Read Online Bad Luck by Anthony Bruno - Free Book Online Page B

said I gotta come here to ease me back into the community. Baloney. They don’t fool me. This is one of their little scams. They give me a little freedom, let me walk around town during the day, and they figure they can catch me doing something. But I got them all figured out, these guys. Bunch of stupids.”
    Sister Cil nodded. Mr. Mistretta has always been a very cautious man. That whole time he was at Allenwood Penitentiary, he wouldn’t allow any visitors except his wife and her. Once a month one of Sal’s men would drive her all the way out to Pennsylvania to pray with him in the visiting room, holding their rosaries across the long bingo table, with the guards standing there watching them. Sal said Mr. Mistretta was paranoid, but he’s just very cautious. He could arrange to meet with Sal now that he’s in the Bureau of Prisons Community Treatment Center. His days are free, he only has to check back in at night. But Mr. Mistretta didn’t want to see anyone until he was released and completely free. She could understand that. After all, the court had come down awfully hard on him, and just for tax evasion. It was a terrible way to treat a businessman simply for being entrepreneurial.
    â€œLook at that,” he said, with disgust in his voice.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œUp on the roof. Across the street. See? They think they’re so clever.”
    It took her a minute to see what he was talking about—three men in grimy work clothes tarring the roof of an old tenement building. One man hauled buckets of hot tar up a pulley while the other two appeared to be spreading it out with rollers. On the sidewalk below them a fourth manstood by a noisy, smelly machine of some kind that kept the tar hot. There was a dirty, smudged sign on the machine that said “Stuyvesant Roofing, Inc.”
    Mistretta shook his head and tried to grin. His grins never looked like grins, poor man. Sister Cil blushed as she remembered something else Sal had said. It was true, though. A Mistretta grin seemed more like a reaction to gas pains.
    â€œThey’re so obvious, I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “The stupids. Those aren’t rollers they’re holding. Those’re those special things they got. Like rifles. You know what I’m talking about? To listen in on us. They point those things at the store windows over here and pick up the vibrations of what we’re saying off the glass. A guy told me all about it in prison. The stupids.” He shook his head and tried to grin again. “Listen to me. Don’t say anything else until we get there, okay? Don’t give them the satisfaction.”
    Sister Cil nodded. He was a very cautious man. She just assumed those men on the roof were simply fixing the roof. She held her veil in place and squinted up at the “roofers.” How did he know such things? Remarkable. It just went to show why he was the boss.
    They walked in silence up the next block. At the corner of Forty-fifth Street she turned around and saw that tall man with the curly hair again. He wasn’t ten feet away now and he was looking right at her. Lord God in heaven, he was close enough to eavesdrop on them! How could she ask Mr. Mistretta for his permission with this man hovering over them? Her brows furrowed behind her glasses.
    They crossed the street and passed a liquor store on the corner, where the owner was trying to keep a persistent bum out of his store. She watched to see whether the tall man following them would stop and assist the poor, overweight liquor-store owner before he had a heart attack, but the tall man just kept walking. Sister Cil frowned, outraged at the man’s lack of concern. It just goes to show what these people’s concept of the law is all about. Betterto harass a poor businessman who’s already paid his debt to society than help someone being tortured by an obviously sinful individual. Lord God, have mercy on