Bad Blood

by Anthony Bruno

  Elam flipped a few sheets on his clipboard. “About two this afternoon, 911 started getting calls about something floating in the harbor. Only the roof and part of the windshield were visible in the water. One woman reported it as a dead whale.”

  “An orange whale?”

  “She was a dumb blonde,” Elam said with a shrug.

  “Now who’s the racist?”

  Elam rolled his eyes at Gibbons, then flipped another sheet and continued. “Harbor Unit responded, and they sent a diver in to investigate. The diver reported that the doors were locked, two bodies in the front seat.”

  Elam looked at Gibbons again, waiting for a reaction. Gibbons stared back at him stone-faced. He wanted the details first.

  Elam went on with the report. “Apparently the killer didn’t know that VW Bugs are airtight. I don’t suppose he wanted this thing to float on him. Anyway, the Harbor guys towed it into this slip. They said it’d be easier to pull it out from here. I dunno. Said they’d have it out before rush hour, no problem. But as soon as they started to lift it out of the water, the front axle snapped. Pulled it up too fast. That’s what the crane guy told me. The windshield smashed somehow when it hit the water and the car started to sink then. They told me it might take all night to pull the damn thing out now, so I told them to go ahead and take the bodies out.”

  “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “Didn’t want the fish to start eating them.”

  Gibbons shook his head and snorted a laugh. “Sharks?”

  “Anything’s possible in New York, man.”

  “Go on. I like this. First you dump this ass-pain on the FBI, now you’re telling me you fucked up whatever evidence we might’ve had. The lab boys in Washington are gonna send you flowers for this one, Elam.”

  “Division okayed taking the bodies out. You take it up with them.”

  “That’s right, pass the buck. You guys are good at that.” Gibbons pushed his sunglasses up his nose. “I still don’t get why you called us. This isn’t a federal crime.”

  “Keep your pants on. I’m getting to that.” Lieutenant Elam flipped another page. “If you look closely, Gib, you’ll see that the car has Jersey plates. It floated here to Manhattan from Jersey, which is where the murders must’ve occurred, which makes this an interstate crime, which, as you know, makes this all yours, Gib.” Elam put his thumb and forefinger over his eyes and laughed with his shoulders.

  “You check the water inside the engine? Can you prove it’s Jersey water?”

  The lieutenant just shrugged. Not my job, man.

  “All right, I’m here now,” Gibbons said. “I may as well solve this one for you. Where are the bodies now?”

  Elam’s grin suddenly disappeared at the mention of the bodies. The ME did the preliminaries and took them to the morgue a little while ago.”

  “And?”

  “Not pretty.” Elam exhaled deeply and looked down at his notes for a moment before he went on. “The victims were a male and a female. Both Asian. Exact cause of death is unknown at this time.” Elam looked up from the clipboard. “But if you saw them, it wouldn’t be too hard to guess.”

  Gibbons squinted at Elam. “What do you mean?”

  Elam scratched his ear. “They were practically cut in half. Right through the middle. They weren’t hacked, though. You know, the way a guy does it when he wants to stuff his wife in garbage bags and put her out with the trash. These cuts were different. They were . . . well, neater than that.”

  Gibbons tried to imagine what he was talking about and all he could think of was the big roasts in the meat case at ShopRite. “What do you mean, ‘neater’?”

  “From what I saw, it looked like the killer actually tried to cut the victims in half. The gash on the male was on the left side. It cut right through the spine. The female’s was on the right. Not quite as deep, but almost. The guys from the morgue had a hell of a time keeping them together when they moved them out of the car. The ME told me he wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few organs missing. Lost in the water. That’s how big these cuts were. But like I said, the weird thing is that they’re very neat, precise cuts, Gib. No indication of sawing or chopping that I could see. Slices, I’d call them. I’ve never seen wounds like these on a body before. Clean, deep slices.”

  Gibbons took off his glasses and waited for his stomach to settle down. He could taste his lunch—brisket. “Slices, huh? You telling me I should go check out every cold-cut slicer in Jersey?”

  Elam shook his head slowly. “You are one hard ass, aren’t you? This kind of shit doesn’t affect you anymore. You seen it all before, right?”

  “What do you want me to do? Pull out my handkerchief and cry a little? Sympathy for the victim wasn’t part of the job description when I joined the Bureau. I feel sorry on my own time. My job is to find the bastards who do this kind of shit so they can’t do it again. Okay?” A rock-hard band of pain circled his gut. Bastard.

  Elam stood up, stuck his hand in his pocket, and just looked at the veteran special agent. “They don’t make ’em like you anymore . . . thank God.”

  Gibbons scowled. “Don’t try to butter me up, Elam. You already dumped this case on us. It’s not your headache anymore. Be happy.”

  “I’d love to see your annual job evaluation. What does your boss put under ‘Attitude?’ Peachy?”

  Gibbons didn’t bother answering. He stared at the orange Volkswagen hanging from that cable like the big one that didn’t get away, trying to imagine what kind of weapon or device could make those “slices,” wondering what kind of sick mind could do something like this, wondering why the hell a killer would bother doing something difficult when all he wanted to do was just kill his victims. Assuming, of course, that was his only purpose.

  “Were there any other marks on the bodies?”

  Elam shook his head. “Not that we could see.”

  “Any idea who they were?”

  Elam shook his head again. “No identification on the bodies. No wallets, no money, no keys, just odds and ends.”

  “Anybody checking with Missing Persons?

  “Nope. Not our job, man. This is your baby now.”

  Gibbons shook his head and looked at the ground. “It gladdens my heart to see that the NYPD’s attitude toward the Bureau has improved so dramatically.” Couldn’t expect a cop to go out of his way to help a fed. Unwritten police rule in every precinct from sea to shining sea: Screw the feds whenever you can.

  The crane’s engine started revving up then as it slowly started to pull the VW up away from the water. When they finally set the Bug down on its tires, Gibbons took out his notepad and went over to take a look. The first thing he did was jot down the license plate number. He looked through the side window on the driver’s side, scanning the frontseats, then the backseats.

  He could see Elam’s reflection in the glass, looming behind him. “So what do you see, Gib?”

  “A wet car, lieutenant.”

  Elam pursed his lips and nodded. “That’s the kind of trenchant comment you come to expect from a seasoned investigative talent. I can see why the FBI pulled you out of retirement.”

  “Who says they pulled me out of retirement?” He walked around to the passenger side and peered in.

  Elam stuck his hands in his pockets and cocked his head back. “Oh, you know how it is, Gib. Word gets around.”

  Gibbons ripped off a blank sheet of paper from his pad and used it to open the car door so as not to add his fingerprints to the handle. “So what’s the word?” he asked. “Clue me in.”

  “That the Bureau had to call you out of retirement to chase down one of your guys in the Manhattan field office who went renegade.”

  Gibbons stuck his head inside the car and took a look under the dash, then jiggled the stick shift. It was in neutral just as he knew it would be. Bodies don’t drive themselves into the river. They were pushed.

  “The way I heard it, Gib, this dude started shooting up all th
ese bad guys who walked in court, you know, cases he’d put together before he went nuts. A one-man judge, jury, and executioner.”

  “You see this one on TV, Elam?” Gibbons scowled under the dash. How the fuck did he know about Tozzi?

  “Yeah, well, the way I heard it, you knew something about this guy, how he ticked and all that. They figured you were the only one who could bring him in before he did any more damage. Is that how it went down, Gib?”

  There were a couple of people at the field office who could’ve pieced it all together and figured out that Tozzi had gone renegade, even though Ivers insisted that he was certain he’d kept the lid on it. Maybe it was Ivers himself, though. Maybe our dear Special Agent in Charge bragged to a few of his law-enforcement colleagues, modifying the story to make it look like a real management coup on his part. That wouldn’t be out of character for the asshole.

  “Come on, Gib, you can tell me. You are the Great White Renegade Hunter, aren’t you?”

  Gibbons stood up and looked at Elam over the roof of the Volkswagen. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s a good story, though. You ought to write it up in a book.”

  Elam just smiled, flashing a lot of big white teeth. “Yeah, I’ll do that, Gib.”

  “Hey, Elam, can I ask you something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You used to play for Michigan, right?”

  “Michigan State. I played forward and backup center. We tied with Indiana for Big Ten champs, my junior year.” The lieutenant seemed very proud of his record.

  “Didn’t you play some pro ball, too?”

  “Yeah, a little. I was drafted by the Bullets, but I only played a couple of games with them.”

  “What happened?”

  “I wanted to stick it out, man, but I had bad knees.”

  “Bad knees, huh?” He studied Elam’s size, noticing how his waist was almost even with the roof of the Bug. Willis Reed had bad knees. Didn’t stop him.

  Gibbons stared at the passenger seat of the VW. There were no blood stains; the river had washed the vinyl upholstery clean. He shut the door and pressed his hand against his sore gut, wondering if the killer was a short little shit.

  THREE

  JOHN D’URSO watched his boss, Carmine Antonelli, slowly pouring out two cups of espresso and wondered just how he should bring it up, hoping that maybe today he could convince him. It was a great idea, a potential fucking gold mine. He knew from the first night last summer when Nagai took him to the yak whorehouse on Sixty-sixth Street, the one Hamabuchi set up to cater exclusively to Jap businessmen. Ever since that night, he couldn’t stop thinking about the possibilities, the opportunities, those incredible girls.

  The girl he had that night was unbelievable. To tell the God’s honest truth, he wasn’t even up for it that night, but she changed that quick enough. It was like she had a little hand up there. He never imagined one of these shy, quiet little things could be so sexy, so accommodating, so incredibly good. And as far as he could tell, they were all like that, walking fantasies, all of them. There was no question about it, he had to have Jap girls working a house for him. All he had to do was get Mr. Antonelli’s okay. That’s all he wanted. Antonelli was a stubborn old bastard, but he wasn’t unreasonable all the time. If the old goat had enough left in him to make it with one of these Jap pros, he’d go for it like that. True, Antonelli already said no, but he could change the old man’s mind if he played his cards right. Play it right and he just may go for it this time. Sure, why not?

  “Nice suit, John,” Antonelli said without looking up. “Shiny.” He pushed a cup and saucer in front of D’Urso.

  D’Urso knew what the old man really meant. He didn’t like flash, never had. Gotta keep a “low-profile,” he always says, a “low-profile.” Always the goddamn “low-profile.” A three grand, tailor-made, polished Italian silk suit and he calls it “shiny.” Christ.

  Antonelli carefully rubbed the slender piece of lemon rind around the rim of his espresso cup. His bony, wrinkled hands reminded D’Urso of the wicked queen’s hands in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs after she turns herself into a witch. They had the video at home, and his daughter watched it all the time. The old man’s hands looked just like the wicked witch’s when she held out the poison apple for Snow White.

  D’Urso waited for the old capo di capi to speak next. It was considered very disrespectful to rush the boss, even if the senile old bastard did take a week to stir a little spoonful of sugar into his goddamn espresso. D’Urso glanced over at Vincent sitting at the bar, quietly sipping his own espresso. Vincent stared back at him dead-eyed, like a gorilla with an attitude. Vincent, of course, wouldn’t agree that the old man was getting too old to run the family. Why should he? The old man wants to make him underboss. Vincent the bodyguard, the old man’s goddamn driver, for chrissake! Vincent who ran the shittiest crew in Brooklyn. Now the old man wants to make him underboss. Unbelievable.

  Antonelli reached for a pignoli cookie from the plate in front of him and broke it in half. He took a bite and chewed slowly and deliberately, then sipped from the small gold-rimmed cup. D’Urso felt like he was trapped in a fucking old age home. He looked out the window at the traffic inching down Mulberry Street, then focused on the backwards letters on the plate-glass window, the cracked gold-leaf lettering that spelled out CAMPANIA SPORTS SOCIETY. MEMBERS ONLY. He hated coming here, bowing and scraping to the old man, making a big production number out of giving him his cut when the goddamn guy didn’t do shit for it really. Christ, the last time Antonelli was even in Jersey Nixon was president. Why the hell should he have to drive in here and give Antonelli fifty fucking percent, leaving him with a lousy ten percent after expenses? Good question. D’Urso held his tongue and sipped his espresso which was like poison in his throat. He hated espresso and only drank it when he was here, out of respect.

  “So,” Antonelli said, brushing cookie crumbs from the ridiculously wide lapels of his dark suit, “how are we making out with our Japanese friends?” He looked up for the first time, and D’Urso was startled by the clear blue of his eyes. The old man’s hard, suspicious eyes always caught him by surprise. They just didn’t go with the rest of him.

  “Very good, Mr. Antonelli. Very good.” He heard himself sucking up to Antonelli, and he hated the way he sounded. A bad taste lingered at the back of his throat as he reached for the attaché case on the floor by his leg and presented it to the old man. Four hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars, freshly laundered from Atlantic City at his own expense. For what?

  Antonelli took the leather attaché case and passed it to Vincent who opened it on the bar and started counting the packets of bills.

  “I saw Hamabuchi last week,” Antonelli said. “He’s much happier now that the profits have started to come in. He never liked the idea of having to wait till we showed a profit before he got paid for his merchandise.”

  Merchandise, my ass. They’re slaves, for chrissake. Why not just call them slaves?

  “Hamabuchi has his doubts. He says he still can’t see people in America using enforced labor.” Antonelli stared him in the eye without blinking.

  “Well . . . our customers don’t know that these people are slaves.” The old man knew all this. He just likes to make you lay out the whole operation for him to make sure you know what the fuck you’re doing. Just to bust balls. “We lease the slaves to different employers, mostly factories but some domestic help too—maids, cooks, nannies—”

  “What?”

  “Nannies, live-in baby-sitters. You know. They’re very popular these days. My wife handles them . . .”

  Antonelli closed his eyes and nodded for D’Urso to go on, which made D’Urso’s stomach tighten up. He treated him like a goddamn kid.

  “Anyway, we’ve got two dummy employment agencies set up, besides my wife’s nanny thing. As I said, our customers don’t know they’ve got slaves working for them. They don’t even question it because they’re gett
ing help at cut-rate prices. I imagine some of them suspect that everything’s not totally kosher, but they don’t want to know any of the details because they’re getting such a great deal. All they ever say is that we’ve got some hell of an outfit. Our buses deliver the slaves first thing in the morning, pick ’em up at closing time, and the bosses don’t want to know a thing beyond that.”

  The old man smiled benevolently and nodded. “That’s just what I told Hamabuchi, John.”

  D’Urso grit his teeth. He could’ve punched him in his fucking face, the patronizing old bastard. Then he caught Vincent glaring over his tinted glasses at him. Vincent who carried two guns at all times.

  Antonelli took the other half of the pignoli cookie, stuck it in his mouth, and sucked on it for a minute. “You know, John, I asked Hamabuchi why these Japanese kids agree to this crazy deal in the first place. Eighteen, nineteen years old, selling themselves, three years of hard work in exchange for a trip to America. Maybe I could understand it if their country was one of those poor and dirty places, but Japan isn’t a poor country. You Japs got everything now, I told Hamabuchi. So why do they do it? I asked him.”

  D’Urso knew why, but he knew he was going to have to hear why again. Out of respect. “What did he say, Mr. Antonelli?”

  “They make their kids crazy over there in Japan. Did you know they have to take tests to get into kindergarten over there? Can you imagine?”

  He thought about pointing out to the old man that rich kids right here in New York have to take tests to get into ritzy preschools, but he decided not to bother. Antonelli was hip; he just liked to pretend he was an ignorant old fool from the old country.

  “In Japan these kids take tests all the time, and if they don’t pass, they’re finished. It makes these kids cuckoo. Hamabuchi told me that a lot of these kids go to school ten hours a day, six, seven days a week. But why? I asked him. He said because they all want good jobs with Panasonic and Sony and Toyota, all those big companies they got over there, and the only way to get an executive job is to go to one of the top colleges, but if they don’t get fantastic grades on these stupid tests, they end up going to a number-two school, which only gets them a so-so job with a so-so salary in a country where a lousy cup of coffee in a diner costs you five bucks. That’s why these kids agree to sell themselves to Hamabuchi’s gang.”