5 Bad Moon (3 page)

“That’s
her boyfriend?”

“Lucky bastard.”

Tozzi turned toward the envious voices, but she turned his face back around with one finger on his chin and leaned her forehead into his. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Tozzi.” She had the kind of pouty voice you’d expect to come out of those lips.

Tozzi could feel his face heating up like a toaster.

“My name is Stacy. Stacy Viera.”

“Nice to meet you
…
Stacy.”

“Hey, c’mon, Toz, is that the best you can do?” Gibbons was having a fucking ball.

It was at that moment that Tozzi realized he had his hands on the Pump-It-Up Girl’s waist. He suddenly became very self-conscious of them, so he quickly put them on her bare arms and gently undid the embrace. The touch of her skin felt very nice, firm but soft at the same time. He could feel himself getting hard. The goddamn thing had a mind of its own. He stared into her face and decided she couldn’t be more than twenty. Exactly half the age he was going to be in two weeks. Old enough to be her goddamn father. All of a sudden he wasn’t hard anymore.

Stacy’s pout got a little juicier. Her eyes darted over his face. She looked upset.

Gibbons nudged him with an elbow. “Hey, Toz, whatsa matter? We’re trying to cheer you up here. You look like you’re going to a funeral.”

Stacy looked to Roy and frowned. “I don’t think he got the joke.”

Tozzi glared at Gibbons. His face was burning. “This is not funny.”

“Lighten up, Toz. You been down in the mouth all winter. We figured you needed a boost.” Gibbons eyed Stacy’s tits whenever he saw she wasn’t looking.

Roy flipped the towel over his shoulder and leaned over the bar to mediate. “I’m sorry if this embarrassed you, Toz, really. It was mostly my idea. I apologize. See, one night Gibbons was in here and the commercial came on and he mentioned that you thought Stacy was real hot. I told him that I knew her—see, I work out at the place in the Village where she teaches aerobics—and so we figured it would be a real hoot if we could set it up so you could meet her in the flesh. So I asked Stacy and she said it was cool with her, and she even found out when the commercial would be running tonight so we could set it up the way we did. But, jeez, we didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything like that. We were just kidding around.”

“Yeah,” Stacy said, “it was just supposed to be fun.”

Tozzi zoomed in on those baby-doll lips and got very depressed. He was supposed to be getting a kick out of this, and now it was upsetting him that he wasn’t. A scolding voice not unlike his cousin Lorraine’s was echoing through his head.
Act your age, act your age.

He looked at Roy, then at Gibbons, trying not to stare at Stacy. He took one last swig of his beer, then got off the stool. “Look, I’ll see you later, Gib. I gotta go.” He headed for the door.

“Hey, Toz, where ya goin’?”

“I’m sorry, man,” Roy called out. “Lemme fix you a drink. On the house.”

“You told me he was a good sport, Roy.”

Stacy’s words followed him out the door, like a rain cloud.

Outside, Tozzi shrugged into his trench coat as he walked down the sidewalk. A good sport, huh? His life was half over, for chrissake. He wasn’t supposed to be chasing babes like Stacy Viera anymore. He was beyond being a good sport.

The night was cold and wet and miserable. You could see the drizzle coming down in the streetlights. Tozzi flipped up his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets, fingering his car keys, mulling over that stunt they’d pulled in the bar, upset with himself that it was upsetting him so much. Gibbons and Roy meant well, and Stacy was probably a good kid. It was just bad timing, that’s all. He wasn’t in the mood for kidding around. Sure, Stacy Viera was a walking wet dream, but that wasn’t what he needed anymore. Gibbons and Roy didn’t understand that. They didn’t know that it was time for him to grow up.

He turned down the side street where his car was parked. The street was empty and quiet except for the sound of his own footsteps muffled by the drizzle. It was the perfect setting for how he felt right now. He went toward his car and pulled out his keys, thinking that maybe he wouldn’t go home right away. He’d just end up watching something stupid on TV if he went home. Maybe he’d drive around for a while in the rain. He stuck the key in the lock and considered crossing the George Washington Bridge and heading up the Palisades Parkway. Kill some time riding along the river, listening to the radio in the dark.

But as he turned the key in the lock, he suddenly felt something in his back, something small and hard. Something like a gun barrel.

“Don’t move and don’t turn around.”

The guy sounded nervous. He kept prodding Tozzi with the gun even though Tozzi was doing what he was told. He waited for the guy to say something else. If he was a mugger, why wasn’t he demanding money? If he was a killer, then he was an amateur. Professional shooters don’t wait.

Tozzi didn’t say a word. He didn’t want to provoke him. He turned his head slightly to the left.

The guy pushed his face back around with his free hand.
“I said don’t turn around!”

Tozzi’s heart was thumping with relief. Thank God he didn’t shoot. Now he knew that the guy was holding the gun with his right hand.

He considered the possibility of an aikido move. Turn quick to the right toward the hand with the gun, and roll to the guy’s shoulder, take his wrist at the same time and control the gun, pull his arm forward to take his balance, then swing it back up and fold it behind his head, pointing the hand and the gun to the ground, forcing him to fall over onto his back. Keep control of the gun and point it in his face.
Kote gaeshi
from a stick-’em-up attack. Not the easiest throw, but one he’d done before, one that could be on his black-belt test.

Tozzi took a breath and let it out slowly to calm himself. As the gunman pressed the barrel into his back again, he started his move, turning nice and smooth, quick but not rushing it, putting himself shoulder to shoulder with the guy, pulling him forward to take his balance, then swinging the arm up and over, twisting his hand behind his head until he fell backward and hit the pavement. The guy still had the gun, but Tozzi had a good grip over the hand so that the weapon was pointed back in the guy’s shadowy face.

“Hey! What the f—”

“Let go of the gun,” Tozzi said.

“Fuck you, man.”

“Let go of the—”

“Tozzi? I’m sorry about what happened in there.”

Tozzi looked up. He recognized the pouty voice calling to him. Stacy Viera was standing on the corner five car-lengths away, a stacked silhouette in heels under the streetlamp.

“Stacy, go get Gib—”

A loud wet crack cut him short. The gun had gone off. A hot poker seared through Tozzi’s thigh. The powder burn singed his pants, and the stink filled his nostrils. Tozzi clutched his thigh and clenched his face. Shit! Stacy had distracted him. He’d let up on his grip and lost control of the gun. The bastard had pulled the friggin’ trigger. Shit!

The gunman rolled over and scrambled to his feet. Tozzi couldn’t be sure in the dark, but he just assumed the guy still had the gun. Stooped over, holding his leg, Tozzi dropped to one knee, the blood draining out of his face. He groped for the gun in his ankle holster.

“Tozzi! What happened? Are you all right?”

Stacy was running toward them. He could hear her heels clicking on the pavement. Jesus Christ!

“Get down! Get behind a car!”

Tozzi expected the bastard to plug her, then empty his gun into him. But when he glanced up, he saw that the guy had his hands to his sides. Tozzi couldn’t make out his face in the dark, but it seemed like the guy was just staring at her.

“Holy shit
…
” the bastard whispered.

“This is bad. Very bad.”

Tozzi whipped his head toward this second voice. He squinted into the shadows between the parked cars. He struggled to get his gun, tearing at the holster and ripping the Velcro straps. He was getting light-headed and he felt like throwing up, but he was determined to keep it together.

He got his gun out and pointed it up at his attacker. “Freeze,” he croaked.

The bastard suddenly fired down at him, the muzzle flash lighting the street for a microsecond. Tozzi heard the
ping
of the bullet piercing the car door just above his head.

“Freeze!”
Tozzi shouted.

The gunman turned to bolt. Tozzi fired over the man’s head, but he didn’t stop. Tozzi leaned on the car and hauled himself up to pursue, but his leg couldn’t take the weight and it gave way under him. He collapsed to the ground, flat on his belly, his cheek pressed against the wet asphalt. He heard running footsteps splashing through puddles down the block. Under the streetlights in the distance, he saw two running figures, one big, the other small. The big guy seemed to be pushing the small guy ahead of him. Then he heard Stacy’s clicking heels coming up behind him.

She knelt down beside him, her knees in his face. “Oh, my God! Are you all right? Are you all right?”

Tozzi tried to push himself up, but the leg hurt like a bitch. He tried to move it, but it wasn’t responding, so he eased himself down onto his side. “Get Gibbons,” he grunted.

“Oh, God!” she kept saying. “Oh, God!” She was chewing on her pouty lips, on the verge of hysteria. “Oh, God!”

“Go get Gibbons,” he grunted again. “Don’t worry. I’m all right. Just go get Gibbons. Go
now
!”

Reluctantly she got to her feet and staggered toward the bar, stopping to look back at him with every step she took, afraid to leave him alone.

“Go ahead, Stacy. Get Gibbons. Go ahead now. And call for an ambulance.” He tried to sound as reassuring as he could even though he felt like he was gonna pass out.

He lowered his head back down to the asphalt and squeezed his eyes shut as he reached for the wound.

Shit! he thought. Now I’m gonna miss my black-belt test.
Shit!

Sal Immordino sat hunched over on a folding chair, looking intently at his fists, making like he was talking to them. He always talked to his hands when he was putting on the nut. It was what he did.

Loopy Lou Nardone was sitting next to him with his fingers joined on top of the table. They were in the visitors’ room, a small cubicle built into one corner of Sal’s ward at the Vroom Building, the dungeon where the criminally insane were kept at the state psychiatric hospital in Trenton, New Jersey. Visits weren’t monitored here the way they were at a regular prison because no one here at the nuthouse had been officially convicted of anything. But the walls were made of that thick security glass, the kind that has the thin wire mesh inside it, and the guards were always watching.

Sal furrowed his brow and frowned at his left hand. “So did you find out who the hitter was?”

Loopy Lou threw his hands up and shook his head. His jet-black hair looked like a used Brillo pad, his mouth was lopsided, and he was walleyed, but he was the top soldier in Sal’s old crew, loyal like a brother. He was the one who should’ve taken over the crew after Sal got sent here, not that ass-licking Frank Bartolo. “It’s a big fucking secret, Sal. I got my ear to the ground, but nobody knows nothing. It must be somebody nobody ever used before.”

Sal raised an eyebrow and examined the knuckles of his right hand. “Not Bartolo’s kid?”

Loopy Lou’s wandering eye shot open. “Whatta you, kidding? You think that dumb fuck could sneak his way in here and pull off a hit? You’d spot him a mile away.”

“Hmmm. Maybe. What about Joey D’Amico? He’d volunteer.”

“D’Amico couldn’t shoot himself. You know what they say. He didn’t even make his bones by himself. He hired some kid to do his hit for him so he could get made. I don’t think it’s D’Amico.”

“Maybe.” Sal glanced out at the ward on the other side of the glass. The nut cases, the real ones, were shuffling around in their bathrobes and baggy jeans. A big TV set was mounted high up on the wall where no one could reach it. It was on, but no one was watching it. There was a guard leaning back on a folding chair, reading a paper by the door, and another one just outside the door to this room who kept his eye on Sal and Loopy Lou.

Loopy Lou threw up his hands again. “I just can’t figure it, Sal. Either they hired somebody nobody knows, or they called off the hit.”

Sal spread his fingers and studied them. “They didn’t call off the hit.” He was sure about that.

He stared out at the Thorazine Boys, the other nine patients on this ward, and wondered if any of them might be faking it to beat a rap the same way he was. But if one of them was, he’d never say so. That was the whole deal. You had to act like a nut to be declared mentally incompetent in the eyes of the court. Problem was, you had to act like a nut all the time because if a doctor or a guard or anyone ever saw you not acting like a nut, they’d boot your ass the hell outta here and haul you back into court to face your charges. That’s why Sal had to act like one of them. But what if one of the Thorazine Boys was faking it too? What if one of them wasn’t nuts and Juicy and Bartolo had gotten to him, given him the contract to kill their old buddy Sal? Wouldn’t have to worry about sneaking the hitter into the hospital that way. It would be perfect. Sal tried to remember if any of these guys had visitors recently, a messenger who might’ve brought the deal in from Juicy and Bartolo. Sal scanned their blank, pale faces. You can’t be too paranoid when you know there’s a contract out on you.

Up on the TV, Phil Donahue was talking to a bunch of old bags about something or other. If Donahue was on, that meant it was after four. Charles should be here by now. Sal suppressed a grin. He couldn’t wait for Charles to give him the details.

Sal glanced back at his soldier. “So whatta they saying about Mistretta’s hit?”

Loopy Lou’s eyebrows shot up and his bad eye rolled. “They’re going nuts. The cops still got the old man’s body, you know, and they’re saying they won’t be finished doing the autopsy for at least two weeks. Mrs. Mistretta’s having conniption fits. Can you imagine? Poor woman’s gonna hafta wait all that time to bury her husband. That’s a shame.”

“My name been mentioned?”

“Not that I heard, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, like it wasn’t no secret how you felt about Mistretta.”

Sal squinted at his thumb. “Well, at least one of my problems is gone.” He raised his index finger and squinted at that one. “One down, three to go.”

Loopy Lou mumbled out of the side of his mouth. “Juicy, Frank Bartolo—who’s the third one?”

Sal raised his middle finger. “That FBI guy, Tozzi. Dudley fucking Do-right.”

Sal caught his own angry expression in the glass wall’s reflection, and immediately he let his face go slack before the guard saw him. He saw red whenever he thought about Tozzi. Fucking Tozzi. Life was sweet before Tozzi came along. Back when he was out on the street, Sal used to play dumb all the time whenever people were looking, act like a punch-drunk retard and get away with murder. It had kept him out of jail for twenty years. But then Tozzi came along and caught him with his guard down in Atlantic City, saw him act normal. And that’s how he ended up here in the bin. He had no choice but to take the insanity plea or face charges. But the charges were murder this time, so that friggin’ old bastard of a judge said he had to put Sal in the nuthouse with the real nuts.

Loopy Lou looked all around before he spoke. “You really gonna do Tozzi, too, Sal?”

Sal let half a grin sneak out. “He may already be done.”

Loopy Lou smiled on one side of his face. “And so that means you can check yourself outta here?”

“Yup.”

“Tremendous.”

Sal looked Loopy Lou in his good eye and bit the insides of his cheeks to suppress his joy. The only thing the state had on Sal was Tozzi’s testimony that he witnessed Sal acting normal. With Tozzi gone, there was no testimony and the state had no case. He could check himself out into his sister’s custody and he’d be as free as a bird. He could be outta here as soon as the day after tomorrow, the way he figured. All he needed was for Charles to get here and give him the word that the deed was done. He scanned the ward again. Where the hell was he?

There were commercials on the TV now. Sal let his jaw go slack and looked blank just in case someone was watching him through that one-way mirror on the other side of the ward. Sal couldn’t hear the sound, but he could see that they were playing that commercial for that health club in New York, the one with the blonde with the long corkscrew curls and the jiggly tits. What the hell did they call her? The Pump-It-Up Girl, yeah. Sal squinted and zeroed in on her jiggly tits. Yeah, baby. Day after tomorrow, you can pump me up anytime.

Sal stared at the thunderbolt stripes on the Pump-It-Up Girl’s leotards and remembered that night at Cil’s place last week, how they dragged Mistretta and Jerry out of the basement, how Mistretta left this long, bloody brushstroke on the floor when Charles dragged him out by the ankles like he was a rickshaw. Fucking pain in the ass bled all over the place. Took them an hour to clean the place up, that loony bird Emerick saying “This is bad, this is bad, this is bad” over and over and over again the whole time. Even dead, Mistretta was a pain. But now he was gone, and Tozzi was too. Just two more to go and the way would be clear for Sal to take over.

Sal caught himself smiling then, and he wiped it right off.

“Tell me something, Sal,” Loopy Lou mumbled. “When you become boss, is it gonna be like it was when you took over for Mistretta that time when he was at Lewisburg? Gyp and Jimmy T. asked me to ask you.”

Sal looked him in the good eye and shook his head slightly.

Loopy Lou’s face dropped.

“Nope. This time it’s gonna be better.”

A lopsided grin reached out for Loopy Lou’s earlobe. “You’re gonna make some guys very happy, Sal.
Very
happy.”

Sal thought back to the time when Mistretta made him acting boss. That was when things started to fall apart between them because the old man didn’t like the way he was doing things. The old fart thought Sal’s ideas were too big. Mistretta liked the old ways, the safe bets, things he understood: girls, dope, hijacking, gambling, unions, loan-sharking. Sal had taken the family into new ventures when the old man was away: gas tax scams, insurance scams, school bus contracts, asbestos dumping, payola. Mistretta didn’t understand those kinds of things so he didn’t trust them. He said they weren’t reliable. The old bastard was a throwback to the past; he ran the family like a fucking dictator. If Sal had stayed on as boss, they would’ve made money,
real
money, not this nickel-and-dime whores and bookie crap they made now. Well, that was gonna be old news. Sal was ready to bring the family back up to speed. All he had to do was get outta here and take care of those other two assholes.

Loopy Lou scratched his Brillo head. “You know, I just thought of something, Sal. Aren’t you safer in here as long as the contract is still out on you? Won’t it be easier for them to get you on the outside?”

Sal made fists and boxed with the air. “Theoretically, yeah. But as soon as I take care of Juicy and Bartolo, that won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Would you go through with a hit if the guys who hired you weren’t around to pay you? Think about it.”

A light bulb went on over Loopy Lou’s head. “Yeah
…
you’re right.”

Sal kept sparring with the air. “So how’s Bartolo been treating you guys?”

Loopy Lou made a disgusted face. “You know what he did now? You remember that Dominican guy Gyp used to work with all the time, Raoul, the fence up in the Bronx?”

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“Bartolo tells Gyp he can’t do no more deals with him, none of us can.”

“Why not?”

“Bartolo hates spies, that’s why.”

“He’s crazy.”

“I know he’s crazy. And the sad part is Raoul’s got a kid with leukemia. He really needs the dough, and Gyp told Bartolo that. But Bartolo didn’t wanna hear nothing about it. He stuck to his guns and said no more deals with no spies, no matter how much money’s involved. Can you beat that shit?”

Sal shook his head. The way he figured, somebody oughta give him a public service award when he finally gets rid of that fat-ass, baldheaded fuck. Frank Bartolo had been a nothing, a hanger-on, never earned a penny for the family in his whole goddamn life. But he was a good ass-kisser, and he sure knew how to suck up to Mistretta.
Right away, Mr. Mistretta. No problem, Mr. Mistretta. Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Mr. Mistretta. Whatever you want, Mr. Mistretta.
And in the end it paid off for him. Not only did he get himself a crew, he got a good crew,
Sal’s crew.
All good earners, each one of them. None of them really wanted to go with Bartolo, but what could they do? Complain to the old man? Lotta good that woulda done. It was no wonder those guys were saying rosaries every night, praying for Sal to come back. And there were guys in other crews who wanted him back as boss too. The way he and Loopy Lou figured, at the very worst they could count on half the family backing Sal. And in Sal’s mind, that was the half worth having.

Sal tightened his fists, gritted his teeth, and kept punching air. The useless half belonged to that fucking pervert Juicy Vacarini, Mistretta’s favorite capo, his hand-picked successor. But all that guy knows about is girls. Girls, girls, girls. Vacarini wouldn’t know how to diversify the family if somebody told him. Sure, the guy makes good money with all those pros of his, but that’s all he’s got. He makes steady money, but he don’t go nowhere with it. He doesn’t know how to build with it. But old Mistretta, he thought Juicy was Mr. Wonderful. Juicy was his boy. And to his credit, Juicy may look like a sleepy momo with those Elvis Presley eyes and those stupid silk shirts of his, but he is a shrewd son of a bitch. Only thing is, he thinks he’s got a lock on being the new boss. But he don’t know how strong the competition is yet.

Sal threw a hard roundhouse.

“Hey, Sal, what’s this guy looking at over here?” Loopy Lou nodded at the glass door. Charles Tate was standing there in his gray guard uniform, poker-faced, waiting to be noticed. The other guard who’d been watching the door was gone. “This
moolinyam
got a problem or what?”

Sal covered his mouth and grinned. He’d never thought of Charles as a
moolinyam,
an eggplant. His skin wasn’t that dark. ‘Course, now that he thought about it, if you looked at his head from a certain angle, it was sort of shaped like an eggplant. Charles thought he was a tough guy, but that was all in his head. Half the time he tried to come off like Run DMC, but underneath he was Bill Cosby. Sal had to laugh. Mr. Black Mafia, this guy. Wants to be a wiseguy. Stupid
moolinyam.
Now that he’s made his bones shooting Tozzi, he must think he can be an honorary member. Yeah, sure. Just wait.

Sal hunched over his hands and didn’t look at Loopy Lou as he spoke to him. “Why don’cha take off now? I gotta talk to this guy. If you wanna find out when I’m getting out, call my sister. Otherwise, stay away for a while. The feds’ll be watching me.”

“Whatever you want, Sal.” Loopy Lou stood up and went to the door.

Sal compared his thumbs. “And keep your ear to the ground about the hitter. It’d be nice to take care of him, whoever he is, in case it takes me a while to get Juicy. You know what I mean?”