“My personal life is none of her business, and it’s none of yours either, Lorraine. So just don’t worry about it, okay?”
“But, Michael, you’re not being fair to Stacy.”
“What do you mean, I’m not being ‘fair’?”
“You seem to be leading her on, treating her like a … like a pet.”
“Like a pet? Did you come up with this one by yourself? It sounds more like one of Dr. Cummings’s analyses.”
“Michael, I’m not accusing you of anything, but let’s be honest. Your history with women is nothing to brag about. I’m afraid you’re going to end up hurting Stacy and you don’t even realize it.”
Tozzi reached across the table for her coffee mug and took a sip. He made a face. It had sugar in it. “Lorraine, you don’t understand the situation here. It’s not what you think.”
“Then explain it to me.”
Tozzi just looked at her for a second and sighed. How could he tell her that his dick was broken?
She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, encouraging him to tell her what was on his mind.
But there was no way he could bring himself to tell her. Christ, he couldn’t even bring himself to tell Gibbons. He’d thought about unloading it on John, but he could forget about that. Yesterday he finally worked up the courage to call the doctor who had treated his leg and asked if his impotence could be a side effect of the gunshot wound.
The doctor said he seriously doubted that his problem was a physical ailment. According to the doctor, impotence is almost always the result of stress. Tozzi admitted that he was under a lot of stress, particularly with Stacy. When Tozzi told him that he’d been avoiding sex with her because he was afraid he’d fail, the doctor told him he’d never know whether he was truly impotent unless he tried to have intercourse. Tozzi just grunted when he said that. He knew his own body and he knew that normally he would get erect just standing next to a woman like Stacy. He didn’t say anything to the doctor, but he wasn’t willing to risk an experiment, not with Stacy. What if they got started and he couldn’t make it happen? He could never live with himself after that. The doctor finally suggested that Tozzi might want to see a shrink if his problem persisted.
Great. Maybe he could get an hour on the couch with Dr. Cummings. He could tell her all about his limp dick and how it was driving him so crazy he couldn’t respond to Stacy. That wouldn’t be too stressful. Yeah, right.
The phone rang. Tozzi looked up at it, a white wall phone next to the refrigerator. Lorraine didn’t move to pick it up. It stopped ringing. Gibbons must’ve answered the extension in the living room.
“Be fair to her, Michael. For once in your life don’t be such a typical male.”
“Whattaya talking about, Lorraine?”
“Michael, I know you. You’ve only known Stacy for what?—a week and a half?—and already you’ve fast-forwarded into the future, decided the relationship could never work, and now you’re looking for the escape hatch. You’ve done this with every woman I’ve ever seen you with. Except in this case, Stacy’s just too good-looking to let go of, so you’re sitting on the fence.”
“That’s not true.”
“Michael, I know you. Be honest. You’re poison with women. You don’t know how to treat a woman like a person first. You’re doing it now with Stacy. You’re treating her like the Pump-It-Up Girl.”
“Lorraine, you really don’t understand the situation.”
“I understand perfectly.”
Tozzi couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was Cummings talking, not Lorraine. “Lorraine, I’m under a lot of stress right now. I’m very confused about a lot of things and—”
“Don’t make excuses, Michael. Stacy’s probably even more confused, thanks to you. She’s probably trying to figure out what the hell you want from her, and you’re not giving her any clues. Remember, she’s only—what? Twenty-one, twenty-two? She’s looking to you to take the lead. That’s why I think you should make up your mind about her, Michael. As they say, shit or get off the pot.”
“But—”
Gibbons came into the kitchen, tying his tie as he walked. “Get up, Tozzi. We gotta go.”
“Where?”
“The field office. That was Ivers. He wants to see us, right now.”
“Us? I’m still on sick leave.”
Gibbons shrugged. “He said he wanted you, too.”
Tozzi looked at the clock on the stove. “It’s eight-thirty. He’s still at work?”
“Yup. He said a coupla lab reports just came in. C’mon. I told him we’d be there by nine.”
Tozzi stood up and rotated his knee to loosen up the leg. Lorraine had a condemning stare fixed on him. He just shrugged. It was beyond his control, but she didn’t understand that. And he didn’t know how to explain it to her.
“We’ll finish this some other time. Okay, Lorraine?”
“Yeah, I bet we will.” Weary and sarcastic.
“Finish what?” Gibbons was putting on his jacket.
“Nothing.” Tozzi pointed his foot and stretched the leg.
Lorraine was staring at him, accusing him with her eyes.
“I’ll see you later.” Gibbons bent over and pecked her on the cheek. Her eyes stayed on Tozzi.
“Yeah, see you around, Lorraine. And thanks for dinner.” He didn’t need this aggravation, not from his own cousin.
Tozzi turned and headed for the door with Gibbons right behind him.
Out in the hallway, Tozzi could hear the sound of plates and silverware clinking in the sink. Lorraine was starting to do the dinner dishes.
Shit or get off the pot, huh? She didn’t understand. She never would. She’s a woman. He let out a long sigh and followed Gibbons out the door.
Madeleine Cummings was flipping through a stack of printouts spread out next to her on the green leather couch in Ivers’s office. Ivers was in one of the guest chairs, leaning over a mess of papers on the coffee table. It looked like they’d been here for a while. Gibbons glanced at Tozzi as they walked into the assistant director’s office, then narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw. He wanted to know what the hell Cummings was doing here.
Ivers looked up at them over his half glasses. “Pull up a chair. We’ve come up with something on the Mistretta-Bartolo killings.”
Gibbons looked at Tozzi again, but Tozzi just gave him a shrug. He glanced down at all the papers on the coffee table as he dragged up a chair. He didn’t like the look of this.
Ivers sat back, took off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why don’t you lay it all out for them, Madeleine?”
Gibbons’s upper lip rose on one side. Madeleine? When did this happen?
Cummings sat up and faced them. She let her gaze settle on Gibbons. “I’ve been doing a little work on my own.” She reached into a manila envelope and pulled out a black-and-white glossy. “This is our man. Donald Emerick.”
Gibbons grabbed the photo. It showed a chubby little guy being led away by a cop. He looked like a distraught honey bear in a cartoon—smallish, round-faced, full bushy beard. Gibbons guessed that the picture had been taken at the time of his arrest because the guy was in handcuffs rather than a strait-jacket or belt restraints. The little honey bear was crying in the picture, crying inconsolably from the contorted expression on his face—mouth open, lips sort of puckered, eyes slanted back in fear. Either that or he was howling at the moon.
“This is the only picture I could get of him right now. I’m told he’s lost quite a bit of weight since he’s been at the hospital. I’ve asked them to send me a more current picture. It’s on its way.”
Gibbons tossed the photo onto the pile of papers. “What makes you so sure Emerick’s the killer?”
Cummings’s face was impassive. “Fingerprint analysis. The lab has a possible match. The partial thumbprint that was lifted off Mistretta’s watch crystal could be Emerick’s.”
Gibbons smirked
and shook his head. “So what? A possible match won’t hold up in court. Not in a mob killing.”
“Why won’t it?” Cummings was indignant.
“Because it’s inconsistent.”
“What are you tàlking about?”
“Why would the killer be so sloppy with Mistretta, then be so careful with Bartolo? If he didn’t care about leaving his fingerprints on Mistretta’s watch, why didn’t we find any prints on the bullet casings we found in the men’s room at the track? Doesn’t make any sense. There should be prints all over those casings from when the shooter loaded the gun. Psycho killers don’t give a shit about leaving prints. They’re on a mission from God, right? But there weren’t any prints on those casings from the Bartolo murder. They were clean as could be. So whoever loaded that gun was worried about leaving his prints.”
“Psychotic behavior by its very nature is unpredictable—”
Gibbons waved her away. “Save it for the term paper, Doc.”
Ivers intervened before she could retaliate. “As to the matter of the weapon, we’ve finally gotten some solid information.” He glanced at Cummings, who was suddenly smug as a Siamese. Ivers opened a bound gray folder and put his glasses back on. “One cartridge was recovered intact from the scene of the Bartolo-Witherspoon killings. It seems that this bullet ricocheted off the door of the bathroom stall where Bartolo was”—he cleared his throat—“sitting, and lodged in the toilet paper roll. As a result, it was a very good specimen for analysis, and ballistics was able to determine that it came from a Browning BDA 380. We checked with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and they informed us that a case of these handguns was stolen from a warehouse in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1990. These guns were traced to a Mr. Richard Skinner of Bordentown, New Jersey, who operated a porno parlor there called Captain’s Paradise, and sold firearms under the counter. Mr. Skinner was convicted this past winter on weapons charges and is now serving time. ATF was kind enough to check their case file on Skinner for us, and they came up with something very interesting. Among the credit card records seized in their search of the store, there were four slips totalling five hundred and fifty dollars, all of them dated in the same week last October. The purchases were described as ‘videotapes.’ The cardholder is a Mrs. Thelma Tate of Trenton, New Jersey. Mrs. Tate is seventy-two years old and legally blind. Her son, Charles Tate, is a guard on the ward at the state mental hospital where Donald Emerick was residing until he escaped. He’s also the same guard who assaulted Madeleine earlier this week.”
The smug little Siamese looked like she’d swallowed the canary and enjoyed it.
A mean grin crossed Gibbons’s face. “You think Tate bought the gun for Emerick? You gotta be kidding.”
“How much stronger do you want the evidence to be?” she said. “I don’t think Emerick will be mailing us a signed confession, if that’s what you want.”
Tozzi’s forehead was bulging. He was ready to explode. “How do you know Tate gave the gun to Emerick? How do you know Tate isn’t Sal Immordino’s hit man? Jesus, what do you need? A signed confession from Immordino?”
Cummings sat there with her hands in her lap, Miss Prim and Proper. “According to the files I’ve read, Emerick has an unusually weak personality. He’s very easily influenced, even passively. For this reason, he was not allowed to have a radio, and all television programs had to be taped and screened before he could see them. In fact, he had a serious setback at the hospital due to unmonitored television viewing. After seeing a thirty-second commercial advertising the program Twin Peaks, he became convinced that he had murdered Laura Palmer, and he demanded to be punished accordingly.”
Gibbons gestured with his hands. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re saying that Sal Immordino could be running this guy? That Immordino played with this Emerick’s head so that he could get the kid to do his dirty work for him?”
“It’s possible.”
“You’re nuts.”
Cummings ignored the comment. “However, given Mr. Immordino’s condition, I don’t believe that he could be controlling Donald Emerick. My hunch is that Emerick overheard Immordino complaining about his perceived enemies when they were on the ward together, and that’s how he became fixated on Mistretta and Bartolo. Emerick, being so impressionable, adopted Imrnordino’s burden. Thus, Immordino’s vendetta became Emerick’s vendetta. Now, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me yet, Charles Tate procured the weapon and facilitated Emerick’s escape. My gut feeling is that Tate has a sadistic personality and he likes to control people. Giving Emerick a gun may have temporarily satisfied some deviant psychosexual need that this man has. In other words, Charles Tate got a thrill out of turning Emerick into Sal Immordino’s guided missile.”
Gibbons shook his head. “You don’t expect anybody to believe this, do you? If you do, then you’ve really got your head up your—”
“Gibbons!” Ivers’s nostrils flared.
Gibbons flared his back. “Look, maybe you can swallow this horseshit, but I can’t.”
Tozzi piped up then. “We know Sal Immordino is a fake, and we know what he’s capable of. He’s the one behind all this, not some hospital guard.”
Cummings raised one eyebrow. “How can you know?”
Tozzi pounded his fist on the coffee table. “Christ Almighty, I know how the guy thinks. I’ve seen how he operates. He wants me dead, but he ends up killing an innocent guy. It’s him. I know it.”
Tozzi’s face was red, and his neck was tight and strained. He looked like he was ready for the nuthouse himself.
Gibbons decided to intervene before Tozzi said anymore. “Look, we know that Immordino is staying with his sister in Jersey City. Why don’t we go pick him up and squeeze him for a while. Maybe he knows where we can find Emerick.”
“You mean, ‘squeeze’ him the same way you’ve successfully ‘squeezed’ him in the past?” The doctor’s sarcasm had surgical precision.
Ivers folded his glasses and put them in his pocket. “She’s right, Gibbons. Immordino hasn’t opened up for anyone in over twenty-five years. He’s not about to start now.” He stood up and buttoned his suit coat. “For the time being I’m shifting the focus of this investigation away from Immordino and onto Donald Emerick. Our first priority is to find Emerick before he strikes again. The New Jersey State Police are looking for Charles Tate as we speak. As soon as they have him in custody, they’ll let us know.”
Tozzi bounced out of his seat. “But Immordino is out on the street, too, for chrissake. He’s the one we should be concentrating on.”
“There are local agencies keeping their eye on him, and we just don’t have the manpower to spare. They’ll keep us apprised of his activities. Emerick is the more immediate threat as far as I’m concerned, and so far we’re the only ones who know about him.”
Gibbons’s upper lip exposed an eyetooth as he watched the assistant director’s small, benevolent smile beam down on Cummings. This was all political. Ivers liked exclusives. There were mobsters in the papers evety other day. The general public couldn’t tell one from another. But if Ivers could bring in a serial killer before the guy hit the papers and got a nifty nickname, Ivers would pick up a few nice brownie points down in Washington for sparing the Bureau the inevitable embarrassment of having to tell reporters day after day that no, they haven’t caught Donald the Ripper yet. It would be a great coup for Ivers, and when you came right down to it, boosting the man’s career was what they were all there for. At least, that was how Ivers saw it. Asshole.
Ivers buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie. “Given Madeleine’s expertise in these matters, I’m making her coordinating agent in this case. Until Emerick is apprehended, Gibbons, you answer to her.”
“What!”
“You heard me. And as for you, Tozzi, I want you to go home and rest. You’re on sick leave, so get busy being sick. If I find out you’ve been sticking your nose in this investigation again, I’ll arrang
e for a more permanent leave of absence. Do you read me?”
Tozzi glowered at him. “Yes, sir.” The two syllables sounded like something else.
Ivers went to his desk, and Tozzi got up and stomped to the door. “I’ll meet you downstairs, Gib.” He was gonna be climbing the walls tonight.
Cummings started gathering up her precious printouts and files. “Gibbons, I’m going to be busy here putting together a complete profile of Emerick. I think it would be helpful if you went down to the hospital tomorrow morning. See if you can find anyone on staff who remembers hearing Sal Immordino talking to Emerick. Find out what Sal said to him if you can. Maybe the other guards on that ward can be of some help.”
Gibbons glared at her. His gut was roasting. The “coordinating agent” was up on her high horse again.
When he didn’t say anything, she looked up from her papers. “Do you have any questions?”
“Nope.” He headed for the door.
“When can I expect your report?”
“When it’s ready.”
“When do you think that will be?”
He turned around and just stared at her. When I fucking feel like it.
Ivers was standing behind his desk, waiting to hear Gibbons’s answer. “We’d like it as soon as you get back from the hospital,” he said.
Gibbons grumbled. “Right.”
The Siamese smiled. “Good.”
Right. As soon as I get back. Whenever the hell that is.
Gibbons left Ivers’s office and passed into the waiting room, a crooked grin on his face. He had to catch up with Tozzi so they could figure out how they were going to handle Immordino.
“And, Gibbons,” the assistant director called through the doorway, “if you or Tozzi go anywhere near Sal Immordino, you can consider yourselves dismissed.”
Don’t do me any favors, asshole.
Gibbons kept walking. His gut was on fire. He was afraid to open his mouth for what he might say.
“Did you hear me, Gibbons? Gibbons?”
“I heard you.”
The outer door slammed.
5 Bad Moon Page 21
