Bad Guys Read online

  Gibbons waited, watching his own blood drip from his brows to the dusty wooden floor. He waited and told himself it wasn’t over yet, refusing to hold out any kind of hope. But then, without warning, the black hose dropped right in front of him, the hose but without the hand. It was well within reach.

  He could hear Kinney’s soft laugh. He looked at the hose and he was tempted. Just one good smack at the bastard, that’s all. Just one good one right in the face. Maybe put his eye out, the bastard.

  “Go ahead, Bert. Take it,” Kinney whispered, mocking him. “You’re not that old. You can still take care of yourself, can’t you? Go for it.”

  And without thinking, Gibbons grabbed for the hose with burning hate in his heart, but before his fingers could grasp it, Kinney’s foot slammed into his windpipe, the toe of the heavy black wingtip he’d been looking at for nearly an hour finding the delicate cavity just above the sternum. Gibbons arched back and clutched his chest with his free hand, thinking Heart attack, when Kinney delivered a hard uppercut into his face, drawing blood over the cheekbone. Gibbons fell back. The handcuff on his right wrist rattled down the steampipe as he landed flat on his back.

  Through the haze of numbing pain, Gibbons could see Kinney’s face clearly now. The bastard kicked him in the ribs, and instinctively he tried to grab Kinney’s ankle and trip him, but he was too weak to react fast enough. Kinney kept kicking, his gleeful glinting eyes set in an otherwise placid face that smiled in winces whenever he delivered a new blow. A mindless frozen Doberman smile that Gibbons saw in strobe flashes between kicks, again and again and again, never changing, a mask carved in ice . . .

  When Gibbons woke up again, it was dark out. He went to look at his watch, but the face was smashed. His head throbbed, he was sore all over, and the flesh around his eye felt stiff and lifeless. So this is what it feels like to be knocked out twice in one day, he thought.

  He was slumped on the floor, his back against the radiator. As soon as he tried to stand up, his head started to spin. He went to clutch his temples, but the handcuffs stopped him. He stared at the cuffs in confusion for a moment. He’d forgotten about them.

  Sitting up slowly, he was able to peer over the sill of the dirty casement windows and see a panoramic view of the Statue of Liberty’s backside with the World Trade Center in the background. He knew he was still in Jersey from the proximity of Lady Liberty, in an abandoned warehouse somewhere on the waterfront in Jersey City or Bayonne. He didn’t like the fact that they weren’t trying to keep their location a secret from him. It didn’t bode well, as Lorraine might say.

  His face was crusty with blood, particularly the area around his left eye. That goddamn college ring, the garnet stone.

  He couldn’t remember passing out, but from the way he felt and the way Kinney had behaved, he just assumed that the bastard continued to beat him while he was unconscious. It was easy to understand why they called him “the Hun.” Gibbons wondered if Lando, Blaney, and Novick were treated to this kind of torture before Kinney cut them up. A sickening hollowness opened up in the pit of his stomach as he remembered the coroner’s report on those three. He was lucky he still had his eyes.

  “Hey, you ’wake, ole man?”

  Gibbons looked up. Someone was standing over him. He had a metal folding chair in his hand. Instinctively Gibbons grabbed his head.

  “Take it easy, man, take it easy. I’m not gonna hit you with it.” He unfolded the chair and set it down next to Gibbons. “I already hit you once today. That’s enough.”

  Gibbons leaned on the chair and painfully hauled himself up and into the seat. In the dim light he focused on the face that went with the heavily accented voice. He was short, dark, and wiry with a razor-trimmed mustache and glittering eyes. A tight muscle T-shirt showed off well-developed arms, and there was an automatic in the waistband of his pants, right above the fly. The pants were shiny and green, and he wore them with pale yellow suspenders. Spic chic.

  “E-man! What the fuck’re you doin’ over there?”

  Gibbons followed the new voice to the other side of the long room where two figures sat hunched over a table. There was a stand-up lamp with a battered shade next to the table. Gibbons felt like he was in a dark cave looking out.

  “He’s up, man,” E-man called back. “What’re we supposed to do with him?”

  “Nothin’.”

  E-man crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “You don’t remember me, do you, man?”

  “Should I?” He had an overwhelming urge to kick this little asshole’s teeth in.

  “So you didn’t see me at all? Not even in your side mirror when you got out of the car?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I was in your trunk, man. After you parked in that alley I got out nice and quiet, came up behind you, and wham! took you down with my sap. Pretty slick, huh?”

  “You want a merit badge?”

  “A what?” E-man’s smile faded. “What’s that you said?”

  Gibbons didn’t answer. He knew it drove Latins wild when they thought they were being made fun of but didn’t know enough English to be sure.

  “Hey, what’re you two yakking about over here?” The other two sauntered up and stood over Gibbons. One was tall, lean, and full of nervous energy; he bounced on the balls of his feet like Jimmy Cagney. The other was broader and slower. They both had the same shanty-Irish face, though. Long bony head, beady eyes, and pig nostrils. Gibbons assumed they were brothers.

  “He thinks he’s real bad for an old dude.” The little muscle man sneered. “How ’bout it, Feeney? Can I show him how bad I am?”

  The lean one smiled with a mouthful of horse teeth and kept bouncing. “Not yet. Mr. K said to chill out until he gets back.”

  The little man shrugged his shoulders and shuffled his feet in place. “Yeah? When’s that gonna be?”

  Feeney shrugged. “He said he’d be back before morning. Louis, what time is it?”

  Gibbons noticed that the broad-shouldered mick had one of those tiny three-inch televisions in the palm of his hand. “Must be five o’clock. Here’s Lucy just went on.” Light from the little screen flashed eerily across his face and lit up the inside of Louis’s nose.

  “He should be here soon,” Feeney said. “Come on.” He headed back to the table, and the other two followed loyally.

  Assholes, Gibbons thought angrily, but his anger only made his headache worse. He tried to sit quietly, hoping to make the pain subside. Whatever they were doing over there, the three punks were quiet, and the quiet helped his head. After a while he realized that the night had turned to gray dawn, and he stared out at a black-and-white world, enveloped in his thoughts. He wondered if they’d gotten Tozzi too.

  Sometime later Gibbons was pulled out of his trance by the sound of a bell ringing. He immediately pictured those cheap electric bells kids hook up to twelve-volt batteries for school science projects. Across the room, E-man and Louis jumped up and rushed to the freight elevator. Feeney, the leader, strolled over. When the slow elevator finally arrived, E-man lifted the gate and out walked the bastard himself.

  Kinney was carrying Dunkin’ Donuts bags, which Louis immediately took from him. E-man and Louis clustered around Kinney like kids around their dad just home from work. Feeney kept a respectable distance. He was the head of this crew after all.

  Gibbons overheard Kinney telling them to take their breakfasts and go downstairs for some air. Feeney huddled with his boss for a second before he joined Louis and E-man in the elevator.

  When they were gone, Kinney turned toward Gibbons. The morning light from the windows above Gibbons’s head highlighted the golden boy, who was wearing a crisp tan suit today. “Morning, Bert,” he called affably as he picked up a folding chair and walked toward the sunlight. He was carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts cup in his other hand.

  If Kinney got close enough, Gibbons swore he’d stick his fingers in the bastard’s eyes and rip his fucking face off.


  “I brought you a coffee,” Kinney said as he set down the chair.

  “You know what you can do with it, don’t you?”

  Kinney shrugged and sat down backward on the chair. As he carefully pried the lid off the cup, Gibbons considered the distances and decided that he was too far away to get a decent shot at him.

  “Where’s Tozzi?”

  Kinney ignored the question and sipped gingerly. The garnet in his college ring sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight.

  “You planning on cutting my head off too?”

  Kinney frowned. “We haven’t decided yet, Bert.” This was the public Kinney talking, the future Special Agent in Charge. The Hun had gone back into his coffin for the night. Gibbons had to marvel at how different this Kinney was from the animal who’d savaged him last night.

  “Tell me why,” Gibbons said, squinting at him.

  “Why what? Why I went over to the mob? Or why I killed Lando, Blaney, and Novick?” Kinney smiled brightly.

  Gibbons’s stomach was burning with pure hate. “Both.”

  Kinney closed his eyes and laughed. “What do you want me to tell you? How about ‘love’? That’s always a good one. I did it for love.”

  “I think you did it because you’re a fucking wack. You get off on killing. You’re sick.”

  “Much too simple, Bert. The insanity defense is overused. It’s what they say when they’ve got nothing else to blame. You know that.”

  “Then why?”

  “Why do people do anything these days, Bert? For money. Pure and simple.”

  “Is that how Varga converted you? Just with money?”

  Kinney stared at Gibbons for a long moment before he answered. “When I was undercover in the Philly mob, Richie Varga and I sort of naturally gravitated toward each other. He wanted to be made in the worse way, but he knew it would never happen in the Philadelphia family because they thought he was a little jerk who just happened to be Jules Collesano’s son-in-law. Richie had a lot of good ideas, though, and I was impressed with him. He asked me if I’d support him. I said yes, but I didn’t tell him I was a fed until after he’d screwed his father-in-law. I wanted to be sure he really was a rising star before I committed myself.”

  “Why the hell would he trust you after you told him you were a fed?”

  “As I said, we’re kindred spirits. As a matter of fact, I gave him the original idea for turning on the New York bosses. The heads were my idea too. But you have to understand something, Bert. Richie and I fit each other’s needs. He wanted power, and I wanted money. Together, we got what we wanted.”

  Gibbons scowled. “You’re full of shit. It wasn’t just the money.”

  Kinney sipped his coffee. “You wouldn’t understand, Bert. You live like a monk, you clearly don’t like material things, and most importantly, you don’t have kids. Money doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it means to me.”

  “Yeah, right. And your mother needs an operation.”

  “College costs are soaring, Bert. Right now it costs about sixty thousand dollars for a decent college education, and that’s just for a bachelor’s degree. Given inflation and the ages of my children, I figure I’ll need at least six hundred and fifty thousand to send them all to school. You know what a special agent makes, Bert. Even if they made me director tomorrow, I’d never be able to afford it.”

  “Send ’em to tech school. The girls can be hairdressers.” He just said that to get back at Kinney.

  Kinney grinned. “Not my kids, Bert. No, I want my kids to have at the very least what I had. Because, face it, the world just gets harder all the time, and the competition they’ll have to face will be enormous.”

  Gibbons just shook his head. He refused to credit this shit with a response. It was unbelievable how guys like this could rationalize anything, even murder, for their own benefit. Not only rationalize it, but make it seem as natural and logical as getting in out of the rain. Damn him.

  “Believe me,” Kinney said, “I tried to figure out another way, but Varga presented me with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as they say. I saw it as a workable solution to my financial dilemma. I had no other choice, really. You sure you don’t want a coffee? There’s an extra one.”

  Gibbons looked at his feet. Kinney was making him sick.

  Kinney exhaled loudly and stood up. “Well, if it’s any consolation to you, I’ve instructed the boys to leave you alone for the time being. We won’t do anything until we have your friend Tozzi. Then I’ll just have to figure out who gets to watch the other one die. Of course, maybe by then I’ll have thought of something simultaneous so you can both watch.” He took another sip. “Later, Bert.”

  Gibbons listened to his footsteps as he walked the length of the big room, hating that bastard more than he’d ever hated anyone in his entire life.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Tozzi peered through a row of hemlock bushes, his feet sinking in the soft soil, his back up against the stockade fence. He could see the whole house from here. Chrissie was downstairs watching TV. The other kids were probably in bed; it was almost eleven. Mrs. Kinney was upstairs doing something in the bedroom, walking around the room in her bathrobe. Kinney was in his study, sitting at his desk. He’d been on the phone for the past half hour.

  Tozzi felt the scratch on his cheek where the low branch of a short-needled spruce tree had caught him as he was hopping a fence a few doors down. He’d been thinking about dogs at the time and he wasn’t paying attention. The lawn in that yard was bare and there was a dog run attached to the back of the house. He was afraid some goddamn dog would come charging out and wake up the whole neighborhood. The dog must’ve been inside, though, because he crossed that yard with no trouble. Sneaking through the backyards was the only way he could get to Kinney’s house unnoticed, he’d decided. In fact, he hadn’t even bothered to check out Kinney’s street. He was certain there’d be a couple of Varga’s men sitting in a car out front waiting for him. He’d counted on there not being anyone covering the backyard or stationed inside the house. If Kinney invited the heavies inside, he’d have a lot of explaining to do to his wife. Conducting business at home was strongly discouraged by the Bureau—Mrs. Kinney probably knew that—and if Varga’s muscle all looked like the pair of greaseballs Tozzi spotted that morning, Kinney would have a hard time convincing his wife that these guys were FBI colleagues.

  Watching Kinney through the window, Tozzi assumed that some of these phone calls he’d been making had to do with him. Probably ordering up more torpedoes to go out looking for “the other one.”

  Tozzi was weary and worried about Gibbons. He wanted to put a bullet between Kinney’s eyes so bad. He’d spent the whole night and day plotting and planning, trying to outpsych this son-of-a-bitch, and now he was just sick and tired of thinking about him.

  It had been a frantic twenty-four hours. After the pizza had arrived at Gibbons’s apartment, Tozzi had wasted no time getting out of there. He figured he was being watched, but he had a gut feeling that they wouldn’t try to take him. Not yet. The situation was too perfect for Kinney to pass up. Tozzi was a wanted man and Gibbons was supposed to be hunting him down. If Kinney’s thugs could corner Tozzi somewhere where there wouldn’t be any witnesses, they could take Tozzi down, then bring Gibbons along later and shoot him with one of Tozzi’s guns to make it all look like a shoot-out, the good agent taking a fatal bullet while trying to apprehend the renegade. Kinney, of course, would claim to be the only witness, which would make him the hero who finally succeeded in neutralizing the maniac renegade. It was perfect. Not only would Kinney eliminate the threat of exposure, he’d pick up a gold star in the process and go to the head of the class, the son-of-a-bitch.

  After Tozzi had left Gibbons’s place, he’d stashed Excalibur in the trunk of the Buick with his other guns and took off, heading north along the river, taking local roads so he could spot a tail. By the time he’d reached the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, he was pretty certain no one was
following him, but that’s when he panicked. He suddenly realized he had nothing that could lead him to Gibbons, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what Kinney might be doing to him. Kinney was insane, he was a butcher. That’s when Tozzi started to doubt his theory about Kinney’s plan for staging a shoot-out. Maybe Kinney had already sliced up Gibbons, pulled another Lando, Blaney, and Novick. Maybe he didn’t care how much Tozzi knew about him because he figured no one who mattered would listen to a renegade agent. Maybe Kinney figured it was better to get rid of Gibbons right away and worry about Tozzi later.

  Gunning the Buick south down the Turnpike Extension, Tozzi had broken out into a cold sweat thinking about all this. He had to find Gibbons, fast. It occurred to him that maybe Kinney had someone staked out at the motel in Secaucus where he’d been staying. He hoped to God Kinney did have someone there. Even if it was all part of Kinney’s plan to use Gibbons as bait to nail him, Tozzi didn’t care. He had to risk it to get a lead on Gibbons’s location before Kinney went blade-crazy again.

  When he’d gotten to Secaucus, he pulled into the Exxon station next to the EZ Rest Motel and told the attendant to fill it. That’s when he spotted them. He was looking right at them, not thirty yards away. Two slimy-looking disco retreads sitting in a navy-blue T-bird with an orangy-tan vinyl roof parked on the side of the motel, waiting. He had no way of knowing for sure who they were, but instinctively he knew. He could read their stories in their weaselly faces—two young torpedoes eager to make an impression with the big boss and increase their chances of getting made in Varga’s family. They were yakking away at each other like two old ladies at the old-age home. The sight of them made him crazy. He wondered if these two assholes would really know where Gibbons was. Doubtful, he decided. Shaking them down probably wouldn’t be worth the risk. Tozzi pounded the steering wheel with his fist in frustration. He had to do something, though.