5 Bad Moon (8 page)

Tozzi laughed, trying to lighten things up. “Yeah, they say we’re like a tag team. Some people actually think we look alike.”

Stacy looked skeptical. “Maybe in a police report.”

Tozzi leaned his elbow on the sofa and started to push himself up off the floor. “You wanna beer, John?”

“No, I’m fine. Sit down, sit down.”

Stacy looked at her wristwatch. “Listen, I’ve got a five-thirty high-impact class. I’d better start heading back to the gym.”

“Oh.” Tozzi didn’t like that look on her face. He felt like he’d done something wrong.

“Maybe I’ll stop by later on,” she said.

“Oh
…
Okay
…
I’ll be here.” But will my dick be here?

She picked up her motorcycle jacket from the armchair and. shrugged into it.

John was grinning at her like an idiot. “It was nice meeting you, Stacy.”

“Yeah, you too, John.” She looked down at Tozzi, like she expected something. He wished to God he could give her what she wanted. “Bye,” she finally said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and heading for the door.

John waited for the door to close before he sat down in the armchair and loosened his tie. “I’ll make you a deal, Toz. You give me Stacy’s phone number and I won’t test next week. I’ll wait for you so we can be black belts together.”

“Forget it, John.”

“C’mon, Toz. I thought we were friends.”

“Forget about it.” He wasn’t thinking about the test.

“Tozzi, I’m in love here. She wants me. I can tell.”

Tozzi started winding the bull Zoid. “Go fuck yourself, will ya, John?”

“That’s what I do all the time, Tozzi. C’mon, you’re not interested in her. You’re too old for her.”

Tozzi glared at his friend. He set the bull down on the coffee table and it charged across the magazines. “Go fuck yourself, John.”

“Please, Tozzi, I’m begging you. I’m only thirty-four. It wouldn’t be cradle-robbing if I went out with her.”

“Go fuck yourself, John.”

Forty isn’t old. It’s a fucking curse, is what it is. I’m cursed.

The bull chugged its way over the pile of magazines, tripped, and did a header off the coffee table. John leaned over and picked it up. He had the body in one hand, the head in the other. “It’s broke, Toz. The head fell off.”

Tozzi glanced out the bay window. He could see Stacy walking up the street, her long blond curls bouncing down her black leather back.

“I said, the head came off, Toz.”

“Go fuck yourself, John.” Tozzi’s teeth were clenched. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

“Oh
…
Maybe I will have that beer after all, Toz.”

John went into the kitchen while Tozzi stared out the bay window and watched Stacy walking down the sidewalk, her corkscrew curls bouncing as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance.

He put his hand over his crotch. Still nothing. It was a fucking curse. It had to be. He was being punished for something.

Tozzi dropped his chin to his chest and spotted the headless bull on the coffee table.

Shit.

Gibbons shuffled into the kitchen, all dressed for work except for his tie, which was draped around his neck. He opened the dishwasher and grabbed a clean cup. He was worried about Tozzi. He was worried about himself, too.

Tozzi kept saying it was a mugger who shot him, but Gibbons didn’t buy it. Tozzi had too many enemies in the mob—they both had—wiseguys they’d investigated together and brought to trial. So it was only logical that if some wiseguy had a vendetta against Tozzi, he had it against Gibbons, too. Trouble was figuring out which wiseguy. Tozzi had come up with three likely suspects off the top of his head, but Gibbons had been thinking about it and he’d come up with at least a couple of dozen. He wasn’t gonna tell this to his boss, Ivers, though. Ivers might do the chickenshit thing and try to put them under protection until someone was apprehended. That could take forever, and the police might never find anybody. No, Gibbons planned to handle this the way he would any other investigation: Run down the most likely suspects, eliminate the unlikely ones, then squeeze whoever’s left until he finds out who wants them dead. And hope that he doesn’t get shot first.

The morning light was streaming through the window over the sink as he poured himself a cup of coffee. Lorraine was at the stove, stirring a pot. Gibbons looked over her shoulder to see what she was making, then backed off when he saw the swirling, gritty white glop. He didn’t want to get too close.

“What’s that?”

“Cream of wheat.” Lorraine didn’t look up, just kept stirring.

Gibbons made a face. “Whattaya making that for?”

“I like it.”

“I don’t remember you ever making it before.”

“That’s because you hate hot cereal, and it’s too much bother to make it for one.”

“So whattaya making it now for?”

“Madeleine told me she loves cream of wheat, but she never has time to make it. I thought I’d surprise her this morning.”

Gibbons plopped some milk into his coffee from a cardboard quart. Madeleine, was it? They were getting real chummy, her and Cummings. They were also turning the place into a goddamn girls’ dormitory. Last night Lorraine had rented an opera from the video store, some humongous black woman making the god-awfullest noise—Haystack Calhoun in drag with rhinestones all over her head. The two of them were riveted to the set, drinking herb tea and eating dried apricots. Cummings snuck those in. They looked like two zombies eating dried-up ears, staring at the Momma Witch Doctor on TV. And the worst part about it was that the Mets had played Cincinnati last night. He had to listen to it on the radio in the bedroom. Christ Almighty. Cummings had only been there a couple of nights and he was already fed up with this goddamn arrangement.

“Good morning.” Cummings waltzed in, chipper as a bird.

“Morning.” Gibbons sipped his coffee and gave her the once-over. She was wearing a tobacco-green suit with a big paisley shawl or scarf or kerchief—whatever the hell you called that rag women wear—pinned to one shoulder and looped under the other armpit. Gibbons pointed at it with his cup. “Don’t wear that.”

Her chipper face went dead. She adjusted her glasses, then laid her hand on the rag. “Why shouldn’t I wear this?”

“ ’Cause we’re going to the bin today.”

Her mouth got shorter. “I find your reference to a state mental hospital as the ‘bin’ offensive. And your implication that a patient might try to strangle me with my own scarf is even more offensive. I assume
you
will be wearing your tie.”

Gibbons shrugged and took another sip. “That’s different.”

“And why is that?”

Gibbons pulled his gun out of the holster under his jacket. “Because I carry one of these and you don’t.”

The morning sun sparkled off Excalibur’s metal finish. Excalibur was a vintage .38 Colt Cobra, the weapon Gibbons had carried his entire career as an FBI agent. Gibbons forced himself to keep the barrel pointed up. Cummings wasn’t worthy of a slug from a weapon as fine as Excalibur, though he was sorely tempted to wing her so he wouldn’t have to partner with her.

Cummings’s face didn’t move as he put his gun back in the holster. “Comparing penises again, are we?”

Gibbons stared at her over the rim of his cup. He wasn’t even gonna answer that one. It was just another lead-in to more of her bogus psychology crap. No matter what they talked about, she knew all the “underlying reasons” for why people did what they did, and in Cummings’s world view, men had a lot more underlying reasons for their unacceptable behavior than women did. She’d been having a field day analyzing Tozzi. He was practically a mental leper with all his scabby unacceptable behavior and his nasty underlying reasons. He lived alone in an apartment that got cleaned only when one of his female relatives did it for him; he only kept beer, ketchup, and eggs in his refrigerator; he lived on takeout; he wasn’t married; he dated a lot of different women; and he was basically paranoid. He was barely worth the air he breathed.

Gibbons assumed Cummings felt he was just as bad as Tozzi. He preferred baseball to opera, after all. Cummings just wasn’t saying it in so many words because she was a guest in his house. Of course, Lorraine didn’t help matters. She lapped this psychology shit right up, and that just encouraged Cummings to spout out more of it. According to the good doctor’s latest assessment, which Lorraine related to him with more than a few giggles before they turned out the lights last night, he and Tozzi had the egos of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble with the ids of Frank and Jesse James. Very insightful.

Lorraine started pouring out that glop from the pot into two bowls. She was humming, probably some tune from that opera video. Gibbons dropped two slices of rye bread into the toaster. Lorraine was really being weird about this whole situation. He and Cummings had been sniping at each other since she got here, but Lorraine was determined not to get involved. The odd thing was that the bickering didn’t seem to upset her very much. It was like she was quietly enjoying having her Barnard buddy on the premises throwing digs at him all the time and generally making his life miserable. Sort of like having a surrogate witch around the house to do the dirty wife business.

Lorraine put the empty pot in the sink and brought the steaming bowls of glop to the table. Gibbons grabbed the edge of the table and braced himself.

Cummings clasped her hands together. “Oh, my God! Cream of wheat. Lorraine, you are a sweetheart.”

Lorraine shrugged and smiled. “A little treat. For both of us.”

Cummings sniffed the rising steam and savored the experience, carefully stirring in a pat of butter and sprinkling cinnamon on top. Gibbons waited for her to spoon up her first taste.

He stared down into her bowl. “You really like that stuff?”

“Ummm.” She nodded and spooned up some more. “I love it.”

“Aren’t you worried, though?”

“What about?”

“What your colleagues might think.”

“What do you mean?”

He nodded at the spoon as she put it in her mouth. “Looks like a bad case of semen envy to me.”

Cummings gagged on her glop.

Lorraine slammed down her spoon.

The toast popped.

Gibbons smiled like a crocodile.

Lorraine was bound and determined not to yell at him. Barnard girls are above that. You could see in her crimson face how hard she was trying to be unaffected. Gibbons started buttering his toast.

“Why are you going down to the state hospital today?” Lorraine asked, changing the subject. “I thought Ivers had you two on the Sabatini Mistretta case.”

“Gonna go talk to Sal Immordino.” Gibbons spread butter on the second piece of toast. “He might know something about who killed Mistretta. He might also know something about who plugged Tozzi.”

Cummings looked up from her glop. “It would be more helpful if he knew something about Donald Emerick.”

“You still pushing that theory, huh? It’s a little too
Twilight Zone,
if you ask me. More than a little.”

“Who’s Donald Emerick?” Lorraine asked.

Cummings adjusted her glasses. “He was a patient on Sal Immordino’s ward who was reported missing the day before Sabatini Mistretta was murdered. I believe Mr. Emerick could be our killer.”

Gibbons rolled his eyes and bit into a piece of toast.

Lorraine leaned toward her buddy. “Why do you think this Emerick person is the killer?”

“He’s killed before. Two women, both in the same week. One was a prostitute. The other was a housewife whom he happened to see parking in a handicapped space at the supermarket. He stalked them both and cornered them where they lived.”

“So naturally he’d whack a mob boss next time he had a chance to kill. The pattern is obvious, right?”

Cummings ignored his sarcasm and continued her explanation to Lorraine. “He nailed the prostitute to a wall with five-and-a-half-inch nails, through the head, shoulders, and abdomen. He did exactly the same to the housewife, except that he used the woman’s kitchen knives in that case. After he was apprehended, he told the police he was ‘blessing’ them because they were sinners and they needed absolution. He said he had to give them the sign of the cross.”

Gibbons got up to get the marmalade from the refrigerator. “This is her only good point, Lorraine. Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.”

Cummings continued to ignore him. “Sabatini Mistretta and his bodyguard, Jerry Rella, were slain with the same wound pattern. They were both given the sign of the cross.”

“However,” Gibbons said as the refrigerator door slammed shut, “Emerick used nails and knives to kill those women. Mistretta and Rella were shot, and the wounds may not have been the cause of death. In Rella’s case, they appear to have been inflicted
after
death. So it’s
not
the same.”

“I beg to differ, but in essence it
is
the same. Assuming that career criminals like these two Mafiosi would put up significantly more resistance than two terrified women unused to violent confrontation, Emerick simply may have had to kill them first to accomplish his goal. And as for the weapon, whether it was bullets, knives, or nails, in each case the same goal was achieved, which apparently was to satisfy some distorted inner need.”

Gibbons shook his head. “First of all, that hooker Emerick killed? She had been working the trade for quite some time, so she was probably no stranger to violent confrontation. I’ll bet she put up more of a fight than a seventy-four-year-old mob boss with more aches and pains than Carter’s got little liver pills. As for the wounds, my guess is that they’re some kind of bullshit Mafia symbolism. I’ve seen stuff like this before. Dead canaries in the mouth, balls cut off and stuffed down the throat, tongues up the ass, eyes gouged out—there’s nothing new about this.”

Lorraine looked a little green. She pushed her bowl of mush away.

“I’ve checked the archives on symbolic maimings connected with La Cosa Nostra murders. There actually aren’t that many, and none of them come close to resembling this.”

“You think wiseguys consult the archives before they do what they do?”

“The bodies were found in a sandpile under the West Side Highway, but it’s been established that those men weren’t killed there. They were moved, which to me indicates some kind of compulsive behavior. Generally, mobsters leave them where they fall. No?”

Lorraine looked out the window.

“I just told you. Wiseguys don’t follow rules. So what if they moved the bodies? All that says to me is that wherever they whacked Mistretta was too incriminating. They did it too close to home.”

“Can we change the subject?” Lorraine was still looking out the window. Both her legs and arms were crossed.

“What about the thumbprint on Mistretta’s watch and the partial palm print on the bodyguard’s neck? Wouldn’t mobsters take precautions against leaving prints? A psychotic killer doesn’t worry about leaving fingerprints. Getting caught doesn’t even enter his mind because he feels perfectly justified in what he’s doing.”

Gibbons shook his head. “We haven’t gotten anything back on those prints yet. They could be the victims’ own prints, or their wives’ or their girlfriends’ or their kids’. It’s too soon to tell.”

Cummings folded her arms and stared at him. “You cannot be so stupid as to think that there’s no connection between those wounds and Donald Emerick.”

Gibbons leveled a stare right back at her. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe Immordino got the idea from Emerick? You ever think of that?”

Cummings frowned. “Mental institutions are not like prisons. Psychotics like Mr. Emerick and Mr. Immordino don’t compare notes. Now, I know you don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with Mr. Immordino and you feel that he’s faking his condition, but he has been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic by a court-ordered psychiatrist, and several doctors have supported that evaluation under oath. That’s why he’s been incarcerated at the state hospital for the past nineteen months. Those were all reputable doctors, and I accept their findings. From the reports I’ve read, Mr. Immordino could not possibly have murdered anyone. He isn’t capable.”

Gibbons looked at his wife. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Even Lorraine knew that Cummings was wet behind the ears on this one. Incarceration never keeps mob guys from pulling off hits. Putting out a contract on someone is no problem for them. It’s like calling out for pizza.