Bad Apple Page 24

  “Where ya goin’?” Bells said. He was on his feet, a little unsteady, still holding the back of his head. He tottered forward.

  Tozzi looked over his shoulder. Gina was frantic, pulling him to move faster. Tozzi could hear the voices in the crowd—kids oohing and ahing, parents telling them to look at this, look at that. On the other side of the avenue, Woody Woodpecker, Spider-Man, and Bart Simpson were becoming giants as the balloons filled out. Farther up the block, Garfield, Pink Panther, Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop sitting on a quarter moon, and Goofy in a Santa suit were bobbing and weaving as they puffed out their chests and came to life. He looked down at the zombie with the gun and Bells doing the Transylvania shuffle as he lurched toward them. This was too fucking bizarre.

  “Where ya goin’?” Bells repeated, a malicious growl stuck in his throat.

  “Where you wanna go?” Tozzi answered.

  Gina was yanking his arm out of the socket. He grabbed her wrist to keep her still. It was like trying to hold back a wild horse. They waded into the crowd, Tozzi stepping backward, Bells lumbering, Gina pulling.

  Tozzi locked eyes with Bells, intent on maintaining that contact with him and ignoring the voices all around him, the voices of kids. He didn’t want to look at them, and he didn’t want Bells to look at them. Tozzi didn’t want to be distracted by them, and he didn’t want them to give Bells any ideas.

  “C’mon! Let’s go!” Gina kept yanking on his arm, but he ignored her, walking backward at an even pace, letting Bells keep up.

  Bells held the knife down by his side, and in the carnival confusion no one noticed. No one except for one little boy, a toddler with long dark eyelashes who was bundled up in a powder blue snowsuit, wearing a red harness attached to a leash that was tied to a stroller where another, younger child was fast asleep. The mother had her hands on the stroller’s handle, but she and her husband weren’t paying attention. They were looking up at the giant Bart Simpson balloon while their little son was reaching out for the bright shiny object in a killer’s hand. Tozzi’s heart leaped as he imagined what would happen next. The kid would grab Bells’s leg, and Bells would seize the opportunity, slashing the leash with the knife and snatching the kid away. Knifepoint to the snowsuit. A new hostage. Jesus Christ, no . . .

  “Bells!” Tozzi glanced at the kid, praying that he wouldn’t touch Bells and that Bells wouldn’t notice him. But Bells followed Tozzi’s eyes and saw the toddler down by his leg.

  The kid reached up to touch the shiny metal. Bells pressed the flat of the blade against the sleeve of the blue snowsuit. He looked up at Tozzi and grinned.

  “Bells,” Tozzi repeated. “Bells—”

  Then Tozzi saw that goofy moon face looming over Bells’s shoulder. He couldn’t believe this. It was Freshy.

  “Hey, Bells! Bells! Over here!” Freshy’s face was drenched with sweat.

  “Michael!”

  “Tozzi!”

  Tozzi frowned and peered over the surface of the crowd. Gibbons and Lorraine were swimming through the crush, fighting to get to them. Gibbons? Tozzi zeroed in on his partner’s face. He looked terrible, but he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead.

  Gibbons cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “He’s got Excalibur.” He pointed at Freshy.

  Tozzi wrinkled his brow. What the hell was Freshy doing with Excalibur? He glanced down at the toddler. Bells had the blade under the red webbing of the leash, sawing through it. The parents were oblivious to all of this because they were going gaga over the big Bart Simpson. Freshy was no more than an arm’s length behind Bells, shaking like a leaf. Tozzi couldn’t see where he had Gibbons’s gun, but it wasn’t going to be worth much in Freshy’s hands. Freshy didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger, not on Bells. Of course, under the circumstances Tozzi wasn’t so sure he wanted Freshy to try. In this crowd he was bound to hit somebody besides Bells. Like the little kid. Shit.

  But as he watched the red webbing start to fray under the knife’s edge, Tozzi changed his mind. Shoot the fuck. Kill him. Go ’head, Freshy. Do it before he grabs the kid.

  Gina had stopped pulling on Tozzi’s arm. She was staring at her little brother. “Freshy! What’re you doing?”

  Freshy raised the gun and stuck the muzzle into the back of Bells’s neck.

  Tozzi’s stomach sank. Freshy should’ve kept some distance between himself and Bells. Now Bells could do something because he knew where the gun was, and he knew where Freshy was. Also, Freshy shouldn’t have waited. He should’ve shot the bastard right away when he had the chance. Bells continued slicing through the kid’s leash. The gun to his head didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  Gibbons moved around to Freshy’s side, pushing people out of the way to make room. “Easy, kid. Take it easy.”

  Freshy’s hand was shaking like crazy. He looked like he was going to cry. He kept looking back to Lorraine, but she was totally confused. “What is it?” she said. “Say it.”

  Freshy’s mouth bent into a clown frown. “I, I . . . I dunno.”

  People in the crowd were starting to notice the nervous guy with the gun, and a circle of panic quickly opened up around them. The toddler’s mother yelped and pulled on the red leash, but Bells had his fingers around the harness, and he wasn’t letting go.

  “Josh! Josh!” The woman was screaming, staring at the knife, about to blow a gasket, and the husband had that shaky look like he knew he should do something heroic, but he didn’t have a clue where to start, so instead he yelled at the kid along with his wife, “Josh! Come here right now! Josh!”

  Tozzi moved in front of the parents, dragging Gina with him. He took the leash in the middle, ready to yank the kid out of harm’s way, praying that the frayed leash wouldn’t break.

  Before he did anything, he looked over his shoulder. Where the hell were the cops when you needed them? But then he realized how dense the crowd was. It was as bad as Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Even a mounted cop would have a hard time getting through this mob, which meant there weren’t going to be any nick-of-time rescues from the cavalry.

  He stared at the knife. The blade was flat against the kid’s chest, the fingers of the same hand clutching the harness. A flip of the wrist, and Bells could pierce the snowsuit easy.

  Bells grinned at Tozzi, daring him to try his luck.

  Tozzi let out a slow breath and caught Gibbons’s eye. “Anybody know any good jokes?” he called out.

  Bells’s grin stretched, but he didn’t say a word.

  Gibbons nodded toward Freshy. “You hear the one about the guy who wanted to get made?”

  “No.” Tozzi kept his eye on Bells.

  Gibbons kept his back to the crowd and his eye on Freshy. “Well, there was this guy who wanted to make his bones in the worst way, so he told this capo he’d whack this wiseguy who’d pissed the capo off by paying off a loan with funny money.”

  Bells perked up and laughed. He looked at Gibbons. “I heard that one, but that’s not how it goes.” He glanced at Excalibur and acted as if Freshy were holding a Popsicle to his head instead of a pistol.

  Gibbons looked at Bells. “So how does your version go?”

  “The little fuckhead who wanted to make his bones? He was the guy who gave the wiseguy the funny money.”

  Freshy barely squeaked, “. . . not true . . .”

  Bells turned all the way around to face Freshy. “Yeah, the little fuckhead gave the other guy, who was supposed to be his friend, thirty-two grand in counterfeit bills, and that guy turned around and gave it to the capo, not knowing it was phony baloney. Now I wonder where the little fuckhead got it? What do you think? You think maybe he shot some undercover agent up on the Jersey Turnpike for it? You think it goes something like that?”

  Freshy had Excalibur in Bells’s face, but he was shaking and sweating as if it were the other way around. “No, no, no . . . that ain’t the way it goes. No—”

  “No, huh? So tell us, Fresh. Where were you last night when that undercover gu
y got shot? Huh?”

  Tozzi suddenly remembered that Freshy had disappeared last night. The first time he had seen Freshy was after three at Joey’s Starlight Lounge, while Bells and Buddha were having their meeting in the back room. Tozzi wasn’t sure what time Petersen had been shot, but he could account for Bells’s time a lot better than he could Freshy’s.

  Freshy’s eyes were blinking out of control. “Y-y-you’re fucked up, Bells. You are.”

  “C’mon, Freshy, tell us where you were last night. What’s your alibi?”

  Freshy’s lips trembled. He couldn’t get the words out.

  “You wanna hear my alibi, Fresh? Here, I’ll tell you. I was with Buddha from two till around four”—Bells glanced at Tozzi and grinned—“before that I was with your sister, Fresh. I left her place around one thirty. Go ’head, ask her.”

  Tozzi’s stomach bottomed out. His face was burning. He felt betrayed. Unconsciously his fingers tightened around the red leash as he pulled on it. Bells pulled back.

  “Mommy!” the kid suddenly wailed.

  “Josh!”

  Tozzi stared at Gina. “Is that true?”

  Her eyes roved from one face to another, but she didn’t answer the question.

  “Mom-meee!”

  “Joshua! Josh—”

  Tires screeched at the top of Seventy-eighth Street. Tozzi looked back toward the edge of the crowd, where a smoke-gray Lincoln was stopped in the middle of the street next to the blue surveillance van. The car doors flew open, and Buddha and his gorillas jumped out. “There they are,” one of the gorillas shouted, and they rushed into the crowd.

  “I told you they were following us,” Lorraine said to Gibbons.

  “Get ’im,” Buddha shouted to his apes from the back of the crowd.

  Bells turned toward the yelling wiseguys, and Tozzi suddenly yanked on the leash, whipping the kid out of the bastard’s grasp. He hoisted the little boy up like a fish on the line and swung him back to his mother.

  Buddha roared, “Get ‘im, goddammit.”

  Freshy turned white. His knees started to buckle. Excalibur fell from his fingers, clattering to the pavement. He looked down at the ground, but Gibbons was already there, trying to recover his weapon.

  Bells grinned into Freshy’s face. The knifepoint was suddenly under Freshy’s chattering chin. “What now, my love?”

  Tozzi quickly snatched Bells’s wrist and, dragging Gina along, used his other hand to bend the hand back over the wrist in a kote gaeshi pin that pointed the knife back at Bells’s own chest.

  Freshy didn’t waste time. He bolted, heading for the balloons, going over the crowd rather than through it, like a running back diving over the defensive line to make that last half-yard for the touchdown. Bells slithered out of Tozzi’s grasp and went after him, muscling his way through the crowd.

  Gibbons yelled. “Stop! You’re under arrest. Both of you!” Excalibur in his hand was pointed at the sky.

  But neither Bells nor Freshy could hear him, not with all these screaming citizens running for their lives. Gibbons started pushing his way through the panicked sea of people, Lorraine right behind him. But Buddha was making better progress with his phalanx of gorillas cutting through like an icebreaker.

  Tozzi glared at Gina, his jaw so tight he could’ve shattered a molar. “C’mon,” he growled, and didn’t wait for her to object. He yanked her arm and plowed through the crowd. He didn’t give a damn if he pulled her goddamn arm right off.

  Bells had been with her until one thirty. And she never said a word.

  Bitch!

  TWENTY-THREE

  1:17 A.M.

  Gibbons felt like someone had pounded a spike into his jaw. The chest pains were gone, but the tooth hurt so bad now, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open as he shoved people out of his way, trying to get to Bells and that little shit DeFresco. With Excalibur back in his possession, Gibbons was itching to use the .38 as payback for all the bullshit he’d had to put up with that day. After all, fair was fair. Bells had shot him; he should get to shoot Bells. At least one shot. And Freshy, that conniving little bastard, he’d been fucking around with everybody, the mob and the Bureau. But worst of all, he was the one who’d gunned down Petersen. Why the hell else would he be running away now? For that, the little shit deserved the rest of Excalibur’s load.

  “Stop! FBI!” he shouted over the heads of the screaming crowd. “Stop, goddammit!”

  Freshy continued to flee with Bells right on his tail. They moved through the commotion like salmon leaping upstream. Either they didn’t hear Gibbons’s order or they were ignoring him because Gibbons was no more than ten feet behind Bells, and neither one of them looked back.

  Gibbons kept shoving and pushing through the flailing arms when suddenly someone threw an elbow back at him and caught him in the face, right on top of the tooth. A gong went off in his brain, no, an explosion with a mushroom cloud rising out of the top of his head as the pain quadrupled and his body went stiff. His fingers squeezed Excalibur’s butt so tight it was a miracle the gun didn’t discharge.

  Seconds later, when Gibbons was able to open his eyes again, he saw red. His whole field of vision was like an infrared scanner homing in on those two lying, murderous, scum-of-the-earth assholes. He was gonna take those two down if it was the last fuckin’ thing he ever did. Gibbons shoved harder, unconcerned with the citizens he was bruising in his wake. He had his sights set on Bells and Freshy. Dead or alive, they were his, goddammit.

  “Gibbons!” Tozzi shouted.

  “Gibbons!” Lorraine screamed.

  “Freshy!” Gina yelled.

  Tozzi was trying to get to Gibbons, but it was slow going with Gina on one arm and Lorraine hanging off the other. He noticed that Buddha’s gorillas were making much better progress, and that worried him. He had no doubt that they were all armed, and from the shade of scarlet on Buddha’s face, Tozzi knew they were out for blood and weren’t going to worry about pinpointing their targets. Once they started shooting, innocent people were going to get hit. And then there was Gibbons, who was acting like a maniac now, manhandling bodies like a college-club bouncer, desperate to get to Bells and Freshy. Tozzi hoped to God his partner still had his bulletproof vest on.

  Lorraine dragged on his sleeve. “Michael, we have to do something. Gibbons is out of his mind. He’s going to get himself killed.”

  Gina jerked the handcuffs. “Do something. Bells is gonna kill my brother. Can’t you do something, for chrissake?”

  Tozzi scowled at her. “Why should I? He shot an FBI agent. Gary Petersen may be dead, for all I know. Why should I help a friggin’ cop killer?”

  “That’s bullshit,” Gina snapped. “I don’t believe it. Freshy’s a jerk, but he’s no killer. Believe me.”

  “Believe you? Why the hell should I believe you? You’ve been jerking my chain right along. Why didn’t you tell me you were with Bells last night?”

  Her eyes flashed hot. “I wasn’t with him last night. He just showed up at my place at midnight.”

  “Why? Who goes visiting people at midnight? Tell me that.”

  Gina started screaming. “You think I slept with him? Is that it? You think I’m his girlfriend?”

  “You’re on the right track.”

  Bells’s voice on the answering machine sliced through the madness all around them and rang in Tozzi’s ears: “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call.”

  “You’re a jerk, you know that? I knew it right from the start, right after I took you back to my place. I saw you snooping around, checking out my things, looking for clues, looking for signs of another man. And you were sneaky about it, too. You were jealous before you even had anything to be jealous about. Jealous and clingy. Just like him.”

  “Him who?”

  “Bells. Who the hell’re we talking about?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, you’re crazy. You and Bells are two of a kind. That’s why he came to my house last night. That’s w
hy he comes buzzing around me all the time, bugging me at home, at work, everywhere. He thinks he owns me. Are you thick or what? Don’t you get it?”

  Tozzi’s face was burning. “No! I don’t get it.”

  She pulled out the chain around her neck. Margie’s gold wedding band dangled under her chin. “He came by last night to give me this. He wants me to marry him.”

  Tozzi was stung, but he wasn’t really surprised. “Congratulations,” he shouted.

  “You don’t understand,” she shouted back. “Margie had told him about the Sicilian girl I found to have their baby. He told me this last night. But he thinks I’m the Sicilian girl. He’s sick in the head. He thinks Margie’s cuckoo plan worked, and I’m pregnant with his kid. That’s why he won’t leave me alone.”

  Tozzi’s face was burning. He’d thought that she was the “Sicilian girl,” too. “You really expect me to believe this?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you believe. It’s true.”

  “So, are you?”

  “What? Pregnant?”

  “Tozzi! Tozzi! Behind you.”

  Tozzi looked over his shoulder to see who was shouting to him. About three arm-lengths away, a young redheaded guy in a suit was waving to him. There were three other young guys in suits with him. It took Tozzi a second to realize who they were. The redhead’s name was Connell, from the FBI’s Newark office. They all had their weapons drawn, pointed at the sky, as they fought their way through the crowd. Connell was carrying a shotgun over his head.

  “We followed Buddha and his goons here,” Connell shouted. “They were following Gibbons in the surveillance van. But we lost them in the crowd. Have you seen them?”