Bad Blood

by Anthony Bruno

  “I told you there was more bad news,” Reiko said, breaking into his thoughts. “Don’t you want to hear it? You don’t seem very concerned.” She didn’t hide her annoyance with him. She hadn’t always been this bold and testy with him. It was only after she started spying for him that she started talking back like this.

  He stared her in the eye and considered a hard slap across the face to remind her where her place was. “I’m listening. Speak.”

  “D’Urso and Michelle had a fight over me. He wants to take me out of the house and make me a prostitute in his whorehouse.” She said it like a threat.

  “Have they told you to pack your things yet?”

  “No. She wants me to stay with the child. But he’s determined and he always gets his way. I’m telling you right now, though. I am not going to be a prostitute! I’ll run away first.”

  He stared at her. He didn’t like this belligerent pushiness of hers. She’d picked that up in D’Urso’s house. “You’re not there yet. Don’t worry about it until it happens.” He wondered if he could change her mind. Having a spy down at the whorehouse in Atlantic City could be advantageous. It wasn’t as if she’d never done it before. Maybe he could convince her, make her a few promises. Not now, though. Later. After she cools down.

  “He likes me, you know. I always catch him staring at me, saying little suggestive things to me.”

  Nagai furrowed his brow. “Who?”

  “D’Urso! He wants to fuck me. One of these days when Michelle is out shopping, he’s going to do it. He’s going to rape me.” She didn’t sound worried. Just more of that threatening defiance in her voice.

  “You never told me this about him.”

  “Well, I’m telling you now. It’s true. He wants me very badly.” She sounded like a little spoiled brat.

  “If you let him,” he said slowly, “consider yourself just another slave. That’s a promise.”

  She pouted and whined. “But what if I can’t stop him?”

  “That’s your problem.” Her face was on the verge of crumpling into tears. She knew he meant it.

  He looked up at the branching cracks in the ceiling. They didn’t look like anything in particular. He shut his eyes. He could’ve drifted right off, but he knew she’d wake him up as soon as he did.

  He heard her sniffing back her tears. “What are you going to do?” she demanded. “This is serious.”

  He opened his eyes and stared at her, annoyed with her badgering. “I’ll decide what to do and when to do it.”

  “But you—”

  “But nothing. Everything is under control for the time being. You’re not in the whorehouse yet, and I happen to know that Antonelli is in Florida right now. D’Urso won’t try a hit on unfamiliar territory.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “I know.” I was there. D’Urso wants revenge. He wants to see it, at least be near enough to feel it. Another mistake.

  Reiko sat up and hugged her knees. “I don’t see how you can say everything is under control. You haven’t done a thing yet.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. If D’Urso tries to move you out of the house, we’ll deal with that then. But as it stands, no one’s bothering us. As Mashiro always says, let the attackers come to you, don’t go chasing them. Until they bother us, we won’t bother them.” But if I ever find out D’Urso is getting it on with you . . .

  She reached across his chest and took a cigarette from his pack of Marlboros on the nighttable. “This sounds like the spiritual bullshit the karate teachers used to hand us in school. You going zen on me now?” She lit the cigarette, then tossed his lighter back onto the nighttable. It bounced off and hit the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up.

  When she mentioned school, Nagai thought of that slave at the chicken factory, Takayuki, the one she went to school with. Had she been a ball-buster like this when the poor bastard tried to win her affections with English tutoring? She could be cruel when she wanted to be.

  He glanced at his lighter on the cheap blue shag rug. “I’m not zen, just smart. A little strategic thinking works in these situations. Ask Mashiro about it sometime.”

  She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “No thanks.”

  “There’s a lot to be learned from him.”

  She didn’t answer. He knew that she thought of Mashiro as just another thug in the gang, someone definitely below her status and unworthy of her consideration. But is a good woman worth more than a loyal man? A man of Mashiro’s abilities? He didn’t have to wonder. Mashiro didn’t talk back.

  She was pouting again, still hugging her knees, watching the smoke rise from the tip of the cigarette in her hand. He took the cigarette from her and stuck it in his mouth as he picked out a strand of her hair and slid it through his fingers, making a small noose with the end. Squinting through the rising smoke, he looped the noose over her nipple and tightened it until she brushed him away. He laughed softly. Suddenly she threw her arms around him, burying her head in his chest and covering his tattoos with all that ebony hair. He smiled. This was what he liked to see.

  “I love you, Nagai. All I want is for us to be happy together. That’s all I want.”

  He felt the tears on his skin, and he hugged her, sliding his fingers through all that hair. His smile faded. I love you. Just like the Americans in the movies, he thought. Burt Lancaster and the blonde on the beach . . . getting it on . . . getting sand in their bathing suits . . . just before Pearl Harbor.

  He stroked her hair, looking at his cigarette lighter on the floor, listening to the traffic outside the drawn curtains. It must be getting late. Mashiro was waiting. D’Urso’s wife would be expecting her home from her “walk” soon. It was time to go.

  SEVENTEEN

  “WHERE’S THE RUSSIAN?” Tozzi looked pissed.

  Gibbons slathered mustard on the two halves of his pastrami on pumpernickel as Tozzi made faces at his sandwich. Now what the hell was bothering him? “What’s the matter?”

  Tozzi didn’t answer. He was staring at their waitress, trying to get her attention, but Rudy’s Deli, like every other halfway decent place to eat in Lower Manhattan, was always mobbed at lunchtime, and she was busy taking orders at another booth.

  “I must come here at least twice a week,” Tozzi grumbled, “and nine times out of ten I order the same thing, turkey on rye with coleslaw and Russian on the sandwich. And every time they get it wrong. They always forget to put the coleslaw on the sandwich, but today it’s something new. Today they forget the Russian.” The waitress was rushing over to the sandwich counter now. Tozzi started waving to her. “Selma! Over here!”

  “Normal people eat coleslaw on the side,” Gibbons said, considering the sandwich half in his hand. “Why do you have to have it on the sandwich? You special?”

  “Because that’s the way I like it, and that’s the way I goddamn ordered it. Selma!”

  Gibbons bit into his pastrami, wishing Tozzi’d just shut up and eat his goddamn sandwich the way it was. Who the hell wanted to hear Selma now? She was the reason he didn’t come here all that often. That sick cow face and the dramatic sighs and the breast beating as she cried on your shoulder with that same old story of hers. Jesus.

  Gibbons ate as Tozzi kept waving and eventually Selma came waddling over, jiggling her D-cups, pencils stuck out of either side of the lacquered red hairdo that didn’t move. “What can I do for you, hon?”

  Tozzi explained his big problem in great detail. He sounded like some old lady complaining down at the Social Security office. Gibbons kept eating, trying not to pay attention, hoping he could ignore what he knew was going to come next, the sad tale of Lydia and Morris.

  When Tozzi finished with his complaint, Selma shook her head slowly and clucked, pulling the sick cow face. She sighed and squeezed into the booth next to Tozzi, shoving him over with her hip. Shit. Here we go.

  “You know Rudy never used to make these kind of mistakes,” she said with another long, dramati
c sigh. “You have to forgive him. He hasn’t been the same since Lydia left him.”

  Gibbons looked over at the short guy with the bad toupee making sandwiches behind the counter. He didn’t look so bad.

  She sighed again, paused, then started her story. “That Lydia—a beautiful woman, I can’t deny that—but trouble from the word go. Never wanted to work here in the deli. She thought it was beneath her. Not even hostessing she would do. ‘It’s okay,’ I told Rudy at the time. ‘We can manage.’ I mean, who needed her, the Jezebel? She couldn’t pour a cup of coffee without spilling to save her life. And the few times she did work here, she just flirted with anyone who’d pay attention to her—and believe me, everybody paid attention to Lydia. Even my Morris, the schnook.”

  Selma looked up at the ceiling now and rapped her knuckles on her chest a few times. “Six days a week my brother and I ride the Long Island Expressway at the crack of dawn to open this place up. Four-twenty in the morning, every morning, Rudy picks me up. For twenty-two years we’ve been doing this. So how were we supposed to know that back in Hempstead, my sister-in-law Lydia was keeping the sheets warm for that son-of-a-bitch husband of mine? Come to find out they’d been doing it for years, practically from the day that bitch—excuse my language—stood under the chuppah with my poor brother. Can you imagine? We don’t know nothing, Rudy and me. We’re busy working here. Then one day the two of them troop in here just before the lunch rush and tell us that they’re in love and that they’re leaving together. Rudy’s stunned, he can’t work for the rest of the day. Me, I want to kill her. One of the dishwashers had to stop me, actually physically had to stop me. I had the bread knife right here in my hand. I was going to slice her up like a challah, the farshtinkener bitch.”

  Selma paused to shake her head and sigh again. “There it was, ten to twelve, and I’m watching the two of them get into our Chrysler—which, by the way, had just seven payments left on it, most of which was paid for by yours truly—and I see them drive off, heading for who the hell knows where. Never saw them again, the both of them. The car either. And it was a nice car, too. I hope she made his life miserable.” She sighed again and stared off into space.

  “That’s awful,” Tozzi said. He looked uncomfortable. Probably felt guilty for bothering a woman with such troubles for something as trivial as Russian dressing. The sap.

  Gibbons bit into his pastrami and stared at her as he chewed. “How long ago did that happen, Selma?”

  She focused her eyes on Gibbons’s and narrowed them with vengeance. “I’ll never forget. It was a nice sunny Friday in April. Nineteen-seventy-two.”

  Gibbons nodded. “Life is tough, Selma.” He still had a hairline in ’72. So did Rudy, probably. He glanced over at Tozzi who was trying to look sympathetic when he was really wishing she’d just go away and let them eat. You satisfied, asshole?

  “Rudy never got over it, huh?” Tozzi’s concern sounded lame.

  Selma suddenly whipped her head around and nearly put Tozzi’s eye out with one of her pencils. “Could you get over something like that?” she said. “How could you? My brother deserved better than her. He was a good-looking man. He could’ve done better.”

  “Say, Selma,” Gibbons said, finally fed up with the soap opera, “how about a refill on the coffee when you get a chance?”

  Suddenly she seemed to come back to her senses. “Oh, sure, hon, I’m sorry. It’s just that I get carried away when I talk about—”

  “Yeah, I know.” He cut her off before she got started again.

  She struggled out of the brown vinyl-upholstered booth and stood up, patting the back of her hairdo. “I’ll be right back with a fresh pot.”

  “And will you bring this guy some Russian for his sandwich?” Gibbons called after her. “Before he has a conniption fit,” he added under his breath.

  “You’re a real sweet guy, Gib. The lady’s pouring her heart out and all you’re worried about is your coffee.”

  “I’ve heard the story before. Anyway you’re the one who called her over because you didn’t get your goddamn Russian.”

  Selma returned then with a Pyrex pot of coffee and a paper cup of Russian dressing for Tozzi. “There you go, boys. Everything hunky-dory now?”

  Gibbons looked up at her. “Yeah, hunky-dory.”

  “Thanks, Selma,” Tozzi said nicely, trying to make up for his partner’s rude behavior.

  “Okee-doke.” She turned and waddled down to the next booth to peddle her refills.

  “Now,” Gibbons said, tearing the foil off a little plastic cup of half and half and dumping it into his cup, “fly that cock-and-bull story by me once more, the one you were trying to sell me before you had to have your little Russian incident.”

  Tozzi frowned. “Look, I know you think this is bullshit, but I heard them talking about it. I was right there lying on my stomach under the shrubs. D’Urso is importing slaves from Japan.”

  Gibbons sipped his coffee. “I don’t buy it, Toz.”

  “Why not? Christ, I saw Japanese nannies all over Milburn. Roxanne Eastlake, the woman at the nanny agency I told you about, told me it’s D’Urso’s wife who’s handling them. Also, I overheard them talking about the ‘yaks.’ They could’ve been referring to the yakuza, the Japanese Mafia.”

  Gibbons closed his eyes and shook his head. Here he goes again. First it’s a devil cult, then it’s a karate killer, now it’s the yakuza. Gibbons decided not even to comment on it. “I still don’t buy this Japanese slave-trade shit. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Japan is a rich country and everything is expensive over there. If you were gonna buy slaves, you’d buy them cheap, right? Get them from some dirt-poor third-world country, right? Not from a country where a steak costs you eighty bucks. Am I right?”

  Tozzi rubbed his mouth. He was getting frustrated. Logic that didn’t jibe with his version of reality had a way of doing that to him. “All I know is what I heard.”

  “So why don’t you go tell Ivers.”

  Tozzi was glaring at him now. Gibbons smiled like a crocodile. He knew why. “Well, you can’t say the man didn’t warn you, Toz. If you had reason to believe there was something going on at D’Urso’s house, why didn’t you ask for a wiretap? He’s gonna be real happy to hear about you sneaking through the bushes, eavesdropping on D’Urso with nothing on tape, nothing we can use against him in court. I swear to God, Tozzi, you get smarter everyday.”

  “Okay, fine. Now that we’ve established that I’m the fuckup here, and you’ve gotten your licks in, how about if we decide how we’re gonna proceed with this?”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  “We’re partners on this case. Remember?”

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  “Good, I’m glad to see the Alzheimer’s hasn’t set in too badly yet.”

  Gibbons sipped his coffee and ignored the comment. “What have you got in mind, Sherlock? I can’t wait to hear.”

  “I want you to go to D’Urso’s chicken processing plant in Harrison and check it out. It’s called Farm-Fresh Poultry, and it’s supposed to be one of his legit fronts, but from what they were saying on his deck the other day, I have a feeling he may be using slave workers there.”

  “So why don’t you go? You got something against chickens?”

  “His brother-in-law knows my face. He thinks I work for the gardener.”

  “Who the hell is this brother-in-law? What are you worrying about him for?”

  “His name is Bobby Francione. He’s on file in the computer. Just got out of Rahway a little while ago. He was into stealing cars for a high-ticket chop shop up in Bergen County. Only German cars—Mercedes, Audis, and BMWs. His file says he was little more than a gofer, but I have a feeling he’s got big ambitions now. He seems pretty tight with D’Urso.”

  Gibbons propped his face on his hand and looked at Tozzi sideways. “Why should I have to go to Harrison? Why not get someone from the Newark
office to check out the chickens?”

  “You know why. Because I’d have to go through Ivers who would want to know why I suspect D’Urso and how I arrived at those suspicions, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “And you don’t want to tell him you’ve been moonlighting with a gardener for purposes of unlawful surveillance.”

  Tozzi nodded as he finally took a big bite out of his sandwich. The coleslaw inside dripped out the bottom and through his fingers. He seemed satisfied. Gibbons wondered if this was what they meant by “hog heaven.”

  “Besides,” Tozzi said with his mouth full, “Newark operates like the Keystone Kops. They think they’re the Untouchables over there. Very unsubtle.”

  “I’ve never heard that.” In fact, he had.

  “Come on, Gib. I was hoping you could get in and out of there without showing your ID. Just look around, see how many slanty eyes you can count. If you find a few, then we’ll have something to work with, something we can go to Ivers with.”

  “And what will I tell him when he asks what the hell I was doing out of our jurisdiction?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll cook something up. Just go check out the chicken shack. Please.”

  Gibbons rubbed his nose with the back of his finger. Goddamn Tozzi. Always had to go through the back door first. Slaves. From Japan. With the yakuza. He was fucking crazy. How about a simple, illegal alien shakedown, just like the kind of shit that goes down every day on the Mexican border? Someone knew those two kids were sneaking into the country. They were easy prey. They were probably robbed and killed for whatever money they had on them. Simple as that. The only twist was that they came from Japan, not Central America, and it happened somewhere in New York Harbor, not down in Texas or out in California. That’s what he thought this was all about. But Tozzi didn’t want to hear about that. It was too logical.

  “So will you do it?” Tozzi persisted. “Will you check out the chicken shack?”