Bad Blood (17 page)

Suddenly the accordion swept through the room like a tornado with the intro to “Strangers in the Night.” The Chianti bottles rattled. The skinny guitar player started to sing. Tozzi looked into her eyes. She gazed back into his. Her eyes were like melting chocolates. Her lips parted moistly. Their fingers entwined across the table. Then they both started laughing uncontrollably. It was all so cornball. He loved it. She was great.

“Let me ask you something, Roxanne.”

“Ask me something.” She looked sly and giddy.

“Would you be interested in coming over to the apartment as soon as I move in, just to make some decorating suggestions?”

She gazed at him over the rim of her wineglass. “To work on the ‘ambience'?” She really did have laughing eyes.

“No, seriously. I'd just like to get a woman's opinion on what I should do with the place.” He couldn't keep a straight face either.

“My, aren't we cheeky.”

And horny, too.

The accordion swelled. The bottles chimed. She was terrific. Tozzi felt great.

TOZZI FELT STUPID. He felt sore and stupid. His hands were blistered, his back hurt, and he couldn't keep his attention focused on Neil Chaney as he demonstrated aikido techniques, which made him feel even more stupid each time he had to pair off with one of the people in the class to practice. It didn't help that Neil referred to each technique by its Japanese name, which just confused Tozzi. And it didn't help that he was constantly being corrected by the others in the class. He knew they meant well, but he wasn't in the mood to be told that he stood the wrong way, sat the wrong way, stretched the wrong way, fell down the wrong way, attacked the wrong way, and even punched the wrong way. He'd been in how many fistfights in his life?—too many to count—and now he had to be told by an eighteen-year-old girl that he didn't punch the right way? Rationally he knew she was right, that they had a certain way of doing things in aikido, that he was a beginner and that he just had to learn. But he wasn't feeling very rational right now, and everything was pissing him off.

He wished to God he had some of Gibbons's patience. Gibbons knew how to work an investigation, how to let the facts gestate, how to go over the same territory again and again until he found what was hidden there. Tozzi was like a kid. He needed instant gratification. You get a lead, you follow it, you uncover the crucial evidence,
bang!
you solve the case—
bing-bing-bing
, just like that. Rationally he knew
that wasn't the way it went in the real world. But being rational was never one of his strong suits. He preferred swinging down on a rope, causing confusion, making things happen. Or at least that's the way he liked to think of himself.

Neil Sensei, as everyone called him once they were on the mats, was demonstrating a technique with one of the other black belts, a big-boned, pasty-faced guy. The black belt was aiming some pretty vicious-looking punches at Neil Sensei's midsection. Neil Sensei would step out of the way, gently grab the big guy's wrist, cover his hand with his own, point the guy's fingers at the floor, and force him to fall flat on his back. Simple.

Ha! Tozzi knew better. Things were never that simple in aikido. Not only did you have to get the move right, including the footwork, you had to keep the four basic principles of aikido in mind while you did it. A sign on the wall reminded you in case you forgot: Keep one point, Relax completely, Keep weight underside, Extend
ki
. Tozzi had learned that evening that one point was somewhere below your belly button, and being aware of it was supposed to keep you strong and balanced and do something for your energy flow. Keeping weight underside vaguely made sense to him in terms of balance—better to be bottom-heavy than top-heavy. Relaxing completely was a nice idea, but somehow Tozzi had a hard time relaxing when he knew someone was about to punch him in the gut. (Neil Sensei kept telling him his tension stemmed from the fact that he wasn't keeping his one point, which he thought he was, sort of. It was a vicious circle.) And as for
ki
, well, the best explanation he'd gotten so far was from some spaced-out grad student from Stevens Tech who told him that it was “sorta like projecting this spirit, this feeling, this aura that's kinda like your phazer set a little higher than just stun.”

Right. Beam me up, Scottie.

How the hell were you supposed to keep all this in mind and get the moves down right to learn the damn technique? And how the hell could you learn anything sitting on your knees all the time in
seiza?
Everyone else in the class could sit like this indefinitely, even look comfortable doing it. But he had to keep shifting his weight so he could tolerate the pain, forcing himself not to think about the spasms he knew were just waiting to grip his thighs and ankles. Damn.

He'd hoped this class would help him work off some tension, not add to it. The pain in his legs and the feeling of hopeless ineptitude
wasn't what he needed right now, having spent the whole day at John D'Urso's house, cultivating his fucking endless flower beds and picking every last stray leaf out from under the goddamn shrubs. It was Roxanne's fault. She'd worked too fast and gotten D'Urso's address for him early that morning. He'd hoped to spend the day with her, maybe take a drive somewhere, but duty called. Dammit. He really wanted to see her. Instead, Tozzi went right over to D'Urso's and arrived just in time to see the gardener's truck pulling out of the driveway of D'Urso's big pseudo-French chateau. The gardener's name was painted on the doors of the truck:
NICK PARISI, LANDSCAPE CONTRACTOR
. That gave him the idea. He was already dressed pretty sloppy in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a jeans jacket, so he ran over to Freeman's Nursery in Milburn and picked up a three-prong cultivating hook and a flat-edged spade, then went back to Short Hills and parked around the corner from D'Urso's. He pulled the tools out of the trunk and walked back to the D'Urso house.

He went straight to the backyard, which was surrounded by an eight-foot, black iron-bar fence. It felt like he was in the lion's cage at the circus. There was a wooden swing set with a built-in tree house on the lawn behind the kidney-shaped pool. The swing set made him feel a little better. Wiseguys probably won't shoot if their kids are around. Posing as one of the gardener's helpers should be pretty safe, though, he figured. Just as long as Nick doesn't come back.

He started working on the beds, pulling weeds, digging up fresh soil and smoothing it out with the hook, then cutting a nice neat edge all around with the spade. He kept glancing back at the house, hoping to see something suspicious—like a bunch of Japanese girls running around the place—something he could take to Ivers so he would authorize a formal electronic surveillance. Good ole Ivers and his goddamn daily reports. Tozzi'd love to have a real report ready for him first thing Monday morning, something worthwhile, something he could shove up Ivers's ass. Tozzi was grinning meanly to himself when the glass patio doors suddenly slid open and this young guy in a purple sweater and baggy, pleated, gray plaid pants came out.

“Hey! What're you doing over there?” He kept his head cocked to one side—to keep that faggy-looking piece of hair out of his eyes, Tozzi figured. He definitely had the wiseguy attitude even if he didn't have the look. One of D'Urso's crew no doubt.

“I said what are you doing?” The guy enunciated every syllable. He probably assumed Tozzi was an immigrant.

“I'm doing the beds,” Tozzi said.

“What's-his-name, the gardener, he just left a little while ago. What're
you
still doing here?”

“Nick left me here to do the beds. It's about time, too. Look at that.” Tozzi pointed to the beds. “These roots need to breathe. Gotta break up the soil, let the air in.” He was right. The beds hadn't been touched all season. Nick was a shitty gardener. Gradually the punk nodded in agreement.

“You gonna be here long?”

Tozzi shrugged. “As long as it takes. There's a lotta work here. Look at those hemlocks, look how straggly they are. They have to be trimmed. That's a big job. I won't finish all this today. No way.” He figured he'd pave the way just in case he had to come back.

“Yeah, the place does look pretty bad.” The punk nodded and pushed up the sleeves of his purple sweater. “Do a nice job, okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. That's all I know how to do.” Tozzi kept smiling until the punk went back inside. Now he had to work, dammit. He always hated digging beds. To him it was worse than mowing grass in the heat of August. After that last summer he'd worked for a gardener, the one between his senior year of high school and his freshman year of college, he swore he'd never do this kind of work again. Who'd of thought eighteen years later he'd be digging beds again? Never say never, they say.

He worked there from ten-thirty to almost three, and in all that time he didn't see a goddamn thing. No one came in or out except for the punk who left around noon in D'Urso's black Mercedes. No stream of illegal aliens, no giggling geisha girls, no sign of John D'Urso or his wife. Only a little girl who stared at him for a while from behind the sliding glass doors up on the deck, and a glimpse at the Japanese woman who pulled her away from the window. From the brief look he got, this woman seemed a little older than the girl who'd been murdered, mid-to-late twenties, maybe. She was also quite a looker. Tozzi kept thinking of these nannies as homely girls. Of course, he'd also expected to find some old bag running the Eastlake Academy, and Roxanne turned out to be something else. Something else indeed. As he worked, he kept hoping the Japanese woman would come out with the kid so he could talk to her, but that
didn't happen. He thought maybe if he could get inside, he could corner her. After the punk left, he rang the doorbell and asked to use the toilet. The Hispanic maid answered and showed him to the john in the basement. She also waited outside the door so she could escort him right back out. Shit. He kept trying to come up with some other ploy to get to the baby-sitter, but in the end all he could do was work and watch and wait for something to come his way. As the day stretched on, it became obvious that he was going to have to come back and work on those hemlocks on Monday. Shit. At quarter of three, he picked up his tools and headed back to his car.

Driving back to his rented room in Weehawken, Tozzi couldn't stop thinking about the Japanese woman at D'Urso's house. Why would a Mafia guy let his wife get involved with a nanny business? And why Japanese nannies? Was it just to give the wife something to do, to get her out of his hair? Possibly. But even assuming the business was legitimate, why let her work out of the house? These guys never like to draw attention to themselves, and their homes are their castles, literally. Didn't it occur to him that a home business like this might make the IRS or Immigration a little curious? And why just Japanese girls? It didn't make sense. On Friday Gibbons had told him about the air hose he found in the Honda. Assuming that D'Urso was smuggling Japanese workers into the country, why go to all that trouble? Down at the Mexican border, you can get illegal aliens from Central America by the truckload. And they get themselves into the country. That had to be cheaper than shipping them one by one from Japan. Anyway Roxanne thought D'Urso's wife was undercutting her price. What kind of profit margin could they have with these Japanese nannies? D'Urso would never get involved in any kind of operation that didn't leave him with a healthy cut. It just didn't make sense.

He kept thinking about the D'Urso's nanny, forcing himself to remember her face. There was something different about her expression, more world-weary than those other Asian nannies he'd seen around Milburn. None of that
Teahouse of the August Moon
happy-happy innocence. She looked like she knew more than she'd ever tell.

Tozzi took the exit off the Parkway and looped onto Route 3 East, shaking his head at himself. He was doing it again. Christ, he'd only seen her for twenty seconds. He was doing a whole character study based on a twenty-second look from thirty feet away through a
plate-glass door? Pretty flimsy. He was making up stories again, bending reality to make it be the way he wanted it to be. That's how he got into trouble before. That's the kind of shit Gibbons always warned him about. Well, maybe Gibbons was right.

As he drove down the highway, he started thinking about the two dead kids and the cuts on their bodies and karate chops to the neck, and suddenly he remembered that there was an aikido class in Hoboken this afternoon at four. He glanced at this watch and decided he had just enough time to clean up, grab some sweats, and get over there. He decided throwing people around the mats might be a good way to work off some of this edginess he always seemed to have. Yeah, work off some of the frustration. Just what he needed after a wasted day like this.

He was wrong.

Neil Sensei finished his demonstration and bowed to the pasty-faced black belt, then instructed the class to pair off and practice. The spacey grad student from Stevens tapped him on the shoulder. “Shall we dance?” he asked.

“Sure.” Tozzi noticed that he was a blue belt, one of the middle ranks. Good. Tozzi figured the guy was experienced enough to teach him something, but not so good as to make him look bad.

“My name's Chris. You're . . . ?”

“Mike.”