Bad Business (20 page)

He reached for the gallon and grabbed the box of salt.

The broad was screaming behind her gag, digging her heels in, trying to scoot away on her back. She saw it coming.

Nemo bent over and grabbed a handful of hair, spun her around. He stood over her upside-down screaming face. He sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Now, open your eyes nice and wide, Suzie-Q. Let's get this over with quick.”

He started to pour, a thin little trickle.

Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she winced and turned her head to the side when the liquid hit her face.

He positioned his feet on either side of her head and made a vise out of his ankles so that she was facing straight up.

He poured a little salt in her face, waited a second, then trickled a little more bleach. It should start burning like hell in a second. Burn right through her eyelids. Turn her eyeballs all white and cloudy. Blind as a bat. Can you identify your assailant, Miss Fucking Suzie-Q Bitch? I'm sorry, Your Honor, I can't see a fucking thing. I'm blind as a fucking bat.

Nemo sprinkled a little more salt, shivering and grinning. C'mon, relax, baby. Open your eyes and get it over with. He poured another trickle.

She struggled and kicked, screaming for nothing because nobody could hear her.

C'mon, baby. What the fuck? It's no use. Just give it up.

“Lorraine?”

Nemo stopped pouring and stared down the hallway. His heart was doing a Gene Krupa.

Fuck!

“Lorraine, you down there?” Tozzi was in the middle of the staircase, bending his head down to see into the front parlor. “Hey, Lorraine? Gibbons just called from the field office. Didn't you hear the phone? He wants me to check out . . .”

He came down the steps, glanced at the rug, then went over by the buffet table. She was just here, cleaning up. Where the hell was she? Maybe in the kitchen. He turned around to—

“Hey!”

He saw a blur—maybe it was an arm—then something pelted his face and suddenly his eyes stung like hell. Someone had thrown something in his eyes. He blinked and rubbed them, but he couldn't even keep them open they stung so bad. Some of the grit landed near his mouth, and now he could taste it. Salt?

Instinctively he reached for the gun in his belt holster, but he didn't have his gun. He was suspended. Ivers had it.

He reached out for a wall, trying to reconstruct the first-floor layout in his mind. If the bastard came near him, he'd smash him, get him in a headlock, break his neck, do something. He felt along the wall, aikido techniques running through his mind. The bathroom should be right here somewhere. If he could get to the tub, he could douse his face. But as soon as he took a step forward, he felt something going around his neck and knew what was happening before he really felt it. He quickly got the tips of two fingers under the rope or whatever the hell it was before it tightened. It was thin and scratchy—twine, the big ball sitting out on the kitchen counter. Then, with a sudden jerk he was hauled back on his heels, his back arched. The bastard was trying to choke him.

The guy grunted as he yanked. “You shouldn't be here, you stupid fuck you.”

Clawing at the twine to get it off his windpipe, Tozzi heard the guy grunting and straining, working hard to strangle him. Without thinking, Tozzi dropped to his knees and sat on his heels in
seiza
, made himself heavy, then bowed forward. He felt the bastard's weight flying over his head, heard the big crash as he landed. On the buffet table maybe? Tozzi ripped the twine off his neck, sucked in a lungful of air, and coughed.

Tozzi got to his feet, blinking, trying to see something. It still burned, but he could make out blurs now when he could keep his eyes open. Blurs, but not much else. He couldn't see anything that looked like an attacker. Either the guy was right in front of him, standing absolutely still, or he was lurking around behind him. Tozzi threw his hands out in front of him and waited for the guy to attack.

“Where are you? What do you want?” Tozzi kept blinking, praying for sight. Then he remembered Lorraine. Oh, shit. “Lorraine!”

He whipped around in a panic, and that's when it came. The bastard charged him from behind and threw his arms around his chest. He was reaching up under the armpits to get his hands behind Tozzi's neck, going for the full nelson.

No way, motherfucker.

Tozzi clamped his elbows down on the guy's forearms, twisted, and threw him off his hip. But the bastard managed to grab the back of Tozzi's jacket and dragged Tozzi down with him. Tozzi landed on his side, on that goddamn rug. He could feel the pile on his cheek. The guy jumped him, but Tozzi scrambled and got to his knees. The guy grappled with him from the front and they started to wrestle, arms tangled, Tozzi fighting to pin the guy down on his back so he could get his hands around his neck, or knee him in the groin or the gut, anything to slow him down. The bastard seemed to be a short little shit, but he was incredibly strong. Tozzi
could feel the guy's forearms—they were huge. Tozzi strained and twisted the guy's arms, finally got him down, but he worked his way right out of it and bounced back with a countergrip on Tozzi's forearms.

“You're under arrest, you bastard. FBI.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Tozzi frowned. He didn't think that was gonna work.

He got a palm on the side of the guy's face and managed to push him over again and bounce his head on the floor. It made a dull thud on the rug as he yelled, “Hey!” He let go then and pushed off Tozzi's chest with his foot. Tozzi stood up on his knees and reached out at the blurs all around him.

Where the fuck was he now?

Wham!

Tozzi clutched his head and doubled over. He held his breath, waiting for the pain to kick in. It didn't take long. He visualized the back of his head as a windshield shattering in slow motion. As he rocked back and forth, he felt what he thought was a lampshade brush the back of his hand. The broken ceramic pieces clinked a little when he reached out and felt the shade. It was the white lamp with the gold trim, the one that was on the sideboard, with the crinkle-cut lampshade, the one Marie said she wanted. Fuck. Who the hell wants to hear her now? She's not gonna believe this.

“Son of a bitch,” he groaned through clenched teeth.

His eyes started to water with the pain of the blow, and that cleared them a little. He heard the front door opening, saw the light from outside coming in, saw the blurry figure rushing out.

“Stop!”

But the little bastard didn't listen. Why should he?

If I had my gun, he'd listen.

Tozzi stood up and stumbled forward to go after him, but his head started to spin and his legs were wobbly. He caught himself on the door frame, straining to see straight. The little bastard was getting away. Again Tozzi yelled for him to stop,
not because he thought it would do any good, but because he felt he had to do something, that maybe someone would hear and tackle the guy as he ran off. Woozy, he stepped out into the cold air and reached for the wrought-iron railing. Putting his weight on it, he started to go down the steps, but he stumbled again and started to fall. He caught himself on the railing, his legs tangled up underneath him.

Shit. The bastard was gone by now. Shit!

Dizzy, his head throbbing, he hauled himself back inside. He could see a little better now because his eyes had been tearing so much. He got himself to the bathroom and stuck his head under the bathtub faucet, dousing his face with water. He felt a cold draft from the wide-open window. Must be where the bastard had come in. He must've been quiet. Lorraine probably didn't hear him.

Lorraine!

Tozzi rushed out of the bathroom, leaving the water running.

“Lorraine!”

He saw her legs on the floor through the kitchen doorway. He ran to her. She was on her back, her hands bound together under her, a towel tied over her mouth. The towel was wet; so was her hair. She was squinting and blinking. Then he noticed the Clorox jug on the floor beside her.

Jesus Christ.

He fell to his knees and pulled the gag down around her neck, then jumped back up and grabbed the teapot on the stove, filled it at the sink, and dumped water on her face. The metal lid hit the floor and rolled into the refrigerator. He raced back to get more water.

“Michael, stop.” She coughed and turned her face to the side. “Untie me.”

He dropped the teapot in the sink and went to untie the cord around her wrists. “Lorraine! Your eyes! Can you see anything? C'mon, we're going to the hospital.”

She coughed and shook her head. “I'm okay, I'm okay.”

“But, but—How could you be?”

They were both staring at the Clorox jug.

“Leave it to Uncle Pete,” she said.

“Huh?”

Her wrists free, she picked up the white plastic jug and sniffed the spout. She held it out to him. “Smell.”

Tozzi sniffed, made a face, and recoiled from the jug.

“You remember that awful white wine he used to make in the bathtub.”

Tozzi nodded, his eyes tearing again.

“Leave it to Uncle Pete to put it in bleach bottles.” She seemed more upset with Uncle Pete's disorder than with the bastard who'd tried to blind her.

“Who was that guy? Did you get a look at him?”

Lorraine got to her feet, nodding her head. “Short, dark, and ugly. He looked like Rumpelstiltskin.” She turned on the water at the sink, cupped her hands, and splashed her face.

Tozzi tapped the jug on the floor with his foot. “I didn't see anything at all. He threw something in my eyes.” He rubbed the back of his head and happened to notice the box of salt down the hall. It was over on its side on the rug.

The rug.

He suddenly remembered what Gibbons had called about. He'd thought Gibbons was crazy when he said it, but now . . . He opened a counter drawer, pulled out a steak knife, and headed down the hallway.

In the parlor, he flipped over a corner of the rug and jabbed the knife into the canvas backing. He sawed two incisions and made a right-angle flap, then peeling back the flap, he saw gray plastic, quilted in squares. Each one was about two, three inches square. He tried to dig the point of the knife into one of the squares, but the plastic was surprisingly tough and it took some doing to pierce it. When he
finally broke through and pulled the blade back out again, there was a residue of white powder on the tip.

Lorraine was standing over his shoulder. “What is it, Michael?”

“Wanna guess?” He touched the tip of his pinkie to the end of the knife and rubbed his gums. The reaction was almost instantaneous. Better than novocaine. “Heroin,” he said. “Uncut, I'd say. That's what Gibbons had called about. He had a hunch about this rug. It was a good hunch.”

“What're you going to do?”

“Call the field office and turn it in, of course.”

“Is that really a good idea, Michael? I mean, they're investigating you for the murders. How will it look if you show up with heroin?”

He thought about it for a moment. She had a point. It would look pretty incriminating. At least that's the way McCleery and Augustine would see it. “Maybe I should hang on to it for a while? Since I'm out here on my own now, it could come in handy. As a bargaining chip maybe.”

“But you can't do that. Can you?”

He looked up at her. “Who's gonna know? Unless you tell on me.”

“Of course I won't tell on you, but hanging on to this stuff is very risky. Look at what just happened. Don't you assume that man was here to get the rug?”

“Probably. One of Salamandra's people, no doubt.”

“If you keep it, they'll just come after it again. They'll kill you for it.”

“Not if I hide it well enough.”

“It's too dangerous, Michael. Maybe you should turn it in. I'll vouch for you. I'll tell them about the man who broke in. They'll believe me.”

“Listen, Lorraine, as far as you're concerned, you don't know anything. Not a thing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me. I know what I'm doing.”

Not really, but she doesn't need to know that
.

He stood up and cleared off the broken pieces of the lamp so he could roll up the rug. “Lorraine, I need some tape to patch the hole. I think there's some duct tape in one of the kitchen drawers. Get it for me, would you?”

She came back with the tape and he patched the flap he'd made, then laid the rug flat so he could roll it up.

Just then the cop who was supposed to be guarding the crime scene walked in. “Why's this door open?” he asked grimly.

“Airing the place out,” Lorraine said, not missing a beat. “Is that all right?”

“I don't think so.”

She shrugged. “Then close it.”

“Where'd you go?” Tozzi asked.