Bad Luck (28 page)

Sal ran out of the bedroom, his rubber feet squeaking on
the hardwood floor, rushing down the stairs, wishing Tomasso would show his fucking face so he could blow it off. He couldn't hear Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or anything else now. Just the horn on the boat outside.
Blap! blap! blap!
Hurry up!

The beach house was still a football field away when the chopper came up from behind and roared over Tozzi's head. He shaded his eyes and followed it as he walked in the soft sand, watched it stop and hover over a small fishing boat. The boat was in pretty close to the beach. Tozzi wondered if it was in trouble.

He looked at the house and realized that the boat and the helicopter were right by the house. Gonna wake Valerie up, he thought. Then he spotted this guy in hip waders running into the waves, a big guy, galloping like a horse through the water, heading out to the boat. Another guy in the boat helped the big guy with the hip waders get in. Tozzi could hear the loudspeaker on the chopper, but he couldn't make out what they were saying to the guys in the boat. Coast Guard probably giving them hell for being so close to the beach. Valerie must be staring out the window, wondering what the hell—

Galloping like a horse, a big guy . . . Tozzi's heart started to pound. Fucking Immordino. Val! He started to run, feeling the dread like sludge in his stomach. Val! His legs dug into the sand, but it sucked at the soles of his feet and slowed him down. He wanted to be there—
now
—but he couldn't run fast enough, and he started to blame himself before he even knew anything was wrong. Val!

He kept trying to run, but the sand didn't want him to. He moved down to the wet sand and picked up speed, but by the time he reached the house, the chopper was gone and the boat was way out there. He ran in through the sliding glass door, wide open, not the way he'd left it.

“Val!”

He ran up the stairs, turning on the landing, more stairs, second floor, more stairs, another landing, taking the stairs
two, three at a time, third floor, pounding barefoot on the wood floor. The jazz sax, the bubbling water.

“Val, answer me!”

Rushing into the bathroom, he slipped on the wet floor and banged his knee on the tile. It hurt like a bastard. He squeezed his eyes closed and clutched it, pressed it to his chest. But then he opened his eyes and he saw her. He didn't feel the pain anymore. She was half out of the water, flat on her belly, like a beached dolphin in one of those dolphin shows. Thin lines of blood squiggling down her wet back, trickling over her ribs. Val!

He crawled over to her, felt her wet hair, probed for a pulse in her neck, put his ear to her back at the same time and heard the faint, shallow breathing.

He jumped up and slid again, scrambled for the phone in the bedroom. He punched out 911, looking into the bathroom, wanting to go to her. One ring, two rings. Come on, come on. Hurry it up, goddamn you.

“Long Beach Island emergency services.” A woman's voice. Too goddamn calm.

“I need an ambulance right now. Seventy-fourth Street on the ocean side. Russell Nashe's house. A woman has been shot. Do you have that? Seventy-fourth on the ocean side, the great big gray place all by itself. On the top floor, in the bathroom. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir. They're on their way now.” Too damn calm.

“Hurry, you gotta hurry. She's hurt
badi
!” This woman is too fucking calm. She doesn't realize how serious this is. “Please, hurry!”

“Sir, are you hurt also?”

“Me?” He realized he was rubbing his knee and he stopped. “No, no, I'm not hurt.”

“Then you should go down to the street and be there when the ambulance arrives to direct them to the injured person.”

“Right, yes. I know that.”

Tozzi dropped the phone on the floor. He ripped a blanket off the bed and brought it into the bathroom to cover
Valerie. He felt for the pulse again. He didn't want to leave her. He stroked her hair, put his cheek to the floor, and looked into her glassy eyes.

“They're coming, Val. They're coming.”

He heard the sirens then and he jumped up, about to run downstairs, but he stopped to shut off that goddamn music, too loud, too loud. He twisted the volume dial on the unit built into the wall and happened to glance out the bathroom window. That little fishing boat was almost a speck on the ocean.

Fucking Immordino. I swear to Christ I'm gonna kill that bastard. I don't give a shit. I'll fucking crucify him.

The doorbell suddenly jolted him, made him jump. Like a big fishhook speared through the chest. He pushed off the wall and ran down to let the ambulance guys in.

They're here, Val. They're here. They're here. Hang on. Please!

n other news, police arrested seven Jamaican immigrants in a predawn raid in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The seven men are accused of belonging to a notoriously violent drug posse specializing in the sale and distribution of marijuana. A police spokesman reported that half a ton of marijuana was found in an apartment where the suspects were in the process of dividing and packaging the drug for street sale . . .”

On the screen seven handcuffed black guys were being marched into a police station one by one, all greasy dreadlocks and drop-dead eyes. The picture switched to the grungy apartment, cops showing off the cache. Two burlap bales, the sides slit open to show the grass. Hundreds of neat plastic Baggies, rolled tight and taped shut, ready for sale. A plastic laundry basket full of cash. A sawed-off shotgun, an AK-47, three 9mm automatics, a .357 Magnum. The camera panned by the arsenal quickly, but Gibbons was almost certain the .357 was a Colt Python,
the one with the six-inch barrel. A real Wild West item. Nice bunch, these guys.

The picture switched to one of the arresting officers, an undercover cop sitting in a darkened office, his head just a shadow in order to maintain his anonymity. An off-camera reporter asked him how the arrest had been executed.

“The suspects had been under surveillance for several weeks prior to this morning's arrest Three of the men were observed picking up a major shipment yesterday at—”

“Did I tell you that Brant Ivers's wife RSVPed today?” Lorraine said. “She said she was very sorry, but they won't be able to make the wedding.”

Gibbons looked over at her sitting on the other end of the couch, flipping through a magazine. A stupid magazine. He looked back at the TV, but the undercover cop was gone. Goddammit. He wanted to hear where the Jamaicans were bringing in their weed.

“Mrs. Ivers was very apologetic in her note, but they're already committed to parents' weekend at Groton. That's where Brant, Jr., goes. Her husband went there too, apparently. He's very active with the alumni association.”

“Too bad.” Gibbons stared at the magazine in her lap, one of those oversized magazines with a lot of pictures of girls in their early twenties wearing clothes for women in their late forties, the kind of pictures that make women crazy because even after they buy the clothes, they still don't look like the models and they refuse to believe that it isn't the clothes that's the problem. It's the years. Gibbons turned back to the news.

A still photo of Richie Varga appeared over the anchorman's shoulder. Gibbons sat forward.

“Lawyers for convicted mobster Richie Varga appealed his 1987 murder conviction, citing improper procedure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in making his arrest. Varga, who is currently serving a life sentence at the Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institution in upstate New York, was convicted of running a renegade
La Cosa Nostra
faction while he was living under the protection of the
government's Witness Security Program. In seeking to overturn the murder conviction, Varga's lawyers hope to have their client moved from a maximum-security facility to a medium-security prison. In filing their appeal, Varga's attorney's charge the FBI with illegal use of—”

“Is there a buttonhole in the lapel of your new suit?”

“Wait!”

“—which led to Varga's eventual capture. In other news . . .”

Goddammit! What the hell's wrong with her?

Lorraine paused and looked at the television. “You and Michael were on that case, weren't you? You're the ones who caught him.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think they'll overturn the conviction?”

“Beats me.”

“You worked so hard on that case. You nearly got killed. Thank God Michael found that warehouse where they were keeping you.”

Yeah . . . lucky me.

The commercial came on then, a commercial for Maalox. Gibbons was biting his tongue, dying to say something. But where the hell do you begin? How do you tell the woman you love she's turned into an idiot and she better snap out of it?

“So does it?” she said.

“Huh? What're you talking about?”

“Does your new suit have a buttonhole for a boutonniere?”

Gibbons was sitting on a volcano, about to explode. “I don't know. Does it matter?”

“Well, yes. You can't wear a flower in your lapel if you don't have a buttonhole.”

“If you don't have a hole, you use a pin.” Nitwit.

“That's true. I hadn't thought of that.” She folded over the magazine and extended it to him. “I was thinking you should wear a yellow tulip to offset the gray suit. See the
girl in this picture? On the bottom of the page. Don't the tulips look nice with her—”

“Do you think you can hold on to this crucial information until after the news?” Before I throw you out a fucking window.

“Oh . . . I'm sorry.”

A cornflakes commercial was just ending, and the anchorman came back on.
“And now, Lou Moses with sports . . .”

The camera switched to Lou Moses, the worst hairpiece in broadcasting. Looked like something dead on the side of the road. The guy'd been on TV for ten years, probably made four, five hundred grand a year, and he couldn't get himself a better rug? One of the mysteries of the universe. Just like women.

Lou started going over the baseball scores. Gibbons glanced over at Lorraine. She was all jammed up in the corner of the couch, like she was trying to make herself small. She had the whipped-puppy look, something new for her. Christ Almighty, he wished he could figure out what in the hell was wrong with her. They had to talk. As soon as the news is over.

“—and there's been a mysterious development in the War Down the Shore, the heavyweight-championship bout between reigning champ Dwayne ‘Pain' Walker and former champ Charles Epps scheduled for this Saturday night in Atlantic City. It seems that ‘Pain' Walker's longtime trainer was secretly hospitalized earlier this week in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reporter Craig Wood at our sister station in Philadelphia is at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Reading—”

“I'm sorry I interrupted—”

“Not now, not now!”

A heavy-set guy in a plaid jacket held a microphone in one hand, a clipboard in the other. He was standing outside a hospital emergency-room entrance.
“Lou, Henry Gonsalves, the champ's trainer—and, some say, the only man the erratic young fighter trusts—was admitted to Our
Lady of Mercy Hospital here late Sunday night under the name Hector Diaz. A nurse, who would not give me her name, told me today that Gonsalves, who remains in critical condition, was unconscious from the time he was brought in until late Monday afternoon and that he had facial lacerations, a broken jaw, and two fractured ribs. He was later diagnosed as having sustained a severe concussion, and some degree of brain damage is feared. The nurse told me that Henry Gonsalves's injuries seem to indicate that he'd been beaten up very badly.