Bad Luck (8 page)

“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.

“Look at that,” he said, with disgust in his voice.

“What?”

“Up on the roof. Across the street. See? They think they're so clever.”

It took her a minute to see what he was talking about—three men in grimy work clothes tarring the roof of an old tenement building. One man hauled buckets of hot tar up a pulley while the other two appeared to be spreading it out with rollers. On the sidewalk below them a fourth man
stood by a noisy, smelly machine of some kind that kept the tar hot. There was a dirty, smudged sign on the machine that said “Stuyvesant Roofing, Inc.”

Mistretta shook his head and tried to grin. His grins never looked like grins, poor man. Sister Cil blushed as she remembered something else Sal had said. It was true, though. A Mistretta grin seemed more like a reaction to gas pains.

“They're so obvious, I can't believe it,” he whispered. “The stupids. Those aren't rollers they're holding. Those're those special things they got. Like rifles. You know what I'm talking about? To listen in on us. They point those things at the store windows over here and pick up the vibrations of what we're saying off the glass. A guy told me all about it in prison. The stupids.” He shook his head and tried to grin again. “Listen to me. Don't say anything else until we get there, okay? Don't give them the satisfaction.”

Sister Cil nodded. He was a very cautious man. She just assumed those men on the roof were simply fixing the roof. She held her veil in place and squinted up at the “roofers.” How did he know such things? Remarkable. It just went to show why he was the boss.

They walked in silence up the next block. At the corner of Forty-fifth Street she turned around and saw that tall man with the curly hair again. He wasn't ten feet away now and
he was looking right at her.
Lord God in heaven, he was close enough to eavesdrop on them! How could she ask Mr. Mistretta for his permission with this man hovering over them? Her brows furrowed behind her glasses.

They crossed the street and passed a liquor store on the corner, where the owner was trying to keep a persistent bum out of his store. She watched to see whether the tall man following them would stop and assist the poor, overweight liquor-store owner before he had a heart attack, but the tall man just kept walking. Sister Cil frowned, outraged at the man's lack of concern. It just goes to show what these people's concept of the law is all about. Better
to harass a poor businessman who's already paid his debt to society than help someone being tortured by an obviously sinful individual. Lord God, have mercy on their souls. They were worse than stupid.

At the next corner they waited for the light and crossed Ninth Avenue. From the crosswalk Sister Cil could see the narrow redbrick church wedged between the tenements on the side street, a single slate-roofed steeple standing tall over the surrounding squalor. Sister Cil smiled when she spotted the name of the church in the glass case bolted to the brick front. Our Lady of Mercy Roman Catholic Church. Same as the hospital where they had done so much good for Sal when he was so sick. Cil brushed a tear of hope from the corner of her eye. It was a sign, a good sign. Mr. Mistretta wouldn't disappoint the girls, she knew it.

They climbed the stone steps and Mr. Mistretta pushed through the heavy oak doors. The vestibule was dim, of course, filled with the smell of burning candle wax and the lingering scent of incense from past funeral services. They dipped their fingers in the white marble holy-water font and crossed themselves, then went into the nave and took a pew near the front. The church was empty. Sister Cil noticed that the floor was old, cracked, marble-patterned linoleum and that there was no Jesus on the cross over the altar. It was just a simple wooden cross with a little carving on the top. A poor parish.