Bad Business (16 page)

Her eyes were hot, and her chest was heaving. “When are you going to grow up, Michael? Why don't you go home and make yourself some hot chocolate? And don't forget the marshmallows.”

He didn't respond right away, just stared at her with no expression. He wanted to make her nervous. “All of a sudden you've been going out of your way to chase me down, counselor. Why?”

“I have not been chasing you down.”

“You went all the way out to Newark to sweet-talk my cousin Sal into giving you my address, then surprise, surprise you came over to my house one night, then you invited me to lunch—that's not chasing me down? You never said two words to me before this. Why, after all these years, am I so interesting?”

“Who ever said you were interesting?”

Tozzi pressed his fist into his gut. “I've got this bad feeling right here in the pit of my stomach, and I don't like it. You know why I got this feeling? Because somebody's trying to frame me for murder, and I think that somebody is your client Mr. Salamandra. Two days ago you showed up at my place out of the blue. What were you, checking me out? Doing a little reconnaisance for the Zips?”

She just stared at him in disbelief. Her chest was still heaving, though, which meant he was getting her rattled. Good. He had to scare her a little, see if he could read her face.

“You're a mental case, Michael. Do you know that? How
could you even suggest such a thing? How do I know you didn't—?”

“Mommy?”

They both turned at once. A little girl was standing in the hallway on the other side of the living room. Her blond hair was long and tousled, and she was rubbing her eyes with her fist. She was wearing a long, red-plaid flannel nightgown, clutching a little stuffed skunk to her chest. Tozzi glanced at Lesley and noticed that her face had changed. Her eyes were anxious. Was she always this alarmed when her daughter got up in the middle of the night?

“Patricia, what are you doing up?” Lesley went over to her daughter and gave her a hug.

The little girl stared at Tozzi with wide blue eyes. They were just like her mother's. “Is
that
Santa Claus, Mommy?”

“No, honey, that's not Santa Claus.” Lesley wasn't looking at him.

“Did he come yet?”

“No, not yet.”

Tozzi smiled to reassure the kid that he was all right. Now he felt awful, waking the kid up on Christmas Eve like this. “I'm one of Santa's helpers,” he said, catching Lesley's eye. “I scout things out for Santa before he comes, check the chimneys to make sure they're big enough.”

Lesley threw him the dirtiest look he'd ever seen. “Come on, honey. Let's get back in bed. You know what I said about Santa not coming if he knows you're still awake.”

Lesley led her daughter back down the hallway. Tozzi could hear the kid asking questions about who that man really was. Was he really Santa's helper?

After they were gone, Tozzi stepped into the room and checked the place out. A small Christmas tree stood in the corner, red balls and white lights, nice but not much character. There were no presents underneath it yet. She was probably waiting to bring out the presents, figuring the kid would be up a few times before she finally fell asleep. His
mother always hid the presents until Christmas Eve. Even when he was older, he could never figure out where the hell she hid them. Their house wasn't that big.

Lesley's furniture was all clean lines and practicality, natural wood and black lacquer, Workbench kind of stuff. Nothing gaudy or extravagant. He leaned on the back of the couch in the middle of the room and studied the oil paintings on the walls. They were all by the same artist, he guessed, because they all had a similar style, vague shapes surrounded by hazy colors coming out of the gloom, like extraterrestrials caught in your headlights on a foggy night. They could've been originals she'd picked up at a fancy-schmancy Soho gallery for fifty grand apiece, or they could've been motel art from a Holiday Inn weekend sale in Manhasset. He had no idea. Art was something he knew absolutely nothing about. Of course, collecting fine art might be something she'd do if she suddenly came into a lot of cash from a client rolling in drug money. It was exactly the kind of thing Lesley Halloran would do. Because it was classy.

Tozzi got up and went toward one of the paintings. He didn't care about the picture; he wanted to see the wall behind it, see if the paint had faded, see how long the painting had been there. He wanted to know if it was a recent purchase. But just as he was reaching out to move the frame over, Lesley came back. She emerged from the shadows in the hallway in her pink bathrobe like one of the shapes in these paintings. There was fear in her eyes. But there was something else with it. Fear mixed with determination. It was then that Tozzi noticed that her hands weren't in her pockets anymore. She was holding a gun.

He dropped his arm to his side. “What're you gonna do with that?”

“Whatever I have to,” she said. “I'm not taking any chances. What're you really doing here, Michael? Have you come to kill me the way you killed Marty Bloom and the
others?” Her hand was trembling. So were her lips. She was scared shitless, which meant she could start firing without much provocation.

He kept his hands where she could see them. “I didn't kill anyone, Lesley.”

“I will not let you harm me or my child. Do you understand that? I am within my rights. I'm protecting my child and my property.
I'm within my rights.”

She was getting hysterical, and she wasn't listening. “Lesley, put down the gun. Okay? Put down the gun before something happens.”

“I thought I knew who you were, Michael, but I was wrong. I was very wrong. I shouldn't have let you in. I don't know what I was thinking. After what happened today, why in God's name would I trust you?”

Tozzi took a deep breath. It was time to go for broke. “Maybe you let me in because you
do
trust me. Maybe because you like me? Kinda.”

Tozzi held his breath, waiting for an answer. Her hand was still shaking, but the resolve seemed to have hardened in her face. His words weren't registering with her. She felt threatened, and now she was convincing herself that she could do the deed if she had to. Tozzi had no doubts that she could. If a frantic mother can pick up a car to save her kid's life, pulling a trigger should be a snap.

He glanced down at the gun. It was a silver-plated automatic, small caliber, a .22 or maybe a .25, the kind of little gun wiseguys like. Professional shooters prefer 9mms, the contract killers, but street hoods like little guns they can keep in their pockets. Could she have gotten this one from Salamandra?

“Do you have a license for that weapon?”

“Yes. And I know how to shoot, if that's what you're thinking.”

Tozzi nodded just to agree with her, wondering whether she would really do it. He didn't want to find out.

“You don't think I'm capable of pulling the trigger, do you? I'm just a little woman, right? That's what you're thinking.”

“That's not what I was thinking.”

She exhaled a brusque nervous laugh. “Oh, no? Then what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about a dance.”

“A what?”

“A dance. Mixers, we used to call them. You know, back when we were in high school?”

She narrowed her eyes, very wary of him.

He kept talking. She seemed to be listening now. “I remember it was a Halloween mixer, at your school. I went with a couple of guys from my school. One of my buddies was going out with this girl in your class, and we all went together in a big group. We must've been sophomores, I think.”

“What's this got to do with anything?” Her hand shook a little more than it had been.

“My buddy's name was Joe Reilly. His girlfriend's name was Pam something. A Polish or Ukrainian name, I think.”

“Pam Sabisky? She was a good friend of mine.”

“Yeah, I know. I remember you from that night. It was in the gym, and it was pretty dark. I guess someone convinced the nuns that for Halloween it should be dark. Usually they kept all the lights on at mixers so they could spot any hanky-panky. Anyway, you were over at one side of the gym with a bunch of your girlfriends, and Joe and us guys were over on the other side, leaning against the wall, looking at you.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

To get you to put that gun down. To keep you from putting a hole in my chest. To get you to trust me
.

“Well,” he said, “you probably don't remember, but—well, you know how guys are at that age. Too horny to get out of their own way, and too dumb to do anything about it. Well, I remember standing there that whole night, just looking
at you and trying to think of something to say to you so I could ask you to dance. I mean, I guess I can admit it now. I really did have the hots for you back then, but we'd never talked or anything, so I didn't know how to approach you. See, most of the time you didn't look like you wanted to be bothered with guys like me. You always looked sort of mad, or like you could get mad very easily.”

The way you sort of look right now
.

“I remember that dance,” she said after a long silence. “Pam kept running back and forth from one side of the gym to the other, acting as the go-between, trying to get us to dance with you guys.”

“Yeah, right. Do you remember the name of the band they had that night?”

She shook her head.

“The Wheels of Fortune. They were from around where we lived in Vailsburg. I can remember distinctly—they started their second set with ‘Drive My Car.' You know, the Beatles song? And I
really
liked that song. ‘Baby, you can drive my car, da-da-da-da-da.' I almost worked up the nerve to go over to you when they played it. Almost. I was waiting for you to smile a little, you know, just not look so mad. But you didn't smile, and I chickened out. Later I saw you dancing with some jock from Seton Hall Prep. You were with him the rest of the night. Maybe if that song had been longer . . .”

She stood there, frozen, the gun still leveled at him. Then all at once, she lowered the gun to her side and let out a long, exhausted sigh like all the hope was rushing out of her. She dropped her head and covered her eyes with her hand. “Shit. You're not the killer, are you?”

“No. I'm not.” Tozzi stepped closer cautiously. “Lesley? Put down the gun.”

She just stood there, not moving.

He went a little closer. “Lesley? Give me the gun. Please?”

Her shoulders started to jiggle. She was sobbing into her hand. As he took another step closer, she suddenly looked up and glared at him. “What're you staring at? I'm scared, all right? I worry about Patricia.” Her face crumpled and tears glistened in her eyes. “She's only five years old, for God's sake.”

She tossed the gun on the couch, then turned her back on him, burying her face in her hands. She didn't want him to see her crying.

Tozzi moved closer and hesitated before he put his hand on her shoulder. He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to apologize for scaring the shit out of her. He'd been all wrong about her. She wasn't dirty, and he felt bad for thinking she was. He wanted to do something for her to make it up to her.

Except all of a sudden he realized that he had an incredible erection. Touching her, being so close to her, seeing her vulnerable like this—it was the way he used to imagine her, the way he thought he could win her over. This was a wet dream come true. Tozzi squirmed. He couldn't believe he could be such a pig. And without even trying.

She turned around quickly then, threw her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest. “I'm afraid,” she sniffed. “Goddammit, what if they come after me? What'll happen to Patricia?
What if they come after her?”

He put his hands on her back. “Don't worry. Nothing will happen to you or your daughter. I promise.”

It was getting very tight down there. Oh, Jesus.

She kept crying, pitiful sobbing. His throat started to constrict just listening to her. He thought about Ivers and McCleery, Cooney and Santiago, the bloodbath at Uncle Pete's. The reality that they could pin this whole thing on him suddenly hit home like a spear sinking into his chest. He could be arrested at any time, thrown into the jaws of the legal meat grinder. The killer could go after her, blow her away the way he did Marty Bloom, kill as many lawyers as it takes to get a mistrial. Meanwhile, Tozzi figured, he'd be
locked up in some holding pen, waiting to be arraigned. Jesus. He tried to swallow, but it hurt. He almost started to cry with her.

“Listen, I want to ask you something, Lesley.” He felt as shaky as the night of the Halloween mixer.

She sniffed and kept her head in his chest. “What?”

“I may be needing a good lawyer. See, I think they're gonna try to pin the murders on me. Will, ah . . . I don't know how to ask you this, but . . . will you represent me?”

She lifted her head and looked up at him. Her eyes were red, wet, and pathetic. “Get Kostmeyer,” she said. “He's good.”