“Exactly. Only, Juicy don’t feel that way about it. He’s a real pagan, that guy. I don’t like him.”
“Why’s he making Sister Cil cry?”
“Well, lemme tell you. You know all the girls back at the home? You know, where we live? Linda and Luisa and Crystal and Shavon and Carmen and Francine and all the other girls. Juicy wants to turn them into prostitutes, too. That’s why Cil’s crying. She doesn’t want him to do that, but he’s telling her he’s gonna do it anyway. He’s gonna make them take drugs and turn ’em into drug addicts so that they’ll do anything for him. He’s gonna turn ’em into whores so they’ll make money for him. So they’ll treat him like God.”
Emerick started to shiver. His eyes were bugged out, staring at Juicy. “No,” he whispered. “No.” There was a fury in that whisper.
“Tell you the truth, Donnie, I don’t know what to do about him. Juicy’s got a lotta guys working for him. They do what he says. He could send some guys over to the home, tell ’em to break down the door, grab the girls, and stick needles in their arms. Ten minutes later, they’ll all be like zombies, screaming ‘Juicy is God, Juicy is God.’”
“No!”
“Well, I’ll tell ya, Donnie. There’s only one solution I can see.” Sal reached into his jacket and pulled out the gun. “Juicy has to go. I know killing is bad, it’s against the Ten Commandments and all, but in this case I think it’s the only thing to do. You know what I mean? I think it’s what God would want you to do, Donnie. It’s like taking one life to save a couple hundred other lives. Coupla thousand, if you count all the kids these girls abandon plus the poor guys they seduce and lead into sin. I mean, just think of all the sins that will never happen if Juicy weren’t around anymore.” He put the gun in Emerick’s hands.
Emerick tossed the 380 back to Sal like a hot potato. “Nooooo!”
A sharp pain zinged through Sal’s gut. He took Emerick’s hand and placed the gun in it, held it closed. “It’s okay, Donnie. It won’t hurt you.”
“Bad! Very bad!”
“You’re right, Donnie. You’re right. That man Juicy is bad, very bad. And it’s all up to you, Donnie. It’s not a nice thing to have to do, but it definitely has to be done. Juicy’s too evil to just let him go on the way he is. You’ve gotta kill him.” Sal pointed out the window at Cil dabbing her eyes. “Sister Cil would want you to do it. She’d be proud of you if you did.”
Emerick kept staring at the gun in his hand.
Sal’s stomach was in agony. The nut wasn’t getting it. Shit!
“She’d be so happy if you saved the girls from that man. She’d stop crying, Donnie. She would.”
Emerick started nodding to himself, staring and nodding, staring and nodding. He mumbled something under his breath.
“What’s that you said, Donnie?”
“I have to do it,” he mumbled. “She wants me to. I don’t want her to cry anymore.”
“Good, good, Donnie. I’m glad you feel that way.” Sal hugged him close and rubbed his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Donnie. You’re doing the right thing.” Thank God.
Emerick suddenly frowned and stared up at him. “No one is God except God. No one. Just Him.”
“No. I agree. You’re absolutely right, Donnie. One hundred percent right. Now, I want you to take a good look at that man, Donnie. You gotta make sure you know who he is so you get the right guy. Go ’head, look at him.”
Emerick nodded and stared out the window. The gun was tight in his fist.
“Okay, now lemme tell you how you should do this. Pay attention now.”
Emerick nodded, staring intently at Juicy. “I’ve got to do it. For the girls. For Sister Cil.”
Sal nodded. “That’s right, Donnie. That’s absolutely right.” He took a deep breath. His stomach felt much better.
Gibbons checked his watch. It was five minutes to ten, and he was parked across the street from St. Anthony’s, right where he’d said he’d be. So where the hell was Tozzi?
He scanned the front steps of the church. A bunch of wiseguys holding black umbrellas were milling around the open back of the hearse. These had to be the pallbearers. Everyone else had gone inside, including Immordino and his sister the nun. Friggin’ Tozzi. This was his goddamn idea. Where the hell was he?
A knock on the window next to Gibbons’s face made him turn away from the church. It was about time. But when he saw who it was, he dug his fingers into the car seat. Shit.
He rolled down the window a few inches. “What the hell’re you doing here?”
Madeleine Cummings gave him her dead face. “What the hell are doing here?” She was standing on the curb holding a goddamn two-tone purple umbrella over her head.
“Get in the car,” he said.
“I asked you—”
“Get in the friggin’ car!”
For a change, she did what she was told, thank God. A black woman hanging around outside a mob funeral in Howard Beach with a purple umbrella. May as well carry a big sign—
HERE I AM.
She got in on the passenger side and slammed the door shut. “I don’t like your tone of voice, mister.”
Gibbons looked up at the ceiling and bit his upper lip. Here comes the Seven Sisters Scolding. As if he hadn’t heard it before. “Save your breath, Cummings. I don’t need the aggravation.”
“Have you forgotten who the coordinating agent is on this investigation?”
“How could I?” He groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. “By the way, I thought you were busy chasing down your psycho killer. Whattaya doing out here?”
She raised her chin and flared her nostrils. It was how Ivy League types let you know that they’re pissed off. “I’m here looking for you, Gibbons. When I couldn’t find you, I figured you were out doing your own thing again, so I checked the duty register to see where you were. This location isn’t part of our investigation. I need you to go over to—”
“This location
is
part of the investigation as far as I’m concerned. Now, if you’d just do me one gigantic favor and get lost, I’ll do my job and you can get back to the field office and continue doing whatever the hell it is you do.”
“You know, I have just about had it with your deprecating remarks about my work. I’ll have you know that—”
“Stop!” Gibbons was looking out the side window. Directly across the street, a cab pulled up to the curb. Tozzi stepped out of it, flipping up the collar of his raincoat and pulling a hat down over his brow. As he shut the door and the cab took off, he looked at Gibbons’s car, but didn’t come over. Instead he headed for the church steps. He must’ve spotted Cummings and figured she’d just cause more trouble if he had to deal with her. He was right.
“What’s Tozzi doing here? He’s supposed to be on sick leave.” Cummings opened her door, ready to go after him.
Gibbons reached past her and pulled it closed. “Sit still.”
Tozzi was climbing the church steps. The pallbearers were looking at him.
“Let him go,” Gibbons said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“I will
not
let him go. I’m the coordinating agent here, and Tozzi is not supposed to be working. It’s my responsibility to—”
“You wanna get hit with a harassment suit?”
“Excuse me?”
“You go in there and start an argument with Tozzi in the middle of Mistretta’s funeral, they’ll hit the Bureau with a harassment suit like you’ve never seen. Guineas are real sensitive about weddings and funerals. You disturb the services in there and we’ll be hearing from their lawyers by the end of the day. And as coordinating agent, it’ll be
your
ass on the line, Cummings.”
“Don’t try to bully me.”
“All right. Go ’head.” Gibbons reached over and opened the door. “Do what you want. Why listen to me? What do I know? I’ve only been doing this friggin’ job for twenty-five years. What the hell do I know?”
She pulled the door shut and glared at him. Her Seven Sisters nostrils were flaring like mad. Gibbons waited for her to say something, but something across the street caught his eye. Another yellow cab whizzed up to the front of the church. A woman in a tan trench coat got out, rushed through the gang of pallbearers, and ran up the steps. Gibbons squinted and got a good look at the long blond corkscrew curls bouncing up and down on her back as she climbed the stairs. It was Stacy.
Cummings pointed out the window. “Isn’t that—”
“Yeah, that’s her. C’mon. I don’t like this.” Gibbons shouldered his door open and went out into the drizzle. Over the roof of the car, he saw Cummings opening her purple umbrella. “Leave that thing here,” he said.
She frowned at him. “Why? It’s raining.”
“It’s purple. Leave it.”
She flared her nostrils again, then closed the umbrella and threw it back into the car, slamming the door.
Gibbons bared his teeth. Take it easy with the goddamn door.
He met her at the front of the car and took her by the elbow, trotting across the boulevard, holding up his hand to slow the oncoming traffic.
“I can walk by myself,” she huffed as they stood on the median strip, wet wheels hissing past them in both directions.
He didn’t let go. “Now, listen to me. If anybody tries to stop us from getting in, let me take care of it. You go on in by yourself. Find Stacy and get her the hell out of there. But don’t let her make a scene. All we need is for her to start a lovers’ quarrel with Tozzi in the middle of a boss’s funeral. Christ, I can hear Ivers now.”
“What if she won’t cooperate?”
“Make her cooperate.” There was a break in the traffic, and they ran across. “Just be discreet.”
“Okay.”
They walked fast along the sidewalk. He kept his eye on the church. “You carrying your weapon?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t take it out. No matter who hassles you, no guns in church.”
“I’m not stupid, Gibbons.”
He glanced at her sideways. “Yeah. You told me.” He could see the headlines now.
As they approached the church steps, Gibbons touched Cummings’s shoulder and sent her on ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see one of the pallbearers rushing over to head them off. Gibbons picked up his pace so that he could get between the pallbearers and Cummings.
“Hey, where you think you’re going?”
Gibbons recognized the wiseguy. It was Joey D’Amico. Gibbons had busted him one time over in Jersey. He had been fencing fur coats. Had a showroom set up in the back of a warehouse about a mile from Giants Stadium.
D’Amico pointed at Cummings as she mounted the steps. “Hey, I’m talking to you, nig—”
Gibbons grabbed him by the throat and made his eyes pop. “What’s all the yelling for, Joey? Don’t you have any respect for the dead? Huh?”
Joey couldn’t answer. Gibbons had his thumb right on Joey’s windpipe.
Over at the hearse, the undertakers were pulling out the casket. Raindrops were beading up on the polished metal top. Two of the wiseguy pallbearers started to come over to help Joey.
“Stay put,” Gibbons said as he pushed D’Amico back toward the others.
D’Amico was coughing like crazy. “Fuckin’ fed,” he rasped.
At the top of the steps, the church doors were open. Gibbons could hear the organ music from inside filling in the gaps between Joey D’Amico’s coughing and the wet hiss of the passing traffic.
“I think they’re waiting for you guys,” Gibbons said to the group. He nodded at the casket. “Never keep a boss waiting. Even a dead one.” Gibbons backed toward the steps, then turned and climbed them two at a time. Instead of going in the open double doors, he pushed through the single heavy oak door on the far right.
The vestibule was cold and dark. These old Catholic churches always reminded Gibbons of medieval torture chambers with the iron bands and the exposed rivets on the doors, the high vaulted ceilings, the gloomy lighting. A guy in a black suit was looking outside through the open double doors. Gibbons guessed he was from the funeral parlor from the look of him. It was the way he stood there with his hands clasped in front of him. There was an empty gurney by the door, waiting for Mistretta’s casket. Gibbons looked around for Cummings. She wasn’t in the vestibule.
He walked toward the open doors in the middle of the vestibule. Outside, the eight pallbearers were just starting to come up the steps with the casket hoisted on their shoulders. Gibbons looked the other way, into the church. The altar was straight ahead, Jesus hanging high on a big wooden cross. Gibbons slipped in and stood behind the last pew.
The church was crowded. He scanned the assembly, but all he could see were the backs of heads. He moved over to the side aisle to get a better look, and he spotted one big head towering over the crowd on the other side of the church. He moved up the aisle a little to get a look at the profile and saw that it was who he thought it was, Sal Immordino. His sister the nun was next to him, on the center aisle. Tozzi was on Sal’s other side. Gibbons craned his neck and made out an aureole of curly bronze locks next to Tozzi. Shit. Stacy was over there, too.
As the people in the pews nearby started to notice him, Gibbons retreated to the back of the church, wondering whether it was worth doing anything at all at this point. Tozzi was shoulder to shoulder with Immordino, whispering into his ear. Stacy was jammed up next to Tozzi on the other side, leaning into his ear. Gibbons wished he could see her face better, see if she was frantic or what. If she didn’t look like she was gonna make a scene, better to just leave her be. Of course, if Stacy was blabbing at Tozzi, she might drown out anything Immordino might say on the tape, which would defeat the whole purpose of their being here.
Gibbons looked around for Cummings. Where the hell did she—
The organ music swelled then, and everybody immediately stood up. On the altar, a priest emerged from a side door, wearing a purple satin tunic thing over a white robe. This purple was way gaudier than Cummings’s umbrella. When the priest turned his back to the assembly and genuflected in front of the altar, Gibbons saw that there was a big black satin cross sewn to the back of the tunic.
Gibbons noticed the smoke then. The priest was carrying one of those silver gravy boats on a chain that they burn incense in. He turned to the congregation and started swinging the gravy boat, making it clang against the chain with each swing. He did three swings to the middle, three to one side, three to the other side, then back to the middle. The smoke drifted up and up past the dim chandeliers to the high ceiling where God the Father was painted on the ceiling, a huge old guy with fiery eyes, no shirt, a snowy white beard down to his belly button, and a white pigeon doing a kamikaze dive into his head.
“Pssst!”
Gibbons looked around. Cummings was coming across the back aisle toward him. She was walking fast, waving at him.
He frowned at her as he moved in her direction. Cool it with the waving, will ya?
Gibbons stepped across the center aisle as if he were crossing a mine field. He glanced to his left and saw that the casket was resting on the gurney, waiting to be brought in.
“Whattaya waving at? You’re gonna make a scene, goddammit.”
Cummings looked gray. She started to point her finger, then used her head to gesture instead. The priest was walking slowly down the middle aisle, swinging his gravy boat, coming down to greet the dead man.
She dug her nails into Gibbons’s forearm. “The priest!” she whispered. “It’s him!”
“Who? What’re you talking about?”
“The priest! It’s Emerick!”
Gibbons looked at the guy in the purple tunic, smoke swirling in his wake and rising to the ceiling. He stared at the skinny guy’s pale face, the translucent eyelids, and he remembered the picture he saw of Emerick in handcuffs. Mentally he erased the beard and put the guy on a diet. Gibbons’s fingers went numb.
Holy shit.