5 Bad Moon (10 page)

“Were they afraid he’d hurt himself or the other patients?”

“Both. Emerick’s a little dude, but he one of the worst ones here. They shoulda had him in a room downstairs by hisself. He killed two ladies, you know. That’s how he got in here. I bet he tries to kill somebody again. You watch.”

Sal clenched his fists. He wished to hell Tozzi would disappear. Charles was talking too much.

Tozzi wrote something down on the pad, ripped out the page, and handed it to Charles. “This is a number where you can reach me. If you see Mr. Immordino doing anything out of the ordinary, anything that strikes you as different for him, anything at all, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”

“Will do.” Tate slipped the phone number into the front pouch of his sweatshirt.

“Thanks for coming. Sorry to disturb you on your day off.”

“No problem.” Tate got up and walked back across the ward, his new high-tops squeaking on the linoleum.

Tozzi leaned into Sal’s face. “Last chance, Sal. You got anything you want to tell me?”

Sal clenched his fists again. He was so mad, they were shaking. He wanted to punch Tozzi’s head off and piss down his throat, he was so mad. But he was afraid to move a muscle, afraid to do anything that might make him look sane. They must have a video camera going behind that one-way mirror, filming this whole thing. On top of that, Sal couldn’t figure out if Tozzi actually knew something about him and Charles and Emerick, or he was just acting like he knew something, hoping he could scare Sal into talking. He oughta know better by now, the bastard.

Tozzi stood up and leaned on his cane. “Nothing to say, huh? Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Sal.” He turned to go, but then stopped and turned back. “By the way, you want me to give Juicy your love when I see him?”

Sal kept his head down, gritted his teeth, and squeezed his fists so hard they hurt.
Fuck you, Tozzi.

“That’s what I thought.” Tozzi walked through the ward, dragging his bum leg behind him.

Sal followed Tozzi out with his eyes. His face was as tight as his fists.

You’re fucking dead, Tozzi!

Tozzi helped Stacy out of her leather motorcycle jacket and handed it to the hatcheck girl. Stacy looked incredible tonight. Little black dress cut up to the middle of her thigh, black suede heels, and all that incredible hair. She was a walking dream, and he wasn’t the only one who thought so.

A couple of guys at the bar were giving her the eye right now, showing their appreciation in their gaga faces. They waved the bartender over and asked for his opinion. It was the same. Tozzi was willing to bet they were wondering whether this was really the Pump-It-Up Girl. All three of them probably had hard-ons for her. He wished he could have one for her. His equipment still wasn’t responding, and it was driving him nuts. There was no good reason for this, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to go to a doctor. It wasn’t like that. It was all mental, and he was pretty sure he could fix it himself. If he stayed around Stacy, the blood was bound to start circulating again. With the right stimulation, it would happen. He was almost positive.

He got the ticket from the hatcheck girl, and leaning on his cane, escorted Stacy over to the maître d’s register. The skin on her bare shoulder was soft and firm.

The restaurant was a classy Italian place on East Seventy-first Street called Pompeii. Tozzi scanned the dining room and checked the back tables, where the preferred customers were usually seated. He spotted Frank Bartolo’s shiny bald head right away. Juicy Vacarini was sitting next to him, just the two of them at a table for four in the corner near the piano. Hey, why not? Juicy owned the place.

Watching Juicy light a cigarette, Tozzi began to have second thoughts about bringing Stacy here. Juicy was definitely gonna have a hard-on for her. He had a special appreciation for beautiful women. He ought to. Juicy was the biggest whoremeister in the Northeast. He supposedly had a gift for recruitment.

Stacy smiled sweetly at Tozzi and spoke through her teeth. “This looks like one of those places where they do mob rubouts, Tozzi. I don’t want to end up on the front page of tomorrow’s
Post
facedown in a plate of linguine.”

Tozzi smiled back pleasantly. “Then order something else.”

“Very funny.” Her smile turned sarcastic. “I don’t like the energy in this place. Why don’t we go home? I’ll make something for us.”

He could tell she was nervous. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna happen. We’re just here to check out the scene, that’s all. Besides, the food is actually very good here.” It always was in mob joints. He took her hand and patted it.

The maître d’ weaved his way through the dining room, coming toward them. He had a face like a corpse.

“Do you have a reservation, sir?”

“Yes. For Thompson.”

The maitre d’ checked the register and nodded. “Right this way.”

As they followed the maître d’, Stacy furrowed her brows. “Thompson?” she whispered.

“You never use your real name for a reservation,” he murmured. “It’s an invitation for a setup. But don’t worry,” he added quickly. “Nothing’s gonna happen here tonight.” He sneaked a look at her face to see if she believed him.

Tozzi kept his eye on the maître d’. He knew who the guy was, but he couldn’t remember his name. The guy did some time for hijacking a truckload of fur coats at Kennedy a while back, took the rap for a made guy in Juicy’s crew. This restaurant job must’ve been his reward for being a stand-up guy. His utter joy and gratitude was written all over his petrified face.

They followed Happy the maître d’ around a big table of fat couples eating pastries and drinking cappuccinos. Tozzi made sure he didn’t stare at Juicy and Bartolo, but he kept them in his peripheral vision. No one was gonna believe this was a coincidence, but he still had to make it look like it was.

Happy showed them to a table across the room from the two capos. At a table on the other side of the piano from Juicy and Bartolo, three soldiers from Bartolo’s crew were eating with three women too young and sexy to be their wives. Louis “Loopy Lou” Nardone, Domenico “Gyp” Giambella, and Jimmy Turano had been key men in that crew when it was Sal Immordino’s.

Little Jimmy T. had made a mint setting up dummy gasoline brokerages that bought and sold hundreds of thousands of gallons of gas, then disappeared before it was time to pay the federal taxes. By beating Uncle Sam out of his cut, Jimmy was able to sell his gas to retailers at a big discount and walk away with a nice profit.

Cockeyed Loopy Lou had been running a couple of asbestos-removal companies under different names out on Long Island. He hired illegal Polish immigrants hungry for work who were willing to take their chances ripping out asbestos ceilings and pipe insulation without adequate safety equipment, then dumped the toxic material on a farm near Albany in the middle of the night.

Gyp ran a private school-bus company in Queens that specialized in transporting handicapped kids. Gyp had managed to finagle an exclusive contract for all the public schools in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Without competition, he was able to charge whatever he wanted. And he did.

But according to the latest intelligence reports on these guys, they weren’t too happy with their new captain. Gyp still had his fleet of school buses, but Frank Bartolo pulled the reins in on Loopy Lou and Jimmy T. On Bartolo’s orders, they were concentrating on loan-sharking now, and they weren’t making nearly as much money as they had been under Sal. Apparently Bartolo didn’t want to owe Sal anything, so all enterprises started under his leadership were now terminated.

Tozzi watched the faces of the three wiseguys. They didn’t look unhappy now, but he had a feeling the girls had a lot to do with that. What Tozzi found interesting was that Bartolo wasn’t sitting with his soldiers. It looked like he was deliberately ignoring them and they were ignoring him. Supposedly Bartolo didn’t like to rub elbows with his men. Supposedly he felt he was above that. Interesting.

Tozzi felt his bandaged thigh under his pants and he thought about Sal Immordino playing dumb with him yesterday. Gibbons had checked on the other two mobsters he thought might have tried to have him killed. Old man Zucchetti was on a farm deep in the rain forests of Brazil, hiding out from a Sicilian drug rival who’d made an unsuccessful attempt on his life, and the Los Angeles field office had confirmed that Richie Varga was in California, trying to produce movies. As far as they knew Varga wasn’t doing anything illegitimate, and he hadn’t been out of the state in eight months. That didn’t guarantee anything, of course, but Tozzi and Gibbons agreed that Varga and Zucchetti were too far removed from things in New York to care about an FBI agent who had given them some trouble once upon a time. That left Sal Immordino, and considering that the boss of Immordino’s family had just been whacked, Tozzi couldn’t help feeling that there was a connection between the Mistretta killings and his own “mugging.” If Sal was behind all this, he was setting himself up to go head-to-head against Juicy for control of the family, so Juicy might have something to say about that. The mob vow of silence was all well and good, but if Juicy thought the FBI could take care of his main competition, he might drop a few subtle hints. It was known to happen.

When Tozzi looked back at Bartolo and Juicy, he saw that Juicy was looking this way, but he wasn’t looking at Tozzi. It was Stacy he was focused on. Tozzi pressed his lips together and let out his breath. He hadn’t planned on using Stacy as bait, but
…

He waved to Juicy and worked up a nice big smile. “There’s somebody I know over there,” he said to Stacy. “Let’s go say hello.”

Tozzi stood up, pulled out Stacy’s chair, and led her toward Juicy’s table.

“They don’t look very happy to see you,” Stacy said through her teeth.

“Don’t worry. That’s just the way these people are. They’re not very demonstrative.”

“Who are they? Are they killers?”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Just smile. Nothing will happen.”

“Excuse me, sir.” Happy the maître d’ moved into their path just as they got to Juicy’s table. “Your table is over there, sir.”

Tozzi looked past him to the proprietor.

Juicy Vacarini was leisurely sucking on a cigarette, elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of his face. He squinted through the rising smoke, his gaze fixed on Stacy. He was a thin guy with a long horse face and styled steel-gray hair that swept laterally over his ears, defying gravity. His clothes were impeccable, and his skin had that peculiar waxy sheen Tozzi had seen on Hollywood types, guys who’ve had face-lifts. Juicy had young features, but Tozzi knew he wasn’t that young—early to mid-fifties. Tozzi thought of him as a Lamborghini—fast and sharp to look at, but constant maintenance.

Frank Bartolo, on the other hand, was a gas-guzzling, bottom-of-the-line, stripped-down domestic sedan. Hunched over a mountain of golden fried calamari with a fork in his chubby fist, Bartolo glared up at Tozzi from under hairy caterpillar eyebrows. With that cue-ball head of his, he looked like a mad egg.

Juicy squinted up at Stacy and took another slow drag off his cigarette. “I’ve seen you on television, haven’t I?”

Stacy sighed, rolled her eyes, and nodded. She didn’t mind being the Pump-It-Up Girl. It was the loss of anonymity that bothered her.

“You know, every time I see your commercial, I say to myself, ‘This is a very talented person.’ And I wonder, Why is this person wasting her time with these low-rent commercials?” He shook the two fingers holding the cigarette at her. “You should be acting. You know that?” Swirls of smoke rose from his hand like a lasso. “Film.”

Tozzi’s jaw tightened. Juicy had a genuinely engaging smile, and Tozzi could see that it was working its charm on Stacy. He shouldn’t have brought her here.

“How’s it going, Juicy?”

The capo ignored Tozzi, giving Stacy his undivided attention. “Please, sit down.” He indicated the chair opposite himself.

She looked at Tozzi to see if it was all right. It wasn’t, but he nodded anyway as he pulled out the chair for her, then took the one opposite Bartolo.

The egg snarled. “Who invited you, Tozzi?”

Tozzi sat down and hooked his cane on the edge of the table. “We’re a package deal.”

“Oh, yeah? She a fed, too?”

Tozzi glanced at her. “She look like a fed to you?”

Stacy glared at them both. “Why don’t you ask me yourself?”

The egg grumbled as he speared another forkful of calamari rings.

Juicy looked up at Happy the maître d’. “Bring us a bottle of Cristal.”

Happy nodded and made tracks for the bar.

Juicy looked into Stacy’s eyes. “I prefer Cristal. I think it’s a little more sophisticated than Dom P.”

Tozzi smirked. “Or is that the brand that happened to fall off the truck this week?”

Juicy acted as if Tozzi wasn’t even there. He only had eyes for Stacy. So did every other guy in the place, except for Bartolo who kept cramming calamari into his mean little mouth as he gave Tozzi the evil eye.

They stared at each other for a minute, then Bartolo suddenly erupted. “So whattaya want?”

“Dinner.”

“Then go sit at your own table.”

“I like this table better.”

“You know something? This is government harrassment, pal. You’re giving me
acida
here. I’m gonna get my lawyer on you guys.”

Tozzi held up his cane and twirled the hook. “I’m on sick leave, Frank. So I’m not on duty now. Which means I’m just being friendly.”

The egg scowled. “Bullshit you are.”

Juicy frowned at them, very displeased. He didn’t like them using bad language in front of the lady. He shrugged and shook his head apologetically to Stacy, still ignoring Tozzi.

The piano player came back then, and Juicy made eye contact with him. He sat down at the keyboard, poker-faced, and started to play “Fascination.” Juicy leaned over the table and spoke softly, just to Stacy. Tozzi couldn’t hear what he was saying over the piano. This was the way it was gonna be: Stacy would get all of Juicy’s attention while he had to make do with the mad egg. Okay, fine. He could deal with that.

“So how’s it hanging, Frank?”

Bartolo stared down at his plate and kept eating.

“Tell me something, Frank. All this stuff I’ve been reading in the papers—should I believe any of it?”

The mad egg reached for his wineglass and took a glug, then went back to the calamari.

Tozzi leaned in closer and whispered, “Some of the papers are saying that Juicy did Mistretta, that he’s the new boss now. That true?”

“Get the fuck outta my face, will ya?”

Tozzi leaned back. “Hey, I’m just asking, Frank. See, I haven’t been to the office lately. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Bartolo pointed his fork at Tozzi. “Listen, wiseass, don’t get cute with me. You think I don’t know what’s going on here? You guys are warming up to pin this thing on us ’cause you jerk-offs can’t find the real killer. You’re not fooling anybody, Tozzi. Some fucking crazy person did Jerry and the old man. Anybody can see that. Only a crazy person would pull that kind of sick shit, shooting up their bodies like that.”

“You mean,
you
wouldn’t do it like that. You’d do it clean. One to the back of the head, maybe two to be sure, then get out quick.”