That had been many years ago. Now it seemed funny as hell, but the truth was, they could have both ended up in jail. That was how Gerry saw his past now; there were consequences for breaking the law. Getting married and having a baby had changed his perspective.

Gerry pressed the elevator button while holding the sodas and sandwiches against his chest. The hospital was quiet, and he waited while humming a song he couldn’t get out of his head. Finally he decided to take the stairs.

The stairwell had a dank smell. Halfway up, he heard footsteps, and looked up to see an Italian guy about his age coming down. The guy was dressed in black, had pocked skin and wore a scowl on his face. Normally, Italians were hospitable to other Italians. This guy wasn’t, and grunted under his breath when Gerry said hello.

“Suit yourself,” Gerry said when the guy was gone.

A minute later he walked into Jack’s room. The monitor next to Jack’s bed was beeping, and the oxygen tube that had been attached to his friend’s nose had been ripped out, and lay on the floor. Jack lay with his arms by his side, his chest violently heaving.

“Jack!”

Gerry hit the red emergency button on the wall to summon the nurses. He stared at the monitor; Jack’s oxygenation had fallen below 80 percent. He put his face a foot from his friend’s.

“Who did this?”

Jack’s eyes snapped open. “Hitman…”

“Hitman for who?”

“Guys I taught scam…”

“Why? You can’t hurt them.”

“Afraid I’d squeal…”

“Squeal about what?”

Jack’s hand came out from beneath the sheet. Clutched between his trembling fingers was a playing card. Gerry took the card: It was an ace of spades from the Celebrity Casino in Las Vegas.

“Is this part of the poker scam?”

Right then two nurses ran into the room. They pushed Gerry away from the hospital bed as they worked to get Jack’s oxygen intake back to normal. It was at that moment that Gerry noticed that the canvas bag underneath Jack’s bed was gone. He shouldered his way between the nurses and lowered his face next to Jack’s.

“What’s the scam?” Gerry whispered.

Something resembling a smile crossed Jack Donovan’s face, like he was happy to have pulled Gerry back into the fold. But then the look was replaced by one of pure fear.

“Tell me,” Gerry said.

Jack’s mouth moved up and down.

“I…so…”

“You so what?”

“I…so…”

“Come on.”

“Bye…Gerry.”

Jack’s mouth stopped moving. And then he stopped breathing. Jack had accepted that he was dying, and he had asked his friends to accept it as well. Gerry had tried, yet it didn’t make it any easier now that it had actually happened. He bowed his head and wept.

2

Tony Valentine could feel his son’s eyes burning his face. He knows the news isn’t good,Valentine thought. Still, it didn’t make this any easier. Hanging up the phone, Tony sat down on the couch beside his son. He put his hand on Gerry’s arm.

“The police are ruling it a suicide,” he said.

“What? What are they smoking?”

“I’m sorry, Gerry, but all the evidence is pointing that way.”

“For Christ’s sake, Pop, don’t take the company line on this.” Gerry put his bottled water on the coffee table in his father’s living room. “Jack was murdered. Take my word for it. I was there in the goddamn room.”

Eight days had passed since Jack Donovan’s death in the intensive care unit of the Atlantic City Medical Center. After Jack had been buried, Gerry had come home and asked his father to ride the coattails of the homicide detectives working the case. Still having juice with the Atlantic City Police Department, Valentine had obliged his son.

“Gerry, the only evidence you have is a suspicious-looking guy in the stairwell,” Valentine said. “The nurses are saying that Jack talked about ending his life when things got bad. Maybe that’s what he did.”

Indignation rose in his son’s face. “Jack was in the middle of telling me about this poker scam. Said it was the greatest thing since the baloney sandwich. I left, and that guy came into the room and pulled Jack’s tubes and beat on Jack’s chest. Jack said he was a hitman.”

“The police checked Jack’s room for fingerprints. The only prints besides Jack’s and the nurses’ were yours.”

“The police also found a pair of rubber gloves in the garbage pail by the door,” his son said. “The guy was a pro.”

“There isn’t any proof, Gerry.”

“What about the playing card Jack gave me? Isn’t that evidence?”

It was like déjà vu all over again. Valentine had examined Jack’s playing card for hours, found nothing, then sent it to an FBI forensic lab in Langley, Virginia, where he had a friend. All the tests had come back negative.

“The FBI didn’t find anything, Gerry. The card is normal.”

“No, it’s not,” his son said. “Remember that scam you told me about at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas? Major Riddle, the owner, lost his casino to a poker scam that one of his dealers pulled off. How long did the police examine those cards?”

“Two weeks,” his father said.

“And the cards came up clean,” Gerry said. “Then they sent them to you, and what did you find? The cheaters used an X-acto knife to draw tiny lines on the faces of all the high cards. The dealer felt when high cards were going to Major Riddle, and he signaled the other players.”

“What does that have to do with this case, Gerry?”

“I’m saying that stuff gets missed. If Jack said that card was marked, then it was marked. You have to ask the Atlantic City police to start over.”

Valentine blew out his cheeks. He’d already called in a bunch of favors with the police in his hometown; any more and he might start losing friends. It didn’t help matters that Jack Donovan had been a scammer and had been run in many times.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Valentine said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I’m running out of options, Gerry.”

“Come on, Pop. I’m begging you.”

Valentine stared at the videotapes stacked next to his VCR/DVD player. He was on monthly retainer for dozens of casinos, and every day got a videotape from a client who thought his casino had been ripped off. He’d been neglecting his work to help Gerry, and couldn’t continue to ignore his customers without it affecting his income.

“I’m trying, Gerry,” he said.

His son pushed himself off the couch and walked out of the house.

Valentine believed that food was the antidote for most things that ailed you. Fixing two ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwiches, he poured some potato chips onto the plates, stuck two cans of soda into his pockets, and went out the back door to where Gerry stood, smoking a cigarette in his postage-size backyard.

“You hungry?”

“No,” his son said.

“I made you a sandwich.”

“Pop, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Eat something anyway. It will make you feel better.”

Valentine put the food on the plastic table in his yard, and pulled up two plastic chairs. His son begrudgingly sat down and they began to eat. A few minutes later, Gerry pushed his empty plate to the center of the table, and stared at his father.

“Did I ever tell you that Jack came to Mom’s funeral?”

Valentine was still eating his sandwich, and glanced at his son. His wife had died two weeks after they’d moved to Florida to retire. He’d taken her body back to Atlantic City, and buried her beside her parents. The ceremony was for friends and family, and Valentine was sure Jack Donovan had not been present.