The hospital had kept Tozzi here overnight for observation, even though according to Tozzi it wasn’t much more than a flesh wound. They were letting him out this morning, and Lorraine insisted they both go pick him up and take him home, meaning their home. Gibbons didn’t put up an argument, even though he hated having houseguests, even when he liked the person. If someone was gunning for Tozzi, he shouldn’t go back to his place right away, not alone. Still, the thought of having Tozzi around the house didn’t thrill Gibbons. The moody son of a bitch was just gonna make everybody crazy. Gibbons couldn’t wait for Lorraine to break the news to her cousin that she was bringing him home to take care of him. Tozzi was gonna have a fit.
Lorraine was standing in the middle of the room with her hand on her hip, exasperated. “Michael, will you please stop bouncing around like that and use the crutches?”
“I’m fine, Lorraine. I’m fine.” Tozzi was holding the crutches in one hand, hopping around on his good foot, trying to collect his things. He was already making Lorraine crazy. Wait’ll he’s around the house for a while.
Gibbons closed his eyes and rolled his neck on his shoulders, listening for the old familiar crick on the left side. There was gonna be one good thing about having Tozzi stay over. Lorraine could bust someone else’s balls for a change.
“Michael! Will you please sit down and let me help you?”
Gibbons winced. She could etch glass with that voice.
Tozzi kept hopping around like an idiot. “I’m okay, Lorraine. I’m fine. I can do it for myself.” Tozzi bounced over to the other blue vinyl armchair in the room, plopped himself down, and started to put his socks on. He managed the left one okay, but you could tell from his face that the right was a struggle.
“Here. Let me do that.” Lorraine reached for the sock, but Tozzi pulled it away.
“I said I’m okay. I can do it.” He was gritting his teeth.
“No you can’t. Give it to me.”
He waved the sock over his head, out of her reach. “It’s dirty, Lorraine. It’s the same one I wore last night.”
“Will you give it to me and stop acting like an ass? I can see it hurts you to bend that leg. Let me help you.”
“I’m not helpless, Lorraine. I can do it.”
She was steaming. “You’re not helpless, you’re hopeless. Gibbons, will you tell him to be sensible? Maybe he’ll listen to you.”
Gibbons shook his head. He didn’t want any part of this catfight. No use talking to either of them. They both had those hard guinea heads.
Tozzi managed to get the sock over his toes, but now he was having a hell of a time pulling it over his heel. His face was red and he was biting his bottom lip. Lorraine was biting her bottom lip too. Gibbons didn’t understand what she was getting so cooked up about. If the guy wanted to be a jackass, let him. He’s only hurting himself. ’Course, Gibbons wouldn’t want anybody putting his socks on for him. To hell with the socks. He’d just step into the shoes and stick the socks in his pocket.
“Michael, can I ask you something?” Lorraine’s voice dropped to a slightly more conciliatory pitch.
“Sure. What?”
Gibbons inspected his fingernails. He had a feeling he knew what was coming.
“I talked to your mother this morning. She wants to know if you intend to give up aikido now.”
Tozzi’s forehead bulged and his eyes slipped farther under his brow, like rattlesnakes ready to strike. “No, Lorraine, I am not going to give up aikido now. And my mother can go—”
“But she’s worried about you, Michael. She doesn’t want you to do something stupid and end up a cripple.”
Tozzi pointed to his thigh. “I did not do this on the mat doing aikido, Lorraine. I was shot on the street by a mugger.”
“But your aikido didn’t help you fight him off, did it?”
Gibbons pinched his nose to keep from laughing out loud. She had no mercy. But she did have a point.
Tozzi’s face was an angry red ball, but he chose not to argue with her, which was unusual for him. He was, no doubt, following the supposed first rule of the martial arts: Avoid the fight. Either that, or he didn’t have a good answer.
Tozzi tried a clever tactic then. He ignored Lorraine’s original question and answered the one he wished she’d asked in the first place. “I keep telling you, Lorraine, it’s just a flesh wound,” he said. “The bullet went in and came out, didn’t hit bone or anything. I’ll be back on my feet in a week and a half, maybe sooner.”
Lorraine put on the mournful face. This was one of those Italian specialties reserved for people in the hospital. Illness was an Italian delicacy, like baccalà. In fact, the death-and-dying report was a daily bulletin with the older members of the Tozzi clan, and Tozzi’s old lady was the editor in chief.
“Michael, we all know how bullheaded you are. Your mother and I are afraid you’re not going to let this heal properly. Look at yourself. You’re not treating it properly now. And remember, the body doesn’t heal as quickly at your age.”
Gibbons rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Oh, boy.
“What do you mean, at my age? I’m thirty-nine. What’s that? Is that supposed to be old?”
“You’re going to be forty in two weeks, Michael. Face it, you’re not a kid anymore. This martial-arts stuff is for young people.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lorraine. You don’t know the first thing about aikido.”
“I may not know anything about aikido, but I do know you. You’re dying to test for your black belt, and you’ll risk anything to do it. Including the use of that leg. For God’s sake, Michael, you have nothing to prove.”
“I’m getting mad now, Lorraine. You know why? Because you and my mother both belong in a nuthouse. You must think I’m stupid. You think I don’t know I’ve got nothing to prove? I’m a goddamn street agent, for chrissake. I’ve been shot at, stabbed, kicked, clubbed, beaten up, pistol-whipped, stomped. I’ve had guys try to run me over. A crackhead tried to chop me up with an ax in East Harlem one time. Another time some union goon came at me with a circular saw. I’ve even had to put up with attack dogs. Not just once, three times. So I know I don’t have anything to prove. I’ve already proved it, a hundred times over. What I get out of aikido is something else entirely. Something I don’t think I can make you or my mother understand.”
Lorraine folded her arms. “Try.”
Tozzi’s nostrils flared. “Well, for one thing, it brings me peace. Which is something I’m not getting from you right now.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, Michael. Why don’t you arrest me for disturbing your peace?” Lorraine’s voice was back up in the chicken-screech range.
Gibbons screwed a pinkie into his ear. This was getting boring.
“Am I disturbing something?”
Gibbons glanced at the doorway. Brant Ivers, Assistant Director in Charge of the Manhattan FBI field office, was standing on the threshold. The boss was here to visit the fallen soldier. Gibbons sat up. This ought to be moving.
Ivers’s square frame filled the doorway just about right. His head was square, his jaw was square, and his shoulders were square. He was artfully gray at the temples, and Gibbons always wondered if he had that done at some fancy men’s salon somewhere uptown. He probably thought it looked commanding on camera, gave him a glint of wisdom and authority. A powerful enhancement for the figurehead. Now that Gibbons thought about it, Ivers was sort of like the hood ornament on a fancy old car—silver and stiff.
Ivers nodded to Lorraine and Gibbons, then fixed his authoritative gaze on Tozzi, who was sitting there with his sock hanging off his bare foot like a wool cap on one of Santa’s elves. “How are you feeling, Tozzi?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Tozzi snapped the sock off his foot and lowered it tenderly to the floor. “Fine. It’s still sore and a little stiff, but I can get around. A couple of days home on the couch and
I’ll be functional.”
Lorraine shot him the death-ray stare, but she knew enough to hold her tongue in front of Ivers.
“I’ve spoken with your doctor,” Ivers said. “They think it’s a bit more serious than that.”
Lorraine beamed. She had her argument ready for when Tozzi told her he didn’t want to recuperate over at their place.
Ivers spoke with stern authority. “The doctor wants you off that leg for more than just a few days. I told him there’d be no problem. I’m putting you in for four weeks’ sick leave. If you need more time, you can have it. But I want you to use the time to rest. Do you understand?”
Gibbons could see the muscles working in Tozzi’s jaw. The same muscles were working in Ivers’s. To say these two didn’t see eye-to-eye on certain things would be like saying Jews and Arabs tend to have differences of opinion.
Tozzi thought Ivers was an ass-kissing paper pusher whose top priorities were his own image and his next promotion. He was right about that, but Ivers was also the boss and they had to live with him. It was one of those realities Tozzi had a hard time swallowing.
Ivers thought Tozzi was a hot dog, a disciplinary problem, an embarrassment to the Bureau. He was right, too. Only problem was, Tozzi had a nasty habit of getting results, which prevented Ivers from doing the one thing he wanted to do most in his tenure at the Manhattan field office: Shit-can Tozzi.
It was a cozy relationship, sort of like grit in a clam’s mouth. The irritation often produced pearls.
These two could butt heads like this for hours if you let them, but Gibbons decided to break it up before it got ugly. “Have the police gotten anything on the mugger?”
Ivers pursed his lips and shook his head. “They’ve promised to send me a report today, but they don’t seem to have much. Ballistics will analyze the slugs, for whatever it’s worth.”
“Which probably isn’t much.”
Ivers ignored Gibbons’s observation. He didn’t think much of opinions that didn’t come out of his own mouth. “The detectives assigned to the case will want to talk to you, Tozzi. They’re working on the theory that it wasn’t a simple mugging. They want to know if you have any enemies.”
Both Gibbons and Tozzi snorted out a bitter laugh at the same time.
Lorraine frowned.
Ivers stared at them from under his bushy eyebrows. “Am I missing something?”
Tozzi looked at Gibbons. “Do we have any enemies, Gib?”
Gibbons shrugged. “Only if you count all the wiseguys and mob associates in the five families. What’s that? Fifteen hundred, two thousand guys. That’s all.”
“Yeah, that’s all.”
Lorraine looked ill.
Ivers stood there like a high school principal, coughing to get the unruly class’s attention. “How about specific suspects? They want names.”
Tozzi rolled his eyes up. “Phew! Where do I begin? Well … Richie Varga, Juicy Vacarini, Sal Immordino, Ugo Salamandra, Emilio Zucchetti, Jules Collesano, Phillie Giovinazzo…” Tozzi ticked them off on his fingers. “Christ, everybody hates me.”
“Don’t sound so proud of it.” Ivers crossed his arms. The stone on his Yale class ring glinted in the sunlight.
Gibbons cupped his chin and considered Tozzi’s short list. Every one of those guys had a reason to want Tozzi six feet under. Him, too.
“Mr. Ivers?” A woman’s voice came in from the hallway.
Ivers stepped out of the doorway, and a smartly dressed black woman came in—glasses, navy suit, pearl-gray silk blouse, black leather shoulder bag. Gibbons guessed she was somewhere between thirty-three and forty-five, attractive in an executive sort of way. She wore her hair straight back and chopped at the neckline, a tortoiseshell hair band holding it in place. The glasses were stylish but sedate, purple-gray plastic frames, half-moons hanging from a heavy crossbar that covered her eyebrows. Gibbons wondered why she was dressed for business on a Saturday morning.
“Madeleine Cummings,” she said, and offered her hand to Ivers. “I was told I could find you here.”
Ivers shook her hand. “I didn’t expect you until Monday. Welcome to New York, Agent Cummings.”
Gibbons raised an eyebrow. Agent Cummings?
“I prefer Dr. Cummings, sir.”
Ivers nodded. “Of course.” He was smiling, which was unusual. He usually disdained correction from underlings.
“I arrived last night,” she said. “No sense in my wasting the weekend when I could be getting acquainted with my new assignment.”
Ivers smiled and nodded, proud of the new kid in class. Gibbons was waiting for her to pull a polished apple out of her purse to put on his desk.
“You must be Agent Tozzi,” Cummings said. Her gaze sank from Tozzi’s face to his bare foot. “I’m sorry to hear about your injury.”
She didn’t sound very sorry.
Tozzi reached up and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Ivers extended his arm to bring Gibbons and Lorraine into the circle. “Dr. Cummings, this is Agent Cuthbert Gibbons and Lorraine Bernstein.”
Gibbons instinctively clenched his jaw at the sound of his first name. He hated it, and he hated having to explain to people that he hated it. He preferred to be called Gibbons, just Gibbons, but he decided not to bother setting Dr. Cummings straight. He wouldn’t be seeing much of her since he never had much contact with people outside of the Organized Crime Unit, thank God.
Cummings shook his hand, then took Lorraine’s. “And may I ask what your interest is here, Ms. Bernstein?”
Lorraine was thrown off by the bluntness of her question. “Well … I’m Gibbons’s wife and Michael’s cousin.”
“I see.” Dr. Cummings turned back to Ivers, dismissing the husband-and-wife team.
“And by the way,” Lorraine added, “that’s Professor Bernstein.” Lorraine flashed her cordial de’ Medici smile.
Dr. Cummings’s head snapped back around. She offered a small smile of her own, nodding in approval.
“Dr. Cummings is with the Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico,” Ivers explained. “She’s going to be with us for a while.”
“To analyze Tozzi?” Gibbons smiled like a crocodile. “I always said he needed his head examined.”
Tozzi gave him the drop-dead stare. “I never heard you say that.”
“You never listen.”
“Actually, gentlemen,” Cummings said, “my specialty is aberrant psychology that expresses itself in compulsively violent manifestations.”
Gibbons exhaled a laugh. “Sounds like my partner’s last job evaluation.”
Lorraine shot him the hairy eyeball. That meant she wanted him to behave. She couldn’t pick on Tozzi in front of company so she probably figured she had to make do with picking on her husband because she could do that without talking, just dirty looks and signals. It’s a skill wives seem to develop naturally. Give her a few more years and she’d be using mental telepathy to chew him out, screaming into his head from out of the blue. It was too bad he loved her so much. Love can be a goddamn liability sometimes.
“Dr. Cummings is here as part of an internal exchange program the Bureau has instituted,” Ivers said. “Agents who normally work in the labs or at desk jobs will be getting some field experience in order to get a better understanding of how the system functions as a whole. Dr. Cummings will be working as a street agent for the next six weeks, getting a feel for the front line, as it were.”
Ivers and Cummings smiled and nodded, apparently pleased with each other. Gibbons nodded, but he wasn’t smiling. Another bullshit program from the brass in Washington. Let the executive agents tour the trenches for a month and a half so they’ll have something to talk about at their Georgetown dinner parties. Grade-A bullshit.
“I had planned to put Dr. Cummings with Robertson and Kelso,” Ivers said, “but since Tozzi will be on sick leave for at least a month, I think I’ll let her partner with
you, Bert.”
Gibbons face went slack. “What?”
“Yes.” Ivers nodded, confirming his own decision. “It makes sense in terms of manpower allotment. By the time Tozzi is ready to return to duty, Dr. Cummings’s stint here will almost be up.” Ivers smoothed the lapels of his camel sport jacket, proud of himself, the prick.
Gibbons’s stomach growled. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea. You can’t just slot anybody into an LCN investigation. I’m working full-time on the Mistretta rubout, for chrissake. This is no time for on-the-job training. I’ve got informants who trust me. They see a new face, they’ll clam right up. How’m I gonna get anything done with her hanging around?”
Cummings raised her chin and clasped her hands behind her back. “Agent Gibbons, do you think I’ll be an impediment to your La Cosa Nostra investigation because I’m a woman or because I’m black?”
Gibbons bared his teeth. “You’ll be an impediment because you don’t know a goddamn thing about working the street.”
She stared him in the eye, absolutely expressionless. “My race and sex have nothing to do with it?”
He stared back. “Your race and sex have everything to do with it. A wiseguy won’t think twice about whacking a black chick. To those people, you’re worth about as much as used coffee grounds.”
“Gibbons!” Lorraine’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. The usual outrage of the politically correct.
“I’m just telling you the way it is out there. They know who I am, and they know not to dick around with a fed. They don’t know who the hell you are, Cummings. And these sunny Italians don’t welcome visitors with open arms.”
“Well, you can introduce me.” She was very confident. “Once they know I’m a fed, they won’t dick with me either.” She cussed like a college girl smoking in front of her parents for the first time. Look at me, I’m a grown-up.
“Bert, I can’t think of a better man to put with Dr. Cummings than you,” Ivers said. “You’re the most senior agent in the field office.”
Gibbons bristled.
5 Bad Moon Page 5