5 Bad Moon (19 page)

The man wiggled his eyebrows up and down, and worked his gums. He scratched behind his ear like a dog with fleas as she turned away.

“You’re next,”
she announced as she approached Immordino.

Sal turned his big head and looked up at her, like a hippo noticing that a bird had landed on his back, neither annoyed nor particularly concerned. She took her comb and started picking through his scalp. He shook his head and jostled his shoulders. The hippo didn’t like being pecked at.

Cummings stepped back and put her fists on her hips.
“Come on, now. This doesn’t hurt.”
She went back into his scalp, and he shook his head violently to drive her away. She dropped the comb then.

Tozzi grinned. She was smart to wait for him to react like this. It looked like he had made her drop the comb. She was really doing all right.

Cummings stooped down to pick it up. It had landed under the table, which was perfect. If she had the bug ready between her fingers, she should have no problem sticking it up there. But just as she reached down for the comb, another hand reached for it, too, and got her hand instead.

“Hey, baby.”

It was that pain-in-the-ass guard, Charles Tate. What the hell was he doing here? He doesn’t work this shift.

The guard was hunkered down next to Cummings, and he wasn’t letting go of her hand. Her other hand was down at her side, closed tight. Charles was trying to take that one, too, but she wouldn’t unclench the fist or unbend her elbow. That was the hand with the bug. Shit.

“Excuse me,”
she said.
“I’ve got work to do here.
” She stood up and he stood up with her. He had her by the wrist.

The free hand was balled into a fist against her hip. She was broadcasting that she was hiding something. Tozzi chewed on his upper lip, wondering if Sal had noticed. He couldn’t see Sal’s face because Cummings and the guard were in the way.

“Let go of my hand. Right now.”
Her teeth were clenched, her nostrils were flaring, and she was way out of character. She sounded like Barnard now. The attitude was all wrong. She should’ve been cursing him out or belittling him, but not this. She was up on her high horse, and it was all wrong.

Charles was stroking her arm.
“Why you so mean, sugar? All I want is for you to check my head, too.”

“Do you have head lice?”

“Don’ know. But my head sure itch.”
Charles gyrated his hips, moving into hers.
“Yeah, sugar, it sure itch for you.”
He laughed, low and dirty.
“Wanna check my head? Please?”

“Let go of me right now or—”

“Or what, sugar? What’s a sweet thing like you gonna do to me?”
He went for her tit, grinding his palm into it.

When he mauled her breast, she automatically slapped his face with her free hand.

Tozzi’s heart jumped. She’d dropped the bug. He heard it hit the floor.

Jesus. Get outta there, Cummings. Just get outta there.

“Why you so mean to me, baby? Why you so mean?”
He laughed and squeezed her tit hard. Tozzi could see from her face that he was hurting her.

Get the hell outta there.

But Charles wasn’t letting her go, and the other guard, the one who was supposed to be on duty in there, was nowhere to be seen. Tozzi stood up, ready to go out and rescue her, but his eye caught Sal sitting there, passively watching all this. Sal thought he was dead. That’s what they wanted him to think. Tozzi couldn’t run out and save Cummings, not with Sal there.

He glanced at the door. Where the fuck was Gibbons? He said he’d be right back.

“Stop!”

He turned back to the mirror. Cummings was struggling. Charles had his hips up against hers, pressing her against the table. Christ! It looked like he was gonna nail her right there.

Tozzi paced toward the door. Where the hell was Gibbons?

“I’m warning you, mister. Let go of me right this instant.”
Her voice was strident. She was making things worse. Her high-and-mighty attitude was aggravating him. Tozzi could see it from the way he was gritting his teeth and squinting at her. He wanted to hurt her.

“I am warning you!”

“I’m real scared, sugar.”
He nudged her back so that she was sitting on the table, her feet off the ground.
“I’m all shriveled up to a little pea.”

Shit. The bastard was on top of her. He was gonna rape her.

Tozzi went for the door. To hell with Sal.

But just as he opened it, he heard Charles yell.

“Hey!”

Through the glass, Tozzi saw Charles with his hand over his eye, taking a knee in the nuts from Cummings. The way she was holding that comb it appeared that she’d either poked him in the eye or raked his face with it. He rolled off her and curled up on his side on top of the table, one hand on his face, the other on his groin. She stood up, squared her shoulders, and straightened her wig.

“Bitch!”
Charles reached over to grab her and got her hand again.

Tozzi was ready to bolt, but Cummings thought fast, countergrabbing his wrist and pulling him off the table. He hit the floor right on his hip, yelping like a hound dog.
“Shit!”
His eyes were squeezed shut in pain.

Cummings glanced into the one-way mirror. She wasn’t sure what she should do now.

“Get outta there,” Tozzi breathed. “Come back!”

She was looking at the floor, looking for the bug.

Forget it! Just get out of there.

Charles was getting to his feet. Cummings hesitated only a moment before she turned and headed for the exit.

Tozzi was standing by the door when she came back in. “You all right?”

Cummings pulled the wig off, let out a long breath, and nodded. “I lost the bug, though. I blew it.”

“Don’t worry about it. You handled yourself very well out there. Forget about the bug.”

“But I didn’t plant it.” She plopped down into one of the folding chairs, looking around for Gibbons. “I blew it.”

“I’m telling you, don’t worry about it. Be thankful you didn’t get raped. You handled that jerk very well.”

She glared up at him. “You sound surprised. I got through Quantico, too, you know. I had the same basic training you had, so don’t patronize me.”

Tozzi held up his palm in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything.”

The door opened and Gibbons came in, blowing his nose into a wad of toilet paper. “What happened?” He looked at Cummings. “You do it already?”

She shook her head and made a face. “I blew it. I dropped the bug.”

“What!”

“It wasn’t her fault, Gib. That guard, Charles Tate, showed up out of the blue and started coming on real strong to her. He had her on the table. It wasn’t her fault.”

Gibbons looked from Tozzi to Cummings and back again. “So where is it? Did you see where it went?”

Cummings motioned toward the one-way mirror. “It’s out there on the floor somewhere.”

Charles was hunched over in a chair near Sal, catching his breath. Sal hadn’t moved from his original position.

Tozzi nodded toward the tape recorder. “Turn it on. Maybe it rolled somewhere where they won’t see it. Maybe we can still pick up something.”

Tozzi turned down the volume on the wall speakers as Gibbons pulled out the headphone jack on the tape recorder so they could all hear through the main speaker on the unit. The hubbub of the ward came through the small machine. They were getting something.

They all furrowed their brows, listening closely, trying to figure out where the bug was. Then something came through very loud, a grating, scraping sound. It wasn’t static. They looked out at the ward through the glass, trying to figure out what the hell it was.

Loud crunching. The red light on the tape recorder sputtered, then went out. The sound went dead.

Cummings pointed at the glass. “Look at Immordino. His foot.”

Sal was twisting his shoe into the floor as if he were putting out a cigarette. He kept it up, grinding very slowly and deliberately for what seemed like a full minute. He lifted his head then and looked into the mirror. He stared right into it, right at them, as if he knew they were there watching him.

Tozzi shook his head. “Damn.”

Gibbons wiped his nose. “Crap.”

Cummings threw down the wig.

Gibbons looked at her. “You still think he’s crazy?”

She snatched up the wig from the floor and met his gaze. “I have no reason to believe otherwise. Crushing an electronic bug proves nothing.”

“Jesus! Do you hear this, Tozzi?”

But Tozzi wasn’t listening. He was standing in front of the glass, staring at Sal’s big dumb face, thinking about John and the blood all over Stacy’s seats, hearing the zipper.

His jaw was clenched tight.

Sister Cil stood in the front parlor, scowling as she looked out the bay windows, glowering through the sheer curtains. She didn’t dare touch the curtains, much less part them. They’d take her picture if they saw her in the window, and she didn’t need that. She was going to be hearing from Archbishop Leahy’s office as it was—that, she could count on. She didn’t need having her picture taken. If those awful people out on the street managed to take her picture and the archbishop’s people saw it, it would only make matters worse.

She shook her head and followed her brother Sal with her eyes as he paced up and down the sidewalk out front, talking to his hands, shuffling his feet, throwing punches at the air, making those ridiculous boxing moves of his. If she had known it would be like this, she would never have checked her brother out of the hospital. There were at least a dozen men out there watching him. She assumed the two younger men wearing suits were from the FBI. The beefy fellow in the tight tweed sport jacket was probably from the state police. The others were dressed in jeans and light nylon jackets; they looked more common for a poor neighborhood like this, except that they were white, which meant they were probably police. Three of them had cameras, and one had a video camera. They were taking pictures of Sal as he paced and mumbled and acted like an idiot. It was disgraceful.

She’d asked her brother not to do this. She’d asked him not to come here at all. But he never listens to her. No matter what she says to him, Sal always does exactly what he wants. Now he was going to ruin the good name of the Mary Magdalene Home, connect it with all the unsavory things that were connected with him. Why in God’s name was he doing this? She’d asked him specifically not to go outside, not to draw any attention to this place. But did he listen?

No. Sal always has to do what Sal wants to do. Never thinks of anyone but himself. Sometimes she wondered if what they said about him might be true, a little bit.

Sal was no saint, she was well aware of that. He’d gotten into some trouble when he was younger, associated with a disreputable crowd and was dragged down by their bad influence. In her heart, she suspected that he was probably guilty of some of the things he’d been accused of, but he was certainly not the killer or the notorious hoodlum they made him out to be. No, not Sal. She knew him too well. He wasn’t capable of such sinning. Not really.

But whatever sins Sal might have committed in the past could be forgiven. It’s in God’s nature to be merciful, and that’s why she’d agreed to keep his little secret, to maintain the common belief that Sal was mentally ill. He’d told her a long time ago that it was his way of repenting for his sins, that by living this restrictive life, never acting sane and never being treated as sane, he was doing penance. His time at the state hospital was the ultimate penance, and originally she felt that it would be good for him, that it would be the same as retreating from the world and entering a monastery. But the hospital changed him, changed him in the wrong way. It did not purify his soul. It made him bitter and vengeful. It was evident in the way he’d been treating her ever since he’d been discharged to her custody.

Sister Cil’s eyes started to water as she watched her brother making a fool of himself out on the sidewalk. Maybe his penance did him no good. Maybe he was still a sinner. Maybe he was a compulsive, inveterate sinner. Maybe he’d been lying to her all this time. Maybe she didn’t really know him at all.

She was suddenly reminded of Mr. Gibbons’s allegation that Sal had a great deal of money in a Swiss bank account and something else in Panama. She took off her glasses to wipe her eyes. She didn’t know what to think about him anymore.

“Sister! Sister!”

Lucy, her helper, came running down the staircase. The poor woman was clutching her heaving chest. She could hardly breathe. She really should lose some weight.

“Calm down, Lucy. What is it?”

Lucy couldn’t get the words out. She pointed up the stairs. Her eyes were bulging out of her head.

“Is it one of the girls? Has Shavon’s water broken?” Lucy always panicked whenever one of the girls went into labor.

Lucy shook her head and kept pointing up the staircase. She finally gasped it out. “In your room! Donald! Go! Go! Hurry!”

Cil frowned. Donald? Donald was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom upstairs. Now what? She’d told Sal several times already that they were running low on Donald’s pills, but Sal just ignored her. She’d been trying to make them stretch by extending the time between dosages.

Cil held her skirt and ran upstairs. “Donald? Donald? What are you doing now, dear?”

When she turned the landing on the second floor, she could hear him crying. “Donald?”

She marched to her room at the back of the building. “Donald, I’m talking to you. Answer me.” When she reached the threshold and looked at her bed, she nearly died.

“Donald!”

He was lying on the bed, practically naked, his clothes in a heap on the floor. Her other wimple, the one that went with her long habit, was askew on his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. His naked skin was pale, almost bluish, and totally hairless. He had one hand inside his underpants; the other was brandishing a pair of scissors, the big pair they kept in the kitchen, holding them open like a straight razor. An image of Christ on the cross flashed before Cil’s eyes—bloody, emaciated, draped in a dirty loincloth. She crossed herself quickly as she rushed into the room.

“Donald, put those scissors down.” She spoke calmly but firmly, the way she’d dealt with suicidal girls in the past.

He shook his head, weeping bitterly, wetting the starched wimple with his tears.

She stepped closer. “Donald, what do you intend to do with that?”

“I’m so bad,” he wailed. “I’m very bad. I think about them, and I can’t help it. I’m bad.”

“You think about who, Donald?”

He rolled his head against the pillow in anguish. “I think about the girls.” He looked down at his underpants. “I can’t stop it. It pops up by itself. I’m so bad.”

“No, Donald, you’re not bad.” She put out her hand. “Now, give me the scissors.”

“Noooo!”

His shriek startled her. Her pulse was racing.

“No. No. No. I have to get rid of it. I don’t want it. It’s bad!”

She started to move closer, but he yanked down his underpants and put the blade to his
…

Cil looked away, her face flushed. She forced herself to concentrate on his face.

“Donald, please listen to me. You’re being much too hard on yourself. Sexual thoughts are sometimes normal—”

“
Noooo!
” The shriek made the room thrum in its wake. “I’m bad. I have to cut it off before it makes me do something bad.”

Cil swallowed on a dry throat. Donald needed his medication, full dosage. She’d warned Sal that they needed to have the prescription refilled. Why didn’t he ever listen to her? She’d never seen Donald this upset.

“Why are you doing this, Donald? You can tell me.”

He writhed and wept. “Too much sinning.
Too much sinning!
”

“You’re not a sinner, Donald. I’ve been with you every day since you came here. You’re not a bad person. You’re a very good person. You work very hard, you do what you’re asked to do, and you don’t complain. I think you’re a very good person, Donald.”

Cil clenched her fists. Donald hadn’t been out of the house since Sal and that Mr. Tate from the hospital first brought him here. Sal insisted that he stay inside and not leave the home. No wonder the man was going stir-crazy. He needed to get out and breathe some fresh air.

“Please, Donald, listen to me. Don’t do this to yourself.
This
would be a sin. Your body is the temple of God. Do you realize that mutilating yourself would be a sin against the Lord? Please, don’t.” She imagined all the blood. And in her bed.

He looked up at her. His eyes were raw and wet. “I have to.” His voice was barely a squeak.

“Why? Why do you have to?”

“Too much sinning. I told you.”

Cil glanced down at his groin. It was standing up, fully erect. He was holding the blade of the scissors right up against it as if he were going to slice a carrot. She looked away and crossed herself twice.

“I don’t understand, Donald. What do you mean ‘too much sinning’? Who’s sinning? Not you. Explain it to me.”

“Everybody!” he wailed. “Everybody’s sinning.”

“Who?”

“Me. I have bad thoughts.”

“Who else?”

“The boys.”

“Which boys?”

His expression turned furious. “The boys who get the girls pregnant.”

“Yes, you’re right about that, Donald. But is there anyone else sinning?”

“The girls.” He was still angry. He assumed she should know all this. “They make themselves look like whores. They let the boys do it to them. They’re sinners, too.”

Cil nodded to calm him. “Yes, Donald, I know. There are a lot of sinners in the world.”

“You
don’t
know. There are so many. You can’t know them all.” He stared into her eyes. “You can’t. You don’t know about the girl on television, the blond girl. Do you?”

“What girl on television?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head from side to side. “See? You
don’t
know. I hear the girls here talking about her all the time. They want to be just like her. She’s tempting them into sin. I hear them talking about her all the time. Dolores, Faith, Shavon, Roberta, Yvonne—all of them. They all want to be like her.”

Cil knit her brows. She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who, Donald? Who do you mean?”

“The girl on television!”
he shouted.
“The dirty girl! The blond whore!”

“Are you talking about someone on the soap operas?”

“Nooooo!”
His wail was plaintive, annoyed that she was so ignorant.

She didn’t know what to do. “Donald, please. Shall I get Sal? Would you like to talk to Sal?”

Donald’s eyes flared. “Sal’s a sinner, too. Sal and Charles. They’re both sinners.”

Cil’s stomach sank. Dear God. She didn’t want to hear anymore. Not about Sal.

She looked at him sternly. “No one likes a tattletale, Donald.”

“But they
are
sinners! They killed those men!”

Cil clutched her throat. “What men?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and thrashed his head back and forth. “I don’t know, I don’t know. They just killed them. They did. Downstairs.”

“Downstairs where?”

“Here!”
The shriek from hell.

Her heart was on the rack, being pulled apart. “You mean Mr. Tate killed someone. That’s what you mean, don’t you? Your friend Charles—Mr. Tate—he’s the killer. Maybe Sal was there, but Mr. Tate—”

“No!
It was Sal who shot them. With a gun. Two men.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. A little man, a little grumpy man, he never smiled. And another one who came with him.”

A little grumpy man? Mr. Mistretta? And Jerry? Cil felt ill. She shut her eyes and pressed her forearm into her stomach, then sank to her knees, supporting herself on the edge of the bed. When she opened her eyes again, that fleshy thing was looking right at her. She turned away and sat back on her heels, clutching her stomach, trying to keep from throwing up.

But Donald was right. Everyone was sinning. The whole world was sinning. Mr. Tate—well, he had heathen written all over him. But Sal? Sal, too? Had he been lying to her that much all these years? Was it all true what they said about him? Was he really as bad as the government prosecutors and the FBI made him out to be? Could he have actually killed Mr. Mistretta himself? He did hate Mr. Mistretta—she knew that—and he does have a very nasty temper. But
…

God in heaven, help us all.

Her eyes shot open. She crossed herself quickly, then gripped the pair of pants on the floor next to her and whipped them over the naked body on her bed. “Put your pants on, Donald. We have to pray.”

“No! I have to get rid—”

“Put those pants on right this minute, mister, and get down on your knees and pray with me”

“But—”

“NOW!”
Her screech made the windows rattle.

He dropped the scissors to his side. He looked terrified.

“I said, get dressed now. And don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Yes, Sister,” he said in a little voice. He lifted one knee and started to put the pants on.

She waited for him to zip his zipper. “Now, get down here with me.”

He crawled off the bed like a bad dog and got on his knees next to her, folding his hands on top of the bed. Her wimple was still on his head, crooked.

“Pray with me, Donald. We have to pray for the souls of all these sinners.”

“Yes, Sister.” He started to mumble the Our Father very quietly, his head bowed.

She tried to join him, but she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind was on Sal. Sal and his lies. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, forcing herself to say the words of the Our Father. It was Sal’s soul they needed to pray for. He was going to be needing their prayers. A lot of prayers.