Bad Blood (14 page)

He stared though the hot-house windows in the front of the nursery and watched a green dump truck backing up to the loading dock.
As soon as the truck stopped, the gardener jumped out of the cab and started yelling at his men to hurry up and load bags of fertilizer onto the truck. He was a foxy-looking guy with a thick Italian accent who spoke with the kind of operatic expansiveness that made everything he said sound like bullshit. Freeman, the owner of this nursery, eyeballed him skeptically through black horn-rimmed, Coke-bottle glasses, shifting his big cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. He filled out the gardener's receipt on a clipboard that rested on his big belly. He was about six-five, at least 280 pounds. The skinny Italian jabbered away at the big man, gesturing with his arms, grabbing his crotch and laughing. Tozzi wasn't sure, but it seemed like the gardener was telling Freeman a dirty joke. Freeman wasn't laughing, though. He reminded Tozzi of the dim-witted Cyclops in an old Jason and the Argonauts movie he remembered watching as a kid on “The Million Dollar Movie.” He imagined the gardener intentionally distracting Freeman as his men got a pointy log ready to stick in the giant's eye.

Tozzi took a second look at the gardener's two helpers then. He went closer to the window to get a better look. They were both Asian, most likely Koreans, which surprised him. These Italian-immigrant gardeners usually hired other Italians or Hispanics. Tozzi had worked with a Bolivian and a couple of Uruguayans in his time, but he'd never seen any Asian help. He always thought the Koreans were too clannish to work for anyone else. Of course, it seemed like they had cornered the market on produce stands in the New York area. Maybe gardening was just a logical extension of their thing with plants.

The truck pulled away from the loading dock and Freeman lumbered back inside. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he growled.

“No problem,” Tozzi said, walking back to the counter.

“That guy's a real pain in my ass. Always in a big fucking hurry. Treats his men like shit, too. Never thought I'd ever feel sorry for slopes.” He scratched the stubble on top of his crew-cut head and rolled the cigar to the other side of his mouth where he had several teeth missing on the bottom. The cigar rested nicely in that space. “Now, you said you're from the FBI? A real FBI agent, huh?”

Tozzi nodded and smiled patiently. He'd seen this reaction before.

“Damn. Never thought I'd ever meet a damn FBI agent. So what can I do for you?”

“Well—”

Freeman's face suddenly turned uglier. His magnified eyes bugged out under his glasses. “You're not investigating me, are you?”

“No sir. I think I mentioned before we were interrupted that you are not the target of this investigation.”

“Is it my wife?” The cigar rolled around in his mouth, then went back to its space.

“No sir. Not your wife either.”

“Too bad. I wish somebody'd put her away for ten, twenty years. Do me a favor.”

Tozzi smiled obligingly, but he had a feeling this wasn't a joke. “Marital problems?”

“Fuck no. Business problems. I shoulda never agreed to let her come in here and do her thing. House plants and all that shit.” He pulled out the cigar and spit on the floor. “Plants belong outside, goddammit. And those frickin' bonsai trees. Ridiculous, spending all that time and trouble to keep a tree small like that. It's unnatural. Look at this place. I used to have a nice dirty place here. Now it looks like some kind of boutique, these rich bitches trooping in and out of here all the time. If the old lady wasn't making so much goddamn money on those stupid little things, I'd boot her and those damn weeds of hers the hell out of here.”

“Ah-hah.” Tozzi nodded. “Well, I came because your ad in the yellow pages said you specialized in bonsai trees. Maybe I should talk to your wife.”

Freeman rubbed his nose with the back of his index finger and glared at him. It was clear that the big man was reforming his opinion of the FBI agent now that he knew Tozzi was here for goddamn bonsai trees. “She ain't here today. She's at some bonsai tree convention in New York.”

Tozzi opened a manila envelope and pulled out the eight-by-ten photo of the shears that were found on the female victim. He laid it on the counter. “What can you tell me about these?”

“What do you want to know?” The Cyclops was getting belligerent.

“These are the kind of shears they use to prune bonsai trees, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you sell shears like this?”

The Cyclops scowled down at the photo as if Tozzi had just put dogshit there. “Yeah, she sells these things.”

“These were made in Japan. See the inscription on the blade? The ones you sell, are they made in Japan?”

“They better not be, goddamn it. Too damn expensive. We'd be stuck with 'em. Order the cheap ones from Taiwan, I told her. Her lady friends won't know the difference. I told her, you order those Jap ones and I'll stick your head in the chipper, goddamn it. For once, she listened to me.” The cigar bobbed up and down in its resting place.

Tozzi nodded, wondering how serious he was about putting his wife's head into a wood chipper. It wouldn't be a first. Not that long ago some guy out in the boonies in upstate New York killed his wife with an ax, then put her in the chipper to get rid of the body. He might've pulled it off, except that her pelvis kept jamming up the machine. He kept trying it and eventually she stripped the gears. At his trial, he referred to her the same way, both alive and dead, as “that goddamn cunt.”

“You know of anyone around here who does sell the Japanese ones?” Tozzi asked.

“Nope. Ask the wife, though. She'd know. She'll be back tomorrow.”

“Okay. Tell her I'll give her a call. Thanks for your help.”

He garbled something Tozzi couldn't understand. As Tozzi headed for the door, an obviously well-to-do suburban matron came in. She was a real sketch. Henna red hair, jade-green eye shadow, killer nails in mauve, white fur jacket. Tozzi glanced back at Cyclops behind the counter and wondered if he kept the chipper out back.

Outside, Tozzi noticed a white Mercedes wagon parked next to his car. There were three people in the backseat: a toddler in a car seat, a little girl who looked about kindergarten age, and a dark-haired woman. Tozzi assumed she was the baby-sitter because she was sitting in the back with the kids, her head bent over a stack of construction paper on her lap. Opening his car door, he noticed that the baby-sitter was making animals out of folded pieces of construction paper. She was just finishing one up, a yellow rhinoceros. The little girl was clapping her hands and making giddy squeals. The toddler was fast asleep. As he turned the ignition key and started his engine, the baby-sitter was suddenly startled. She jerked her head
around and stared at Tozzi, a look of terror and anxiety on her face. Tozzi instantly thought of war victims—World War II, Vietnam—noticing for the first time that she was Asian. Another Asian. He forced a smile to calm the girl down as he backed out of his space and left the nursery, wondering whether seeing three Asians in a row was just a coincidence. Maybe it was one of those things like when you buy a new Chevy and all of a sudden all you see are Chevys on the road. Maybe it was just cosmic irony. Who knows? He threw it into drive and pulled out of the parking lot without giving it another thought.

After leaving Freeman's Nursery, Tozzi drove into the center of town to grab a sandwich. The only coffee shop in Milburn was one of those Fifth Avenue-type places where rich old ladies pay six bucks for a scoop of cottage cheese and a half a canned peach on lettuce with melba toast on the side. The sight of that much blue hair and mink gave him the creeps, so he got his tuna on rye to go and ate it outside on one of the park benches that were artfully set among the meticulous rock-garden beds that lined this stretch of Milburn Avenue in front of the kind of shops he'd never dream of going into.

But as he ate his lunch, he began to notice something very peculiar. It wasn't unusual to see young women pushing baby carriages and strollers through the center of any town, but of the eight he spotted in the course of eating the first half of his sandwich, five of them were Asian. One of them was pushing a baby carriage so he couldn't see the baby—it could've been hers, though she seemed too young and too humble to live in a town like Milburn—but the others were all pushing white kids. They all seemed very young, late teens, early twenties. Same age as the two kids who bought it in the VW. Seemed like more than just a coincidence.

He dumped the rest of his coffee into the begonias, packed up his trash, and went back into the coffee shop. As he walked to the back, his nose was assaulted by an onslaught of overpowering perfumes. He breathed through his mouth and made his way back to the pay phone, happy to see that they had a phone book. This kind of place would. He poked around through the yellow pages, looking up “Baby-sitters,” “Nannies,” and “Children.” Under “Child Care,” he found several day-care centers, one employment agency called Domestics Unlimited that provided live-in au pairs as well as cooks,
maids, and chauffeurs, and the Eastlake Academy, a school for nannies that specialized in providing “trained nannies in the British tradition for discerning parents.” The school was in Maplewood, the next town over. Tozzi glanced at his watch and grinned to himself. Time to pay a visit on the Eastlake Academy.

Pip, pip, major.

As Tozzi dug into his pocket for change for the meter, he looked across the tiny park next to the post office at the old Erie-Lakawanna railroad station where a train was just pulling out. Maplewood Village, as it was called, actually sort of felt like an English village. Quaint but not obnoxious about it. Before he took the depressing rented room he was living in now in Weehawken as a temporary solution, he'd considered getting an apartment here, but ultimately he decided it wasn't his kind of place, which suddenly reminded him that he better call Mrs. Carlson and cancel that meeting tonight with the landlord who “prefers married tenants.” He'd call her later and make up some excuse. Too bad, he liked that place on Adams Street. It was gritty but clean.

Maplewood Village was really the perfect place for a nanny school in “the British tradition,” he thought, as he walked past the Christian Science Reading Room and the stationery store to the doorway marked “49.” It was two-story yellow-brick building with stores on the first floor, offices on the second. The Eastlake Academy was in Room 22. Tozzi went upstairs and followed the arrows to Room 22, smiling nostalgically as he suddenly recalled dumpy Miss Frances on “Ding-Dong School.” That's probably the kind of ladies who come out of the Eastlake Academy. Older, gray, kindly but proper, firm and correct. Miss Frances with an accent.

But when Tozzi pushed the buzzer on Room 22 and opened the door, what he saw was something else again. She was standing beside the reception desk, holding the phone to her ear. She had legs, incredible legs. Tall. Padded shoulders. Nice shape. Early thirties. Dark red hair. Small, Oriental-looking eyes, laughing eyes. She flipped her hair behind her ear and looked over at him. She smiled cordially. There was a slight space between her teeth. He almost dropped dead.

“. . . yes, Mrs. Danzig, yes. I
assure
you. All our nannies have been thoroughly trained in child care. Our women have completed courses
in pre-school psychology and first aid as well as the traditional nanny curriculum . . . Well, they will bath the children, of course . . . Only if there's an emergency. If the baby spills his milk, nanny will clean it . . . No, I'm afraid our nannies don't do floors and windows . . . No . . . No, I'm afraid not . . . Very well, I'm sorry we couldn't accommodate your needs, Mrs. Danzig. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and smiled at Tozzi again. “Hello. Can I help you?”

She was very British. Welcoming but still stiff upper lip considering that she had apparently just lost a client. “Well,” he said, “I'm interested in hiring a . . . nanny.”

“Well, you've come to the right place.” She walked toward him and extended her hand.

Tozzi's heart kicked. He wanted to grab her and kiss her. Was she ever nice.

“I'm Roxanne Eastlake,” she said, shaking his hand. “I'm afraid my secretary is out to lunch right now.” She rolled her eyes back toward the reception desk. They were light brown, dark gold. “Please come into my office, Mr . . . ?”

“Uh . . . Tozzi. Mike Tozzi.”

“This way, Mr. Tozzi.” She pronounced the z's like s's. So what. She had a beautiful ass. And that space between her teeth . . . ooo-la-la.

Her office was all brass and burgundy leather. A lot of women decorate their offices like powder rooms. This office was very classy, no silk flowers but no high-tech black-lacquer-and-chrome power shit either. He liked it. He liked her.

“Now,” she said, lacing her fingers on top of her blotter, “tell me what you're looking for in a nanny, Mr. Tozzi.”

“Well,”—it was hard not to stare at her—“I have a daughter—”

“How old?”

“Uh, two.”

“Ah-hah.” She nodded and smiled, encouraging him to go on. Oh, that space! It was so sexy.

“Well, you see, Ms. Eastlake, I'm on the road a lot. Business. And—”