Bad Luck Read online

  “No, forget about it. You don’t want to help.”

  An oily brown residue coated one of the Tupperware pieces. The compost. “I wanna help! Whattaya want me to do, beg?”

  “All right. Go find Immordino’s sister the nun at the Mary Magdalen Center in Jersey City. Just go talk to her. You know, show her your ID, ask her about Sal and the family, that kind of stuff. That should shake things up nice. If I’m right about Sal, when it gets back to him that an FBI agent was questioning his sister, he’ll go nuts. If we get lucky, he’ll get sloppy and do something stupid.”

  “Get sloppy, my ass. You’re in fairyland. This man is a career criminal. You don’t think his sister hasn’t been questioned a million times before?”

  “Of course she has. But Sal’s hiding something from Mistretta now, so this time it’ll bother him.”

  Gibbons looked through the doorway. Lorraine was loading up a plate for him. Oh, shit . . . “All right, I’ll go see Sister Cil first thing in the morning.”

  “Great—”

  “Hold on, my friend. You better fucking keep me informed, or I’ll go down there and do the job for Immordino. Capisce, paesan’? I want to hear from you. Tomorrow. All right?”

  “Of course. What do you think? We’re partners, aren’t we?”

  Gibbons didn’t answer right away. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, so I’ll call you at the office in the afternoon sometime. Around two.”

  Gibbons was watching Lorraine. She was spreading that fish-mousse stuff on another cracker. “Tell me. How’s that girlfriend of yours? The bartender, Valerie.”

  “Fine.” Tozzi sounded puzzled.

  “You said she walked in on you and Immordino?”

  “Yeah, but nothing happened.”

  “I hope you’re not treating her like that slut Sydney. She seems like a good kid. She doesn’t deserve that kind of shit.”

  “What kind of shit? What’re you talking about?”

  “Just remember, she’s not part of all this.”

  “I know that. What do you think I am, stupid?”

  “You want me to answer that?”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. And don’t hit the nun or anything, will ya?”

  “Can I genuflect on her foot?”

  “Good-bye.” Tozzi hung up.

  Gibbons leaned against the refrigerator with the phone in his hand. He looked through the doorway and watched Lorraine eating that brown stuff, the compost. She wasn’t just eating it, she was enjoying it. Gibbons let out a long sigh. Valerie would never bring crap like that into the house. Lorraine wouldn’t either—not the old Lorraine.

  The phone started to blare with that obnoxious hurry-up-and-hang-up-the-phone noise.

  “It’s getting cold,” she called from the dining room. She must’ve heard the phone blaring.

  “Yeah, I’m coming.” He hung up the receiver. Shit.

  Gibbons parted the lace curtains and looked out the bay window to see if his car was still there. The Mary Magdalen Center was in that kind of neighborhood—lot of misguided youths hanging out and looking guilty, lot of little crack vials in the gutters, lot of slick dudes in old Caddies cruising the streets. It was the kind of neighborhood where cop cars come by only when they have to. He spotted his car and, by some miracle, no one was yanking the radio out—yet. He sat back down on the worn rose-colored brocade sofa and waited for Sister Gil to come back.

  A little kid with long dark bangs down to his eyes was on the floor next to his foot, digging his grubby fingers into a hunk of flesh-pink Play-Doh. Gibbons assumed that was the color you get when you mix them all together. The kid was really ripping into it, using his fingers like claws. Maybe he thought it was real flesh. Gibbons studied his mean little face. Future perp, sure as shit. You could see it already. The kid kept edging closer to Gibbons’s foot, and Gibbons had a feeling the kid was eyeing the toe of his wingtips, thinking about smushing Play-Doh into all the little holes. Gibbons watched and waited. He had his handcuffs in his pocket. If the little bastard tried it, he’d cuff him to the radiator.

  Gibbons looked through the doorway that Sister Cil had gone through a few minutes ago, wondering where the hell she was. Maybe she was calling Sal to tell him the FBI was on her case. So far she’d been pretty cool, not quite answering what he asked her but very polite and agreeable. He decided he’d press her a little harder when she came back, just to make sure it all got back to Sal.

  Gibbons glanced down at the kid who had worked his way a little closer to his wingtip. The room was hot and sticky, ripe with the smell of kids. There were overhead ice-cube-tray fluorescent lights stuck to the ceiling that lit the place like an operating room and clashed like hell with the scrollwork moldings that edged the tops of the walls in the brownstone’s old parlor. Gibbons spotted one of those juice boxes lying on its side on the hardwood floor, and he shifted in his seat, wondering what he might be sitting on.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Gibbons.” Sister Cil whisked back into the room, her headpiece flying behind her, a wailing baby in her arms now. “A small crisis,” she said with an apologetic smile, showing him the infant. As she sat back down in the shabby armchair across from him, the fluorescent lights glared off her big eyeglasses. She settled down with the cranky, flailing baby and stuck a bottle in its mouth. It calmed right down.

  Gibbons smirked. How fucking transparent. She thinks she’s clever. She went out to get a prop. Bring in a baby, and the big bad fed will melt right down and ease up on her. Yeah, just watch.

  “Colicky,” Sister Cil said, looking down at the baby. “Can’t blame you, can we, sweetheart?” She looked at Gibbons over her glasses. “Her mother was a crack addict.”

  “Was?” Probably croaked.

  Sister Cil smiled proudly. “Wanda’s mommy has come a long way since she’s been with us. Hasn’t she, sweetheart?” She jiggled the baby in her arms.

  Gibbons nodded. Keep that up and the kid’s gonna throw up all over you.

  “Mr. Gibbons?” She held the baby out toward him. “You wouldn’t like to—”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Gibbons glanced down at the kid on the floor. He was gouging out chunks from the Play-Doh blob with a Pop-sicle stick. Serial killer—you watch.

  “Now, what was it we were talking about, Mr. Gibbons?”

  “Well, Sister, you were assuring me that your brother Sal isn’t the acting boss of the Mistretta crime family and that he couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the real estate tycoon Russell Nashe.” Gibbons smiled like a crocodile.

  Sister Cil nodded, and her glasses glimmered. “Yes, that’s true.” He wished he could see her eyes behind those glasses. He couldn’t figure out if she was lying for Sal or if she really believed this crap.

  “And you contend that your brother actually does suffer from irreversible brain damage?”

  She paused to let out a big sigh before answering. “It’s a terrible burden my brother has to bear. He was a very bright young man at one time, but he loved his boxing and . . . well, the human head can just take so much. It was the boxing that did it. As a result, his mental capacity is . . . Well, what can I say? In most aspects he’s about on the level of a normal seven-year-old.” She looked down at the Play-Doh killer and sighed again. “But such is God’s will.”

  How many times has she given this little sermon?

  “Tell me something, Sister. I’m not of the Catholic faith myself, and frankly I’m a little curious about something.” He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from grinning. “Why would God choose to turn a healthy, athletic man like your brother into a walking dummy, Frankenstein with a weak battery? Why would He do that?” You wanna bust balls with the baby and the holy of holies? I’ll show you how to bust balls.

  She looked down at the baby and smiled serenely. “Mr. Gibbons, it is simply beyond our humble understanding. Our job here on earth is to praise and obey the Lord. It isn’t our place to question His in
tentions. If God has decided that Sal should be a walking dummy, as you put it, then it’s part of a greater plan that we could never hope to understand.” The light flashed off her glasses. “Or as my grandmother told us so often when we were growing up, ‘Gesù Cristo vede e provvede.’ Jesus sees and provides, Mr. Gibbons.”

  “Uh-huh . . .” Gibbons nodded. She was something. Calm and even-tempered the whole way. She knew the family drill and nothing was gonna upset that. Ma Barker was the same way, supposedly. Well, rattling the nun wasn’t the important thing here. Just as long as the message got back to Sal that the FBI had been there asking questions about him. That’s all that was necessary.

  He stood up then. “Well, Sister, thank you for your time.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Gibbons. I hope I’ve shed some light on your understanding of my brother.”

  Gibbons smiled with his teeth. “When you see him next, give him our best.”

  He looked out the window and saw that his car was still there, then he glanced down at the floor. The kid was gone, but the toe of his right shoe was smeared with flesh-pink Play-Doh.

  Fucking little sneak! That kid’s picture will be in the post office someday. Little son of a bitch!

  The nun was busy feeding the baby, busy not noticing his shoe. Gibbons didn’t bother asking for a Kleenex. Didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. He just picked up his hat from the sofa and walked out with the Play-Doh on his toe and his hand in his pocket on the cuffs.

  Little bastard.

  oseph kept blotting his forehead with his handkerchief, the nice silk one that matched his silver tie. He kept standing up and sitting down, first pacing the sidewalk, then dropping down on the park bench to wipe his face again. Sister Cil stared across the street at the row of old brownstones, pressing her forearm into her aching stomach. She regretted ever telling Joseph about Mr. Gibbons. It had been a mistake, she hadn’t been thinking. Joseph is a baby. He’s no help at all.

  “You sure he was FBI, Cil?”

  “I’ve already told you a hundred times, Joseph. He showed me his identification. Who else would he be if he wasn’t a real FBI agent?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was from one of the other families. A spy, like.”

  Cil pressed her stomach harder and fingered the wooden rosary beads in her lap. This didn’t even deserve a response. No wonder Sal got so fed up with him. Joseph could be so useless sometimes. Why did she ever tell him?

  She’d panicked, that’s why. That was stupid. She wasn’t thinking straight when she called him. Stupid.

  Joseph nervously twisted that nice handkerchief around his fingers, ruining it. “We gotta tell Sal, Cil. He’s gonna wanna know about this.”

  “No!”

  Joseph got up again and started pacing. “You keep saying no, Cil. I don’t understand why. Why, Cil?”

  Cil wasn’t listening. She was staring at their shabby brownstone squeezed in among all the other shabby brownstones, the Center, their too-small brownstone, thinking that if they tell Sal about this and he gets cold feet and abandons the plan to have the champ throw the fight, then it’ll be God only knows how long before they get their new building . . . if they ever get it at all. The agencies keep calling with referrals—pregnant girls, young girls with babies, babies who need a home—and she has to keep turning them away because they just don’t have the room. She gripped the wooden crucifix in her fingers. This wasn’t right. She was being forced to turn away so many. It made her feel like the innkeeper who had turned Joseph and Mary away on Christmas Eve.

  Joseph dropped back down on the bench. “Say something, Cil. You’re just sitting there. We gotta do something here.”

  Cil adjusted her veil, pulled it forward a little at the hairline. Her stomach was in turmoil. Maybe Sal should abandon the plan. Maybe she should confess to him that Mr. Mistretta didn’t want him to bet family money on this boxing match, that he’d been definite about that, that she’d lied about that. Maybe it’s not too late. But she couldn’t stop staring at the Center. What if it all worked out and Sal did make all that money, what could Mr. Mistretta say then? Give it back? Of course not. The boxing match was just a few days away. So close. It’s not as if she were being selfish—the money wasn’t for her. It’s for the new building, for the girls, the babies. It’s for something very important, something that’s desperately needed. It’s money for an act of charity that should excuse the lie she had told Sal. If the new facility is built, God will forgive her. And if He forgives her, so will Sal and Mr. Mistretta.

  “Cil, you’re not helping things here.” Joseph blotted his brow and stood up again. “How about this, Cil? How about we go to Mr. Mistretta with this? Ask him if—”

  “No! Absolutely not.” Dear God, no . . .

  “But, Cil, if the FBI is gonna put the screws to the fight deal, we gotta protect ourselves. We got thirty million dollars tied up in this thing.”

  “I said no. Now, sit down and stop panicking. You can’t go over Sal’s head. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “What do you mean, it wouldn’t be right? You don’t wanna tell Sal, you don’t wanna tell Mistretta—whatta we do? Just sit around and wait for everything to go wrong?”

  The pain in her stomach flared like the flames of hell. “Will you please sit down and calm yourself, Joseph. You’re getting all worked up over nothing. When we were kids you were always the nervous one.”

  Joseph sat down and glared at her. “Whattaya talking about, when we were kids? I was eleven years old when you were born. What do you know what I did when I was a kid?”

  She looked at him and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Sal told me.”

  “Fu—The hell with Sal. You think Sal’s Mr. Wonderful, and I’m just some jooch you happen to be related to. That’s what you think. I know.” Joseph was on his feet again.

  “Joseph, you’re not thinking straight. That FBI agent doesn’t know anything about the fight. If he did, he would’ve—”

  Suddenly something rustled in the overgrown forsythia bushes behind them, and they both turned quickly. A homeless man sprawled out on a sheet of cardboard under the bushes sat up and stared at them. He had wild red hair and a wild red beard, wide pale blue eyes. Cil’s heart was pounding. Was he another one, another FBI agent, one of Mr. Gibbons’s associates?

  But as she stared into the man’s face, something occurred to her, something profound. This man’s appearance, this was the way she always pictured Barabbas, the way she remembered him from a Hallmark Hall of Fame Easter special about Jesus that she’d seen on television a long, long time ago, before she’d entered the convent. She put her hand on her chest and pressed against the thumping. This man wasn’t an FBI agent. No. He was a sign. A sign.

  Joseph was as white as a ghost, staring at the poor, unfortunate man. “Calm down, Joseph. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re not seeing the whole picture. You’re only thinking of yourself.”

  “Whattaya mean, I’m only thinking of myself? Why shouldn’t I think of myself? Nobody ever thinks of me. I gotta worry about myself ’cause nobody else does.”

  “Just calm down, Joseph.” Calling him down here had been a mistake. Telling him about Mr. Gibbons had been a mistake. If she could just reassure him so he would keep quiet, everything would be all right, everything.

  He slid over close to her and whispered in her face. “Listen to me, Cil. I gotta worry about myself. This deal blows apart, I’m left with nothing. I’m supposed to run those cement factories Sal wants to buy with the money we make on the fight. We don’t get the money, I don’t get the job, simple as that. Mistretta gets out of jail soon, Sal goes back to being a captain. Where’s that leave me? Nowhere, that’s where. I’ll be the gofer, the guy they send out for coffee, taking crap from every bum in his crew. Well, shit on that. I’d rather go back to cutting meat. Even if I have to work for someone else.” He hung his head and looked down at the bluestone sidewalk. “Can’t afford to buy a shop of my own again. And I’ll be damn
ed if I’ll ask Sal for the money . . .” He shook his head. “Man, this, this . . . this stinks, Cil.”

  She drew in a deep breath. Tell him everything will be all right, pacify him enough to keep him quiet at least until after the boxing match. He’s a child. Treat him like a child. “Joseph,” she said, speaking to him calmly but firmly, “there is nothing to worry about. The FBI is harassing me as a way of harassing Sal. This is just a new strategy in something that has been going on for years. Now, the boxing match is this Saturday. Logically, what could they do to stop it?”

  “Hey, these guys are the government. They do whatever the hell they want.” He was twisting that silk handkerchief again. It was ruined now.

  “You’re not being logical, Joseph. Think. If the FBI knew that Sal was involved with the boxing match, why would they bother to send an agent to see me? Wouldn’t they go directly to Sal or to Mr. Nashe or to Mr. Walker and Mr. Epps?”

  “Yeah, but what about the bug we found in your gold cross?”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Just reassure him. “Joseph, how many times did we go over what was discussed at the house after he gave me that crucifix? Whatever they heard meant nothing to them. They don’t know anything.”

  “Maybe someone squealed, got nervous and ran to the feds.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “I dunno—maybe Nashe. Maybe he’s cutting a deal with them, giving them Sal in exchange for reduced charges on something else they caught him at. Like tax evasion. Guys like that are always going up for tax evasion. The feds get Nashe in a corner, and he cuts a deal with them to save his own hide. You don’t think that kind of stuff happens all the time?”

  The man with the red beard, who’d been staring at them in a daze until now, flopped back down on his cardboard and turned over on his belly.

  Her heart was pounding again. Tell Joseph anything. Make him calm down. “Joseph, you have so little faith. Don’t you think Sal has taken precautions?”

  He suddenly turned on her. “Sal, Sal, Sal! Everything is Sal with you.”