5 Bad Moon (2 page)

“You know how these things go, Sal. It was up to Bartolo to give you the money. It was his decision.”

“You coulda made him. Aren’t you boss anymore?”

“Don’t make me mad now. You know I’m the boss.”

“Well, you ain’t a very good one. You don’t take care of your people. I did so much for you, but when I was down, you forgot about me.”

“I never forgot about you, Sal.”

“Well, you never did anything
for
me,” Sal shouted. He glared at Mistretta, fuming, then he looked over his shoulder. “Turn up the TV, Charles. I don’t want my sister to hear.”

Mistretta suddenly noticed two guys on the other side of the room in the glow of the television. The black guy was big, not as big as Sal, but big like a running back.

The other guy was slouched on a ratty couch, watching the little black-and-white TV perched on a plastic milk crate. He was scrawny and pale with a real goofball haircut, long on top but shaved close around the ears. He was mumbling something to himself, rocking back and forth, rocking and twitching, his eyes glued to the set. Every time he twitched, his eyes rolled back in his head and stayed there for a second.

“Hey! I thought I told you to get your ass down here, Mistretta.”

Mistretta looked Sal in the eye. “This is your sister’s place, for chrissake. It’s holy. How could you pull this kind of shit in here?”

“Forget about my sister. She don’t know what I do. And since when are you so worried about her? She’s been asking you for a little donation for this place for years and you always told her to go screw. Go get it from the pope, you told her.”

“You used to tell her the same thing, Sal. You never gave her a—” Mistretta winced. His front tooth was chipped, and the nerve must’ve been exposed because it hurt like a bastard when the cold air hit it. “So what’s your beef, Sal? Just tell me. Maybe I can fix it.”

Sal’s eyes turned to slits as that mean grin pierced his cheeks. “You know, you make me laugh, Mistretta. You gonna tell me you can fix things? Bullshit. You ain’t got the power anymore.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yeah? Bartolo doesn’t listen to you. He listens to Juicy Vacarini now.”

“Juicy?”

“Yeah, Juicy. Most of the captains listen to him. He’s been running things lately because you don’t care no more. Juicy might as well be the boss. He’s just waiting for you to croak so he can take the title.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know what I’m talking about. I know that Bartolo owes me four hundred grand and nothing you say is gonna make him give it up. I also know that he and Juicy got a contract out on me, and even if you cancel it, they ain’t gonna listen.”

“They’ll listen. We’ll have a sit-down and you’ll tell them to their faces that you ain’t talking to the prosecutors down in Trenton. We’ll call off the hit.”

“You ain’t got the power.” Sal extended his arm so that the muzzle was leveled on the knot in Mistretta’s tie.

The old boss couldn’t help swallowing. Getting shot in the throat was supposed to be very painful. He’d seen people suffer that way. He grit his teeth and cold air hit that tooth again. He glanced down at Jerry’s body. His shirt was completely red now.

“Whad’ja kill Jerry for, Sal? He was a nice guy.”

“He
was
a nice guy. I used to like him. But he woulda killed me if he saw me down here. Look at him. His hand is on his gun.”

“He wouldn’t have killed you. Not if I told him not to.”

Sal’s eyes flared. “Don’t bullshit me, Mistretta.” He lowered the gun and jabbed it into Mistretta’s knee.

Pfittt!

It felt like a blasting cap went off on his knee. Mistretta instinctively went to clutch it, but he lost his balance and fell forward. He tumbled down the stairs, banging up his shoulder and back, and landed on top of Jerry. Spooked by all the blood, he rolled off fast, despite the pain, and pushed himself up against the wall. He was sitting up halfway, propped on one hand, his eyes blinking out of control. His knee looked like a fresh road kill.

“I was gonna retire,” he mumbled. “I’m tired of all this shit. I just wanna retire and take it easy.”

“This is bad. Very bad. Very bad.” The scrawny guy on the couch was staring at him, wild-eyed, rocking back and forth, making the sign of the cross over and over again. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen. In the name of the Father
…
Mistretta thought about doing that himself, but he was afraid he’d fall over if he moved his arm.

“Give him another pill,” Sal said to the black guy.

“He’s okay. Can’t give him no more now anyway. Too soon.”

“You sure he’s all right?”

“He fine.”

“Then keep him quiet.” Sal glared down at Mistretta.

Mistretta held his chest. He was having a hard time breathing. “Whattaya want, Sal? Just tell me. You want the money from Bartolo? I’ll help you get it.”

“Fuck the money, Mistretta. I’ll get that for myself. You wanna know what I really want?”

“What? Tell me.”

“I want your job. I wanna be boss.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I got guys still loyal to me. As many as Juicy’s got. They thought I shoulda had your job a long time ago. Now I’m gonna get it.”

“C’mon, Sal. Be for real here. Whattaya want? Let me help you.”

Sal’s nostrils flared. “I told you. I wanna be boss. And what I really want, I get. You wanna see how I’m gonna do it?”

Mistretta kept blinking. He couldn’t focus on Sal’s face. “C’mon, Sal. You’re acting fucking crazy now.”

“You think I’m crazy? Just watch.”

Sal stepped over Jerry’s body, straddling him. He squinted down the long barrel, holding the gun with both hands and taking aim. “Watch. I’m gonna give Jerry his last rites. Extrem’ unction.” Sal put the silencer to Jerry’s forehead. “In the name of the Father
…
”

Pfittt!

Jerry’s head bounced.

Sal moved the gun to his belly.

“And the Son
…
”

Pfittt!

Jerry’s whole body twitched.

Sal put the gun to the right shoulder.

“And the Holy
…
”

Pfittt!

The arm shot up and flopped back.

The left shoulder.

“Ghost
…
”

Pfittt!

The hand flipped open.

“Amen.”

“A-men.” The black guy was grinning like a chimpanzee.

“Fucking bastard,” Sal grumbled, staring down at Jerry’s body. “I lent him twenty grand once for his daughter’s wedding, and he was gonna kill me.”

“No, Sal
…
no.” Mistretta couldn’t breathe right. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“This is bad. Very bad.” The whites of the little scrawny guy’s eyes flashed in the dim light as he stared at Jerry, rocking back and forth, crossing himself again and again.

When Mistretta looked up again Sal was smiling down at him. The big jooch hunkered down and whispered in his face. “Don’t ever tell anyone I never gave you nothin’, you old fart you.”

Mistretta narrowed his eyes and glared up at him. “You do this, Immordino, you’re gonna be sorry for the rest of your life. I’m gonna fucking haunt you. I swear to Christ I will.”

The last thing Mistretta felt was the hot muzzle burning the skin on his forehead.

“In the name of the Father
…
”

“NO!”

Pfittt!

“Believe me, it’s no big deal, Tozzi.” FBI Special Agent Cuthbert Gibbons took a sip from his beer bottle. He was sitting sideways on his stool, one elbow on the bar. Gilhooley’s was hopping with the Friday happy-hour crowd. Gibbons was trying to cheer up his glum-faced partner. “It’s not the end of the world, Toz. So you’re gonna be forty. So what?”

Special Agent Mike Tozzi stared at Gibbons, then stared at the untouched bottle of Rolling Rock on the bar in front of him. He finally took a sip. He didn’t need this shit.

“Trust me on this one, Tozzi. Turning forty is no big deal.”

Tozzi stared at the green bottle in his hand. “How do
you
know? You probably don’t even remember.”

“Whattaya mean? It wasn’t that long ago.” Gibbons’s voice suddenly got tight. He always got touchy whenever someone brought up the issue of
his
age.

Tozzi smirked at his partner and shook his head. Looking at the mirror behind the bar, he scanned the crowd. Gilhooley’s was a favorite watering hole for people who worked for the city of New York since it was only a couple of blocks from City Hall. But tonight there was a roving pack of trial lawyers of the ambulance-chaser variety working the crowd, and there were even a few Wall Street types scattered here and there ogling the female secretaries and administrators. You could tell the Wall Street guys from the lawyers because they wore better suits and looked a little healthier, but not much.

A table of secretaries over by the wall caught Tozzi’s eye. They were laughing and clucking over a frothy pitcher of whiskey sours, having a grand old time getting loaded. A couple of them were very cute—cheerleader cute—and they were definitely on the make, checking out all the guys they hoped were single. Tozzi was single, but they weren’t looking for him. They were looking for guys in their late twenties, the guys with good suits. They sure weren’t looking for soon-to-be-forty FBI street agents from the Manhattan field office’s Organized Crime Unit.

He refocused and took a good look at himself sitting next to Gibbons in the mirror. He wasn’t ugly, but he didn’t think he looked like anybody’s idea of a catch anymore. His dark, deep-set eyes always seemed to look tired now, even when he’d gotten enough sleep. He didn’t have sagging jowls like Gibbons—not yet—but his face seemed longer and fleshier than he liked to think of it. His hair had thinned some on top, but he still had more than most guys his age. What did bother him, though, were the silver hairs. You could spot them from ten feet away now.

’Course, he had a long way to go before he looked like Gibbons. Gibbons
looked
like an old guy. Not an old man, but an older guy, an older middle-aged guy. His hair had gone south long before Tozzi had met him. All he had now were those thin gray strands that he combed back over his freckled head. Gibbons had jowls, too, real jowls. And that face. Nose hanging over his mouth like a big hot pepper, small mean eyes, and no lips. All that and the personality of a moray eel.

Tozzi studied both their faces side by side and shuddered. In fifteen, sixteen years, that could be him. Jesus.

But it wasn’t his aging face that was bothering him or his graying hair. It was the fact that here he was in the middle of his life, and he hadn’t done a single positive thing he could look back on and be proud of. Sure, putting bad guys away and keeping the mob at bay was something, but it didn’t seem like it was enough. It wasn’t like he had created something, something that would last, like a building or a great song. He didn’t even have kids.

He glanced at Gibbons in the mirror. Gibbons didn’t have any kids either. But at least he had a wife. Tozzi didn’t even have that.

It was cool being single and free when he was in his twenties and thirties, going out with different women all the time, but the thought of being forty and still on the prowl seemed kinda sad and pathetic, very past tense. Too old for young babes, too immature for women his own age.

He took another swig from the bottle and looked up at the TV set over the bar. The local news was on, the black guy with the glasses on Channel 9. He was doing an update on a transit cop who’d been shot in the line of duty last month. The poor bastard was in a wheelchair, his arm in a sling, his wife trying to push him around their crowded little apartment, banging him into walls and furniture.

Tozzi shook his head and sighed. He glanced down at the beer in his hand, then glanced at the cute secretaries getting shit-faced in the mirror.

Shit. He had to get outta here.

Gibbons turned in his seat and laid his forearms on the bar, lacing his fingers around his beer. “So what’s the face for, Toz? I’m telling you. Turning forty is not a problem. It happens, and you feel like you want to kill yourself, but the next week you forget about it.”

“It’s not that.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m telling you. It’s not.”

“Then what is it? Your black-belt test? You’re good. You’ll do all right. Don’t worry about it.”

Tozzi stared at him. He resented the pep talk. “It’s not that either.” His black-belt test was only part of it.

“Then what’s buggin’ you, Toz? You can’t tell me? I spend more friggin’ time with you than I do with my own wife, and you can’t talk to me? You know, Lorraine predicted a long time ago that you’d be terrible when you turned forty. She was right.”

“How the hell would she know?”

“She’s
your
cousin.”

“Is that what you two do in bed at night before you turn out the lights? Talk about me?”

Gibbons looked at him blankly. “Who talks?” The crocodile smile broke open under his big hot-pepper nose. Wiseass bastard.

Tozzi slid off his stool. “I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Gibbons grabbed his sleeve. “Hey! Where you goin’?”

“I got paperwork to do on the Mistretta thing.”

“It’s eight o’clock. We put in a twelve-hour day. I think the taxpayers got their money’s worth today. Sit down and relax.”

“No, really. Ivers said he wanted this report right away. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Gibbons layed a hand on Tozzi’s shoulder. “Let me tell you something, Toz. One person cannot solve every crime in the city of New York by himself. Not even you. We did our part today. We covered the crime scene and collected the evidence. We spent the whole goddamn day with those two bodies. Now it’s up to the lab techs to come up with something. See, each person has to take his own little square of turf and just deal with that. As you get older, you find out that that’s what life is really all about. And now that you’re about to be middle-aged, I think you ought to realize that.” The bastard was laughing. He thought this was real funny.

“Fuck you, Gibbons.”

“Hey, I’m just telling you the way it is, Toz.”

“Look, Ivers told me he wanted the report ASAP. When a mob boss gets shot, the Bureau has to make some kind of statement to the press, and he wants to know what he’s talking about for a change.”

Roy, the regular bartender here, came toward them, wiping his way down the bar. Tozzi guessed Roy to be in his late twenties, maybe thirty. He had longish blond hair, big biceps, and a small waist, and he always looked happy. Tozzi watched his big arm running the rag along the bar. Why the hell shouldn’t the guy be happy? He’s not gonna be forty.

“Another round, gentlemen?” Roy asked.

Gibbons picked up Tozzi’s beer. It had hardly been touched. “Another one for me, Roy. Maybe a cup of herb tea for my friend here since he’s not drinking tonight. He must be watching his health.”

Roy snorted out a laugh and revealed an army of perfect white teeth. He laughed like a donkey, but a good-looking donkey. Tozzi made up his mind then and there that he really did hate this guy’s guts.

The muscle-bound donkey was still laughing as he brought up another bottle of Rolling Rock from under the bar. Gibbons drained his old one, then looked at his watch. Roy caught his eye and suddenly went poker-faced, nodding once.

Tozzi frowned. Were these two supposed to be subtle or what? He swore to Christ that if someone came out with a friggin’ birthday cake, he was walking outta here. Poor sport or not, he wasn’t in the mood. Anyway, his birthday was still two weeks away.

Roy went down to the end of the bar and reached up to turn up the sound on the TV. He looked like a goddamn orangutan with those arms of his. On the screen, the anchorman was kibitzing with the sportscaster and the weatherman. They cut away for a commercial then, and the sound was suddenly blaring as a red convertible raced through fall leaves on a country road.

“What’s the story, Gib? Why’s he got that thing turned up like that?”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“You’re not funny, Gibbons. Not fanny at all.”

“Whad’ja say?”

The car commercial played out, and the next one began. As soon as Tozzi heard the music—the sinewy beat against a thumping, gyrating bass—he knew what it was. The camera panned that huge weight room with all the sparkling chrome-plated exercise equipment. Tozzi didn’t even have to look. Everyone knew this commercial.

“Is this supposed to be for my benefit, Gibbons?”

“Shut up, Tozzi, I’m trying to listen to this.”

Tozzi looked back up at the TV. The camera stopped panning, and there she was in her metallic purple Lycra tights, the tits hanging out of her matching purple tank top with the fuchsia thunderbolts zapping down her lateral obliques, the pouty red lips, the come-hither eyes, the curly mess of long, two-tone blond hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back as she worked that crooked barbell up and down, doing her curls up and down, up and down, making her tits bobble with each jerk.

Gibbons was wearing a big shit-eating grin, and Roy had his thumb and forefinger over his eyes, trying not to laugh.

“
…
Knickerbocker Spas,”
the voice-over shouted,
“with fourteen convenient locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey. At Knickerbocker Spas, we invite you to come on in and—”

“PUMP IT UP!” Everyone at the bar yelled out the tag line, the line that the blonde always said with that look in her eye, that come-on-big-boy-I-dare-you-to-pump-it-up-for-
me
look. They even called her the Pump-It-Up Girl. Knickerbocker Spas had been blitzing the airwaves with this commercial all spring, and every straight guy in New York was in lust with this girl. Even Tozzi had to admit that she gave him a hard-on the first time he saw her. But what the hell was this all about, turning up the TV and making everyone deaf? What the hell was this, a pervert bar, for chrissake?

Tozzi shrugged and looked at Gibbons. “I don’t get it. Is this supposed to be funny?”

“This is your favorite commercial, isn’t it, Toz? Didn’t you tell me that?”

Tozzi closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn’t believe this. This was fucking juvenile. No, it was worse than juvenile coming from an old guy like Gibbons. It was senile. Anything to bust balls. Ha, ha, ha.

“Now, tell me the truth, Tozzi, and be honest. Have you or have you not been telling me for the past month that if you could have one wish before you died, it was to have fifteen minutes alone with the Pump-It-Up Girl? Tell the truth now. Did you say that or am I crazy?”

Roy was howling. The music on the commercial was still thumping as the two-tone blonde worked that barbell, showing off that incredible bod as the voice-over described the spa’s facilities.

“All right, all right. I admit it. I did say she was nice. So what of it?”

“But did you say that you wanted fifteen minutes alone with her?”

Tozzi just looked at him. Roy was splitting a gut as he reached up to turn down the volume on the TV. Everyone at the bar was watching them, flashing these big dopey smiles, like they expected something else to happen.

Tozzi lowered his voice. “Yeah, okay, if it’ll make you happy, Gib. That’s what I said. I said I wouldn’t mind having fifteen minutes alone with the Pump-It-Up Girl. Okay? You happy now?” He glanced up quickly at the two-tone blonde before the commercial ended and sighed. His young-babe days were over. He wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like that.

Gibbons was smiling with his teeth. “Well, Toz, your wish is my command.”

Someone tapped Tozzi on the shoulder then. He closed his eyes and started to turn around, expecting to see a goddamn cake shaped like the Pump-It-Up Girl with a million candles sticking out of the boobs like two flaming porcupines. But he was wrong.

“What the—?”

She rested her forearms on his shoulders and played with the hair at the back of his neck. The tawny come-hither eyes were calling to him. The pouty ruby lips were right there in front of him. That two-tone, bronze-gold hair was all over the place. And those incredible boobs—they just floated there, suspended in space right under his chin. He tried not to stare down her cleavage, but it was a real struggle.

“Hi, Tozzi,” she said.

“Uh
…
hi.”

Gibbons and Roy were in tears. The crowd closed in, the lawyers and the Wall Street types going bug-eyed to get a good look at her chest. The horny bastards were drooling all over the floor.

“Jesus Christ, that really is her,” Tozzi heard one of them say. “It’s the Pump-It-Up Girl.”