“Good evening.”

The driver stuck his head out and grunted like a caveman.

“Are you looking for someone?” Valentine inquired.

“Just enjoying the beautiful outdoors,” the driver said.

Valentine walked to the end of the block, then turned around and walked back to the car. The driver was looking at him in a way meant to inspire fear. A famous criminologist had once claimed that career criminals could be typed by hostile attitudes. The guy parked in front of Gerry’s house could have been the poster boy for that study. Valentine walked up to the driver’s window.

“What’s up?” the driver said.

“I lost my dog. You didn’t happen to see him, did you?”

“What kinda dog?”

Valentine put his hands together. “He’s about this big, black hair, a mutt.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen him.” The driver lit the cigarette dangling from his lips and blew a cloud of smoke Valentine’s way. “Sorry.”

Valentine gave the guy a hard look. His gut told him the guy was up to no good. His gut also told him that the guy hadn’t come here by himself, and that his friends were inside Gerry’s house, and were also up to no good.

“Oh, look, for God’s sake, he’s under your car,” Valentine said.

The driver sat up straight. “He is?”

“Yes. Come on, boy, come here.”

Valentine knelt down, then grabbed his back in mock pain. “Oh, Christ, my sciatic nerve is acting up. Would you mind helping me?”

The driver snuffed his cigarette in the ashtray and opened his door. As he climbed out from behind the wheel, Valentine leaned his body against the door, and pinned him. The driver let out a yelp like he’d been kicked. Valentine continued to press the door.

“You carrying a gun, buddy?”

“No.”

He didn’t look like the trustworthy type. Valentine stuck his free hand through the open window, frisked him, then opened the door, and yanked the guy out. Holding the guy’s arm, he gave it a twist, and the guy started to corkscrew into the ground.

“You claustrophobic?” Valentine asked.

“What’s that?” he gasped.

“Didn’t think so.”

There were several buttons on the driver’s open door. Valentine found one to open the trunk, and punched it. Then he led the driver around the vehicle, and made him climb in. To his credit, he didn’t complain as Valentine slammed the trunk down.

Valentine climbed into the car. He liked to know who he was dealing with; he opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the rental agreement. The car had been rented that afternoon at Tampa International Airport to Vincent Fountain, whose driver’s license was from Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Valentine ran home, got his loaded Sig Sauer from the hollowed out copy of Crime and Punishmenton his desk, then ran back to Gerry’s house. His heart was pounding as he opened Gerry’s front door with a spare key, and slipped into the foyer.

The house was a New England–style clapboard with original wood floors, and it was hard to walk on them without making noise. He could hear talking from the kitchen and moved toward it, his feet telegraphing every step. He stopped at the swinging door, and tried to imagine the people he was dealing with.

He decided they weren’t Mafia. He’d grown up around the mob, dealt with them plenty as a cop. The Mafia had a code of ethics, as hard as that was to imagine. One of those codes was never to mess with a guy’s family. That told him that Vincent Fountain and company weren’t connected.

He pushed the door gently and peeked inside the kitchen. Gerry and Yolanda sat at the kitchen table, his granddaughter asleep in Yolanda’s lap. They looked remarkably calm. There was a mirror behind them, in its reflection two smarmy Italian guys. One was tall and thin and talked too much. The other was about six three and had the proud, damaged face of a boxer. The boxer stood behind the swinging door, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Valentine put his foot to the door and gave it a healthy kick. He’d been the New Jersey state heavyweight judo champ five years running, and still took class three times a week. He wasn’t the man he used to be, but could still deal with a couple of two-bit punks, and that was exactly what he had here.

Valentine entered the kitchen to find the boxer now lying on the tile floor with blood pooling around his mouth. The guy doing the talking stopped.

“You Vinny?” Valentine asked him.

“Yeah. Who the hell are you?”

The Sig Sauer was in Valentine’s right hand. He tossed it into his left, then used his right to punch Vinny in the jaw. It was a move straight out of the Keystone Cops, and Vinny’s head snapped. Then he fell backward and hit the floor. Valentine looked at his son.

“Get your wife and daughter out of here,” he said. “Right now.”

5

Gerry and Yolanda left the kitchen without saying a word. Valentine glanced into his granddaughter’s face as her mother carried her out. Lois hadn’t stirred throughout the whole commotion.

Hearing the front door close, Valentine frisked Vinny and the boxer while they lay on the floor. They were both clean, and he threw cold water on their faces and made them get up. With the Sig Sauer, he pointed at the sink.

“Get the blood off your face,” he told the boxer.

The boxer splashed his face with cold water. When he was finished he pulled on his front teeth and seemed pleased that none were broken. Valentine picked up a dishrag and tossed it to him.

“Now clean up the floor.”

The boxer got on his knees, and cleaned up the bloodstain. As a cop, Valentine had learned that there were two ways to deal with lowlifes. The first was through brute force, the second intimidation. He told Vinny and the boxer to take our their wallets and hand him their driver’s licenses. The two men obeyed.

Valentine wrote their names, social security numbers, addresses, and driver ID numbers on a piece of paper. They were both residents of Atlantic City, and the boxer’s name was Frank DeCesar. Valentine told him to pick up the digital camera on the windowsill above the sink.

“Toss it here.”

Frank tossed him the camera, and Valentine pointed it at them.

“Say cheese,” he said, and snapped a picture.

The picture came out just fine. Valentine placed the camera on the kitchen table, then pointed at the door with his Sig Sauer.

“Let’s go.”

“You’re Gerry’s father, aren’t you?” Vinny said as they walked through the house.

“No, we just look alike,” Valentine said.

“Look, Mr. Valentine, this isn’t what you think. Frank and I came here to present Gerry with a business proposition, that’s all.”

“Let me guess. You want to open a pizza parlor together.”

The two hoodlums stopped at the front door. Vinny was dumb enough to think he was being serious. “It’s a little more involved than that, not that I want to bore you with the financial stuff. But our call is strictly business. We did not come here to harm your son or daughter-in-law, or granddaughter, who I must say is a beautiful little child.”

Vinny had a face that only a mother could love—sallow eyes, crooked nose, and two rows of teeth that looked like a rotted picket fence. His strength seemed to be his ability to string words together. Valentine pointed the Sig Sauer at Vinny’s chest.

“Don’t ever mention her again.”

“Her?”

“My granddaughter,” Valentine said.

“No, sir, I won’t.”

They walked out the front door of Gerry’s house. It had grown dark, and a lone streetlight illuminated the block that Valentine called home. He watched Vinny and the boxer get into the rental. Vinny looked around in a panic.