Oh, Christ. “What happened?”
“The details are pretty sketchy. Most of what we have came from the local cops down there. Apparently this Raynor woman was shot twice in the back. One bullet punctured a lung. Tozzi got the rescue squad right away, and they rushed her to the hospital. She’s stable now. The hospital says she’ll recover.”
Gibbons pinched his nose and pressed his lips together. Immordino again? But he was supposed to be out gunning for “Tomasso.” Why’d he shoot her? “And what was Tozzi doing while all this was going on?”
“Making a big pain in the ass out of himself.”
“In what way?”
Moran snorted that laugh again. “Well, he was apparently out of control when he got to the hospital, running around, acting crazy, demanded that he be allowed to see the woman. The staff ended up calling the cops on him, and Tozzi tried to throw his weight around, told them he was a special agent, showed them his ID and all. They told him they’d have to confirm it before they’d believe it, and they insisted that he surrender his gun until his story was confirmed. You can just imagine how that went down.”
Gibbons shut his eyes. He was glad he hadn’t been there.
“We confirmed that he was who he said he was, and the police returned his weapon, but they suggested he go out and get a coffee because the nurses were getting sick and tired of having him around. He wouldn’t budge, though, even after they assured him that this Raynor woman was out of surgery and she was okay. He said he had to see her and, of course, the hospital people said no, not until tomorrow. So what does Tozzi do then? He bribes a nurses’ aide to go into the recovery room and give this Raynor woman a message. He wanted her to know that he was there and that he wanted to see her, that he loved her and all that shit. The nurses’ aide apparently came out two minutes later, all shook up. She’d delivered Tozzi’s message, but the Raynor woman wasn’t too happy to get it. From what I gather, she told the nurses’ aide to tell Tozzi that he could go fuck himself, that she didn’t want to see him—not now, not ever. Apparently she was still pretty weak from the surgery at this point, and her monitors started beeping and bleeping like crazy. The doctor on duty ran in on a Code Blue—or whatever color it is when your monitors go off like that—and he gave her a sedative to calm her down. After that, the cops came back and insisted that Tozzi go out and get himself a coffee and not come back for a while. This happened about three-thirty this afternoon.”
Gibbons could imagine Tozzi wandering out of the hospital, going outside for the first time since that morning and being disoriented by the afternoon sun, not knowing where to go, what to do with himself, then realizing that Sal Immordino was out there someplace looking for him, probably mad as hell and determined to whack “Tomasso” once and for all, after having botched it twice. Tozzi had probably driven up the parkway, back to his apartment in Hoboken, then got paranoid, wondering whether Immordino had figured out that he wasn’t Tomasso the bodyguard, that he was really Tozzi the fed. Tozzi had a way of working himself into a froth—“spiraling,” the shrinks call it. He’d probably started thinking that Immordino had him followed all the way up from the shore, that they were watching him, waiting for the right moment to make their move on him. That’s when he’d probably decided he didn’t want to be alone, and coming over here to play with his aikido buddies was the logical choice. Tozzi had told him that he always liked to come over here to practice whenever he was feeling crappy. Said the worse you felt when you got on the mat, the better your practice would be. Well, he must be having one hell of a practice now because he must feel like a bag of shit after all that had happened today. Poor bastard.
Gibbons looked through the doorway, and Tozzi hit the mat again with another booming thud that made Gibbons wince. He got right to his feet and went back to the end of the line. He must be feeling awful.
“You still there, Gibbons?”
“I’m here.”
“Tozzi should be home now,” Moran said. “You want me to relay a message?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“He’s a real piece of work, that partner of yours.”
“So are you, Moran.”
“You’re tying up the line, Gibbons. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“Eat it, Gibbons.”
Moran hung up and Gibbons put the receiver back on the hook. On the mat Tozzi was at the head of the line again, but this time he bowed to the black belt and took the guy’s place in the middle of the mat. It was his turn to do the throwing. He stood there with his wrists out for the taking, waiting for the next nut in line to come grab him so he could start slamming bods the way he’d been slammed. Gibbons noticed that he was wearing an orange belt now. Tozzi had said something about earning a new belt, but Gibbons usually tuned him out whenever he started preaching about the wonders of aikido. He did look pretty good out there, as far as Gibbons could tell. Nothing like the guy with the baggy pants but better than the other orange belts. He moved pretty smoothly, and his attackers made a nice thunk when they hit the mat. Only thing was, it all looked fake. Not just when Tozzi did it, all of them. It always looked like the guy being thrown was helping. Tozzi agreed that it looked fake, but he swore it was all real if you did it right. Gibbons couldn’t figure it out, though, the passion Tozzi had developed for this aikido stuff. Tozzi was crazy, of course, but what about all these other people? What was their excuse?
The teacher, one of the other guys wearing those baggy black pants, yelled out something, and the whole class stopped abusing each other and they all bowed, very polite. Then the teacher called out “Kokyu Dosa,” and they all paired off and sat on their knees facing each other. One person held out his hands while the other person held him by the wrists, then they pushed. Yeah, Tozzi had told him about this one. It wasn’t a contest, like arm-wrestling or anything. It was supposed to be a way of testing yourself, getting centered and finding your “one-point,” the spot below your belly button where all your energy is supposed to come from. That’s what Tozzi said anyway. Gibbons was skeptical. Sounded like a lot of crap to him, but it did do something for Tozzi. At least that’s what he said. Gibbons glanced at his watch. It was nine-thirty. After a day like Tozzi had, he needed a good “one-point.” Either that or a bottle of something with a good proof.
After a few minutes of these people pushing each other over—first to the left, then to the right—the teacher called for the end of class. They all lined up in front of him, sitting on their knees; then they bowed to the front of the room where three Japanese characters were hanging in a frame on the wall; then the teacher spun around and he bowed to the class as they bowed back to him yelling, “Thank you, sensei.” He got up and walked to the edge of the mat, then told them to thank their last partners, which they did. Awfully polite for people who like to beat the shit out of each other.
He watched Tozzi walk to the edge of the mat, bow to those Japanese characters on the wall again, and put on his sandals. Gibbons caught his eye then. Tozzi didn’t seem very surprised to see him. Not very happy either.
Tozzi wiped his brow with his sleeves as he came over. “Valerie’s in the hospital—”
“I already heard. They say she’s gonna be all right.”
Tozzi raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Yeah . . . that’s what they said.”
“I heard about her telling you to get lost too. She didn’t mean it. She must’ve been all drugged up with the anesthesia and the painkillers and all. She didn’t mean it.”
Tozzi just looked at him. He didn’t believe it. Gibbons put his hat on. He felt for the guy, but he wasn’t about to play “Dear Abby” for him. He had his own problems in that department. “Come on, get dressed,” he said. “We gotta go see somebody. About the fight.”
“The fight? What’re you talking about?”
“Just hurry up and get dressed. I’ll tell you in the car.”
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Tozzi rotated his head and let out a long sigh. “The Nashe investigation is over, Gib. Ivers shut me down as of today, you remember?”
Gibbons frowned and shrugged. “So what?”
Tozzi looked curious all of a sudden. “So what’ve you got?”
“Just get dressed, will ya?”
“What’d you find out? Just tell me.”
Gibbons rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Hurry up and get dressed, then I’ll tell you.”
Tozzi didn’t look so sad now. “All right, all right.” He headed for the locker room, walking backward. “You don’t want to give me a little hint?”
“No.”
“Come on, Gib.”
“Get dressed.”
“Okay, okay.” He kept walking backward. “Just tell me one thing. How’d you know I’d be here?”
Gibbons smiled with his teeth. “I’m a freaking G-man. I track down assholes like you every day of the week. Now get moving. We’ve got some driving to do.”
Tozzi was grinning as he went into the men’s locker room.
He’d be all right.
ou know, Gib, I can’t even smell it anymore.”
Gibbons looked over at Tozzi sprawled out on the beige plastic couch, his feet up on the arm, his leather jacket bunched up under his head. “Smell what?”
“That hospital smell. I can’t smell it anymore. All day yesterday in the hospital down the shore with Val, all night here waiting to get the go-ahead to see Gonsalves. I can’t smell it anymore. My nose is dead.”
Gibbons didn’t move. His feet were on the coffee table, his cheek on his fist. He was slouched down in a waiting-room armchair. Four hours in the car with Tozzi yapping nonstop about how much he loves Valerie and how much he hates Sal Immordino and how his one-point is fucked up because he loves Valerie so much he’d like to put a bullet through Immordino’s brain for what he did to her. Christ Almighty, the guy’s a walking loony tune.
But having to put up with Tozzi wasn’t bad enough. They finally get here to Our Lady of Mercy, way out in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, and the night-shift nurses on Gonsalves’s floor are like some commando unit left over from Vietnam, a real bitch-team, and they get it into their heads that no one gets in to see their patient at this hour of the night, no matter what the reason. He and Tozzi show them their IDs, threaten them with the obstruction-of-justice jazz, do the whole big-bad-fed routine, and these women just cross their big arms over their big chests, dig their heels in, and literally block the hallway to Gonsalves’s room. No way, they say. Gotta get the patient’s doctor’s okay. It’s like they’re defending the fucking Magi-not Line, for chrissake.
Then Tozzi starts getting huffy, starts screaming at them, and he has to put the crazy bastard on a leash, send him down the hall to cool off before he makes things worse. Gibbons tries to be nice about it then, goes over and asks the head ballbuster, real nice, to please call the doctor at home because this is very important. But she comes up with a new one this time and says to him, You got a warrant? Must’ve picked this up from some TV show, no doubt. She says unless we have a warrant or something that looks legal, she’s not about to disturb a doctor in the middle of the night so that the health of a patient can be jeopardized. Then she threatens to call the cops, and now he has no choice but to back down because he knows how local cops are. They’d be on the horn to the nearest Bureau field office in no time, and that field office would have to call the New York field office to verify and explain the presence of two agents from the Manhattan office in their jurisdiction, and first thing in the morning it would all get back to Ivers, who didn’t need to know anything about anything right now.
So that’s why they’d spent the wee hours trying, in vain, to get some sleep in this overlit waiting room with the beige plastic furniture and the Holiday Inn landscapes on the walls, waiting for the goddamn doctor to show up at eight so they could ask him if they could talk to Henry Gonsalves for just five fucking minutes.
“I’m gonna sue these damn hospitals,” Tozzi said, staring up at the ceiling. “They killed my nose. I have no sense of smell anymore. I’m handicapped.”
Gibbons closed his eyes. “Tozzi, I don’t give two shits about your nose.”
“What is it you gentlemen want here?” A woman’s voice, and not a nice woman’s voice either.
Gibbons opened his eyes and sat up. Tozzi took his feet off the couch. She was standing on the other side of the coffee table, no more than five feet even, brunette, hair tied back, bangs, glasses. She was wearing a lab coat, stethoscope draped around her neck.
“I’m Dr. Conover,” she said. “I understand you want to talk to one of my patients.”
Tozzi stood up and unfurled his leather jacket. “Yes. We’d like to ask Henry Gonsalves a few questions.”
The doctor just stared at him, looking stern and annoyed. Now Gibbons understood why the night Valkyries had given them such a hard time. The doctor in question was one of them. It all made sense now. She kept staring at Tozzi with this brutally sour, pissed-off face. She had the hots for him. It was obvious.
“Mr. Diaz—if that’s who you’re referring to—is in no condition for visitors. He shouldn’t be upset.”
Tozzi had that punk-biker posture—knees locked, head tilted back and to the side, jacket hooked over his shoulder. “We have no intention of upsetting him. We only want to ask him a few questions.”
She kept staring at him, real grim. The doctor was kind of cute. Gibbons liked women with glasses . . . some women. Dr. Conover was one of those women who looked sexy in glasses. So did Lorraine when she wore hers. Oh, boy . . . Lorraine. He’d forgotten to call her last night. He didn’t even want to think about that now.
The sweet voice of one of the killer nightingales warbled through the PA system and interrupted the standoff between Tozzi and the doctor. “Dr. Conover, a call on three-two. Dr. Conover, a call on three-two.”
“Excuse me.” She turned and left the waiting room.
Gibbons stood up. “Go follow her. Use your guinea charms on her.”
Tozzi curled his upper lip like Elvis. “Wha’?”
“She’s got the hots for you. Go make time with her. Buy her a coffee, take her into the supply closet, use your imagination. Just tie her up for five minutes so I can talk to Gonsalves.”
“What’re you, crazy? Women like that don’t have the hots for anyone. Believe me.”
“Wrong again, Tozzi. It’s women like that who have the kind of hots guys like you are always looking for. Believe me . . .”
Tozzi looked pissed. “What the hell’s wrong with you? I poured my heart out to you last night. Valerie’s lying in a hospital with two holes in her, and you want me to go play up to this munchkin MD. I can’t do that, Gib. It wouldn’t feel right.”
“I don’t give a shit how you feel, Tozzi. This is work. You’re not supposed to feel like doing any of it. You just do it. Now hurry up. Go.”
“Gib, I can’t—”
“Look, you’re the one who told me you wanted to nail Immordino’s balls to the wall. You wait around till it feels right, it won’t happen. You understand? Figure out your priorities, goombah, and make it fast.”
Tozzi’s face didn’t change, but he started nodding. “All right, all right, you’re right.”
“Go to the nurses’ station and wait for the doctor. Keep her busy for a while. I’ll take care of the rest. Now hurry up.”
Tozzi shrugged. “Whatever you want.”
They walked out into the hallway together, and Gibbons noticed that the commando unit from last night was off duty. The nurses’ station was empty except for one nurse, who was busy doing paperwork. She glanced up at them, but there was no turn-to-stone, death-ray glare. Maybe the night girls hadn’t told her about them.
Gibbons pushed the elevator button and told Tozzi he’d see him later. Tozzi leaned against the counter at the nurses’ station and waited. The busy nurse stood up and asked Tozzi if she could help him.
The elevator arrived then and Gibbons got on. As the doors closed Tozzi started explaining that he was waiting here for Dr. Conover to continue the conversation they’d started. This one was probably getting wet panties for Tozzi too. Gibbons shook his head as he rode the elevator down to the lobby. He’d never understand what women saw in Tozzi. He stayed on the elevator and rode back up to the sixth floor, where he’d gotten on. The doors opened and Tozzi was still leaning on the counter. He didn’t see the nurse. Tozzi looked at him and nodded once. All clear. Gibbons walked out, turned left, and headed straight for Henry Gonsalves’s room.
There were numbered doors on both sides of the hallway, some closed, some open. Shit. Gibbons didn’t want it to look like he didn’t know where he was going. He poked his head into the first open door. Some guy with his leg in traction watching cartoons on TV. A bunch of little blue people with squeaky voices running around in the woods. The guy hit the remote control and shut it right off, probably embarrassed to have been caught watching cartoons.
He moved on to the next room, a closed door, and glanced up and down the hall before he twisted the knob. A woman with dark bags under her eyes and long stringy hair was sitting up in bed. The room reeked of cigarette smoke. There was an open paperback in her lap, one of those Gone with the Wind kind of books. Gibbons noticed that both wrists were bandaged with gauze. “You here to see me?” she said.
“Nope.” He closed the door and moved on.
The next door was open. Gibbons poked his head in and saw somebody’s big fat can sticking out of the sheets, a skinny gray-haired nurse standing over it. She was holding a hypodermic needle. “Can I help you, sir?” She sounded just like she looked, an old battle-ax. Shit.
“Ah . . . yes. Yes, you can,” Gibbons said.
The battle-ax seemed annoyed by his mere existence in her world. The ass didn’t flinch.
“I’m looking for Henry Gonsalves’s room. Or Hector Diaz, if that’s the name he’s registered under.”
Bad Luck Page 20