Twenty minutes later, Valentine found himself stuck in traffic on the Strip. Thousands of newly arrived tourists had hit the streets and transformed the city's main thoroughfare into a pedestrian walkway. Horns blared, engines overheated, and cabbies stood on the hoods of their cars and shouted in murderous rage.
Where's a cop when you need one? he wondered. He'd promised to call Roxanne and like an idiot had left her home number on his night table. It hadn't helped that he didn't know her last name and couldn't look her up. He glanced at his watch-nearly five. Flipping the turn indicator on, he maneuvered the Cadillac Nick had loaned him into the front entrance of the Desert Inn. Tossing the valet a twenty, he threw his sports jacket over his shoulder and hit the pavement, the Acropolis shimmering miragelike in the distance.
Florida was never this hot. You could go out at night, walk around, and not be afraid of bursting into flames. He crossed the street in slow motion and caught his breath in the welcome shade of a bus stop. It wasn't any cooler.
By the next block, the heat had risen through his loafers and his feet were burning up. Hundreds of people streamed around him, oblivious to his condition. He looked hopelessly up and down the street. In any other city, there would be someone hawking ice-cold drinks and umbrellas. Not Las Vegas-the only free enterprise here was located inside the casinos.
He heard voices. Women singing, the melodious words floating above his head. No one else seemed to notice. What the hell was going on? Crossing at the light, the voices grew stronger, and he shaded his eyes and stared straight ahead. A block away, he saw Nick's harem of ex-wives standing in the fountains, serenading him.
He was hallucinating, the heat doing tricks with his head. It didn't matter. He'd heard women singing the day before Lois died. God talked to people in strange ways, and there was no doubt in his mind that God was talking to him right now. He started to run.
He was sopping wet by the time he reached Nick's joint, his heart racing out of control. The check-in line was twenty deep, T-shirts flapping over Day-Glo Bermudas, and he went straight to the elevators and bullied his way onto the first available car.
The message light on his bedside phone was flashing. Tearing his shirt off, he placed the receiver to his ear and punched in the code for voice mail.
There was only one message. Mabel.
"Oh, Tony, you were right," his neighbor said, her voice trembling. "The ad ran this morning and I got a call from the postmaster. The police had called him, asked who owned the box. The next thing I know, one of Palm Harbor's finest is standing on my porch. Oh, Tony, it was so embarrassing. He arrested me."
Valentine sat on the bed. Gerry's brilliant idea had gotten Mabel thrown in the pokey. His son was a bad-news buffet.
"They gave me one phone call. Thank God for my MCI calling card. The judge told me I'd better hire an attorney. Who do I call? I've never broken the law. You think F. Lee Bailey would be interested?"
Mabel's voice was drowned out by a drunk woman mutilating an old Carole King song. She'd called him from a payphone in a holding cell.
"That's Sally. She's a bag lady. Anyway, I got arraigned an hour ago. Judge set bail at one thousand dollars. I laughed in his face, told him it would be a cold day in hell before I'd fork over a thousand bucks to him. You should have seen his face!"
Valentine fell backward on the bed.
"Well, I guess I got him pretty mad. He banged his gavel like Judge Wapner and gave me a lecture about propriety in his court. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but you know me… I let him have it right between the eyes. Told him to calm down before he had a stroke. Then I asked him why he was wasting the taxpayers' money arresting me, when every day I drive over to Clearwater Beach and see a hooker on Alternate 19 with her thumb out. Guess what he did then?"
"Here it comes," Valentine said, shutting his eyes.
"Well, he starts to talk, only his face is beet red and there's sweat on his brow, and no words come out. So I say, 'Cat got your tongue, Judge?' and that gets him even madder, and he takes a big gulp of water and looks at me, and I think, You're screwed, Mabel, and then I see him start to froth at the mouth and his eyes roll up into his head and he just keels over right there."
"Sweet Jesus," Valentine groaned.
"Had a stroke. They carried him out on a stretcher. I can't tell you how horrible I felt. Still, he had no right to treat me like a common criminal."
The line went silent and he heard Mabel blow her nose. "Well, now the judge's in the hospital and no one in the jail wants to talk to me. I don't know what to do. I'm sorry to be bothering you, but who else am I going to call?"
Why not Gerry? he thought. He got you into this.
"I'm sure you're mad at your son, but it's not his fault. I'm an old woman prone to stupid deeds. It's my nature, so don't blame him, okay? Well, I guess I've babbled long enough. Can't wait to see the phone bill when I get out of here. If you do get home in the next few days, I'd appreciate it if you'd come down to the Clearwater jail and bail me out."
She honked her nose again and he realized she was crying. Tears of sympathy poured down his face, and he rubbed them away with his sleeve. Grow old enough, and Father Time will find a way to rob you of all your dignity.
A dial tone filled his ear. Valentine dropped the receiver on the pillow and covered his face with his hands.
Rising from the bed, he tore off his smelly clothes and took a cold shower, but not before chaining the door and propping a chair up against it. When he came out, he grabbed a Diet Coke from the bar and sat down at the dining-room table, the phone before him, and he began to hunt for his beloved Gerald.
Burned in his memory were five different phone numbers for his son. They included the apartment in Brooklyn, his saloon, his ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend with whom Gerry had cohabited for two years, and his cell phone. It was Pee Wee, Gerry's bartender, who answered the phone at the saloon, his tongue thickened by whiskey.
"Hey, Mr. Valentine, how's it hanging?"
"Longer than yours," Valentine growled. "Where's my son?"
"Out making the rounds," Pee Wee said. "Wanna leave a message?"
Valentine swallowed hard. Bar owners didn't make rounds.
"You're telling me Gerry is out collecting money?" Valentine said.
"I didn't say that-"
"Is Gerry still running a bookmaking operation?"
"I don't have to answer that question," Pee Wee said.
"It's my bar," Valentine reminded him.
Pee Wee hiccupped into the phone. He was in his early forties and probably wouldn't make it to fifty, the booze taking him down a one-way street with no detours.
"You're on parole, aren't you?" Valentine said. "If I call the cops and they find Gerry's taking bets, they'll put you back in jail, Pee Wee."
"You'd turn in your own son?"
"Goddamn straight I would."
"You're something else," Pee Wee said.
"Answer the question."
"Yeah, he's still taking bets."
Valentine slammed down the phone. Seething, he began dialing Gerry's other numbers, working his way through the list until an unfamiliar young miss with a sultry Puerto Rican accent answered Gerry's cell phone, a radio blaring samba music in the background. He sensed that his son was nearby, perhaps lying in bed beside her, and barked louder than he should have.
"Gerry's not here," she replied timidly. Lowering the radio, she said, "Are you really Gerry's father?"
"That's me. Where is he?"
"I don't know. Why are you such a prick?"
"Is that what Gerry told you? That I'm a prick?"
"He said you were the biggest prick on the planet."
"He wasn't off by much. Where'd he go?"
"I don't know. Why are you such a prick?"
"Maybe I'm just a prick with Gerry."