Bad Luck

by Anthony Bruno

  “You really think it looks okay?” He made like he was inspecting the tags on the sleeve while he watched her.

  “I told you what I thought.” Indignation in her voice now. Gibbons stared down at the pant legs bunched up around his ankles and nodded in thought. The color wasn’t that bad. May as well buy the goddamn thing. If he didn’t do it today, she’d drag him out to more stores next week, and he definitely didn’t want to waste another day in another goddamn mall. Just buy it and be done with it. By tomorrow he’d be down in Atlantic City, out in the field and on the job. He couldn’t wait. He hadn’t told Lorraine about his new assignment yet. She wasn’t going to be happy. She didn’t like him working the streets. Well, too bad. He had to get away from her precious wedding arrangements before she drove him nuts. Just get the suit and make her happy so that when he tells her that he’s gonna be gone for a while on assignment, she won’t be able to say anything. That was how the deal worked, the unspoken, married-people’s compromise.

  “Yeah, you may be right, after all,” he said. “I guess it is better to wear something light in June. Dark colors absorb sunrays or something like that, make you hot. It’s not a bad suit, really. I think I’ll take it.”

  “Thank God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Stay here. I’ll get someone to take a fitting.” She steered around a rack of herringbone-tweed sport coats to look for a salesman.

  Gibbons scratched his ear and watched her go. This was depressing. He never used to scheme and negotiate like this with Lorraine. Why was it so different now? Just because he finally agreed to make it official? They weren’t even married yet, and he was already beginning to miss the way things used to be. Tozzi was a lucky bastard. He was single and he was working undercover. What more could you want? Lucky bastard.

  Gibbons scanned a row of suits hanging against the wall, slick-looking European-cut suits. Giorgio Porgio, Tozzi’s kind of thing. A black one with faint blue pinstripes caught his eye, and he picked up the sleeve to check the tag. He saw the price and nearly shit his pants. Eight hundred and ninety-five bucks? For a suit? In Macy’s? You gotta be kidding.

  He parted the suits on the rack to get a better look at this thing. It was definitely Tozzi. Tozzi liked guinea clothes like this. He’d spend nine hundred dollars on a suit like this if he could afford it. He had champagne tastes about a lot of things, come to think of it, but he was in the wrong line of work for the high life. A special agent’s salary just didn’t stretch that far . . .

  Gibbons thought about that call-in tape that Ivers had played for him, Tozzi’s wiseguy attitude. Champagne tastes. Must be a lot of perks working for someone like Russell Nashe. A lot of temptations too. A personal bodyguard must see all the good stuff—the cars, the women, everything money can buy. Everything Tozzi could never afford. Maybe Ivers’s suspicions aren’t that farfetched. Maybe Tozzi likes being Mike Tomasso. Maybe it’s more fun than being Mike Tozzi.

  Of course, Tozzi isn’t the type to be satisfied working as someone else’s body slave. Tozzi’s too much of a hot dog. He never goes for the first down, not when he can grandstand it and throw the bomb. Gibbons looked at the black suit on the rack. Tozzi is in a good position if he decided to go bad. Offer Nashe a deal, offer to string out the investigation, make it look like he’s digging hard, then in the end tell the Bureau he’s come up empty, that Nashe is as clean as they come. In exchange for the good report card Nashe pays him off nicely. And then there’s Sal Immordino. Mafia guy like him would love to have an FBI agent in his pocket, especially one from the Manhattan field office. Lot of potential there if Tozzi wanted to turn bad.

  Doubtful though. Not Tozzi. He can be an asshole, but he’s not a rat. Gibbons puckered his lips and looked at the nine-hundred-dollar suit, imagined Tozzi in it, behind the wheel of a black Mercedes or a Corvette maybe, Ray-Bans, hot-looking babe next to him. Gibbons dropped the sleeve with the price tag and buried the suit back in with the others. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “Is this the lucky groom?” a swishy voice crooned behind him.

  “That’s him.”

  Lorraine was standing behind the swish, that gooney wedding-smile on her face. The guy had the same gooney smile curling under his big beak. The lucky groom? What the hell was she doing, telling this guy their personal business? For chrissake. A potbellied old queer with dyed red hair and a face like a cockatoo. Gibbons spotted the yellow tape measure hanging around the queer’s neck. He looked at Lorraine and groaned. Shit, this must be love. Why else would anyone put up with this crap?

  “If you’ll come this way, sir, we can get your measurements and you’ll be all set.”

  Gibbons didn’t say a word. He picked up his pant legs and padded off behind the cockatoo toward the fitting room, Lorraine bringing up the rear. In the fitting room the cockatoo bowed his head and gestured like a coachman for him to stand up on the carpeted blocks in front of the three-way mirror. Gibbons stepped up and looked at his three reflections in the three mirrors. Three guys with thin gray hair and too much forehead in baggy pants and untied shoes about to buy a suit he didn’t even like. Three fucking married men. He sneered into the mirror just to show himself that he was still the same guy.

  “Now we’ll just button this up.” The cockatoo reached around Gibbons’s waist from behind. Instinctively Gibbons clenched his wrists.

  “I can do it,” he said.

  “As you wish.” The cockatoo seemed unperturbed.

  Probably likes being manhandled, Gibbons thought. His kind do.

  The cockatoo pulled down on the hem of the jacket, then smoothed the material over his back. He kept running his hands over Gibbons’s back, pulling and tugging here and there, making little frustrated grunts and mumbles with each yank on the material. Gibbons glared over his shoulder, wondering what the hell he was doing.

  “You got a problem back there?”

  “Well . . . yes. I do.” The cockatoo kept fussing with the jacket. “Are you standing up straight, sir? This jacket just isn’t hanging right on you.”

  Gibbons grinned and caught Lorraine’s eye in the mirror. The cockatoo kept pulling on the jacket, trying to figure out where the problem was. Then he found it, under the left armpit. Gibbons unbuttoned the jacket and reached in where his gun rested snugly in its holster. Excalibur, the .38 Colt Cobra Gibbons had used his entire career as an FBI agent. The cockatoo stared at the revolver in the mirror. He looked pretty pale all of a sudden.

  “You can let it out a little on this side, can’t you?” Gibbons was trying not to smirk.

  The cockatoo coughed. “As you wish, sir.”

  “I wish,” Gibbons said.

  “I don’t,” Lorraine said. She looked pissed as she stepped over and hissed in his ear. “Did you have to bring that?”

  “I always bring Excalibur when I get a new suit. Otherwise it ends up being too tight.”

  “This suit is for our wedding, for God’s sake. You don’t need a gun to get married.”

  “Well, I’m not gonna wear it just once. After the wedding I can wear it to work. What the hell did you think?”

  She didn’t answer. He knew what she wanted to say, but she didn’t say it. Another one of the symptoms of this wedding disease she had. No arguments. Extremely non-confrontational. She was probably afraid he’d back out if she got him too riled up. Of all the crazy things she was doing now, this was the worst.

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Of course. You’re right.” Then she went back to her place.

  Goddammit! He hated when she did this. These days she just swallowed whatever he said and made like everything was fine and dandy. He knew she didn’t like his carrying a gun and working the streets, but she hadn’t said boo about his work in the past two months. Anything not to rock the boat. Jesus!

  “Sir, I’m sure we can accommodate your . . . your—”

  “Gun.”

  “Yes, I’m sure our tailor can take the jacket out as you wish.” The cockatoo looked very jumpy. />
  “Good. You do that.”

  The cockatoo nodded and went back to work with his tape measure, chalk marker, and pin cushion. Quietly, this time.

  Gibbons tried to catch Lorraine’s eye in the mirror again, but she wouldn’t look at him. This was the suffer-in-silence phase.

  “What do you hear from Tozzi these days?” he asked. She loved her cousin, used to baby-sit him when he was a kid. Gibbons knew this would bring her out.

  She lifted her eyes and shrugged. “Not much. Aunt Concetta told me he dropped by to see her a few weeks ago. She said he didn’t look happy, but he wouldn’t talk about it. She said he got very moody when she asked him if there was anything wrong. She called and asked me if I knew what was wrong with him. She was certain there was something wrong.”

  “Your relatives always think there’s something wrong,” Gibbons said. “It’s in the blood.” Goddamn suspicious Italians. Never met one who wasn’t.

  Lorraine shrugged again. “Maybe so, but Aunt Concetta is pretty sharp, even at her age. She was right about Daniel.”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel. My ex. The guy who ran out on me.”

  “Oh yeah. Mr. Bernstein.” Another queer.

  “Aunt Concetta thought there was something wrong with him the first time she met him. She was right. The bastard had another wife in Missouri and a fiancée in Toronto.”

  “And he was a homo too, wasn’t he?” Gibbons glanced in the mirror at the cockatoo for a reaction. The bird kept his head down and concentrated on sticking pins in the pants. Probably afraid he’d get shot if he said anything.

  “Bisexual. And that was just a rumor. We never found out for sure.”

  Lorraine’s face changed. The dopey smile was gone and that handsome, ageless beauty was back. She could look like a great painting sometimes. A face you could study for years and never pin down in your mind. This was the Lorraine Gibbons wanted to marry.

  “Bastard,” she said in a whisper.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the cockatoo whispered, afraid to interrupt. “Do you want cuffs on the trousers?”

  Gibbons looked down at the cockatoo on his knees. “No cuffs.” The guy seemed to be shaking a bit, afraid he’d stick Gibbons with a pin. Gibbons shook his head. Pathetic. “What about that girl Tozzi had been seeing? The redhead. She still around?”

  “Roxanne?” Lorraine shook her head. “That’s all over with. I don’t think her nerves could take it. Last time I talked to Michael—”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, at least five or six weeks ago.”

  “Yeah, what did he say?”

  “He just mentioned something about Roxanne leaving a message on his machine after he hadn’t seen her in months, but he decided not to return her call. It wasn’t worth it, he said. They really didn’t have that much in common, he claimed.”

  Gibbons didn’t like the sound of this. Shitcanning the old girlfriend when she’s making an attempt to reconcile. Could be a bad sign, burning his bridges behind him. Was Tozzi trying to erase his old life to make room for a new one? Maybe he really is going bats. “Did he happen to say anything else when you talked to him? I mean, about how he is, what he’s doing? You know.”

  “Are you kidding? When do you guys ever say anything about what you’re doing. G-men don’t make chitchat.”

  The cockatoo had moved on to Gibbons’s sleeves, pulling them down snugly to mark the length. “Will you be wearing French cuffs with this suit, sir?”

  Gibbons gave him a hard stare. “What do you think?”

  The cockatoo cleared his throat. “I didn’t think so,” he mumbled. His hand was definitely shaking as he marked the sleeve, but he managed to make a reasonably straight line. Grace under pressure.

  “You know, I was thinking,” Lorraine said.

  Gibbons looked at her in the mirror. The handsome beauty had disappeared from her face. She had the gooney look again.

  She wrinkled her nose. “The food we picked for the reception? Chicken parmigian’ and baked ziti seems awfully mundane. Maybe we should have something a little more unusual.”

  “Your relatives don’t eat unusual. If there’s no macaroni, they won’t come.”

  Lorraine scowled. “They’re not that bad. Not all of them.”

  “Ma’am, if I may offer a suggestion?” The cockatoo was on his knees again. He looked up warily at Gibbons before he continued. “I attended a wedding last fall out in the Hamptons that was very special. They served Indian food for the reception, and it went over very well with all the guests.”

  “Really.” Lorraine looked intrigued. Gibbons rolled his eyes. You gotta be kidding.

  The cockatoo was more at ease with her, and he launched into a detailed description of this Indian affair. Lorraine seemed to know what he was talking about, but Gibbons had no interest in finding out what pappadum, pakoras, and samosas were.

  Gibbons could tell from Lorraine’s face that she was enthralled. Anything about weddings enthralled her these days—she enthralled easy—and she kept egging the guy on.

  When the faggot got to the main course—some kind of curried lamb with a yogurt sauce—Gibbons’s stomach grumbled. He tried to tune out the cockatoo and the gooney bird, but they were working themselves up into a frenzy, the two of them, squawking and tittering and going on and on about this Indian wedding shit. Just what Lorraine needed, more stupid ideas. Shit. Standing there with more pins in him than a voodoo doll, Gibbons stared at himself in the mirrors and suddenly he began to understand why some men got the uncontrollable urge to run away and become someone else. Like Mr. Bernstein. Like Tozzi maybe.

  ister Cecilia Immordino turned the corner at Forty-third and Ninth Avenue, holding both the veil and the skirt of her black habit against the strong breeze, squinting through her big glasses. She glanced up at the majestic clouds in a clear blue sky and allowed a small smile to grace her lips. The sun was bright and spring was in the air. It was the perfect kind of day for prayers to be answered. Sister Cil was hoping. Today, dear God. At long last please let it be today.

  Sabatini Mistretta, her brother Sal’s boss, trudged along the sidewalk, scowling at the stiff wind whipping down the avenue. He was short and round and somewhat gruff, and Sal, in moments of unkindness, would say he resembled a frog. Sister Cil saw his point, but such characterizations were uncalled for, no matter how truthful they were. It was obviously God’s will that Mr. Mistretta was the boss, and for that reason alone he should be respected. Even if he did look like a frog.

  As they walked up Ninth Avenue she took note of every poor soul they passed—bums in doorways, lustful young women selling their bodies, wild-eyed drug addicts ignorant of their own spiritual and bodily needs, living mindless lives like base creatures, craving only the temporary relief they could get from their drug. It was remarkable, she thought, how God in His infinite wisdom had provided such an array of human degradation so that the rest of humanity would be shown the way not to go. Unfortunately some people do not pay attention to these examples, and that’s why others must dedicate their lives to saving those who stray, others such as herself.

  Waiting for the traffic light to change at Forty-fourth Street, she was careful to step down off the curb and maintain an arm’s length between herself and Mr. Mistretta so as not to accentuate the difference in their heights. She did not want to upset him in any way, not at this most crucial time when his approval was the final thing they needed to make her long-anticipated dream a reality. Finally she would not have to turn girls away for lack of space, girls who stood a good chance of ending up here on the street with the legions of lost Jezebels. No, Sal would make sure of that. He had made her a promise years ago, and he assured her that he would follow through on it as soon as it was economically feasible. And her brother Sal was a man of his word. They’d been brought up right, after all.

  And now, after all these years of planning and praying, he would finally be able to earn the money to make the huge donation she needed
to start construction on the new facility for the Mary Magdalen Center, the home for unwed mothers she ran in Jersey City. All they needed now was Mr. Mistretta’s okay on Sal’s new venture, that’s all, and she was confident that Mr. Mistretta would not disappoint her girls. She’d said a novena to the Blessed Virgin Mary, who knew how to intervene in these matters.

  The traffic light changed and they started to cross the street. Mistretta turned and looked over his shoulder. “You see that tall guy with the curly hair back there, Cil? The one in the brown jacket?”

  Sister Cil held on to her veil and turned around. “Yes.”

  “Parole officer. He follows me around every day.” Mistretta spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Every day since they transferred me to this halfway house here, this guy’s been on my tail. Why didn’t they just leave me at Allenwood for my last month? No, they said I gotta come here to ease me back into the community. Baloney. They don’t fool me. This is one of their little scams. They give me a little freedom, let me walk around town during the day, and they figure they can catch me doing something. But I got them all figured out, these guys. Bunch of stupids.”

  Sister Cil nodded. Mr. Mistretta has always been a very cautious man. That whole time he was at Allenwood Penitentiary, he wouldn’t allow any visitors except his wife and her. Once a month one of Sal’s men would drive her all the way out to Pennsylvania to pray with him in the visiting room, holding their rosaries across the long bingo table, with the guards standing there watching them. Sal said Mr. Mistretta was paranoid, but he’s just very cautious. He could arrange to meet with Sal now that he’s in the Bureau of Prisons Community Treatment Center. His days are free, he only has to check back in at night. But Mr. Mistretta didn’t want to see anyone until he was released and completely free. She could understand that. After all, the court had come down awfully hard on him, and just for tax evasion. It was a terrible way to treat a businessman simply for being entrepreneurial.