionist on duty was a no-nonsense female sergeant named Cobb. Cobb sat behind a three-inch piece of bulletproof Plexiglas, her eyes riveted to the reception area. No matter what time of day it was, the reception area was always filled with angry and sometimes desperate people. Longo came up behind her, and asked to see the logbook. Cobb pulled it off the desk.

“Don’t go too far with that,” she snapped.

Longo pointed at the chair behind her own. “Here okay?”

“Perfect,” she said.

He sat down, opened the logbook on his lap, and found the entries from early that morning. The station house had several hundred visitors a day, and it took him over a minute to find Gerry Valentine’s entry. Gerry had signed out at 3:04 A.M. According to Tony Valentine’s theory, the girl who’d baited Gerry had done so right after he’d been released, which meant she’d probably signed out around the same time. Longo checked the names of the visitors who’d signed out around the same time as Gerry, and found only one. A woman named Bo

Longo stared at the Person Here to Seebox next to Vitucci’s name. It was blank. Rising from his chair, he tapped Cobb on the arm.

“Who was working the graveyard shift last night?”

“Boy, your memory’s going,” the sergeant said.

“Why do you say that?”

“I was working the graveyard shift. Fa

Longo pointed at Bo

Cobb had eyes like a lizard, and looked at the name in the log without shifting her head. She cracked her bubble gum and nodded at the same time.

“Who is she?”

“A stripper who also does tricks on the side,” Cobb said. “She got arrested for offering an undercover detective a BJ.”

“When was this?”

“About a year ago.”

“How can you remember that clearly?”

“It was her walk,” Cobb said.

“Her walk?”

“Yeah. The way she sashayed through here when she got arrested, you’d swear she was sleeping with somebody in the department. That’s what we thought.”

“We?”

“The other ladies on the staff. We.”

Longo realized he was nodding his head. Everything Cobb had said made perfect sense. Jinky Harris had gotten one of his strippers to start sleeping with a detective, and the stripper had pulled the detective over to the dark side. That was how those kinds of things worked. He knew that for a fact, because he’d fallen for a stripper himself once. Sex made you blind and it made you stupid. He put the log back in its place and thanked Cobb for her help.