James Swain - Gift sense

"Please… call her."

Valentine buried his head in his hands. Sinatra's melancholy "Only the Lonely" filled the suite and he began to weep. The cell phone in Roxanne's lap warbled. She answered it, then pressed the receiver against her chest. "It's Nick. He says he's giving you one more chance."

"Tell him to go to hell."

Roxanne did as she was asked, and Tony could hear Nick screaming through the phone. Valentine got up and went to the picture window and stared down onto the neon Strip. He tried to imagine his son the last time he'd seen him. It had been at the saloon, Valentine whipping him with his belt. Would that be last image he would have?

"You stupid bastard," he said to himself.

Then he cried some more.

"Good-bye," Roxanne said curtly, and hung up.

"What did he say?" Valentine asked her.

"He's going to shoot you."

It sounded like the perfect antidote for the way he was feeling. Valentine took a deep breath, then said, "Give me the phone."

Roxanne crossed the room and handed him the phone. Then she gave him a hug. Valentine held her tight, his heart about to break.

Then he went into the bedroom and shut the door.

Sitting on the bed, Valentine suddenly felt like an old man. No wife, no son, nothing left. His eyes fell on a long-stemmed yellow rose lying on the pillow. He picked it up and smelled it. Roxanne had thought of everything.

He dialed Gerry's cell phone and heard the call go through.

"Hello," a woman said hoarsely.

"Yolanda, it's Tony Valentine."

"Oh God, Mr. Valentine." She let out a sob, and Valentine joined her.

"The goons caught up with you," he said.

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"Holland Tunnel. Traffic was so bad, we couldn't move."

"Did they hurt him?"

"Yeah."

"Did you run?"

Another sob.

"It's okay," he told her.

"Yeah," she said, "I ran like hell."

"It's okay," he said.

"No, it's not," she said.

"You call the police?"

"Yeah. They looked around. No Gerry."

Which meant they hadn't really looked at all. Taking a deep breath, he said, "Maybe we could go look for him together."

"Okay," Yolanda whispered.

"I'll call you when I get in."

"Okay."

He started to hang up, but she said, "Mr. Valentine?"

"Yes, Yolanda?"

"I really loved him."

"Me, too," Valentine said.

He killed the power and tossed the phone on the bed. Then he went into the bathroom and looked at his puffy face in the mirror. Would he spend the rest of his days cursing himself for not getting Gerry out of New York? Yeah, he probably would.

The numbness from the punch had worn off and his jaw was throbbing. Hearing Roxanne enter the bedroom, he went out to face her.

"Got any aspirin handy?" he asked, coming out of the bathroom.

Only it wasn't Roxanne standing before him. The closet door was wide open and the cowboy who'd aimed a.350 Magnum in his face a couple of days ago was standing in his bedroom. Now he was holding a three-foot steel pipe, ready to begin the final act in the drama of Nola Briggs and Frank Fontaine.

"Didn't I tell you to get out of town?" the cowboy said.

Valentine took a step back and nearly fell down. His balance was gone, his body having forgotten how to defend itself. The cowboy flashed him a crooked smile.

The cowboy's movements were swift and deliberate, and Valentine lifted his arms helplessly as the steel pipe came down forcefully on his skull.

That low-life fucking Jersey bastard," Nick roared, feeling as forsaken as the day he'd buried his father and kissed his childhood good-bye. "How dare he run out on me!"

Nick paced the surveillance control room and swore some more. Wily stood by the master console, watching his boss with one eye while keeping the other on the monitors. "Boss! They're into us for four hundred grand."

Picking up a house phone, Nick called the people working the cage and instructed them not to pay Fontaine's gang if they tried to cash out. Then he went and stuck his head into Sammy Mann's corner office. Nola lay on the busted couch, facing the wall. He could not wait to get her out of his life, and he said, "You gonna live?"

"Yeah," she said.

"I'm sorry about ten years ago. Sorry I blew it."

"Sure you are."

"You want a drink or something?"

Nola shook her head stiffly. Nick thought he understood. She didn't want anything from him. Wily tapped him on the shoulder and Nick followed the pit boss out into the hall.

Hoss, Tiny, and four other security guards stood at the ready. They all power-lifted together and were behemoths. Nick walked the line, appraising each man. "Wily says you're ready. That true?"

The guards nodded their heads in unison.

"I didn't hear you," he said.

"Yes, sir!"

"This is the plan," Nick told them. "Hoss and Tiny get the Aussie at table six. John and Brett, the Texan at eleven; Karl and Leroy, the pizza king at fifteen. I'll back you up if you have to break bones. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!"

Wily made them synchronize their watches. It was 10:05. He said, "Go downstairs and get near your assigned table without being conspicuous. At 10:08, grab your man. Any questions?"

This was not a talkative group. Hoss, their leader, said, "That doesn't sound too hard."

The guards disappeared into the stairwell, their footsteps as loud as jackhammers. Nick and Wily returned to the surveillance control room and stood before the wall of monitors.

"Think we should call the cops?" Wily asked.

"Fuck the cops," Nick said.

The door to Sammy Mann's office opened. Nola emerged, her hair standing on end like Frankenstein's bride. Pointing a finger at Nick, she emptied her lungs out.

"What the hell is she doing here?"

Nick didn't understand. "Who?"

"Her, you idiot!"

Nick glanced over his shoulder. Sherry Solomon had found her way into the surveillance control room, and was still wearing the same sooty clothes she'd worn when she set fire to Nick's mansion.

"Beats me," he confessed.

Then it was Sherry's turn to start screaming.

"You told me you and Nola were finished!"

Nick shrugged like it was no big deal. "Hey, baby, I mean, stuff happens. You know?"

Sherry grabbed a wastepaper basket and threw it at him. A lamp followed, coming from Nola's side of the room.

"Don't tell me you fucked her," Nola screamed.

"Only in the biblical sense," Nick said.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means it was a fling, no big deal," he said. "I didn't ask her to marry me or anything."

"You two-timing, good-for-nothing prick!"

"Get away from him!" Sherry screamed at Nola.

"Make me, bitch!"

The two women met in the middle of the room, scattering everyone working at the master console. Sherry was in better shape and threw punches like she'd had lessons, while Nola was more of a scratch-and-pull kind of fighter. Within seconds, they were rolling around on the floor, tangled in each other's arms. Nick grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused them both with white foam.

"Don't just stand there," he told Wily. "Do something!"

Wily did. He grabbed Nick by the shoulders and spun him around. There were a hundred eighty-four monitors on the wall and each showed absolute bedlam downstairs. The Texan and pizza king were whupping their security boys good, the hustlers as skilled in the martial arts as they were in cheating at cards.

"Are we recording this?" Nick bellowed.

"I think so," Wily said.

"You think so?" Nick stuck his head into the adjacent room, which housed the VCRs the monitors were hooked up to. Each machine had a red light on, indicating it was recording. Fontaine's gang was going to jail for a long time. He shut the door and locked it.