“C’mon. Drink up, Toz. It’s your birthday.” Gibbons flashed a mean grin as he pressed the beer bottle to his lips.
Tozzi nodded and sipped from his bottle to make his partner happy, sneaking another look at the clock on Gilhooley’s back wall. It was almost nine-thirty. They’d been here an hour and a half, and they’d just done the cake-and-candles bit, but Stacy never showed. It was the only reason he’d agreed to this stupid birthday party idea. Lorraine and Madeleine Cummings were sitting together on the other side of the booth, satisfied with themselves. This was their deal.
Tozzi looked down at the slice of birthday cake on a paper plate in front on him. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Stacy after they arrested Sal Immordino at St. Anthony’s two days before, and she hadn’t returned any of his calls. He had to talk to her about what happened that morning, why he ran out the way he had, why he hadn’t gone to bed with her. God, he’d wanted her that morning, and he still did want her, but he didn’t think she really understood how urgent the situation with Immordino was.
Lorraine raised her eyebrows and examined his plate. “Michael, you’ve barely touched your cake. I thought chocolate was your favorite,” she said.
“Actually, it’s not chocolate.” Cummings was cutting herself a second sliver. “It’s carob sweetened with pear and white grape juice.”
Gibbons made a face and pushed his plate away. “I thought it tasted weird.”
Cummings ignored him. “Lorraine and I worked hard on this cake, Tozzi. The least you could do is try it.”
Tozzi glanced up at the front door. He thought he saw Stacy coming in, but it was someone else with hair sort of like hers.
“My God,” Cummings said, licking frosting off her fingers, “is this what happens when you turn forty? Snap out of it, Tozzi. You’re in a fog. If this is what I have to look forward to in three years, I’ll shoot myself first.”
“Want help?” Gibbons grinned behind his bottle.
Cummings flashed a saccharine smile.
“I’ll get around to the cake,” Tozzi said. “I’m just not hungry right now.” He sipped his beer and checked the clock again.
“Maybe we can send a piece to Sal Immordino,” Lorraine suggested. “He might appreciate it right now.”
Gibbons coughed up a sarcastic laugh. “Stick a file in it, why don’cha? He’ll give you a great big kiss when he gets out.
If
he gets out.” Gibbons sucked on his beer. “Hey, why don’t we all go over and see him? Bust his balls a little more. He’s right down the street at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Whattaya think, Toz?”
Tozzi pictured the dark streets outside this place. He remembered the side street a block south of here where he was attacked and shot in the leg. He remembered being down on the ground after he’d been shot, seeing Stacy’s misty silhouette under the streetlight, hearing her scream.
Cummings brought another forkful of cake to her mouth. “I don’t think Sal Immordino deserves any of our cake. If the judge wouldn’t grant him bail, why should we give him cake?”
Gibbons snorted. “I suppose you’d rather drive down to Trenton and bring a piece to that lunatic, Emerick.”
Cummings’s eyes shot open. “Certainly not. That poor man has enough problems. He doesn’t need sugar shock to add to his woes.” She looked at Lorraine. “Emerick had to have been a hyperactive child. Sweets must’ve made him wild. They didn’t understand the effect sugar has on hyperactive kids back in those days.”
Gibbons narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said you didn’t use any sugar in this cake.”
Lorraine and Cummings both looked guilty. “Only in the frosting,” Lorraine admitted.
Tozzi tuned them out. He stared down at all the candles scattered on the table, the wicks burnt and black, the butt ends smeared with frosting. Forty candles. It had been like a goddamn forest fire when they brought it out. They didn’t have to have the exact number of candles. A couple would’ve been fine. He glanced up at the bar. Another long-haired blonde just came in, but it wasn’t Stacy. He picked up one of the half-melted candles and twirled it between his fingers.
“On second thought, maybe we should bring a piece to Immordino,” Gibbons said. “Could be his last piece of birthday cake ever. Word on the street is that Juicy Vacarini put out another contract on him, which is no big surprise. Sal’s not long for this world. They may not get him where he is now, but once he’s convicted and sent to a federal pen, somebody’ll get to him.”
Lorraine looked skeptical. “You mean another prisoner would do the hit? Does that happen?”
Gibbons sipped his beer and nodded. “All the time.”
Tozzi broke off a dried line of wax that had dripped from the candle. “Yeah, but Sal may not get convicted. Someone must’ve pocketed that tape recorder when it flew into the crowd. Sal’s doing his rope-a-dope routine again, and his public defender’s getting red in the face, yelling that his client’s not competent to stand trial. We still don’t have any hard evidence to prove that Sal’s not nuts, so basically we’re back where we started with him.”
Gibbons banged his bottle on the table. “What the hell’re you talking about? We’ve got your testimony. You heard him talking like a normal person. So did Stacy and Cummings.
You’re
the one who’s gonna put him away, Toz.”
“Without the tape, I’m not so sure our testimony alone will do it. Remember, Sal’s been declared incompetent by the court three times before this, so there’s a precedent. His lawyer will argue that taking Stacy hostage and waving a gun in church was all part of his craziness.”
“Yes, but what about Sister Cil?” Cummings said. “Given the way she feels about her brother, she may very well testify against him, especially if the prosecutor is willing to drop the charges against her in exchange for her cooperation.”
Gibbons shook his head. “What’s she up for? Aiding and abetting? You tell me what grand jury is gonna indict a nun. And if she’s not indicted, she has no reason to make any deals. Besides, Sister Cil believes in mercy and forgiveness. She’s not gonna put her own brother away, no matter what he did to her.”
Cummings pushed her glasses up her nose and speared another morsel of cake. “I’ll go talk to her. She wanted me to counsel her girls at the Mary Magdalene Home. I think she may trust me. I may be able to persuade her.”
Gibbons looked at her. “Yeah, right. And Ted Bundy was just a mixed-up kid.”
“Gibbons!” Lorraine was frowning.
Cummings shrugged and kept eating. “It’s all right, Lorraine. I’ve gotten used to his pointless sarcasm. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
Gibbons snorted up a laugh. “Congratulations. You want a merit badge?”
Cummings set down her fork. “You’re going to miss me when I go back to Quantico, Gibbons.”
“And when exactly will that be, Doctor?”
“Next week. Didn’t I tell you? I was called back to fill in for someone.”
Gibbons leaned over the table. “How’s about I put you on a train tonight, then I can start missing you right away?”
She flashed her saccharine smile again.
He bared his teeth.
“Hey, Tozzi!”
They all looked toward the bar. Roy, the muscle-bound bartender, was waving Tozzi over.
Tozzi scanned the room for Stacy before he got out of the booth, but he didn’t see her. “Excuse me for a minute.”
He walked over to the bar. Roy was the one who’d set up the prank with Stacy that first night. He knew her. Maybe she’d called. “What’s up, Roy?”
Roy leaned over the bar and lowered his voice. “Someone wants to see you. Alone.”
“What?” Tozzi looked back at Gibbons in the booth. He was suspicious. What did these two come up with this time? A belly dancer in the back room? Maybe a stripper? He wasn’t in the mood. He wanted to see Stacy. “No more birthday surprises, okay, Roy?” He started to head back to the booth.
“No, wait. It’s not what you think, Toz. It’s Stacy. She wants to talk to you alone. No joke.” Roy rolled his eyes toward the door next to the juke box. “She’s out back in the storeroom. She called and asked me to let her in through the alley.”
Tozzi stared at the door across the room. There were people drinking and eating at all the tables between the bar and that door, but he didn’t see any of them. All he saw was the door. His stomach clenched. Why didn’t she come in the front? Why was she acting like a spy?
“Go ’head,” Roy said. “It’s not locked.”
Tozzi nodded and faced the door, wondering what she was thinking. He knew she was mad at him, but he was pretty sure he could fix that. He could explain why he’d acted so bizarre with her. The morning of the funeral he had no choice, he
had
to leave. And before that, well
…
he could tell her about his little problem now. He’d make her understand.
He wandered across the room, then stopped in front of the door. The neon pink-and-blue lights on the jukebox tinted his hand on the doorknob. The jukebox was playing some Madonna song he didn’t know the name of. It was the one where she’s got short bleached-out hair in the video, the one where she’s wearing the dog collar and the torpedo bra, dancing in a peepshow, all these horny guys in glass booths drooling on their shoes and pulling their puds for her. He thought about his own pud. Thank God, he didn’t have that problem anymore.
He opened the door. She was standing next to a stack of Budweiser cases. It was dim in there, just one low-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Her hair didn’t sparkle in this light they way it usually did. Her eyes were moist, but they weren’t sparkling either. She was wearing a blue jeans jacket over black jeans and a white cowboy shirt.
“Hi. How ya doin’?”
“Shut the door,” she said.
“I called your machine—”
“I know.” She stared into his eyes.
He couldn’t read her. Her expression was intense, but he wasn’t sure if she was angry or hurt or what. “Stacy, I—”
“No. Don’t talk.” She shook her head. “Let me talk. I know what I want to say.”
He swallowed hard. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“You saved my life, Tozzi, and I guess I should be grateful
…
Well, I am grateful. For saving my life, that is. But what I’m feeling is something else.”
She looked down at the floor, and Tozzi stayed still. She was just getting warmed up.
“I feel like a real fool, Tozzi. I feel stupid. I came on pretty strong to you at the apartment that morning when you were trying to get dressed. I wanted you so bad. I thought you were trying to put me off when you told me you had to get to a funeral. I thought you were just making it up to get rid of me.” She stopped for a moment. “I didn’t realize you were on duty—or whatever you call it. That’s why I followed you out there. I thought you were making it all up. I guess I was pretty selfish.”
“No, Stacy, I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. I wanted you, too, but—”
“Don’t talk. Let me finish what I want to say.”
Tozzi nodded. “Okay.”
“In church, when you told Sal Immordino that you loved me and that you wanted to marry me so that he’d let me go, I really believed it. I mean, I knew you were just saying it to fool him, but I
wanted
to believe it. I felt really stupid afterward, and it’s been bothering me. Why was I so anxious to believe something I
knew
was a lie?”
“Well—”
“Please. Let me finish.” She wiped under her eye with one finger and sniffed. “For the past two days I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to be with you, to be married to you. It’s a weird thought.” She shook her head and tried to laugh. “Now I’m sort of glad we didn’t sleep together. It would never have worked out between us.”
“Whattaya mean? Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re too macho for me, Tozzi. I don’t know why, but whenever I’m with you, I end up feeling like I’m the little girl and you’re the big daddy there to protect me.”
Great. Tozzi stared up at the light bulb.
“You’re very male, Tozzi. Maybe a little too male for me. I have a feeling you’re very dominating when you make love.”
If you only knew.
She let out a long sigh. “I guess, deep down, I always knew it wouldn’t work. I mean, you’re a pretty straight guy, being an FBI agent and all. And then there’s the age difference, which does kinda bother me. It’s just that after I saw you get shot and I got to know you, I began to fantasize about you. You’re really a very romantic character on a certain level. You know, guns and chasing bad guys and doing undercover work and all that. You just don’t get to meet people like you every day.” She forced a smile and shrugged. “But that’s not real. Not for me. Your life is like a roller coaster, Tozzi, and I don’t want to just go along for the ride. I want to pick my own rides.”
Tozzi looked at the floor and nodded. “Yeah
…
I hear what you’re saying.” He sighed and resigned himself to the fact that he was gonna be a lonesome scrotum—again.
They stood there under the dim light bulb, neither one knowing what to say next. She’d pretty much said it all.
He jerked his thumb at the door. “We’ve all been waiting for you, Stacy. There’s still plenty of cake left. You wanna—”
“No. I don’t think I could handle that right now. Apologize for me.”