James Swain - Gift sense

"You know that dude?" Mike asked.

"No-should I?"

"He's looking for Fontaine, too."

Valentine spun around in his chair, wishing he'd gotten a better look at the guy. "Did he say why?"

"Said Fontaine owes him money."

"I wouldn't want to owe money to a guy that big."

Mike popped a can of Diet Coke and poured it into a plastic mug. He put a big head on it, which Valentine found insulting. He was sure Mike was capable of pouring a soda without making it look like a root beer float.

"Look, I'll tell you exactly what I told the cops," Mike said. "Fontaine came in a few times, mostly to use the phone. Never drank anything hard. Always left a fat tip."

Valentine waited. "That's it?"

"He liked to play video poker."

"He win much?"

"Hell, he never lost."

"Which machine?"

"Get out of here," Mike said with a laugh. The cordless phone beside the register warbled. Mike took the call in the kitchen.

After five minutes, Valentine realized Mike wasn't coming back. He finished his soda while reflecting on how little a hundred bucks bought these days. Instinct told him that Mike knew more than he was telling; the problem would be getting him to flip. Maybe a subpoena would do the trick, or Longo's doing a number on him. He threw a few pennies on the bar, just to piss Mike off.

On his way to the john, Valentine found the video poker machines. Video poker was a tough game to beat consistently, and he patted both machines down. A dime-size hole had been drilled into each, and he guessed Fontaine had found a way to rig the machines' silicon chips to pull up specific cards. It was one more headache for Bill Higgins to deal with.

The johns were crudely marked POINTERS and SITTERS. Valentine went through the appropriate door and the smell nearly knocked him over. Taking a deep breath, he soldiered up to a urinal.

As he'd aged, taking a piss had started to feel about as good as having sex, and he was lost in the moment when he heard someone barrel into the room. Jerking his head around, he saw the big guy hovering menacingly behind him, his eyes glazed over like he'd just inhaled a popper.

"Yeah?" Valentine said.

He put his hand on Valentine's face and pressed it into the wall. Valentine kissed the condom dispenser above the urinal, his nose pressing the button for a ribbed Black Mambo.

"Let me see your hands," he said.

"I'm pissing, for Christ's sake."

"You heard what I said."

"What are you trying to do," Valentine said belligerently, "make me wet my pants?"

Valentine's head banged the condom dispenser. Hugging the urinal, he said, "Look, pal, I'm sixty-two years old and wearing a pacemaker. Unless you came in here to kill me, how about cutting out the rough stuff?"

"I heard you asking the bartender about Fontaine," the big guy said. "Tell me what you know."

"Sure," Valentine said. "But first let me breathe."

"Stick your hands out."

Valentine obeyed and the big guy frisked him like he knew what he was doing. Then he reached around and grabbed Valentine's dick, shook it, and shoved it into his trousers and yanked up the zipper. Valentine had never had a guy handle his balls before, and once he got over the initial revulsion, he decided it wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Close, but definitely not the worst.

Valentine felt the guy relax. Dropping his arms, Valentine grabbed his assailant's fingers and pushed the guy's thumb back at an unnatural angle. His attacker corkscrewed to the floor, the pain ripping through him. Valentine stepped away from the urinal.

"What's your name?"

"Al," his attacker gasped, gnashing his teeth.

"Why are you looking for Frank Fontaine, Al?"

"Because…"

"You want to kill him?"

"Let go of my thumb!"

Valentine did the opposite. The bigger they were, the harder they screamed. Al was no exception.

"You the guy who squeezed his head in a door in Tahoe?"

Al nodded that he was.

"Who're you working for, Al?"

"I can't tell you that."

Valentine bent his thumb back a little more. As thumbs went, it was awfully small, and he noticed how freakishly small Al's other fingers were as well, the tiny appendages attached to an even smaller hand. The rest of him looked normal, at least what was visible.

Al screamed some more. The bathroom door swung open and Mike stuck his head in. The bartender blinked, then blinked again. Valentine shot him a murderous glance.

"Where've you been hiding?"

"I was on the phone. Jesus, I thought he was killing you."

"Thanks for the concern," Valentine said.

"You want me to call the police?"

Valentine looked at Al. "How about it? You want to have a chat with the boys in blue?"

Al shook his head. He was clutching his wrist with his other hand, trying to stop the pain from spreading to other parts of his body. Judging by the agonized look on his face, it wasn't working.

"I'll take that as a no." To Mike he said, "I'll try to keep the screaming down to a minimum."

"Sure," Mike said.

He left, and Valentine said, "Who're you working for?"

"I can't tell you," Al said. "They'll kill me."

"Like this is better?"

When Al didn't respond, he gave the thumb a little more juice. Al's face turned crimson and his eyes popped out like a comic-book character.

"How about their initials?" Valentine said. "Tell me their initials, and I'll figure it out."

"F. U.," Al whispered.

"What's that?"

"You saying 'fuck you' to me? Why, you stupid punk…"

Valentine's anger rose to the surface like the lava in a volcano. Why someone cursing him bothered him more than having his balls squeezed, he didn't know. He brought his knee up into Al's jaw and sent him into dreamland.

Valentine laid him out in a stall, then rifled his pockets. A few hundred bucks and an empty inhaler. Typical.

Back in the bar, he found Mike standing stiffly at his post. Al's screaming had put the fear of God into him, and his upper lip was sweating BBs. Valentine slipped onto his former stool, pleased to see a fresh Diet Coke awaiting him, sans a frothy head. He raised the plastic mug to his lips and took a healthy swallow.

"Where's Muscles?" Mike asked.

"Napping," Valentine said.

He finished the soda and reached for his wallet.

"On the house," Mike said.

"I knew there was a reason I liked you," Valentine said.

So when are they going to let you out of here?" Valentine asked, pulling a chair up to Sammy Mann's hospital bed.

"Not anytime soon," the patient said gloomily.

Visiting hours did not start for several hours, and Valentine had taken the service elevator up to the third floor and stolen down a hallway to Sammy's room, the nurses at the station too busy watching monitors to see him slip past. The hospital ran a tight ship, and he felt bad about breaking the rules, but he needed to talk to Sammy in private and this was the best way to do it.

Valentine noticed an uneaten breakfast on a tray sitting beside Sammy's bed, the scrambled eggs cold and runny. He felt a lump form in his throat. "You sick?"

"You got that right."

"What's wrong?"

"Big guy's getting the range."

"Cancer?"

"Prostate."

"What stage?"

"Stage two," Sammy said. "Doctor said it was lucky I got my knee whacked; a few more weeks, and it might have started spreading."

"When can you start chemo?"

"Two weeks," Sammy said, using the remote to kill the picture on the silent TV. "They've got to put a pin in my leg first, let it heal, then start in with the rough stuff. Tell you the truth, I'm scared. I'm not in the best of shape, you know."

Valentine didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. He looked around the room and didn't see the faintest evidence that Sammy had received any visitors other than himself. Sammy wasn't much older than him, which made it easy to put himself in the sick man's shoes. One day you feel fine; the next, a doctor is giving you a death sentence. Life was like that; the shame was suffering through it alone.