Bad Luck

by Anthony Bruno

  “You should not be on this floor without authoriza—”

  “I’m from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Claims Investigation. My name is Baker. I’m here for an on-site identification of the patient and confirmation of treatment.”

  “I wasn’t told—”

  “We don’t make a practice of announcing on-site inspections.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

  Gibbons shrugged. “If you don’t want me to see him, I won’t see him. But all payments for treatment will be withheld until the claim is investigated to our satisfaction.” He took out his notepad and pen. “I’ll just need to have your name for my report.”

  “Oh . . .”

  Gibbons bit the insides of his cheeks to hold back the grin. Blue Cross/Blue Shield was like the IRS—you just don’t fuck with them. And the battle-ax knew that.

  The fat can spoke up then. “I’m getting cold, nurse.”

  The battle-ax frowned down at the big wrinkly thing hanging out of the sheets, then looked at Gibbons. “Our Mr. Diaz is across the hall in 618.”

  “Thank you.” He put his pen and notebook away.

  He crossed the hall to 618 and opened the door. He didn’t like what he saw. Gibbons knew what Henry Gonsalves was supposed to look like—square-shouldered, fireplug build, perpetual tan, full head of thick salt-and-pep-per hair. The man laid out on the bed had no color in his face at all, the flesh under his chin hung loose, and his hair was greasy, flat to his skull. There was a tube up his nose, IV drip in his arm, a green wire going down the neck of his hospital gown, and two yellow wires taped to his temples. Two monitors bolted to the wall over his head bleeped out his vital signs. Gibbons didn’t know what the squirmy green lines on the monitors were supposed to look like, but they didn’t seem very lively, just little bumps and dips that seemed like they could flat-line at any moment.

  Gibbons stepped over to the side of the bed and wondered how the hell close to death this guy really was. He wondered if Valerie was in a similar situation at her hospital down the shore. Poor kid. He felt cold all of a sudden. He was afraid to go near the guy, afraid Gonsalves would croak if he touched him. He stared at the poor bastard, wondering if the guy was as delicate as he looked. This wasn’t going to be easy. Where the hell do you start?

  “Hey, Gonsalves. Wake up.” Gibbons touched the man’s hand. It was colder than his. Shit.

  “Come on, Gonsalves. Wake up.” Gibbons shook his shoulder a little. It was like feeling Jell-O in a plastic bag. Gibbons drew his hand away, thinking the guy was starting to rot before he’d finished dying. He looked around for a more solid spot, then finally went back to his hand. “Wake up, Gonsalves. You hear me? I gotta ask you about Sal Immordino.”

  The trainer’s eyes fluttered and he moaned.

  “Yeah, Sal Immordino. You know him. Let’s talk about Sal.”

  Gonsalves moaned a little louder. One of the monitors bleeped a little louder. Gibbons assumed these things were connected to the nurses’ station. Shit.

  “Calm down, Gonsalves. I’m not Immordino. I just want to talk to you about him. Come on now, wake up.”

  His eyes fluttered again, then slowly opened. They were glassy and unfocused; the whites were yellow. He moaned again, seemed to be trying to say something.

  “Come on, come on, come on. Wake up now, wake up.” Gibbons slapped his cheek as hard as he dared, which wasn’t very hard. “Do you hear what I’m saying, Gonsalves?”

  Gonsalves’s head slumped to the side. “No, no,” he moaned. “Don’ do tha’.”

  Gibbons slapped him a little harder. “Gonsalves, tell me. Did Sal Immordino do this to you? Is he paying off your man Walker to throw the fight with Epps? Did he do this to you because you tried to interfere with his scam?”

  “Noooo . . . Don’ . . . Stop . . .”

  “Gonsalves, pay attention. Is ‘Pain’ Walker going to throw the fight?”

  “No, Clyde . . . Stop . . . You’re gonna kill him . . .”

  Clyde? Spikes started appearing in the green line on one of the monitors. Gibbons felt terrible doing this, but this was important. Valerie had taken two slugs she didn’t deserve and wound up in the same condition. Immordino’s work. Then he remembered something. Clyde was Immordino’s nickname from his fight days, back when Gonsalves was his manager. Gibbons looked at the monitor, then looked at the door. He wanted to lock it, but hospital doors don’t have locks. “What’re you talking about, Gonsalves? You’re not making any sense. Tell me about Immordino, tell me about Clyde.” And make it fast.

  The trainer started rolling his head on the pillow, his eyes open but still glassy. “No, Clyde . . . You’re gonna kill him.”

  “Who? Kill who?”

  “Stop now . . . You’re gonna kill Lawson . . .”

  Lawson. Earl Lawson. Gibbons remembered that fight very well. Somewhere in Florida—not Miami, maybe Tampa—1970, ’71 maybe. They’d played clips from that fight on the news for weeks afterward. It was a nothing fight, a middle-of-the-card bout, both fighters on their way down, so there was nothing at stake for either of them. They were both pathetic, but Lawson still had a little style, some footwork, so he was outscoring Immordino. Then late in the fight something happened. Immordino went crazy. The bell rings to start the round, and all of a sudden, Sal shoots out of his corner and starts beating the shit out of Lawson, gets him on the ropes, and starts roundhousing Lawson’s head like he wants to punch it off. The tapes showed the whole thing, nearly three straight minutes of Immordino hammering Lawson’s head, no let-up, no mercy. The crowd’s going wild, Gonsalves is screaming at Immordino from the corner to back off, just let the guy fall, but Immordino’s not listening. And the ref is just standing there, letting it happen. On the tape you can see the ring doctor yelling for the ref to stop it, but the ref is ignoring him, making like he can’t hear. The bell rings to end the round, but Sal doesn’t stop. Guys have to run into the ring to help pull him off Lawson. Must’ve taken seven, eight guys to hold Immordino back.

  Lawson ended up dying on the way to the hospital, brain hemorrhage. The ref was brought up on charges, but Sal wasn’t indicted. At the time the rumor going around was that Immordino had paid off the ref to let him do his thing on Lawson, but the DA couldn’t prove it because there was no evidence of any heavy betting on the fight. It was pure malice. Apparently he’d just wanted to see if he could do it. That’s how Gibbons saw it.

  “Noooo . . . Stop . . .” Gonsalves’s face was contorted in agony now. The green line on that one monitor was getting real spiky. Gibbons looked at the door. He felt awful doing this, but when was the FBI gonna get this close to Immordino again? If Immordino did do this to Gonsalves, wouldn’t he want them to get Immordino, bring him to justice? If Immordino was the one. Gibbons was just assuming that part.

  Gonsalves’s breathing was wet and ragged. His head kept writhing into the pillows in anguish. Gibbons glanced up at the spiky line, then looked around for a chair to prop against the door but realized the floor was too slick. He went over to check the metal doorframe. Sure, it might work. He scooped all the change out of his pocket and picked out all the pennies. He hated fucking pennies, hardly worth carrying anymore, but now he was glad he had a lot of them. He made a short stack and carefully wedged them into the space between the closed door and the frame. He used his key ring to force the last one in. That would hold them off for a while.

  He went back to the bed and grabbed Gonsalves’s face, held it still. Jell-O in a bag. “Listen to me, Gonsalves. Is Sal Immordino fixing the fight? Is Immordino paying Walker to throw the fight?”

  “No, Clyde . . . Stop . . . No more!” Gonsalves’s eyes still weren’t focused, but he was speaking a little clearer now.

  Gibbons gripped his face tighter, felt bone, and raised his voice. “Is Sal Immordino fixing the fight?”

  “No, Clyde, no! My guys don’t do dirty.”

  “Is Sal Immordino fixing—”

  The doorknob turned,
back and forth, back and forth, impatient, then there was pounding on the door. “Open this door! Open this door right now!” He recognized Dr. Conover’s voice.

  Gonsalves coughed, wet and harsh. “I tol’ you”—he was gasping for air—“I tol’ you. My guys don’t do dirty, don’t throw no fights, Clyde. Forget it.”

  More pounding. Big hubbub out in the hallway. He could hear Tozzi out there with them. Big pounding. What the hell was he doing, helping them?

  “Just tell me,” he said in the trainer’s face. “Is Sal Immordino attempting to fix the Walker-Epps fight? Just nod, Gonsalves. Just nod.”

  “Stop, Clyde. You wanna kill me like Lawson? Stop it now. My guy don’t throw no fights. We don’t do that. Don’t . . . No way, no . . .”

  Gibbons heard the door squeal. Someone was prying it. It flew open with a boom, pennies hitting the floor and rolling all over the place. Dr. Conover rushed in followed by a couple of nurses, Tozzi and an orderly bringing up the rear. The monitors were squealing, green spikes on one, flat line on the other.

  The little doctor shouldered him aside. “Get out of the way!” she shouted. “What the hell did you do to this man?” She put her stethoscope in her ears and didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Get out! All of you! Get out!” The skinny, gray-haired nurse pushed Tozzi out into the hall, then grabbed Gib bons by the jacket and shoved him out too. A guy in scrubs pushing a crash cart nearly ran them over trying to get in.

  Tozzi’s eyes were wide. “I thought you knew how to be subtle. What did you do to him?”

  Gibbons straightened his jacket. “Just asked him a couple of questions.”

  “He tell you anything?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?”

  He looked in to see the monitors over the bed as he took Tozzi by the elbow. They were still going crazy. He felt bad. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They walked briskly to the elevators, not saying a word. No use hanging around here unless you want to spend the rest of the day answering questions you don’t want to answer. Tozzi pressed the Down button to get an elevator. Gibbons glanced at the big wall clock over the nurses’ station. Twenty of nine, Saturday morning. An elevator opened up, empty. They got on and Tozzi hit “1.” Gibbons stared up at the numbers over the doors, watching them light up in descending order as they went down. The fight was scheduled for ten o’clock tonight, which meant it wouldn’t start till ten-thirty at the earliest. They had less than fourteen hours. Probably not enough time to stop it. At least not legally.

  ozzi was buttoning the double-breasted as he came out of his apartment at Nashe Plaza. He locked the door and headed for the elevators, not wanting to be late for work. Had to look good today, had to blend in with the rest of the gorillas on Nashe’s goon squad. Had to watch himself too. Had to get into Nashe’s office somehow and see what he could find. Had to find something good enough to placate Ivers because he was gonna be pissed as shit when he found out Tozzi was still down here working the undercover. It had to be something good enough to give a judge reason to issue a restraining order to stop the fight, something on paper that would link Nashe with Immordino in a dirty deal so juicy that Sal would be wishing he really was nuts.

  Tozzi was determined as he stepped briskly along the money-green carpet, but then he turned the corner to get to the elevators and as soon as he saw them, he knew he was fucked.

  “What the eff are you doing here, Tomasso?” Lenny Mokowski, with two of the bigger gorillas, Frank and Jerry. “I knew you were stupid, Tomasso, but not this stupid.”

  Instinctively Tozzi backed away from them, made some space for himself in case he had to get to the .22 in his ankle holster. He backed away—one, two steps—then backed right into somebody. Two somebodies. Two big somebodies. He looked over his shoulder. Vinnie and Tootsy, also from the primate pen. They grabbed his arms before he could do anything, pinned them back, and escorted him over to Lenny.

  “In there.” Lenny jerked his head and pointed with his greasy pompadour. The gorillas shoved him through the stairwell door.

  “Hey, come on, will ya? What is this?” Tozzi tried to act surprised and put-out, but the sinking feeling in his gut told him these guys were here for something more than a fraternity hazing. The stairwell had that cold-cement feel, just like a city morgue.

  Lenny pointed a stubby finger in Tozzi’s face. “Don’t kick or it’ll be worse.” Then he looked at Frank. “Go ’head.”

  Frank swept up Tozzi’s left leg in his big paw and rolled up his pant leg. He ripped the Velcro straps on the holster, removed the .22, and dropped the leg. Tozzi felt his one-point floating up into his belly and playing with the butterflies. He was fucked.

  Lenny stared at him. Frank too. Tootsy was grinning. Vinnie looked blank. Tozzi’s brain was spinning, thinking of options. Maybe come clean, identify himself as an FBI agent, warn them of the consequences of assaulting a federal agent. He looked at Tootsy again. Forget it. These guys don’t know from consequences.

  He kept trying to think of something he could say, something he could do, and suddenly he remembered the times he’d seen aikido black belts taking on a randori attack, five guys at once. It was beautiful to watch, the black belt like the calm center at the eye of the storm, throwing guys out right and left. But he was fucked already. You’re supposed to act before you get grabbed. Vinnie and Tootsy had his arms pinned way back. Almost impossible to get out of that. Impossible for him anyway. Shit. He was fucked.

  “Hey, Lenny, you gonna tell me what this is all about or what?” He tried to smile, be a wiseguy about it, talk his way out.

  Lenny ignored him. He looked at Jerry and Frank instead. “Go ’head.”

  Jerry balled his fist and sent an uppercut into Tozzi’s gut that would’ve lifted him off the ground if the other two hadn’t been holding him. Tozzi bent forward, thought he was gonna throw up. Vinnie and Tootsy yanked him back upright and Jerry did it again, to the breastbone this time. A ringing pain vibrated through Tozzi’s body, like banging a tuning fork on the edge of a table.

  “Lemme,” Frank said, shouldering Jerry out of the way. He slapped Tozzi’s ear with the flat of his hand, and a spike went through his brain. The head bodyguard curled his fist and threw a roundhouse into Tozzi’s face, snapping his head back.

  Tozzi could feel the cheek getting hot and numb. He heard one of them snickering. Then Frank threw another right into his face, same spot. Then there was another punch, right on top of his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut with the pain, but he didn’t see stars. He saw worms—curly, neon-green worms. Someone grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked him back, and he got it in the gut again. Except for the initial impact he hardly felt any pain this time. He was worried about the neon worms behind his eyelids, though. They looked sort of like those microscopic pictures of chromosomes. Tozzi was worried that they were brain cells, ghosts of all the brain cells these guys were bashing to death.

  He looked up, but the glare of a naked light bulb on the wall blinded him. All he saw were dark gorilla shapes outlined in blinding light. Then someone gave him a shot in the gut again, and he doubled over.

  He heard Lenny’s voice. “Save your hands,” he said. Then it smashed into his forehead, hard, bone on bone, and Tozzi was sure his skull was cracked. A knee—Frank or Jerry, somebody had thrown a knee right into his forehead. The neon-green worms floated and flashed. More dead brain cells.

  The goons let him go and he fell to the floor, flopped down on the glossy painted concrete like a bag of flesh with no bones to hold him up, like a body bag. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. The glare was overwhelming.

  The last thing he remembered was the cold floor on his hot cheek and the neon worms floating up to heaven behind his eyelids.

  Things were starting to come back into focus—the lamp, the windows, the desk—but Tozzi was still too dizzy to move. He closed his eyes, afraid to sit up, afraid he’d puke if he tried. He had
n’t passed out—at least he didn’t think so, not really. He remembered Lenny and the gorillas hauling him down the stairwell, how the lights got softer and the air didn’t have that concrete chill when they’d dragged him back into the hallway and dumped him on this green velvet couch. He might’ve passed out on the couch for a while—he couldn’t be sure. His head started to throb now and it hurt to keep his eyes open, so he just sat there very still, waiting for everything to settle down. He felt like shit, but at least the neon worms were gone. That was good, he thought.

  It was either five minutes or an hour later when he opened his eyes again. He couldn’t tell. Someone was sitting at the desk now, telephone cord stretched around the side of the big leather chair, elbow on the armrest, hand twiddling a pen. Tozzi noticed a big painting on the wall, a portrait of the Nashes, Russ in a dark blue suit hovering over Sydney in a low-cut lavender gown, the skirt spread out all around her, like Scarlett O’Hara. Beside the desk there was an easel. The War Down the Shore poster was on it. Walker and Epps facing off, looking mean. Tozzi’s head started to pound again. He closed his eyes.

  “How’s the head, Tomasso?”

  Tozzi opened his eyes. Russell Nashe was sitting behind the desk, facing him. A background of dark green leather with brass studs along the edges framed his smiling face. He looked happy.

  “I don’t have to call you Tomasso anymore, do I? The jig’s up, right?”

  Tozzi ignored the question. He stared at the rug and rubbed his temples. The fucker knew. Shit.

  Nashe picked up something from his desk and held it up between his fingers, a T-shirt. Printed on the front was a silkscreen of the same picture of Walker and Epps that was on the poster. Same printing across the top: THE WAR DOWN THE SHORE. On the bottom it said Nashe Plaza, Atlantic City, May 12.

  Nashe admired the shirt, smiling with his bunny teeth. “Nice, huh?”

  Tozzi sat up and stared at all the junk on his desk. It was cluttered with all kinds of shit: coffee mugs, bright red kiddie boxing gloves, dolls, videocassettes, programs, bracelets, pins, buttons, money clips, cuff links. Next to the easel there was an inflatable punching bag with Walker’s picture on one side, Epps’s on the other. Nashe loomed over all this crap, smiling, the master of all he surveyed.