Bad Luck Read Online Free PDF Page A

rebuttoned his jacket. “Same attitude.”
    â€œSo what’s your suspicion?”
    Ivers raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It’s not unheard of for a man undercover to forget who he is and choose to become his alias.”
    Gibbons shook his head. “Not Tozzi.”
    â€œRussell Nashe’s world is very seductive. Money, fancy cars, available women, high-stakes gambling. Everything is always the best with Nashe. It’s a tempting life-style. Hard to resist when you’re right in the middle of it, I imagine.” Ivers was doing more than just speculating.
    â€œTozzi gets into that glitzy, wiseguy crap. It’s in his guinea blood. But he’d never turn. I know him. He was my partner.”
    â€œPeople change.”
    â€œSome do.” Gibbons considered the possibility. Tozzi did have an overactive imagination, and the last time Gibbons talked to him he hadn’t been very happy with life. The usual I-ain’t-got-no-woman blues. It’s possible that the excitement of living as someone else had gotten to Tozzi, but with Tozzi anything was possible. Tozzi’s crazy. Still, Gibbons wasn’t going to say anything to Ivers. “What about the Immordino brothers?” he asked, to change the subject. “What do we have on them?”
    Ivers swiveled around in his chair and picked up a file lying next to his computer. He opened the folder on his desk and referred to it as he spoke. “Salvatore ‘Clyde’ Immordino, age forty-two, a capo in the Mistretta crime family, alleged acting boss of the family in Sabatini Mistretta’s absence. Mistretta is currently serving time at Lewisburg for tax evasion.”
    Gibbons covered his mouth with his finger and nodded, imagining that big lummox Immordino. He remembered Sal from his boxing days in the early seventies. It was around the time he’d bought the suit, come to think of it. Hard puncher but no style at all, no moves. People went to his fights just to see him, though. He was a big guy—not just tall, BIG. A freaking monster. He’d gotten the nickname Clyde from a sportswriter with the Daily News who compared him to a Clydesdale. The writer was being kind.
    Ivers put on his half glasses and scanned the file. “In 1985 Immordino was tried with three other Mistretta family members on a variety of racketeering and murder charges, but his lawyer pleaded mental incompetence and got him separated from the trial. Their claim was that Immordino had suffered permanent brain damage in his boxing career and that he was incapable of knowingly committing any crime. The defense produced a very convincing witness”—Ivers had his finger on the page—“a Dr. Stephen Goode who was treating Immordino at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania. The doctor made it all very clinical and referred to Immordino’s condition as ‘Pugilistic Brain syndrome.’ He compared Immordino’ssymptoms to Muhammad Ali’s, which apparently gained a lot of sympathy for the defense. The doctor had a very smooth bedside manner on the witness stand, and the jury bought his testimony. To this day Immordino reinforces that diagnosis by appearing to be a harmless, punch-drunk ex-palooka, though we have no doubts that this is an act. From time to time he reinforces this charade by doing things like walking around town without his shoes, talking to his hands, singing at the top of his lungs, crying . . . that sort of thing.
    â€œHis older brother Joseph, age forty-seven, is his constant companion. Joseph Immordino apparently acts as his brother’s mouthpiece in most instances. Before 1985 Joseph Immordino had no known history with the Mistretta family and to this date has no criminal record. Prior to 1985 he was the sole proprietor of Immordino’s Quality Meats, a butcher shop in Sea Girt, New Jersey.”
    Gibbons nodded. He knew about Joseph Immordino too. A momo, a hanger-on.