Bad Luck (32 page)

He looked in to see the monitors over the bed as he took Tozzi by the elbow. They were still going crazy. He felt bad. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

They walked briskly to the elevators, not saying a word. No use hanging around here unless you want to spend the rest of the day answering questions you don't want to answer. Tozzi pressed the Down button to get an elevator. Gibbons glanced at the big wall clock over the nurses' station. Twenty of nine, Saturday morning. An elevator opened up, empty. They got on and Tozzi hit “1.” Gibbons stared up at the numbers over the doors, watching them light up in descending order as they went down. The fight was scheduled for ten o'clock tonight, which meant it wouldn't start till ten-thirty at the earliest. They had less than fourteen hours. Probably not enough time to stop it. At least not legally.

ozzi was buttoning the double-breasted as he came out of his apartment at Nashe Plaza. He locked the door and headed for the elevators, not wanting to be late for work. Had to look good today, had to blend in with the rest of the gorillas on Nashe's goon squad. Had to watch himself too. Had to get into Nashe's office somehow and see what he could find. Had to find something good enough to placate Ivers because he was gonna be pissed as shit when he found out Tozzi was still down here working the undercover. It had to be something good enough to give a judge reason to issue a restraining order to stop the fight, something on paper that would link Nashe with Immordino in a dirty deal so juicy that Sal would be wishing he really was nuts.

Tozzi was determined as he stepped briskly along the money-green carpet, but then he turned the corner to get to the elevators and as soon as he saw them, he knew he was fucked.

“What the eff are you doing here, Tomasso?” Lenny Mokowski, with two of the bigger gorillas, Frank and Jerry. “I knew you were stupid, Tomasso, but not this stupid.”

Instinctively Tozzi backed away from them, made some space for himself in case he had to get to the .22 in his ankle holster. He backed away—one, two steps—then backed right into somebody. Two somebodies. Two big somebodies. He looked over his shoulder. Vinnie and Tootsy, also from the primate pen. They grabbed his arms before he could do anything, pinned them back, and escorted him over to Lenny.

“In there.” Lenny jerked his head and pointed with his greasy pompadour. The gorillas shoved him through the stairwell door.

“Hey, come on, will ya? What is this?” Tozzi tried to act surprised and put-out, but the sinking feeling in his gut told him these guys were here for something more than a fraternity hazing. The stairwell had that cold-cement feel, just like a city morgue.

Lenny pointed a stubby finger in Tozzi's face. “Don't kick or it'll be worse.” Then he looked at Frank. “Go 'head.”

Frank swept up Tozzi's left leg in his big paw and rolled up his pant leg. He ripped the Velcro straps on the holster, removed the .22, and dropped the leg. Tozzi felt his one-point floating up into his belly and playing with the butterflies. He was fucked.

Lenny stared at him. Frank too. Tootsy was grinning. Vinnie looked blank. Tozzi's brain was spinning, thinking of options. Maybe come clean, identify himself as an FBI agent, warn them of the consequences of assaulting a federal agent. He looked at Tootsy again. Forget it. These guys don't know from consequences.

He kept trying to think of something he could say, something he could do, and suddenly he remembered the times he'd seen aikido black belts taking on a
randori
attack, five guys at once. It was beautiful to watch, the black belt like the calm center at the eye of the storm, throwing guys out
right and left. But he was fucked already. You're supposed to act before you get grabbed. Vinnie and Tootsy had his arms pinned way back. Almost impossible to get out of that. Impossible for him anyway. Shit. He was fucked.

“Hey, Lenny, you gonna tell me what this is all about or what?” He tried to smile, be a wiseguy about it, talk his way out.

Lenny ignored him. He looked at Jerry and Frank instead. “Go 'head.”

Jerry balled his fist and sent an uppercut into Tozzi's gut that would've lifted him off the ground if the other two hadn't been holding him. Tozzi bent forward, thought he was gonna throw up. Vinnie and Tootsy yanked him back upright and Jerry did it again, to the breastbone this time. A ringing pain vibrated through Tozzi's body, like banging a tuning fork on the edge of a table.

“Lemme,” Frank said, shouldering Jerry out of the way. He slapped Tozzi's ear with the flat of his hand, and a spike went through his brain. The head bodyguard curled his fist and threw a roundhouse into Tozzi's face, snapping his head back.

Tozzi could feel the cheek getting hot and numb. He heard one of them snickering. Then Frank threw another right into his face, same spot. Then there was another punch, right on top of his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut with the pain, but he didn't see stars. He saw worms—curly, neon-green worms. Someone grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked him back, and he got it in the gut again. Except for the initial impact he hardly felt any pain this time. He was worried about the neon worms behind his eyelids, though. They looked sort of like those microscopic pictures of chromosomes. Tozzi was worried that they were brain cells, ghosts of all the brain cells these guys were bashing to death.

He looked up, but the glare of a naked light bulb on the wall blinded him. All he saw were dark gorilla shapes outlined in blinding light. Then someone gave him a shot in the gut again, and he doubled over.

He heard Lenny's voice. “Save your hands,” he said. Then it smashed into his forehead, hard, bone on bone, and Tozzi was sure his skull was cracked. A knee—Frank or Jerry, somebody had thrown a knee right into his forehead. The neon-green worms floated and flashed. More dead brain cells.

The goons let him go and he fell to the floor, flopped down on the glossy painted concrete like a bag of flesh with no bones to hold him up, like a body bag. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't. The glare was overwhelming.

The last thing he remembered was the cold floor on his hot cheek and the neon worms floating up to heaven behind his eyelids.

Things were starting to come back into focus—the lamp, the windows, the desk—but Tozzi was still too dizzy to move. He closed his eyes, afraid to sit up, afraid he'd puke if he tried. He hadn't passed out—at least he didn't think so, not really. He remembered Lenny and the gorillas hauling him down the stairwell, how the lights got softer and the air didn't have that concrete chill when they'd dragged him back into the hallway and dumped him on this green velvet couch. He might've passed out on the couch for a while—he couldn't be sure. His head started to throb now and it hurt to keep his eyes open, so he just sat there very still, waiting for everything to settle down. He felt like shit, but at least the neon worms were gone. That was good, he thought.

It was either five minutes or an hour later when he opened his eyes again. He couldn't tell. Someone was sitting at the desk now, telephone cord stretched around the side of the big leather chair, elbow on the armrest, hand twiddling a pen. Tozzi noticed a big painting on the wall, a portrait of the Nashes, Russ in a dark blue suit hovering over Sydney in a low-cut lavender gown, the skirt spread out all around her, like Scarlett O'Hara. Beside the desk there was an easel. The War Down the Shore poster was on
it. Walker and Epps facing off, looking mean. Tozzi's head started to pound again. He closed his eyes.

“How's the head, Tomasso?”

Tozzi opened his eyes. Russell Nashe was sitting behind the desk, facing him. A background of dark green leather with brass studs along the edges framed his smiling face. He looked happy.

“I don't have to call you Tomasso anymore, do I? The jig's up, right?”

Tozzi ignored the question. He stared at the rug and rubbed his temples. The fucker knew. Shit.

Nashe picked up something from his desk and held it up between his fingers, a T-shirt. Printed on the front was a silkscreen of the same picture of Walker and Epps that was on the poster. Same printing across the top:
THE WAR DOWN THE SHORE.
On the bottom it said Nashe Plaza, Atlantic City, May 12.

Nashe admired the shirt, smiling with his bunny teeth. “Nice, huh?”

Tozzi sat up and stared at all the junk on his desk. It was cluttered with all kinds of shit: coffee mugs, bright red kiddie boxing gloves, dolls, videocassettes, programs, bracelets, pins, buttons, money clips, cuff links. Next to the easel there was an inflatable punching bag with Walker's picture on one side, Epps's on the other. Nashe loomed over all this crap, smiling, the master of all he surveyed.

“This is where the real money is,” Nashe said, giving him a wink. “Merchandising.”

Tozzi rotated his head, carefully. “Oh, yeah?”

“That's right. The fight itself—forget about it. Too many hands out afterward for anyone to make a real profit, too many people waiting for their piece of the pie. But the merchandising is another story because
I
control that.” Nashe pointed a finger into his own chest. “It's all mine, minus a nominal royalty to each of the fighters. Now I can see from your face that you think this stuff is all crap. Who the hell wants it, right? But come tomorrow night, people get all worked up waiting for the fight to start—they get
crazy—and then this crap doesn't look so cheesy. Not just here on-site, no, everywhere, everywhere they're showing the fight, all the closed-circuit outlets, eight hundred sixty-three of them across the country.

“See, fans want to take part in an event like this, hold on to it for a while, bring it home to the kids, and buying a T-shirt or a coffee mug or a doll does that for them, makes them part of the event. If it's a good fight—and I'm certainly expecting that it will be—more people will buy even more of this stuff on their way
out
so that they can remember the fight, prolong it in their minds, keep it with them. You see what I'm saying? It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that's how it happens.” Nashe shook his head and picked up the T-shirt again. “Twenty bucks for a two-dollar T-shirt. It's almost robbery. Don't you think?”

Tozzi frowned. “I wouldn't know.”

“No?” Nashe picked up the bright red kiddie boxing gloves and started to squeeze his hands into them. “You know, people like you, people living on a fixed salary, you don't understand how money works. You have no idea how to make money. Real money, I mean.”

“Apparently not.” Tozzi was looking at the oil painting, Sydney's lavish gown.

“Money has to keep moving to be useful. It's like a shell game.” Nashe pushed imaginary shells around with the boxing gloves. “I move it here, I move it there, but the important thing is that
I'm
the guy doing the moving. That way I'm always the one who knows where it is, and in the end I always win. Except with me, it's not a matter of cheating. It's simply a matter of control.”

Tozzi touched his nose. It was tender, crusty blood around the nostrils, maybe broken. “What're you telling me all this for?”

Nashe laughed. “Why am I telling you all this? You know why. Because I know who you are, Mike.”

“So who am I?” So who told you, your lovely wife?

Nashe rolled his chair over to the inflatable punching bag and started jabbing at it. “Your real name I don't know,
but that doesn't matter. What I do know is that you're somebody's little spy. An IRS agent, I assume. Maybe the SEC. Possibly Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I mean, but don't feel bad about it, Mike. It's not like you're the first one. There's always some brand-new eager beaver in some office down in Washington who gets the bright idea that he can sneak a man into my organization and get the goods on me.” Nashe shook his head, smiling. “Sending a guy to be my bodyguard—now that's a new one. Usually they send accountants so they can get into my books.”