Bad Luck (29 page)

“The Walker camp had no comment when I called today, and they refused to even acknowledge that the champ's trainer was in the hospital. Officially the hospital is also refusing to comment, saying only that it's their policy to respect the privacy of all patients under their care. However, ‘Pain' Walker's former wife, model Bonnie Kilmer, did tell me today that the champ's temper is very unpredictable and that he's capable of lashing out at anyone, including those he supposedly loves. While she expressed doubt that her ex-husband would ever turn on Gonsalves, who she feels is responsible for their breakup, she would not rule out the possibility.

“A very bizarre development coming on the eve of the big fight. We hope to bring you more information on Henry Gonsalves's condition at eleven. Reporting from Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania, this is Craig Wood. Back to you, Lou.”

Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of Mercy . . . Why did that sound so familiar? Our Lady of Mercy . . .

“Lorraine, do you remember a—” He looked over at her. She was scrunched up in the corner of the couch, crying. Oh, for chrissake.

“What's the matter?”

She blew her nose into a Kleenex. “Go to hell.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” She was sobbing.

“Tell me. What's wrong?”

She blew her nose again. “Just don't talk to me.”

Her Kleenex was a wet little ball, but she was still trying to use it. He took the handkerchief out of his back pocket and offered it to her.

“Go to hell.” She opened up the shredded Kleenex, looking for a usable spot.

“Are you going to tell me what your problem is or not? You know, I've had it up to here with this crap.”

She spun around, eyes flashing.
“You've
had it up to here!
I've
had it up to here!” Shrill. A madwoman.

Gibbons was speechless. He couldn't believe it. It was the old Lorraine.

“I was going to get us tickets to the closed-circuit broadcast of the fight, to surprise you, but you can go to hell now.” She turned back to her raggy Kleenex and muttered to it. “Selfish son of a bitch.”

“What're you, kidding? You hate boxing.”

“Well, I was going to do it for you, but forget it. I'm tired of bending over backward, trying to make things nice for you.”

“Why? Why do you have to make things nice for me? They were nice before. We decide to get married and suddenly everything is different. I don't understand.”

She flashed those psycho eyes at him. “I wanted to make everything perfect for you so that you'd be comfortable with the idea of getting married. I knew you still had doubts.”

Gibbons saw red. “What do you mean ‘comfortable'? What the hell's that supposed to mean? Why don't you just be honest and say it? You're afraid I'll back out of this. Right? That's what you're afraid of. That's why you've been acting so stupid.”

“I act stupid? Just asking you a simple question is acting stupid?”

“It is when I'm trying to watch the news.” He pointed at the TV. “Some of this stuff happens to pertain to my job.” The weatherman was pointing at the map.

“I only asked a simple question and you jumped down my throat.”

“It wasn't
one
simple question. I'm listening to a story and you're telling me that Brant Ivers can't come to the wedding because he's going to his class reunion or some such shit. What the hell do I care where Ivers is going—”

Then it dawned on him. Ivers. He was the one who'd told him about Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. In Reading, Pennsylvania. That was where Sal Immordino had supposedly been treated for Pugilistic Brain syndrome, where his bogus headshrinker was affiliated. Our Lady of Mercy. The doctor who'd testified that Sal was mentally incompetent, poured on all the medical bullshit, lied through his teeth. But Walker's camp is down around Philly—why didn't they take him to a hospital there? How the hell did he end up in Reading? A coincidence? No way. Immordino's recommendation? But how does Gonsalves know Immordino? How does
anyone
at Walker's camp know Immordino? Unless Immordino arranged to have Gonsalves taken to his hospital, to hush things up. Because he beat the shit out of Gonsalves himself? The way he did to that guy Lawson back when he was a pug? Why? He glanced at the TV, stared at the computerized weather map, green blobs moving over the Midwest. Because Gonsalves has a lot of influence over the champ, that's what the ex-wife said. Immordino wanted Gonsalves to get the champ to do something, he refused, and Sal pounded his head in . . .

Jesus. Gibbons couldn't believe it. It was so fucking obvious. Immordino is fixing the fight. The mob pretty much gave up on fight-fixing thirty, forty years ago. That's why he didn't think of it until now. But so what if they haven't fixed a big fight since the fifties? No crime like an old crime. Right? He looked at the screen. A smiling sun. It was going to be nice tomorrow. He jumped up from the couch and headed for the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” The fishwife.

He stopped and looked at her. She looked like she was gonna bite him. “I gotta talk to Tozzi.”

“He's not home. I tried him a little while ago.”

He went to the closet and got Excalibur out of the shoe
box on the top shelf, clipped the holster onto his belt. They used to fix fights back when he'd bought this gun, 1955. Thirty-eight Colt Cobra. Didn't make these anymore. He threw his suit jacket on and grabbed his hat.

“Where the hell are you going?” she yelled from the couch. “You're not going to leave this unfinished. Come back here and talk to me.”

She-demon. Fantastic. It was great to have her back. “I'm sorry. I gotta go find Tozzi. This is important. We'll talk later.”

“Oh, wonderful! And this isn't important?”

“Don't put words in my mouth.” He had his hand on the doorknob. “That's not what I said.”

“You don't have to say it. It's obvious how you feel.”

He took his hand off the doorknob, walked back to the couch, and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you. We'll finish this fight later. But I have to find Tozzi now.” He headed back to the door.

“If you walk out that door, Gibbons, the wedding is off.”

Facing the door, Gibbons rolled his eyes to the ceiling and showed his teeth. Jesus Christ Almighty. She finally shapes up and now she doesn't want to get married.

“I'm not kidding. You leave me here and I'm calling the whole thing off.”

He turned the knob but held the door closed for a second.

“I'm serious.”

Medea. The Gorgon. Screaming Mimi.

“I gotta find Tozzi.” He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and looked back in at her.

She was shaking her head, waving her arms like an umpire calling the man safe. “That's it, that's it. I'm serious.”

“Later, Lorraine. Later.”

He closed the door, but he could still hear her saying she was serious, that was it.

He put on his hat and headed for the stairs. Fucking women. When you want them, they don't want you. When they want you, then they don't look so good.

Gibbons hurried down the worn marble apartment steps. At least this proved she wasn't permanently braindamaged by the wedding shit. That was good. He turned the landing and looked back up at the apartment door. She's not serious. She's just mad. That's all. I hope.

Gibbons remembered this dingy little lobby as soon as he opened the door. He walked over to the open doorway that led to the practice space and saw a group of people wearing those white martial-arts pajama outfits, running around like nuts out on the blue mats. He spotted Tozzi right away. He had a feeling Tozzi would be here. He went to the pay phone on the wall then, dropped a quarter in, and dialed the 800 number. Pulling up one of the orange plastic stacking chairs, Gibbons propped his foot up and stretched the cord as far as it would go so he could look through the doorway into the dojo. It rang three times before someone picked up.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Yeah, this is Gibbons, four-seven-oh-nine. Who's the night clerk on tonight?”

“Moran.”

“Put me through to him.”

“Hold on.”

Gibbons watched the nuts out on the mat. Tozzi was standing in line with the others, waiting to get his ass kicked by one of the guys with the baggy black pants, one of the black belts. When it was his turn Tozzi ran up and grabbed the black belt's wrists. The guy whipped Tozzi back like it was nothing, then whipped him forward again and threw him over, countergrabbing Tozzi's wrist so that he hit the ground hard—real hard—right on his side. Gibbons winced, but Tozzi jumped right up and ran back to the end of the line, ready to get pulverized again. Gibbons shook his head. These people were fucking crazy. Tozzi said aikido was supposed to be a soft martial art, supposed to make you calm. Bullshit.

A tired voice came through the line then. “What do you want, Gibbons?”

“What'sa matter, Moran? I wake you up?” Moran was always so happy when he had to do night duty.

“I wish. Now what do you want?”

“Tell me something. Did Tozzi call in today?”

Moran snorted a laugh into the phone. “No, Tozzi didn't call in. But we got a shitload of calls about him.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Let's see.” The sound of shuffling papers, Moran going through the log. “Well, it seems that Tozzi discovered an attempted homicide this morning. A woman named—where is it? where is it? here—Raynor, Valerie Raynor.”

Oh, Christ. “What happened?”

“The details are pretty sketchy. Most of what we have came from the local cops down there. Apparently this Raynor woman was shot twice in the back. One bullet punctured a lung. Tozzi got the rescue squad right away, and they rushed her to the hospital. She's stable now. The hospital says she'll recover.”

Gibbons pinched his nose and pressed his lips together. Immordino again? But he was supposed to be out gunning for “Tomasso.” Why'd he shoot her? “And what was Tozzi doing while all this was going on?”

“Making a big pain in the ass out of himself.”

“In what way?”

Moran snorted that laugh again. “Well, he was apparently out of control when he got to the hospital, running around, acting crazy, demanded that he be allowed to see the woman. The staff ended up calling the cops on him, and Tozzi tried to throw his weight around, told them he was a special agent, showed them his ID and all. They told him they'd have to confirm it before they'd believe it, and they insisted that he surrender his gun until his story was confirmed. You can just imagine how that went down.”

Gibbons shut his eyes. He was glad he hadn't been there.

“We confirmed that he was who he said he was, and the police returned his weapon, but they suggested he go out
and get a coffee because the nurses were getting sick and tired of having him around. He wouldn't budge, though, even after they assured him that this Raynor woman was out of surgery and she was okay. He said he
had
to see her and, of course, the hospital people said no, not until tomorrow. So what does Tozzi do then? He bribes a nurses' aide to go into the recovery room and give this Raynor woman a message. He wanted her to know that he was there and that he wanted to see her, that he loved her and all that shit. The nurses' aide apparently came out two minutes later, all shook up. She'd delivered Tozzi's message, but the Raynor woman wasn't too happy to get it. From what I gather, she told the nurses' aide to tell Tozzi that he could go fuck himself, that she didn't want to see him—not now, not ever. Apparently she was still pretty weak from the surgery at this point, and her monitors started beeping and bleeping like crazy. The doctor on duty ran in on a Code Blue—or whatever color it is when your monitors go off like that—and he gave her a sedative to calm her down. After that, the cops came back and
insisted
that Tozzi go out and get himself a coffee and not come back for a while. This happened about three-thirty this afternoon.”

Gibbons could imagine Tozzi wandering out of the hospital, going outside for the first time since that morning and being disoriented by the afternoon sun, not knowing where to go, what to do with himself, then realizing that Sal Immordino was out there someplace looking for him, probably mad as hell and determined to whack “Tomasso” once and for all, after having botched it twice. Tozzi had probably driven up the parkway, back to his apartment in Hoboken, then got paranoid, wondering whether Immordino had figured out that he wasn't Tomasso the bodyguard, that he was really Tozzi the fed. Tozzi had a way of working himself into a froth—“spiraling,” the shrinks call it. He'd probably started thinking that Immordino had him followed all the way up from the shore, that they were watching him, waiting for the right moment to make their move on him. That's when he'd probably decided he
didn't want to be alone, and coming over here to play with his aikido buddies was the logical choice. Tozzi had told him that he always liked to come over here to practice whenever he was feeling crappy. Said the worse you felt when you got on the mat, the better your practice would be. Well, he must be having one hell of a practice now because he must feel like a bag of shit after all that had happened today. Poor bastard.