Bad Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

community,” Mrs. Carlson started, launching into the same pitch Tozzi had already heard from every other real estate agent he’d talked to. “Everybody wants to live here. It’s a very easy commute to Manhattan, but there’s a very special feeling here. It’s almost like a European village, don’t you think? Nice little shops, bakeries, green grocers . . .”
    Tozzi wondered how many villages in Europe had mesquite grills, quarter-million-dollar studio condos, a rock club where Bruce Springsteen films his videos, and an arson rate several times the national average. Ah, Hoboken, all that and more.
    He walked back to the front of the apartment where sunlight was shining off the recently buffed wood floor. The place didn’t have the old-world feeling that some of the others he’d seen had. But marble mantels and coffin corners cost you, and he didn’t want to be rent poor, especially because he was still on probation. Ivers wouldn’t need a great big reason to shitcan him this time, not after his little renegade adventure. Of course, he couldn’t get into much trouble where he was now, relegated to a desk in the File Room, working for that dim bulb Hayes the librarian of all people, who was too shy or stupid or whatever to just come right out and say what he wanted done, which tended to make his days very long, boring guessing games.
    Take your time and get yourself settled, Ivers had told him. Get your head back on straight, he’d said with that bullshit fatherly smile of his. That could almost be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. It wasn’t that long ago that everything he owned in the world fit into one suitcase: a suit, a few shirts, jeans, a few pairs of underwear, some socks, a pair of loafers, a pair of high-tops, a 9mm automatic, a .38 Special, a .44, and three boxes of cartridges. That was it. A couple of Mafia torpedoes had taken care of the rest of his worldly belongings when they ransacked his dead aunt’s apartment, where he’d been hiding out. It depressed him whenever he thought about it. All in all, though, it was a lot better being back in the fold than out in the cold.
    Tozzi looked the place over. It was clean, new fixtures, white walls. He could fill it up, make it a home. Still, it was hard adjusting to the fact that just about everything he owned was brand new.Maybe that’s why he’d decided on Hoboken. It sort of reminded him of the neighborhood he grew up in, the Vailsburg section of Newark.
    â€œOur office has put together a little brochure that lists local shops, restaurants, services, schools, cultural events . . .” Mrs. Carlson opened her briefcase on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room and rummaged through her papers. Tozzi ignored her. He was looking out the front window now at a tough-looking Hispanic teenager in a fringed, black leather jacket, sitting on the tenement stoop across the street, playing with a baby. He assumed she was the mother. The kid was just learning to walk, taking shaky steps on the cracked pavement, moving like Frankenstein in those gooney, white lace-up shoes, the kind people used to have bronzed when he was a kid. The baby was laughing, a big, drooly, toothless smile on his face. The girl was laughing, too. She snatched up the kid in her arms and gave it a big hug. Her face was pure joy. Tozzi smiled.
    â€œHere it is,” Mrs. Carlson said, pounding across the bare floors in her clunky heels to give Tozzi the brochure. “You may find this very helpful when—”
    Just then Tozzi’s beeper went off, which surprised the hell out of him. He was required to carry it, but he never expected anyone from the office to be calling him. Maybe it was a real crisis. Maybe Hayes ran out of the big paperclips.
    â€œExcuse me,” he said. “Is that phone hooked up?”
    â€œWell . . . I don’t know if the former tenant—but I don’t