Bad Luck (26 page)

Tozzi's face was hot. “Just one thing, Mr. Holman, and I'd like a straight answer this time. You've been avoiding this since we got here. Why
did
Russell Nashe fire you?”

Holman wouldn't look at him. He was pounding his chin with his fist.

“Well?”

“Before I answer, I want to know if I can be forced to testify to anything I say here. I don't want my wife to know anything about this.” He looked more like a nervous little accountant now.

Gibbons assured him, “Mr. Holman, I told you. You're not the target—”

“Just answer the question, please.” Jesus Christ, Gib.

Holman stared at Tozzi, looking helpless. “He fired me because . . . because I was . . . carrying on with his
wife. I told her a few things about how the hotel was doing that I suppose Russ didn't want her to know, and she must've thrown it up in his face.” Holman was quiet for a few seconds. “He said I was disloyal, that I couldn't be trusted . . . Look, my wife was pregnant at the time and . . . and Sydney is a very attractive woman. Not the kind of woman the average guy gets the opportunity to be with. If you know what I mean.”

Tozzi could feel Gibbons grinning at him. Smug fucking asshole. Tozzi didn't want to look at him, didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Hey, this was Holman's version of things. He knew Sydney. She wouldn't go down for an accountant, for chrissake. This guy was dreaming. A squeeze in the elevator maybe, a kiss in the broom closet, something like that. Christ, he's making like they were Antony and Cleopatra.

Holman muttered into his fist then,
“Car 54, Where Are You?”

“Excuse me.”

He looked up at Tozzi. “I was just remembering. Sydney used to sing these songs from old TV sitcoms when we were in bed.
Car 54
was the one she sang most often.” Holman exhaled a bittersweet laugh. “Toody and Muldoon.” He shook his head. “Weird lady.”

Tozzi wanted to break something. He wanted to get up and move. He looked at his watch. It wasn't even eleven yet. There was still time. They could still dig up something to bring down the whole fucking bunch of them: Nashe, Immordino, Sydney—

“We finished here?”

“Huh?”

Gibbons with the hairy eyeball again. “You got anything else you want to ask Mr. Holman?”

“No.”

Gibbons turned to the accountant. “Thanks for your cooperation. We'll be in touch if we need you.”

“My wife won't find out about this, will she?” The little shit was pathetic.

“Don't sweat it,” Tozzi said, “We won't tell your wife you were porking some other bitch while she was in labor. Come on, Gib. Let's go.” He got up to leave but Gibbons just sat there, looking at him as if he were from the moon.

“You have to excuse my partner,” he said to Holman. “He's Italian.”

Tozzi shoved the chair out of his way and walked out. Asshole.

ozzi lay on his back in bed, his arm crooked behind his head, staring out the big triangular picture window at the gulls soaring through a solid blue sky. He'd been up since six, tried to go back to sleep, but there was too much on his mind now. He looked over at Valerie sleeping next to him, the sheet pulled up over her face, tousled blond hair all over the pillow. Tozzi sighed. She was nice—too nice to lose.

He reached over her and took her fedora off the brass bedpost, put it on his chest and ran his finger along the silky band. It's a good thing he'd found her last night, a good thing Lenny Mokowski had let him have the keys to this place. No telling what he might've done when he'd gotten back from White Plains yesterday afternoon.

He and Gibbons had started arguing as soon as they got into the car. He'd wanted to get back to the Plaza right away, see if he could chat up one of the accountants who used to work with Holman, see if he could pick up anything
substantial enough to justify keeping the undercover going. Gibbons, of course, gave him his usual rap about being cautious, taking it slow, being methodical, all the old Bureau platitudes. Gibbons told him he was gonna get his ass shot off if he went back there like a mad dog. If Nashe and Immordino know who he is, Gibbons had reasoned, he should just lay low, stay away until he was scheduled to go to work, and worry about protecting his ass because nobody was gonna break this case in the next thirty-six hours. Just be a good Do-Bee and wait it out. Yeah, bullshit.

Gibbons had left him off at his apartment in Hoboken, thinking he'd spend the night there, but he had no intention of doing that. As soon as Gibbons was gone he called Avis and rented a car, took a cab out to Newark Airport where he picked it up, and headed straight down the Garden State Parkway for Atlantic City. Even if he couldn't get what he wanted on Nashe and Immordino, he was determined to have a little talk with Sydney, the bitch.

But Sydney hadn't been around when he got to Nashe Plaza, and it just so happened that when he stepped out of the elevator coming down from her private suite, he ran into Lenny Mokowski who yelled at him for hanging around here on his day off. What the eff you doing here, Tomasso? he says. Get outta here, go rest. Here. And he pulls out a set of keys from his pocket and tells him he can use Nashe's beach house tonight, his place on Long Beach Island that favored employees get to use when they're good.

Tozzi settled back into his pillow and scanned the row of picture windows that overlooked the ocean. Some beach house. Eight big bedrooms, two Jacuzzis—one inside, one out on the deck—sauna, gym, private screening room . . .

He ran his finger up and down the satin band on Valerie's hat, staring out the triangular window. He wished she'd wake up.

It was almost seven o'clock when Lenny had given him the keys and told him to get lost. The accounting people were gone by then. He'd considered talking to Nashe directly,
but that seemed like a stupid idea—Nashe wasn't going to admit to anything—and Sal Immordino he could do without. He really wanted to do something, but there was nothing he could do, so he wandered over to the bar by the escalators to see Valerie. She poured him a Saint James on the rocks with a wedge of lime, just the way he liked it, and told him he didn't look happy, saying it with this sly smile, like she knew what would make him happy if he wanted to. It was good seeing her—sad but good. He knew he had to be with her at least one more time before the clock struck twelve and he turned back into a pumpkin. He told her he had the keys to the beach house for the night. She told him to pick her up when she got off at eleven-thirty.

Valerie sighed in her sleep then and Tozzi suddenly felt empty inside. She was really beautiful, the first woman he'd ever known who could make love and wisecracks at the same time. They're both coming and she's making him laugh so much he keeps slipping out of her and she's yelling for him to stick it back in, quick, making more jokes so that he's practically paralyzed, he's laughing so hard. He looked at her now, eyes closed, sheet pulled up to her chin. She was great. They were great together. He sighed and thought of Brant Ivers peering over his half glasses. This was his last day as Mike Tomasso. He tried to be hopeful, and a part of him was. He and Valerie could keep it going, depending on how she took it when he told her he wasn't really Mike Tomasso. It was possible. It wouldn't be easy, but it was possible. He didn't want to get his hopes up, though.

He sat up a little, bunching the pillow behind him, and put her hat on, pulling the brim down over one eye like Michael Jackson. He wished the hell she'd get up. He was getting antsy, he wanted to do something. Maybe they should just spend the whole day in bed, forget about going to work today, wind down the undercover right here, under the covers. It wasn't such a bad idea. He wasn't going to accomplish anything for the government today. Might
as well just fuck off and have a good time with Valerie. Enjoy her company—while he still had it.

He looked down at her, sleeping so nice, lips parted a little, eyelids so relaxed, and he peeled the sheet away. He stroked the end of her nose with his finger, very lightly. She frowned and turned her face to the pillow. He moved the hair away from her ear and started playing with her earlobe.

“Sto-op,” she moaned.

He kept it up, circling around the whole ear.

She hunched her shoulders. “Nooo.”

He grinned. “This is your wake-up call, Ms. Raynor.”

She opened one eye. “What time is it? It's too early.”

“It's quarter after seven.”

She pulled the covers over her shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

“I can't sleep. I've got too much energy.”

She grunted. “You're not one of those, are you? You
like
to get up early?”

Tozzi shrugged. “If there's something to get up for.”

“Nothing's worth getting up for at seven o'clock.” She burrowed into the pillows.

“Come on, let's go take a walk on the beach.”

“Get bent.”

“Come on, we'll do it on the beach, in the dunes.”

She turned over. “You go start. I'll catch up with you later.”

Tozzi threw off the sheet and stood up in bed, naked. He straddled her, standing over her with her hat on his head. “Come on.” He started bouncing on the bed, wagging his dong at her. “Let's go for a dip. Cold water is very purifying. Japanese monks do it all the time.”

She opened her eyes a little and looked up at his swinging dick. She couldn't hold back the grin. “Screw the Japanese monks.”

“I don't think they screw. You have to make do with me.” He stepped down off the bed and sat on the edge on her side.

She closed her eyes, still grinning. “I'll make a deal with you. Give me another half hour and I'll be your love slave for the rest of the day, okay?”

“And what am I supposed to do for a half hour?”

“I dunno, go make coffee, watch cartoons. Go take your walk. You figure it out.” She turned over and shrugged the covers up.

He stood up on the floor, scrunched his mouth to one side, and thought about trying out the Jacuzzi in the bathroom. He wandered over to the triangular picture window and looked out at the ocean. The sun was bright and the fog was burning off the beach. The water was calm, slate-blue right below him, silvery in the distance. A couple of hundred yards offshore there was a fishing boat, just one, all by itself, bobbing on the waves. To hell with the Jacuzzi, he was too antsy to wait for it to heat up. Makes too much noise anyway, all that burbling. She wants to sleep. “I'm gonna go take a walk,” he said.

Valerie didn't move. She'd already fallen back to sleep.

There he was. Sal could see him. Standing in front of that big triangle window with nothing on but a hat. Fucking Tomasso. Mokowski said he'd get him here. Sal stood under the overhang in the back of the fishing boat and fiddled with the focus on the binoculars to get a better look at him. The hat was pulled down low over the asshole's eyes, like he was some kind of tough guy. Bullshit.

Tomasso moved away from the window then. Sal set down the binoculars and leaned against the galley door so the captain up there in the driver's seat couldn't see. He took the gun out of the gym bag he'd brought and stuck it in his pants, then pulled the baggy gray sweatshirt over it and left the plaid wool shirt unbuttoned.