Bad Luck (22 page)

His stomach grumbled. Oh, yes, the professors. A real fun bunch. Shit, they'll eat anything if it's free. Even the compost. He looked down at the brown mess, then he thought of something. “You know, your cousin won't eat this. Tozzi's a fussy bastard when it comes to food.” For Tozzi, she'll change the menu. She loves him like a little brother. She'll change it now. Watch.

She wrinkled her brow. “Why do you think he won't like—”

The phone rang then. She started to go for it, but Gibbons leapt up and headed for the kitchen. “I'll get it,” he said. Anything to get away from the table.

He snatched it off the wall in the middle of the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Gib.” It was Tozzi.

“Speak of the devil. How's it going?” Gibbons knew better than to mention his name on the phone.

“I'm calling from a pay phone. I got trouble down here.”

“What wrong?”

“I had a visitor about an hour ago. Sal Immordino. He knows I'm not kosher. If Valerie hadn't walked in on us when she did, I don't think I'd be talking to you now. You know what I mean?”

Tozzi sounded tense. Gibbons didn't like this. Tozzi had
a way of getting crazy when he felt threatened. “I'll call the office. Tell me where you'll be, and I'll have some guys go down and meet you—”

“No, no, wait. I don't think it's that bad yet.”

“Sal Immordino shows up to kill you, and you don't think it's that bad yet?”

“I've put a lot of time into this assignment—
too
much time, considering that I've come up with absolutely nothing to show for it. If I hightail it out of here in a panic, it'll be a good long time before Ivers lets me back out again.”

Gibbons rubbed his face. Here we go with the Tozzi logic. “Whattaya got, shit for brains? I told you, Ivers is gonna pull the plug on you if you still don't have anything on Nashe by the end of the week. That's this Friday. This is Monday. What are you gonna know on Friday that you don't know today, genius? Shut it down now and save me a funeral.”

“Listen to me, listen to me. I can take care of myself. I know I can.”

“Give me a fucking break—”

“No, listen. Something's not right with all this. Why did Sal come to kill me himself? He's the acting head of the family, for chrissake. Why didn't he send one of his flunkies to get me?”

Gibbons exhaled into the phone. Here comes the theory. “I don't know why he came by himself, but I got a feeling you're gonna tell me.”

“Because he's doing something behind Mistretta's back, and he thinks I know about it. He feels he has to get me out of the picture, but he can't just order a hit. It would get around in the family, and they'd start wondering why Sal's having this guy whacked. Sal doesn't want people asking him questions he doesn't want to answer. It's the only explanation. You told me yourself Mistretta looked all shook up at the museum when you hinted around that Sal was putting deals together on his own. I'm telling you. Whatever Sal's doing, he's doing it without Mistretta's okay, and he thinks I know what it is.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“Him personally coming to kill me doesn't make any sense. I gotta stay and find out what he's doing. He's not sending his people out after me, so all I have to worry about is him and maybe his brother, that's all. I can stay out of their way for four days. Shit, what's that?”

Tozzi talked a good game, but Gibbons knew him better than that. Tozzi was trying to convince himself. “No. I don't like it. You've been threatened, you come in. Now.”

“No, not yet. I'm gonna see this through. Now, whether you want to help me or not is your business.”

Gibbons squeezed his eyes shut. “I knew this was coming. You never can fuck up alone. You always need me.”

“Yes, I need you, you big fucking asshole. You're my partner, aren't you?”

“Lucky me.”

“Go ahead, be sarcastic. That's always very helpful.”

Gibbons spotted the dirty Tupperware containers the shit from the caterer came in. They were sitting in the sink. “So what is it you want me to do? I can't wait to hear.”

“No, forget about it. You don't want to help.”

An oily brown residue coated one of the Tupperware pieces. The compost. “I wanna help! Whattaya want me to do, beg?”

“All right. Go find Immordino's sister the nun at the Mary Magdalen Center in Jersey City. Just go talk to her. You know, show her your ID, ask her about Sal and the family, that kind of stuff. That should shake things up nice. If I'm right about Sal, when it gets back to him that an FBI agent was questioning his sister, he'll go nuts. If we get lucky, he'll get sloppy and do something stupid.”

“Get sloppy, my ass. You're in fairyland. This man is a career criminal. You don't think his sister hasn't been questioned a million times before?”

“Of course she has. But Sal's hiding something from Mistretta now, so this time it'll bother him.”

Gibbons looked through the doorway. Lorraine was
loading up a plate for him. Oh, shit . . . “All right, I'll go see Sister Cil first thing in the morning.”

“Great—”

“Hold on, my friend. You better fucking keep me informed, or I'll go down there and do the job
for
Immordino.
Capisce, paesan'?
I want to hear from you. Tomorrow. All right?”

“Of course. What do you think? We're partners, aren't we?”

Gibbons didn't answer right away. “Yeah.”

“Okay, so I'll call you at the office in the afternoon sometime. Around two.”

Gibbons was watching Lorraine. She was spreading that fish-mousse stuff on another cracker. “Tell me. How's that girlfriend of yours? The bartender, Valerie.”

“Fine.” Tozzi sounded puzzled.

“You said she walked in on you and Immordino?”

“Yeah, but nothing happened.”

“I hope you're not treating her like that slut Sydney. She seems like a good kid. She doesn't deserve that kind of shit.”

“What kind of shit? What're you talking about?”

“Just remember, she's not part of all this.”

“I know that. What do you think I am, stupid?”

“You want me to answer that?”

“I'll talk to you tomorrow. And don't hit the nun or anything, will ya?”

“Can I genuflect on her foot?”

“Good-bye.” Tozzi hung up.

Gibbons leaned against the refrigerator with the phone in his hand. He looked through the doorway and watched Lorraine eating that brown stuff, the compost. She wasn't just eating it, she was
enjoying
it. Gibbons let out a long sigh. Valerie would never bring crap like that into the house. Lorraine wouldn't either—not the old Lorraine.

The phone started to blare with that obnoxious hurry-up-and-hang-up-the-phone noise.

“It's getting cold,” she called from the dining room. She must've heard the phone blaring.

“Yeah, I'm coming.” He hung up the receiver. Shit.

Gibbons parted the lace curtains and looked out the bay window to see if his car was still there. The Mary Magdalen Center was in that kind of neighborhood—lot of misguided youths hanging out and looking guilty, lot of little crack vials in the gutters, lot of slick dudes in old Caddies cruising the streets. It was the kind of neighborhood where cop cars come by only when they have to. He spotted his car and, by some miracle, no one was yanking the radio out—yet. He sat back down on the worn rose-colored brocade sofa and waited for Sister Gil to come back.

A little kid with long dark bangs down to his eyes was on the floor next to his foot, digging his grubby fingers into a hunk of flesh-pink Play-Doh. Gibbons assumed that was the color you get when you mix them all together. The kid was really ripping into it, using his fingers like claws. Maybe he thought it was real flesh. Gibbons studied his mean little face. Future perp, sure as shit. You could see it already. The kid kept edging closer to Gibbons's foot, and Gibbons had a feeling the kid was eyeing the toe of his wingtips, thinking about smushing Play-Doh into all the little holes. Gibbons watched and waited. He had his handcuffs in his pocket. If the little bastard tried it, he'd cuff him to the radiator.

Gibbons looked through the doorway that Sister Cil had gone through a few minutes ago, wondering where the hell she was. Maybe she was calling Sal to tell him the FBI was on her case. So far she'd been pretty cool, not quite answering what he asked her but very polite and agreeable. He decided he'd press her a little harder when she came back, just to make sure it all got back to Sal.

Gibbons glanced down at the kid who had worked his way a little closer to his wingtip. The room was hot and sticky, ripe with the smell of kids. There were overhead ice-cube-tray fluorescent lights stuck to the ceiling that lit
the place like an operating room and clashed like hell with the scrollwork moldings that edged the tops of the walls in the brownstone's old parlor. Gibbons spotted one of those juice boxes lying on its side on the hardwood floor, and he shifted in his seat, wondering what he might be sitting on.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Gibbons.” Sister Cil whisked back into the room, her headpiece flying behind her, a wailing baby in her arms now. “A small crisis,” she said with an apologetic smile, showing him the infant. As she sat back down in the shabby armchair across from him, the fluorescent lights glared off her big eyeglasses. She settled down with the cranky, flailing baby and stuck a bottle in its mouth. It calmed right down.

Gibbons smirked. How fucking transparent. She thinks she's clever. She went out to get a prop. Bring in a baby, and the big bad fed will melt right down and ease up on her. Yeah, just watch.

“Colicky,” Sister Cil said, looking down at the baby. “Can't blame you, can we, sweetheart?” She looked at Gibbons over her glasses. “Her mother was a crack addict.”

“Was?” Probably croaked.

Sister Cil smiled proudly. “Wanda's mommy has come a long way since she's been with us. Hasn't she, sweetheart?” She jiggled the baby in her arms.

Gibbons nodded. Keep that up and the kid's gonna throw up all over you.

“Mr. Gibbons?” She held the baby out toward him. “You wouldn't like to—”

“No, I wouldn't.”

“Oh . . .”

Gibbons glanced down at the kid on the floor. He was gouging out chunks from the Play-Doh blob with a Pop-sicle stick. Serial killer—you watch.

“Now, what was it we were talking about, Mr. Gibbons?”

“Well, Sister, you were assuring me that your brother Sal isn't the acting boss of the Mistretta crime family and that he couldn't possibly have anything to do with the real
estate tycoon Russell Nashe.” Gibbons smiled like a crocodile.

Sister Cil nodded, and her glasses glimmered. “Yes, that's true.” He wished he could see her eyes behind those glasses. He couldn't figure out if she was lying for Sal or if she really believed this crap.

“And you contend that your brother actually does suffer from irreversible brain damage?”

She paused to let out a big sigh before answering. “It's a terrible burden my brother has to bear. He was a very bright young man at one time, but he loved his boxing and . . . well, the human head can just take so much. It was the boxing that did it. As a result, his mental capacity is . . . Well, what can I say? In most aspects he's about on the level of a normal seven-year-old.” She looked down at the Play-Doh killer and sighed again. “But such is God's will.”

How many times has she given this little sermon?

“Tell me something, Sister. I'm not of the Catholic faith myself, and frankly I'm a little curious about something.” He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from grinning. “Why would God choose to turn a healthy, athletic man like your brother into a walking dummy, Frankenstein with a weak battery? Why would He do that?” You wanna bust balls with the baby and the holy of holies? I'll show you how to bust balls.

She looked down at the baby and smiled serenely. “Mr. Gibbons, it is simply beyond our humble understanding. Our job here on earth is to praise and obey the Lord. It isn't our place to question His intentions. If God has decided that Sal should be a walking dummy, as you put it, then it's part of a greater plan that we could never hope to understand.” The light flashed off her glasses. “Or as my grandmother told us so often when we were growing up, ‘
Gesù Cristo vede e provvede.'
Jesus sees and provides, Mr. Gibbons.”

“Uh-huh . . .” Gibbons nodded. She was something. Calm and even-tempered the whole way. She knew the family drill and nothing was gonna upset that. Ma Barker
was the same way, supposedly. Well, rattling the nun wasn't the important thing here. Just as long as the message got back to Sal that the FBI had been there asking questions about him. That's all that was necessary.

He stood up then. “Well, Sister, thank you for your time.”