Bad Blood

by Anthony Bruno

  “Well . . . hello,” he said when she let him up for air.

  “Got to keep up the ruse,” she whispered. “You know, hubby and wifey. Can’t let the neighbors get suspicious. And you never know. The landlord might have a private detective working for him.”

  “A detective?”

  “Very common these days. Landlords spy on their tenants to make sure they’re on the up-and-up. Make sure there are no after-hours sex clubs on the premises, no outlawed pets, no illegal aliens packed into their apartments.” She flashed that sly smile of hers. “I read all about it in New York magazine.”

  Tozzi forced a smile for her. Illegal aliens. She had to mention that. He hadn’t told her about the slaves either.

  “Why don’t you come in out of the noonday sun . . . dear?” He led her into the apartment and shut the door.

  “Is anything wrong?” she asked as she threw her suede jacket on the couch. “You look a little washed-out.”

  “No, I’m okay.” He stared at her legs. She looked nice in jeans. “You know, I really do appreciate your doing this for me. You sure it’s not a big imposition.”

  “Oh, it’s a terrible imposition,” she said. “As you know, clients are breaking down my door. Taking today off could be disastrous for the Eastlake Academy. It’s a big risk, but I’m prepared to take it.”

  “We’re funny today, aren’t we?”

  She shrugged. “It’s no problem, Mike, really. My office is a crypt. I’m glad to get out frankly. Besides, you need a bed.”

  He took that last line the way he normally would’ve liked it. But why was this happening now, dammit? “Well, I’d wait for the bed myself, but something’s come up that can’t wait. I called the place where I bought it and they said it would be delivered sometime between ten and six. The lady said she couldn’t be more specific than that. Sorry.”

  “I told you. It’s no problem. I brought a book.”

  “I may be back late. You don’t have to stay.”

  “Wait a minute! You promised dinner for this little favor. I’m staying put until I collect.”

  “Fine.”

  “Anyway, be late. I don’t care. The Miss Galaxy Pageant is on TV tonight.”

  “You want to watch the Miss Galaxy Pageant?”

  “I love beauty pageants. All those totally repulsive girls demeaning themselves on national television. Does wonders for my superiority complex. It’s better than The Gong Show. Better than the Westminster Kennel Club competition.”

  “Right.” She was in such a good mood. He wished he could join her.

  Her smile faded. She looked concerned now. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He stared at her and sighed. Should he tell her about it? She was involved after all. And wasn’t this how he always got himself into trouble in the past, keeping things all bottled up, mulling it over in his head again and again until it became his version of reality? Maybe it would be better to get someone else’s opinion. It would certainly be a relief to tell her, just to get it off his chest. Besides, she’d be a neutral listener. Gibbons sure as hell wouldn’t be.

  “I’ve found out some things in the past few days.” He sat down on the couch. “Not very pleasant. It’s been bothering me.”

  She sat down next to him, staring into his eyes. “Tell me.”

  “The Japanese nannies? You want to know why they’re putting you out of business? They’re slaves.”

  “What do you mean slaves?”

  “Slaves. As in ‘way-down-yonder-in-the-land-o’-cotton.’ It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I met a bunch of them.”

  She bit her bottom lip and laid her hand on his knee. God, he wished she wouldn’t do that now. She looked so good, but it wouldn’t be right, given the conversation and all.

  “You mean they’re forced to work and . . . and beaten if they don’t?”

  Tozzi nodded. “Two were killed for trying to escape. Two that I know of.”

  “When is the FBI going to rescue these people?”

  Tozzi looked at her hand on his knee, then shook his head. “The FBI doesn’t know anything about it. I haven’t told anyone yet.”

  “Why not, for God’s sake?”

  “Because the slave I talked to said there are hundreds of them here. Maybe thousands. Sure, we can rescue the ones I found, but what about the others? How will we find them? Once it gets out that the authorities are looking for them, they’ll be that much harder to find.”

  “But, Mike, you have to tell somebody.” The sunlight shimmered through her hair. The color was indescribable, like red gold. She looked so sad and pained. He wanted to comfort her, hold her, touch her. It wouldn’t be right, though. She’d think he was an animal. He’d feel like an animal. “You have to tell somebody, Mike,” she repeated.

  “I told you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m picking up Gibbons at the hospital this afternoon. I want to discuss it with him first.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Okay. The doctor wants him to take a month off to rest, though. Lorraine wants me to convince him to stay down at her place until he’s well. I know what he’s gonna say to that.”

  “Any progress in finding the squat Jap fellow who beat him up?”

  “I got a call from the office a little while ago. Someone apparently dropped a dime on our man.”

  “Say again.”

  “Dropped a dime. It means we got an anonymous tip on the guy. An unsigned letter with a lot of choice details about him. It could be a prank or it could be real. I don’t know yet.” He looked at his watch. “I told them I’d be in this morning to check it out.” He glanced at his watch again. It was getting late.

  “Oh . . . well, you better get going then, I guess.” She took her hand off his knee.

  “Yeah, I guess.” She had that look like she really didn’t want to be left alone. He didn’t want to leave her.

  He nodded. She nodded. He looked at his watch again. “Well, I don’t have to rush. I’ve got a little time.”

  She turned away so that he saw her profile in the bright sunlight. “Please don’t think me insensitive or uncaring, but I . . . I . . .” She turned and faced him again, tilting her head to one side as she hooked her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him close, slowly pressing her lips against his.

  He tasted her lips, ran his hand down her ribs, felt her tongue with his. When he happened to find the space between her teeth, his dick started to throb.

  She tugged on his necktie and started to unbutton his shirt. He reached under her sweater and unhooked her bra, palming a breast and circling her nipple with his thumb.

  “Oh, Mike, I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t wait,” she breathed into his ear.

  “I know how you feel.”

  She pulled the lilac sweater over her head, and her falling hair filtered the sun. He went for her belt. She undid his, then fumbled with the pants button with one hand as she rubbed him through the material.

  His shoulder dug into the couch pillows as he shifted his weight to help her get his pants off. He couldn’t believe they were doing this. For a moment he wasn’t sure he wanted it to happen. Not now. Not when he had so much on his mind. She buried her head in his chest then, which made him even harder. Of course, she was the one who started it . . . No, maybe they shouldn’t wait. He unbuttoned the pants himself.

  He kicked his pants off and ran his hand over her ass, then followed the seam of her panties with his fingers, playing around where the inside of her soft thigh met her crotch. She licked her fingers and rolled the tip of his dick between her thumb and index finger. He stroked her lightly with his middle finger, back and forth, slow and steady. She twisted her hips to get more of his finger and he felt her moistness. She moaned. He closed his eyes and let himself get lightheaded.

  “Oh, Mike . . .”

  “Rox—”

  The doorbell rang. It echoed through the empty rooms.

  Tozzi bolted up,
his heart pounding. His face was drenched. He saw those faces in the shadows behind his closed eyes. No. This wasn’t right.

  She glared at the intercom. “The bed, I take it.”

  He looked at his watch. “Listen, Roxanne—you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but how about if we continue this later? When my head is a little clearer.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Sure . . . of course. You’ve got a lot on your mind. I understand.” She looked disappointed.

  Tozzi felt awful. He didn’t think she did understand. Not really.

  She got up and leaned into the intercom. She was only wearing panties. Blue cotton ones with little ducks marching across the ass. “Yes?” she said.

  “We got a bed here for Tozzi?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” She hit the buzzer to unlock the door downstairs, then rushed back to the couch to get dressed. Tozzi was sitting on the edge of the couch, pulling his pants on. His dick ached. He felt like a balloon with a slow leak. He knew he’d have this pent-up feeling for the rest of the day.

  After she got her sweater back on, she hugged him sideways and whispered in his ear. “Come home as soon as you can. I’ll have the bed set up.”

  There was a pounding on the door then.

  “Be right there,” Tozzi yelled. He kissed her quickly, then stood up to put his shirttails in. “Keep your pants on,” he muttered under his breath. He looked at her zipping up her jeans. He hoped she did understand.

  TWENTY-THREE

  GIBBONS RIPPED OPEN the Velcro straps on the foam-rubber neck brace around his neck and loosened it a little. He’d been fooling around with it all day, but nothing felt right. Tozzi’s dramatic revelation didn’t do much for his comfort level either. He re-did the straps, but the collar still didn’t feel right. Fucking Tozzi. Can’t even let a man be miserable in peace.

  “You looking for trouble or what, Tozzi? When the hell are you gonna wise up? Why didn’t you tell Ivers?” Gibbons glared up at Tozzi from where he sat, but the damn brace made looking up uncomfortable. He got up out of the chair so he could look his partner in the eye, but Tozzi decided to sit on the edge of the bed then. What a pain in the ass this guy was.

  “Look, you know how it is with Ivers. He’ll call out the heavy artillery to liberate those guys at the chicken shack just to get his face on the six o’clock news. If that happens, we can forget about finding the rest of them. D’Urso and his yakuza friends will move those guys so fast, it’ll be a fucking disappearing act. We’ll never find them.”

  “I still don’t buy this yakuza business. Sounds too much like one of your usual fairy tales.” He leaned up flat against the wall. His neck was killing him. He hated those goddamn painkillers, though. Stupid things made you dopey.

  Tozzi started looking around the room, bouncing his knee. He was nervous. He usually did stupid things when he was nervous. “You know a guy named Bob Chen?” he asked. “He’s a special agent with the Honolulu office.”

  “I think I may have heard of him, yeah.” Gibbons was determined not to let Tozzi softsoap him into one of his crazy schemes. Not this time. From now on, it was by the book.

  “I gave him a call this afternoon. He’s the Bureau’s unofficial expert on the yakuza. He told me they’re all over Hawaii and California, and he says there’s some strong evidence that they’re beginning to set up camp on the East Coast.”

  “There’s a lot of competition around here. Why would they move into an already glutted market?”

  “Why do they all come here, Gib? The money. LA may be groovy, but New York is where the real money is.”

  “Tokyo isn’t exactly poor.” Gibbons shifted his hips, but nothing seemed to help. It felt like someone had just pounded a few two-inch finishing nails into his neck and shoulders.

  “Too much competition in Japan. In terms of manpower, the Mafia is like the Mickey Mouse Club compared to the yakuza. They’ve got over a dozen major families. Sixty thousand made members, forty-something-thousand associates. Their biggest family is bigger than all the American Mafia families combined. And Japan has only half the population we have. To survive, these guys have to spread out.”

  Tozzi was great with facts and figures when he wanted something. It wasn’t going to work this time, though. “Ivers isn’t going to buy this. He’ll say the chicken factory is an isolated case. Yakuza, slavery—it’s too farfetched for him.” Gibbons tried tilting his head back a little to relieve the pain. That seemed to help.

  “Yeah, but when you think about it, Gib, slavery is a natural for this area. The yakuza have been into slavery for a long time. It’s not that uncommon in the East. But America is a virgin market for that product. It only makes sense that they’d try to bring it here. Even Ivers can follow that logic.”

  “Don’t count on it. Even if I did think this was a yakuza-Mafia operation, my word doesn’t count for a whole lot with him.” He rolled his eyes toward his partner. “And yours is worth shit. Just tell him and let them raid the chicken factory. Maybe some of those guys can help us find the other slaves.”

  “No, they don’t know anything.” Tozzi looked disgusted with him. “We can’t tell Ivers yet.”

  “Then when? Tell me. When?” he shouted. Goddamn, that hurt. Maybe he could just take half a pill.

  “When we know more about the slave business, that’s when. How big it is, who this guy Nagai is, who’s buying the slaves—”

  “And how the hell are we gonna investigate all that without Ivers wondering what the hell we’re doing?”

  “I’ll do all the legwork. You just run interference for me with Ivers.”

  Gibbons grit his teeth. Jesus Christ Almighty. Tozzi was pounding those nails in a little farther. He tried not to wince, though. He didn’t want Tozzi to see how much pain he really was in. “This is how you got into trouble the last time, asshole. You thought you knew better than the whole Bureau, so you went renegade. And this is the same reasoning you used to get me to help you last time. You remember?”

  Tozzi pulled that defensive guinea look of his. “I don’t need the history lesson, Gib. All I’m asking is that we sit on the information for a little while until we can come up with some concrete evidence that Ivers can’t ignore. Something that’ll prove to him that this is a very big operation that can’t be shut down with a one-shot raid.”

  Gibbons squeezed his eyes shut and rotated his head ever so slightly. It hurt like a bastard. “All right, all right. We’ll sit on this for a little while, but unless you come up with something by the middle of next week, we go to Ivers. Okay?” He didn’t feel like arguing right now.

  “You all right? You don’t look good.”

  Fuck you. “I’m fine. I’m okay.” He lowered himself back down into the lounge chair beside the bed and rested his head against the high back. That seemed to hold the pain down to a dull ache. Tozzi was looking at him with that same wet-eyed long face of concern that Lorraine had been wearing lately. He wished to hell they’d both shape up. He wasn’t a cripple, for chrissake.

  “Did I tell you about the letter?” Tozzi said.

  “What letter?”

  “A tipster sent a letter to the field office, unsigned of course. He knew all about the two kids in the VW. According to the letter, the guy who did it is a Japanese named Gozo Mashiro. There was a complete description of him, the kind of car he drives, and a couple of places where he hangs out. Ivers sent McFadden and Brenner out to locate him. This Mashiro was the one the slave told me about that night at the chicken factory, the one they’re all so afraid of. According to that slave, he’s also the one who beat you up.”

  “Gogo” Mashiro. Sounds like a guinea legbreaker, almost. The goddamn son of a bitch. “Anybody run a check on him?”

  “Yeah. There was nothing in our files on him, so Ivers put in a request to the Japanese National Police Agency for information on him. He told me not to expect much because the Japanese usually aren’t very generous about sharing information, but this time the
telex was like a slot machine that hit the jackpot. It turns out that Mashiro has been on their most wanted list over there for about eight years now.”

  “Yeah? For what?” Gibbons was beginning to taste revenge. No one had ever kicked his ass this badly.

  “The report said Mashiro was a middle-management executive for Toyota, a bachelor, good worker but nothing outstanding about him. In October of eighty-one, he was passed over for a promotion. The next day he shows up for work with a samurai sword and goes berserk. Killed his boss and the personnel director, then wounded eight others. Hacked off one lady’s arm just above the elbow. He was last seen running off into the woods behind the Toyota offices in Nagoya. When the police started investigating, they found out that he had spent several years at the—” Tozzi went into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small green notepad—“the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu. You got that?”

  Gibbons shrugged and regretted it as soon as he did it. The fucking nails again. Jap bastard.

  “This is a school just outside Tokyo that still teaches the old samurai fighting arts, including classical sword technique. The school has been in operation since the fifteenth century.”

  “Is this where they train their killers over there?”

  “No, it’s all very spiritual now, sort of like going into the priesthood. But apparently no one ever explained that to Mashiro.”

  “How about that? I was beat up by a trained samurai. Better than being taken out by some ordinary little punk, I suppose.” Gibbons imagined sticking Excalibur down the bastard’s throat and seeing what the fuck he’d do then.

  “That’s not all, though. Mashiro has also studied several of the martial arts, including Shuri-te, which I found out is the hardest of the hard-ass schools of karate. When he went off his rocker, he was a fifth-degree black belt.”

  “Oh, I feel better already.” Bastard!

  “The interesting thing is that when Mashiro disappeared, he had no yakuza connections. The National Police think he might’ve hooked up with a gang while he was on the run, and they’ve been helping him hide out all this time.”