Bad Blood

by Anthony Bruno

  Lorraine sighed. “All day I’ve been thinking about what it must be like to be a cop’s wife, but being married to a special agent has to be worse. It doesn’t end at the end of a shift. They’re always on the job, it seems, in mortal danger eighty percent of the time. That’s the way it seems to me. It’s not easy to love a man like that.”

  “Is Gibbons particularly . . . exuberant about his job?”

  “Exuberant? No. He gripes about it all the time. He’s dedicated, yes. Tenacious. Obsessed, too. But exuberant? No, that’s Michael, I think. It was him I used to worry about more than Gibbons.”

  “Why?” Roxanne looked surprised. She must not know him very well.

  “He’s reckless, a daredevil. And hard-headed, too. God, some of the things he’s done, you can’t even begin to imagine.” She stopped short and caught herself. She shouldn’t be telling her all this. It must sound awful.

  “I may be taking you the wrong way, Lorraine, but somehow this sounds like a warning.”

  Lorraine looked down at the coffeetable. “This is all premature, Roxanne. You two just met. I shouldn’t be scaring you like this.”

  “You’re not scaring me. I think you’re just concerned. And worried.”

  Lorraine looked her in the eye and saw Roxanne in her shoes. She may not think so now, but it could happen to her, too. God forbid. Lorraine pushed the hair out of her face. She knew she looked like a wreck, but from Roxanne’s point of view, maybe she seemed more like the ghost of Jacob Marley dragging his chains. Good. Roxanne needed a healthy dose of fear and reality. Nothing against Michael and his budding prospects, but she should be warned. No woman deserves to go through this.

  Lorraine then noticed the doctor with the beard standing out in the hall with Michael and Ivers. He was talking and they were listening. She couldn’t read his expression through the beard and glasses. Her stomach clenched, then cramped. She couldn’t move. He’s dead. That’s what he’s telling them. Michael’s going to come over and tell her Gibbons is dead.

  Michael was nodding to the doctor. She crossed her arms and pressed her forearms against her stomach. He turned away from the two men and came into the room. She wanted to double over, but she was petrified.

  “Lorraine,” he said softly.

  Always the gentle, soothing voice breaking the bad news. He reached out for her hand, but she couldn’t move. He sat down next to her and touched her knee. No, don’t say it!

  “Lorraine, the doctor just told us. He woke up. He’s gonna be all right. He’s out of the woods.”

  She closed her eyes and felt it all drain out of her until she was limp and empty, a spent balloon on the ground. He’s going to be all right. Dear God. “He’s going to be all right,” she repeated in a whisper.

  NINETEEN

  THE STREETS WERE deserted as Tozzi drove down Harrison Avenue. He saw a yellow light up ahead and sped through it, then immediately let up on the accelerator and brought it back down to forty. He didn’t want to give a cop on the graveyard shift something to do, but it was a struggle to stay off the pedal. It seemed calm outside his windshield, but inside his head he was ready to explode. Roxanne said she could see it in his face when he came back from seeing Gibbons after he woke up. She kept looking at him funny every time he gunned across an intersection on their way back to her apartment. She invited him to come in for awhile, asking him not to go yet. She knew he was crazy, and she was afraid he’d do something crazy. But she hadn’t seen Gibbons’s swollen face bursting out of the plastic neck brace, or the black-and-blue mark with the knuckle prints on his chest. She hadn’t heard him mumbling and rambling, barely coherent he was so doped up with painkillers. Tozzi knew he was crazy, that he was liable to do something he’d regret, but she didn’t understand. This was Gibbons they tried to kill, Gibbons.

  What Gibbons had been able to tell him, he already knew or just assumed. He’d been attacked at the chicken factory by a stocky Asian man wearing a loud black and white check sportsjacket over a black knit shirt. Gibbons also said something about a lot of Oriental guys just hanging around and watching. Tozzi figured these were probably slaves—unless they were yakuza. Tozzi asked him to describe them, but Gibbons was too out of it to answer.

  Either way he knew he had to check the place out for himself. He knew going there alone wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, but at two in the morning, D’Urso’s troops weren’t going to be in full force. Anyway, part of him wanted somebody to start something with him, give him an excuse to go wild. His nerves were jangling, and he was itching to pay somebody back for what happened to Gibbons because that was no ordinary assault. It was vicious and brutal . . . and it was Gibbons.

  Tozzi was trembling deep in his chest he was so mad. He knew it was wrong, but he wanted revenge and he wanted it badly. It was the kind of self-righteous thinking that had gotten him into trouble before, but that just didn’t seem to relate now. He tried to control this fury, he even tried to use things he’d learned at aikido class to get himself under control—keep one point, relax completely, never do anything out of anger. But as much sense as that made in class, he couldn’t apply it to himself, not now. Japanese wisdom had no appeal, not when it was a Japanese hitman who’d beaten the shit out of his partner.

  The tires squealed as he turned left off Harrison Avenue onto Queenstown Street, following it out until the road went from asphalt to cobblestones and the streetlights became scarcer between the prefab warehouses and the grim brick factories. Farm-Fresh Poultry was at the end of this dead-end on the left, a dingy brick factory dating from the twenties surrounded by a high cyclone fence. There were no lights on inside as far as he could see. Tozzi cruised by and made a U-turn at the end of the street, which was stupid, he realized as he did it. If someone was in there, the sweeping headlights may have already alerted him. It wasn’t the kind of street where cars just happen to get lost in the middle of a week night. But as he made his turn and his lights beamed into the lot behind the building, he noticed something odd. He stopped and backed up a few feet to get a better look.

  There were three pathetic-looking truck trailers parked in the corner of the lot. One was bashed in on top; another was listing to one side on a flat tire. Judging from the height of the weeds that had grown up around them, they hadn’t been on the road in some time. But the peculiar thing was that there were power lines running from the factory to each of the trailers. And on top of each one there was a refrigeration unit of some kind, which looked odd to him. Refrigeration units were usually on the front of the trailer, right over the cab of the tractor. They could’ve been keeping frozen chickens in those trailers, but somehow Tozzi didn’t think so. They seemed too makeshift for that.

  He pulled up to the curb, switched off his lights, and cut the engine. Moonlight beamed off the coils of razor wire on top of the cyclone fence. Pretty mean-looking stuff just to keep chickens in.

  Tozzi got out and fetched the bolt cutters out of the trunk. He went to the section of fence where the shadows were darkest and quickly snipped as many links as he thought he’d need to squeeze through. Maybe they wouldn’t notice a small hole right away, he thought, tossing the cutters back into the trunk. He pried open the flaps in the fence and forced his way through. Gouging himself on the sharp ends, he wished he’d cut a few more links. Too late now.

  He walked around the perimeter of the fence, staying as far as possible from the spread of the floodlights attached to the corners of the factory. As he approached the trailers, he could hear the drone of those refrigeration units, which up close seemed more like the kind of central air-conditioning units you see tucked behind the shrubs in the suburbs. The first thing he thought of was an after-hours gambling joint, but there were no cars in the lot. When he walked up to the nearest trailer, he noticed a shiny new padlock in the rusty door hasp. He put his ear to the cold gray metal, but all he could hear was the vibrations of the droning air-conditioner on top. He reached into his pocket for his Pik-Ez set and went to work on
the lock. It popped open easily enough. Opening the door was going to be the hard part. Tozzi pulled the .44 Special Bulldog out of his belt clip, not knowing what the hell to expect.

  The rusty hasp sounded like fingernails on a blackboard as he moved the handle and threw open one of the doors. The floodlights cast weird shadows inside the dark compartment, shadows with eyes that shined back at him, a lot of eyes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He was afraid he’d find something like this.

  Tozzi climbed in slowly, his gun pointed up but at the ready. Despite the noisy air-conditioners, the air was hot and wet in there, the stink overpowering, like a combination of BO and artificial roses.

  Light from the parking lot angled into the trailer. Metal-frame bunk beds lining the walls on both sides, three high. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light in there, he could make out a few of the sallow faces peering at him. He took a step forward and suddenly heard an agitated voice coming from the shadows in the back. He could barely hear it over the noisy vent in the ceiling.

  “Anyone speak English here?”

  The complainer continued to jabber in what Tozzi guessed was Japanese as he stepped out of the shadows. Tozzi was surprised to see how young he was, just a teenager. He was also surprised when he realized that the kid wasn’t talking to him. He was harping at one of his buddies in a bottom bunk. “Takayuki! Takayuki!” he kept repeating, then he turned to Tozzi. “This Takayuki,” he said in broken English, pointing down at the bunk. “He talk.”

  The kid hunkered down next to the bunk and jabbered even more insistently now, this Takayuki guy in the bunk replying in what seemed like one-word answers. Finally Takayuki rolled out of the shadows and stood up in the aisle, facing Tozzi. He was a kid too, and he had a nasty bruise that covered one side of his face like an unlucky birthmark. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Tozzi guessed from the gray-yellow color of the bruise that the beating had been several days ago.

  “We will not work now,” he said to Tozzi in very good English.

  “What?”

  “No more night work. That was not in our agreement. We must refuse.”

  Tozzi fingered the gun in his hand and suddenly realized that these poor bastards probably thought he was one of D’Urso’s goons here to drag them back to the factory. He stared at Takayuki’s bruised face and felt for him. He was making a stand but his tone was so weary and resigned. It was as if he were just saying this because he felt he had to, not because he thought it would do any good.

  Tozzi put his gun away. “I’m not one of D’Urso’s men. I’m with the FBI.”

  No reaction.

  “I’m a federal law-enforcement agent . . . a policeman. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m rescuing you guys.” Tozzi smiled and nodded his head to reassure them.

  Takayuki shook his head. He looked even sadder now. “Thank you for coming, but please leave now. And please lock the door behind you. Thank you.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t understand. If the lock is not secured, they will think we tried to escape. The consequences for that are severe.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? D’Urso?”

  “Yes, D’Urso,” he said tentatively. “But it’s usually Nagai’s men who do the actual punishment.”

  “Nagai?”

  “Yes. Nagai. Who else? The Fugukai enforces the rules. They were the ones who brought us here. Surely you must know this . . .” Takayuki’s eyes widened as his voice trailed off.

  The names started to register with Tozzi. D’Urso, his wife, and her brother had mentioned Nagai and the Fugukai on the deck the other day. There was another guy they talked about, too. What the hell was his name? “Do you know someone called . . . Mashiro?”

  The inside of the trailer suddenly went dead silent. The vent kept sucking like a mechanical blow-hole. “Tell me,” Tozzi finally said. “I can help you.”

  Takayuki hunkered down next to his bunk, lifted the thin mattress, and pulled out a worn newspaper. Tozzi recognized it right away. It was a copy of the Post from last week. He remembered the headline, DEATH BUG FOUND IN HARBOR.

  Takayuki held up the newspaper for Tozzi to see. “We steal newspapers from the truck drivers so we can know what’s going on in the world. These two people who were killed? My cousin and his fiancée. They tried to escape, but Mashiro found them. This was their punishment.”

  “Do you know this for sure? Are you certain Mashiro killed them?”

  “I’m sure. Mashiro handles all the punishments.” Takayuki turned his face to the light and ran his index finger along his bruised cheek. It was worse than Tozzi thought. “The work of the yakuza samurai,” Takayuki said bitterly. “Pain and death are his purpose for being.”

  Tozzi looked around at the scared faces. “A friend of mine came here to the factory yesterday. An older man, gray hair, about my height—”

  Takayuki was already nodding. “Yes, Mashiro did that, too. Is your friend still alive?”

  Tozzi was put off by the presumptive question. Why did he automatically assume that Gibbons was dead? Was Mashiro that bad? “Yeah, he’s alive. He’s in the hospital, but he’ll be all right.”

  “That’s good. I am relieved. I apologize for not doing more to help your friend, but interfering with Mashiro often means death. He was going to break your friend’s neck, but I threw a chicken at him. I hoped it would break his concentration.”

  “His concentration?”

  “Karate. It’s one of Mashiro’s deadly arts. He was attempting to break your friend’s neck with his bare hand.”

  Tozzi closed his eyes. His head was beginning to pound. He wanted to hit something, break something. This fat-ass Mashiro in his stupid check jacket was settling into the crosshairs of his anger. “Explain something to me,” he said, forcing himself to breathe evenly so he could calm down enough to talk. “How did this happen to you? Were you all kidnapped? How did you get here?”

  “In the trunk of a Toyota Corolla. Very tight.”

  “You mean they smuggled you people into the country in the trunks of new cars?”

  Takayuki nodded. “On cargo ships from Japan. They put us in trunks the night before the ship was loaded. We remained hidden until we were far out at sea. As we approached America, we had to go back into the trunks again. Sometimes many days lying in one position, in the dark, breathing through an air hose. Very—what’s the word in English?—claustrophobia. When I came over, unloading took longer than anticipated. I had consumed all my food and drink. I went without for, I think, two whole days.”

  “How the hell could they do this to you? It’s . . . unbelievable.”

  Takayuki shrugged. “It was bad. But not as bad as living under the oppression of Mashiro and the Fugukai.”

  “How . . . how did they do it? Were you all kidnapped?”

  “No, we were not kidnapped. We agreed to come.”

  “You agreed to come?”

  “Yes, of course. We all signed contracts with the Fugukai.”

  Takayuki turned back to his companions and said something in Japanese. Several of them rustled through their belongings and pulled out folded sheets of paper to show Tozzi. Their contracts.

  Tozzi just shook his head in disbelief. “The Fugukai is a yakuza gang, right?”

  “Yes. The Blow Fish Gang in English.”

  “Why the hell would you sign any kind of deal with the yakuza? They’re criminals. Do you know that? What made you think you could trust them? What did you think you were going to get out of this deal?”

  “We got it. Passage to America, the land of opportunity.”

  Tozzi rolled his eyes. “I’m caught in a fucking time warp,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t understand.”

  “I will explain. The Fugukai offered to get us to America in exchange for our services. We were led to believe that we would have good jobs in the fields of our interests. Obviously they lied to us about that. But you see, we wanted to come to America so we could succeed in life and regain our los
t honor. In Japan we are labeled failures because we did not score high enough on our university entrance exams. If we had stayed in Japan, we would have only qualified for jobs as clerks, secretaries, assistant store managers, postal employees.”

  Tozzi’s Uncle Frank, Lorraine’s father, had been a mailman. “So what’s wrong with that?”

  “Failure is disgrace. How can you face your friends and family when they know you are a person without honor?”

  “Come on, there’s more to life than school. Can’t you get ahead on the job in Japan?”

  “Very difficult. The jobs we could get pay very little money, and everything in Japan is very expensive. Japan is a prosperous country, yes, but prosperity is only for the prosperous. The salaries we could earn would only pay for the bare necessities: a small one-room apartment, two, maybe three hours commuting time from Tokyo, a very tiny car, enough food but nothing special, a small stereo and a television but none of the elaborate electronic equipment our country proudly exports to the world. Not easy for a failure to get ahead in our country.” Takayuki coughed out a humorless laugh. “We did not want to be slaves to menial jobs. The Fugukai told us that in America the system was different. Desire and diligence counted for more here. We could succeed here, regain our honor, make our parents proud of us again. That’s what they told us and we believed them.”

  “How did you kids get involved with the yakuza in the first place? You were students for chrissake.”

  “With shabu.”

  Tozzi shrugged. “What’s shabu?”

  Takayuki turned to his friends and had a short conference. “Shabu means ‘white diamonds.’ That’s what we call it at home. I believe you call it ‘speed’ here.”

  “You mean ‘speed’ as in drugs? As in amphetamines?”

  Takayuki nodded. “Yes, drugs.” He didn’t seem at all ashamed to admit to it.

  “Are you telling me you guys are all speed freaks? Drug addicts?”

  Takayuki furrowed his brow and shook his head. “No. All serious students in Japan take shabu so that we can stay awake to study at night, especially during exam hell.”