Bad Luck (38 page)

“Big fucking deal.”

Tozzi stuck his ID back in his shirt pocket, then unbuttoned the top two buttons and showed Sal the wire taped to his chest. There was a tiny microphone, the size of a pencil eraser, in Tozzi's chest hair. It was connected to a microrecorder taped to the small of his back. Sal's eyes became hubcaps. He was rewinding the tape in his mind, trying to remember what he'd said, trying to convince himself that he hadn't really admitted to the attempted murder of Henry Gonsalves or the murder of Earl Lawson, or that this tape could be used to prove mental competency, which would mean that he would have to face all those old charges he'd walked on a few years ago. Tozzi smiled. Bingo.

Tozzi removed Sal's limp hand from his neck and turned him around as he took the handcuffs he'd borrowed from Gibbons out of his back pocket.

“Hey, wait a minute now.”

“Shut up and spread your legs. Wider. Wider! Put your right hand behind your head. Hurry up!”

“Tomasso, let's talk about this—”

“Do it, asshole!”

Sal sighed and put his left hand behind his head. “C'mon let's be reasonable here, Tomasso.”

“Shut up!” Tozzi bent Sal's right arm up behind him and held the wrist one-handed while he cuffed the hand behind Sal's head. “You have the right to remain silent, Sal,
which you should've been doing all along if you were smart, you big fucking dummy. You have the right to legal counsel. If you cannot afford—”

The hall exploded then, people jumping out of their seats, screaming and yelling. Sal arched his head back to see what was going on in the ring.

Don't look, Tozzi told himself.

“Shit,” Sal muttered. “I'm fucking dead.”

The crowd was going crazy. Whatever was going on down there, it must've been good. But don't look, he kept telling himself, not until he's cuffed. But Tozzi could hear people in the crowd counting, counting with the referee . . . three, four, five . . . Could Epps have done it? Was Walker down for the count?

Tozzi turned and looked. He couldn't help it. Epps was the one on the canvas, Walker was standing—

“Hey!”

Sal broke loose from the hold. Tozzi tried to tie up his right arm again, but Sal snapped it away, then hammered his elbow back, right into Tozzi's face, right into his nose.

Tozzi clutched his face. The pain shot through his head like there was a Sidewinder missile sunk into his face. He dropped to his knees. Colors flew by, Steven Spielberg special effects flew by, eight million miles an hour, speeding through space. Noise and space banshees whizzing past him. His head exploding, one long, continuous, mounting explosion. It wasn't stopping. Tozzi stopped breathing, couldn't relax his face, couldn't open his eyes. All he could do was brace himself like this and not move until it stopped—if it stopped.

Finally it started to calm down. He was breathing. It hurt like hell and his head was throbbing, but the spaceship ride was over. Just the neon-green worms behind his eyelids again. Those good ol' green worms. Oh, shit . . .

When he could finally unclench his face, he pried his eyes open, but it was all a blur. Brain damage, he thought. And an ugly fucking nose. Worse than Sal's. No woman will ever want him with a nose like that. Then the blur became
double vision and gradually the images merged together. He got to his feet. In the ring Walker and Epps were in their corners, getting sponged and massaged. The round was over. Sal was gone. He looked past the ropes. Sal was over with his brother and sister, yelling over Sydney's head at Russ, jabbing his finger at the smiling billionaire, the handcuffs dangling from his wrist. He looked for Gibbons, but he couldn't see him.

The room started to spin then, and Tozzi had to sit down.

on't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about, Nashe, because you do.”

Gibbons watched Sal jammed into that row, his brother right behind him trying to look useful, his sister the nun hanging on his arm trying in vain to pull him away. He was on his feet now, his face like a Jersey tomato as he yelled at his friend Nashe, pointing two fingers at the billionaire, the blond wife sitting between them, apparently enjoying it from the catty look on her face. “She told me you changed your mind, you went to Walker on your own.” Sal was pointing down at Sydney's blond head. “Isn't that what you just told me?”

The wife just shrugged, bare shoulders and a Mona Lisa smile.

Nashe fingered his bow tie. “I
don't
know what you're talking about. I'm not sure I even know who you are, sir.”

The billionaire looked calm—a good act. He was clever, though. Besides the two got-rocks couples in the row be
hind them, there must have been at least a hundred people within earshot, the way Immordino was yelling. Nashe wasn't about to acknowledge the fix or that he even knew Immordino, not where someone could hear. Particularly someone like a special agent from the FBI posing as a photographer. Gibbons stood at the back of the pack of photographers crowding around the edge of the ring so he could eavesdrop on the activity in Nashe's private section. He peered through the viewfinder on his camera and shot off pictures at random to make it look like he was paying attention to the fight. There were at least five bodyguards that Gibbons had noticed—one guy standing next to Joseph, another one on the other end of that row, one at the top of each flanking aisle, and a floater, an older guy with a build like a fireplug who was keeping tabs on the others. This must be the Polack Tozzi told him about. Gibbons pegged him right away for an ex-cop. The little pirogi was sharp, the kind who'd notice a photographer not taking enough pictures. Gibbons scanned the other side of the ring through the camera lens. Tozzi was probably staying out of sight because he knew the Polack would spot him. He was still wondering, though, what the hell had happened over there with Immordino. He hoped Tozzi was all right.

“Don't fuck with me, Nashe! I'm telling you! Don't fuck with me!”

The nun yanked on his arm, but it was like trying to move an elephant. “Come sit down, Sal. You're being stupid. Come
on
!”

“Lemme talk to him, Sal. Lemme talk.” The greaseball brother was tapping Sal on the back. “Go 'head, Sal. Go sit down.”

Sal ignored them both, but something else seemed to be bothering him because he kept looking up into the crowd in that side section over there. At first he thought Sal was looking for Tozzi, but now he didn't think so. Gibbons scanned the section, but he couldn't figure out what the hell Sal was looking at.

Up in the ring Walker was cutting the ring nicely, jamming Epps into the corners, pounding the man's body. Epps was throwing punches, but they all seemed weak. The man looked beat.

Sal was having a conniption fit. “Send one of your flunkies to Walker's corner and give him the message. Put the nigger in reverse. You hear me? Now, you fucking bastard! Do it now!” He was out of his mind.

The nun was straining to move him. “Stop, Sal. Will you listen?”

The wife reached up then and ran her hand along Sal's cheek. The nun's mouth dropped open. She looked like she was gonna blow a gasket. Sydney didn't give a shit about Sister Cil. Look at her rolling those big green eyes, the sly little pout. She was like a sexy little rich-bitch cat in a cartoon. “Listen to your sister, Sal,” she said. “Be a good boy and go sit down now.”

The nun slapped the little cat's arm away. “You leave my brother alone. Don't touch him!”

The bodyguards jumped, and Gibbons was about to move in when Nashe waved them off. The Polack confirmed the order, signaling the goons to back off. The two couples in the back looked very put out.

Sal shrugged his sister off his arm, told his brother to get the fuck away from him, then he glared down at Nashe again. “Hurry up now. I'm not kidding here, Nashe. You know I'm not. Send one of your boys over there right now. Hurry up!”

Nashe ignored him and looked at the nun. “Sister, we're all here to enjoy the fight, but your brother is interfering with some people's enjoyment. Now I don't want to be unpleasant about it, but if you can't get him under control, I'm going to be forced to have him escorted out. Okay?”

Light flashed in the nun's glasses. “Don't threaten me. You can't throw my brother out.”

Sydney piped up then. “Oh, yes, he can. And there's no law that says you can't have a nun ejected for disorderly conduct as well.” Mona Lisa smirk, real cool.

The nun's frown was like a horseshoe hanging under her nose.

Suddenly the crowd was on its feet, screaming like crazy. Gibbons looked up into the ring and saw Walker slamming uppercuts into Epps's gut, one right after another, Epps just taking it, arms practically at his side, serious pain in his face. People from way back in the cheap seats were flooding down the aisles to get a better look at the onslaught. Gibbons was suddenly pressed up against the photographers in front of him, and it was a struggle just to turn around and see what was going on with the family feud. In the middle of all the commotion the bodyguards were doing their best to block the rows and keep the invaders out of Nashe's private section. Brother Joseph was getting huffy now, shouldering big Sal out of the way. Gibbons could see that they were yelling at each other, but he couldn't hear over all the jerks yelling in his ears. Then he saw it, just a glimpse, but he definitely saw it coming out of the sharkskin jacket. Joseph had a gun.

Gibbons dropped the camera and started shoving bodies out of his way, palming faces like basketballs. He was only about fifteen feet away . . . with about sixty bodies between them. Shit. He tried to muscle through with his shoulders, but the photographers around him were leaping at him like salmon swimming upstream, lunging for a shot of the action in the ring.

Through the bodies Gibbons could see Sal and his brother fighting for the gun. Sal suddenly threw Joseph's arm in the air, and Gibbons saw that the gun was a fucking cannon, a stainless-steel 9mm automatic. When the rich people in the row behind saw the cannon, they leapt over their seats like deer and took cover, fancy clothes and all. Sal twisted Joseph's wrist—gun and handcuffs glinting over the waves of jostling heads—twisted until Joseph let go, then he took it away from him, easy as pie. Joseph looked hurt, but Sal didn't notice. He was crazy mad. He leaned over Sydney and grabbed Nashe by his pleated shirtfront, hauled him up out of his seat, and jammed the
pistol into the billionaire's gut. Nashe was white, looking all over the place for his bodyguards, but they were so busy dealing with the riffraff, they didn't notice what was going on with Sal and their boss.

“Turn around, you assholes!” Gibbons yelled to the bodyguards. “Your boss is in trouble!” But it was no use yelling. There was too much noise. No one could hear him.

Gibbons didn't like the look on Sal's face now, mean but satisfied. Gibbons knew that look. Sal was resigned. He was gonna do it. Jesus. Gibbons pushed heads out of the way, threw his elbow right and left, battling his way through the crush.

“Drop it, Sal,” he yelled. “FBI!”

Nobody heard him, still too much noise.

Then he saw it in a flash. That hard, sweet look of satisfaction passing over Sal's face as he was about to pull the trigger, then surprise and annoyance as Sister Cil suddenly yanked on his arm just as the gun went off. Gibbons saw the muzzle flash. A faint crack through the uproar confirmed it. That and Sydney jolting back into her seat, a fright wig of white-blond hair, her head whipping back, bobbling, finally coming to rest, slightly askew on those delicate, bare shoulders. The bodyguards heard the shot, but they were confused, couldn't figure out what had happened. The rich people heard it too because they were climbing over seats, climbing over people, fighting like hell to get out of there. Sal was backing away, trying to get out too, but there was nowhere to go. He was hemmed in, bodies everywhere, bodies who had no idea they were in the middle of a murder scene.