"You're in the minority, you know."
"I usually am."
The last envelope was tagged with a question mark. In it Valentine found two twisted metal coat hangers.
"Cops found those in a closet," Higgins explained.
"Mind if I straighten them out?"
"Be my guest."
Valentine straightened the hangers out. Both were three feet long and bent in the same spots, with a curved fish hook on one end. They reminded him of the contraptions people used to open locked cars, only he was certain that was not what they were intended for.
Standing, he held one hanger at chest height so the curved end was pointing at the ceiling. He moved the hanger up and down, using the hook to move an imaginary object above his head. The first piece of the puzzle fell into place, and he felt a sense of relief. He'd been right about Nola from the start. She despised Nick, so much that she hadn't replaced the shag carpeting in her house. It had served as a reminder, all these years.
"So what do you think?" Higgins said.
Valentine folded up the hangers and handed them back to him.
"Beats me," he replied.
Twenty minutes later, Higgins left, taking the box of evidence with him. Valentine was chaining the door when the phone rang.
"Why did you poison Sherry's dog?" Nick shouted at him.
"I didn't poison Sherry's dog," he replied stiffly.
"Don't bullshit a bullshitter," his employer retorted. "It ain't healthy."
"I kicked the little floor mop in the mouth."
"Why'd you do that?"
"Sherry sicced him on me."
"Oh," Nick said, backing down. "She does that sometimes when she's in a pissy mood."
"How sweet. Did she move in?"
"Yeah, and I moved out," Nick said. "You and I are neighbors."
Valentine was standing by the picture window in his living room just as the Mirage's volcano spit a mammoth fireball into the pinkish sky. Without thinking, he said, "You're staying at the Mirage?"
"Fuck the Mirage, you stupid Jersey asshole," Nick bellowed. "I'm staying down the hall, room 1201. We're neighbors, as in next door." One of the luxuries of being the boss was not having to watch your tongue.
"Sorry. What happened?"
"None of your fucking business," Nick said testily. "I called because I wanted to hear how your day went."
"Well," Valentine said, "I started out-"
"Not over the phone!"
"Sorry. I'll be right over."
Nick's suite was unlocked and Valentine entered without knocking. The living room was a throwback to the glorious seventies, the walls covered with splashy LeRoy Niemans, the furnishings sparkling chrome and glass. He crossed the tiled floor and noticed a boxy RCA television set propped against the wall. It did not fit in with the cheesy decor, and he noticed a brass plaque screwed into the top. On May 4, 1972, Elvis Presley had stayed in the suite, distinguishing himself by putting a bullet through the TV. The plaque did not say why.
Valentine found Nick sitting at the dining room table while a doctor attended to a puncture wound on his hand. The doctor removed a needle from his bag and swabbed Nick's forearm with alcohol.
"This is going to sting," the doctor warned.
"Great," Nick said, clenching his teeth as the booster was jammed in. To Valentine, he said, "What kind of guy kicks a little dog?"
"One who doesn't want to get bit."
"Only W. C. Fields didn't like dogs," Nick said, flexing his arm as the doctor tried to apply a bandage.
"It was self-defense."
"Me, I love animals. Sherry says she has a dog, I say, 'Bring it over.' Dog comes into the house, sniffs my leg, I bend down to pet it, suddenly the little monster attacks me."
"You let her move in?" Valentine asked, unable to hide his astonishment at Nick's lack of judgment.
"No! I invited her over for some sex and a little dinner," Nick said, feigning innocence. "The next thing I know, she's got a U-Haul parked at the front door. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she wouldn't listen." He shook his head. "Crazy broads. I'm a magnet for them."
"So you moved out."
"Temporarily. If she's not gone by tomorrow, Hoss and Tiny will toss her." The doctor was packing his bag. Nick dug out his wad and tossed him several hundred dollars. "Hey, Doc, I really appreciate you coming over. You're a lifesaver."
Pocketing the money, the doctor handed him a vial of white pills. "These are antibiotics. Take three a day for the next two weeks. And no alcohol."
"Sure thing. Thanks, Doc."
The doctor showed himself out and Nick threw the vial into the garbage. "So, on to more important things. You find any trace of Nola?"
Valentine told him how his day had gone, leaving out Higgins's visit. Bill had stepped over the line by sharing police evidence with him, and telling Nick now would only compromise his friend for the rest of his days. In conclusion, he said, "Look, Nick, you may not want to hear this, but the way I see it, Fontaine's going to show up in your casino again, and Nola's going to be with him. Maybe not physically with him, but with him nonetheless. The more I look at what happened, the more I'm convinced she's the one pulling the strings. Shakespeare said all the world's a stage, and this is Nola's stage we're playing on."
Nick's face was emotionless. His fingers fumbled with a half-smoked stogie that lay in a heart-shaped marble ashtray on the table. As it reached his lips, the tip magically turned orange.
"I still want to see her."
Valentine said, "I just wanted to warn you."
"I want to make peace, you know? Clean the slate."
"She might gouge your eyes out."
"You're a real positive guy, you know that?"
Valentine nearly told him to go to hell. His argument with Gerry was eating a hole in him. It was growing dark outside, and across the street, the Mirage had turned its lights on, the mammoth structure glowing like a thousand-watt bulb.
"You think Fontaine will try to rob us when Holyfield's fighting tomorrow night?" Nick asked.
Valentine gave it some thought. The casino would be dead during the fight, and he said, "Probably not."
"Good. Being that Sherry won't be joining me, I was wondering if you wanted to come."
Valentine did not know what to say. Why was Nick offering him the hottest ticket in town? Then it dawned on him: Nick had lived in Las Vegas for over thirty years but didn't have any friends. He suddenly felt sorry for the guy, even if he was a flaming jerk.
"Sure," he mumbled.
"I'll give it to the bellman if that's the way you feel about it."
"No," Valentine said. "I'd like to go."
"You could have fooled me."
"Seriously."
"You a fight fan?"
Valentine acknowledged that he was. Nick slapped his hand on the empty seat beside him, begging for company. Valentine moved to join him. Then it hit him like a thunderbolt: He hadn't called Roxanne. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven. He imagined her at home right now, the steam pouring out of her ears.
Nick practically pulled Valentine into the chair.
"Sit down, sit down," the little Greek said. "I got a story about Muhammad Ali you're not going to believe."
21
Valentine didn't sleep much knowing that Mabel was in jail, Roxanne was angry at him, and he and Gerry had come close to never speaking again. While doing ceiling patrol at three A.M., he realized that his propensity for angering the people he cared about most had gotten steadily worse since Lois's death, and he came to the sad conclusion that his unerring ability to find the negative in everything came from missing Lois as much as he did. And so he made others suffer.
He got up for good at six, ordered coffee and some plain white-bread toast from room service, then got on the horn and started making noise. It was nine o'clock back east, and he located the captain of the Clearwater police without much trouble. Luckily, the captain remembered a cruise ship gambling case Valentine helped the department solve, and he promised to move Mabel into a private cell once he got out of a staff meeting. As a rule, cops didn't lie to other cops the way they lied to practically everyone else, and Valentine hung up feeling better than he had before making the call.