Bad Apple Page 25

  Tozzi nodded toward the advancing gorillas on his other flank. “They’re over—”

  Lorraine shook his shoulder and screamed. “Michael! Look!” She was pointing ahead toward the museum.

  Tozzi squinted, trying to see what the hell she was getting hysterical about. Then he spotted them, and his jaw dropped. He couldn’t fucking believe it. Freshy, Bells, and Gibbons were climbing up the partially inflated Bart Simpson balloon. Freshy was frantically clawing his way up. Bells was right on his heels with his knife in his hand. And Gibbons was bringing up the rear, cursing and screaming and waving his gun at Bells’s backside. They were on Bart’s striped shirt, climbing up his gigantic body like three ants in a row.

  Tozzi glanced back at Buddha’s gorillas, who’d spotted them, too. They were all pointing at Bart with their guns, and they all had automatics. The agents from Newark only had revolvers. Tozzi had nothing. Except for Gina on his wrist. He glared at Bells, the second ant in line, and wished to Christ he had a rifle with a scope so he could blow that mother’s ass to kingdom come. Shit!

  “Michael! Do something!”

  “My brother! They’re gonna shoot my brother! Do something!”

  Tozzi squinted at Bells. Goddamn you . . .

  “Stop, you sons of bitches. You’re under arrest.” Gibbons crossed another blue stripe in the big balloon kid’s shirt. He was starting to lose his footing now, sliding back into the depressions created by his own weight. He was falling behind, but he wasn’t about to let these two dirtbags get away, not after what they’d done to him, to Lorraine, to Petersen, to the Bureau, and worst of all, to his weapon. He shoved Excalibur back into his shoulder holster and grabbed two fistfuls of balloon canvas, hauling himself up.

  Bells slashed a wide arc at Gibbons. “Back off, old man.”

  “Stick it up your ass.” Gibbons kept climbing.

  “I said, back off.” Bells slashed again, forcing Gibbons to stop and lean back.

  “You’re under arrest, Bells.” Gibbons pulled out his gun again. “Drop the knife on the count of three, or I’ll plug you one. I mean it. One . . .”

  “Whatta’ya after me for? I didn’t shoot that guy up on the Turnpike. He did.” Bells pointed with the knife at Freshy.

  Freshy’s legs were dangling off Bart’s drooping bottom lip like a cigarette as he struggled for shelter in the big open mouth. “I heard that, Bells,” the legs shouted. When Freshy made it into the mouth, he poked his head over the side. “I didn’t do it, Gib. He did.”

  Gibbons cocked the hammer and pointed Excalibur up at Freshy. “Who did it?” he barked.

  “Not me. It was h—”

  Crack!

  Freshy ducked back into Bart’s mouth as Gibbons fired and hit the big bottom lip.

  The crowd down below screamed en masse.

  “Whatta’you, crazy?” Freshy screamed.

  Bells nodded down to Gibbons. “That’s right. He was the one who did it.”

  Gibbons snarled. “You shut up. Freshy,” he shouted. “Who did it, Freshy? Tell me the truth right now, or I’ll hit you next time.”

  Freshy’s voice came out of Bart’s mouth. “Gib, I swear to God. I didn’t—”

  Crack!

  Helium rushed out of a second hole in Bart’s lip. Freshy peeked over the side, and his hair was blown to one side by the escaping gas. “All right! All right!” Breathing in the helium, Freshy sounded like Donald Duck. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. It was me, it was me. I did it. But I had a reason, Gib, a good reason.”

  Gibbons exploded. “I don’t wanna hear it.” He was itching to empty his load and do to Freshy what he’d done to Gary Petersen.

  “No, listen, Gib, really. You gotta listen to me. I had a reason. I had to frame this prick over here before he killed my sister.” He pointed down at Bells.

  “What!” Bells glared up at him. “Kill your sister? I wanna fucking marry her.”

  “Yeah, then kill her like you killed Margie if she can’t get pregnant. You’re a sick fuck, Bells. I wasn’t gonna let you do that to my sister. No way. You don’t know how to take no for an answer, Bells. You were bothering her all the time, she told me. I figured the only way to get you off her case was to get you in jail, man. On death row. It’s the only way to get rid of a sicko like you. I swear to Christ, Gib, that’s why I did it. I didn’t wanna kill that guy Petersen, I just wanted to wing him. Attempted murder, you know? All I wanted was for Bells to take the fall for it. I swear to God.”

  Bells’s eyes were glowing. He stabbed the balloon with the knife and pulled himself up by the handle, reaching out for Bart’s lip. Helium rushed into his face, making him squint like a mad Chinaman. He yelled like the bad Donald Duck, “You’re dead, you little fuck! You’re dead!”

  “Stop!” Gibbons was peering down Excalibur’s barrel, drawing a bead on the back of Bells’s thigh, intent on stopping him, when suddenly he heard the hiccuping crack of automatic gunfire coming from down below. Three bullet holes appeared in Bart’s shirt right next to Gibbons’s arm. He lost his footing and spun completely around, dangling by a handful of canvas. A gush of helium rushed into his face.

  “Shit!” he yelled in Donald Duck’s voice. He gritted his aching tooth. Shit!

  “Get ’im,” Buddha yelled to his gorillas. “Get Bells.”

  Muscle-bound arms, each one holding an automatic, rose above the crowd, firing up at the balloon.

  “Michael,” Lorraine screamed, “do something.”

  Gina chimed in from his other side. “Yeah, do something.”

  “Stop hanging on me, the two of you,” Tozzi shouted as he shrugged them off. It was worse than a freestyle aikido attack where everybody gets a piece of your gi jacket and tries to drag you down. Christ, testing would’ve been a piece of cake compared to this. He glanced up at Bart Simpson, Freshy in his mouth, Bells on his chin, Gibbons dangling from his shirt. Gina was clutching his hand with both of hers. He couldn’t stop staring at Bells. His gut was churning, his face on fire, thinking about him and Gina.

  “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call.”

  “Connell,” Tozzi yelled over his shoulder, “gimme the shotgun.”

  “Right.” The redheaded agent passed the shotgun to Tozzi over the crowd, extending it by the barrel. Tozzi reached out for the butt with his fingertips and finally pulled it in.

  “What’re you going to do?” Lorraine screamed. Her eyes were wild, hair all over her face. She clutched his arm again, but he shrugged her off before she could latch on.

  Tozzi pumped the slide. “What the hell’re you doing?” Gina was hanging on his arm again, but he out-muscled her this time. “What’re you doing? You’re gonna kill somebody with that thing. You’re crazy!”

  He raised the shotgun to his shoulder and squinted down the sights.

  The tape played in his head, over and over. “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call. . . . Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call. . . .”

  “You’re crazy!” Gina screamed. “You’re not gonna hit Bells. Bells is like the devil, he can’t die. You’re gonna hit my brother. You’re gonna hit Freshy!”

  Lorraine shrieked in his ear. “That’s a shotgun, Michael. You’ll hit everybody. You’ll hit Gibbons!”

  Tozzi shrugged Lorraine off with his left elbow and fought Gina for the use of his right arm.

  “Don’t do it,” Gina screamed, her face contorted as she strained to pull his hand away from the trigger.

  But Tozzi was determined. He was motivated.

  “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call. . . . Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call—”

  Gimme a call, my ass, he thought.

  Ka-BOOM!

  The crowd was rocked by the explosion, screaming and scattering in fast forward.

  Tozzi pumped the shotgun again.

  Gina strained. “No! Stop!”

  Tozzi took aim. Call this, asshole.

  Ka-BOOM!

  “Noooooo!” Gina was doing pull-ups on his arm, but there was no stopping him.


  “Oh, my God!” Lorraine pointed up at the balloon.

  Bart Simpson had a ragged four-foot hole in his side and a matching one in the middle of his forehead. Helium whooshed out of the huge holes like a hurricane, and Bart started to collapse. In less than ten seconds, Gibbons, Freshy, and Bells were covered in folds of canvas, hidden from view.

  “The balloon,” Tozzi shouted to the young agents. “Get the guys on the balloon. Arrest them. Go!”

  Tozzi whipped around, shotgun pointed up but at the ready. He scanned the scene, looking for Buddha and the gorillas in the dwindling crowd, but all he could see were the soles of people’s shoes as they ran for dear life. The wiseguys were gone. He looked back toward Seventy-eighth Street just as the headlights of Buddha’s gray Lincoln flashed on and the car went into reverse, braking and blowing its horn at fearful pedestrians as it backed up the block toward Amsterdam Avenue.

  The corners of Tozzi’s jaws were pulsating. He could feel Gina next to him, but he couldn’t look at her. He was too angry, too hurt, too angry at himself for being hurt.

  “You could’ve killed them,” she squawked, but her bitchy heart wasn’t in it. “God!”

  Tozzi still wouldn’t look at her. Even if he could’ve thought of something to say, he couldn’t have gotten the words out. He just wanted her off his wrist and gone.

  The street cleared out fast, and NYPD squad cars zoomed in, bubble lights flashing, sirens blaring. Uniforms came running, but the show was over. In the distance, Tozzi watched Gibbons pulling himself out from the heavy folds of canvas, refusing help from the cops. Connell and the boys from Newark had Freshy and Bells in handcuffs. Bells stood erect, as smug as Dracula. Freshy bent over and hid his face like the punk that he was. Looming over them all, Bart Simpson’s giant head lolled over on its side, slowly melting into the puddle of balloon that had been his body.

  A kid on a skateboard rolled up next to Tozzi. He must’ve been about ten or eleven, scrawny, with long dirty blond hair under a backward baseball cap. He gazed up at the sad billowing balloon head, mesmerized by the sight.

  Gibbons stomped across the street toward Tozzi, his eyes locked onto his partner’s. His face was swollen, and he looked mad as hell. Worse than the Grinch who stole Christmas.

  The kid on the skateboard looked up at Tozzi. “Hey, man, you killed Bart. Cool.”

  Gibbons walked up to Tozzi and snatched the shotgun out of his hand. “Yeah, real cool . . . dickhead.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THANKSGIVING DAY

  Tozzi sat slumped down on the couch in Gibbons’s living room, staring blankly at the TV set. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on, and a bunch of leggy cheerleaders from Oklahoma were doing high kicks down Broadway in the cold drizzle. Lorraine was in the kitchen working on the turkey. Gibbons was in there with her, getting in the way.

  Tozzi was having a hard time paying attention to the parade. The hallway off the living room that led to the bedroom kept calling to him. He knew there was a phone in there, on the end table next to the bed. He couldn’t stop thinking about that phone and the fact that he could just go in there and use it. It was like knowing there was a ticking bomb in the next room, and he still had time to do something about it . . . if he knew what to do.

  The problem was: Would he end up disarming it or setting it off? He wasn’t sure. The possible detonator was in his wallet in his back pocket. A scrap of paper with Gina’s phone number on it. He’d copied it from the phone book before he’d left his apartment that morning, but he wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Well, actually he did know why. Unfinished business, that’s why. Unanswered questions that were keeping him from making up his mind about her. She baffled him. He liked her, but he despised her, too. She could be a total bitch, but he admired her for not taking any shit from anyone. She was a street-smart, smart-mouthed, second-generation Italian, as hardheaded as any greenhorn right off the boat. She had balls, chutzpah, spirit, something. She was a lot like him.

  Last night, after “the Bart Simpson Incident,” he didn’t say a word to her. He was too pissed off about her not telling him that she’d been with Bells the night before. As soon as they got to the local police precinct, and that NYPD sergeant had unlocked the handcuffs with a master key, and he and Gina were free of one another, he’d just walked away, afraid of what he might say to her if he got started. He assumed she’d gone off to tend to her brother’s legal needs, which were going to be considerable despite the fact that Gary Petersen had pulled through and was going to be all right. Naturally, Freshy was a fuck-up as a killer, too. He’d shot Petersen three times at point-blank range, but missed all the vital organs. The worst injury Petersen sustained was a partially collapsed lung.

  Tozzi stared down the hallway that led to the bedroom. The smell of roasting turkey was all over the house, but he wasn’t very hungry. He couldn’t stop thinking about that ring, Margie’s wedding band. He could see why Bells had given it to Gina. As sick as it was, it was just the kind of thing he’d do. But why was Gina wearing it around her neck on a chain? That seemed even sicker. Tozzi had been up most of the night thinking about all this, and it was driving him nuts. It was also driving him nuts that he was letting Gina drive him nuts like this.

  A commercial came on the TV then, and of course, the volume doubled, demanding Tozzi’s attention. The Keebler elves were making cookies in their tree house again. This was the second time they’d run this damn commercial. Tozzi stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore the obnoxious little elf voices.

  This was stupid, he thought. He stood up and self-consciously arched his back. The damn couch was so squishy, it was giving him a backache. Of course, he’d been sitting on it for more than an hour, brooding, just getting more and more pissed off.

  This really was stupid. He glanced down the hallway, then glanced at the kitchen doorway. He thought about it for a second and almost changed his mind again, then called out to his cousin before he did. “Lorraine, I have to make a phone call.”

  Her voice sailed out of the kitchen. “Go ahead. You don’t have to ask.”

  “It better not be long distance.” Gibbons’s growl stopped him in his tracks.

  Tozzi didn’t want them to know who he was calling. “I’ll charge it to my phone.” He hoped he didn’t sound too suspicious.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lorraine said, canceling out Gibbons’s warning. “Use the one in the bedroom.”

  “Okay.” Tozzi was already heading for their bedroom, pulling out his wallet to get the phone number.

  But when he got to the bedroom, he stood on the threshold and stared at Gibbons’s and Lorraine’s bed. He’d never thought of them sleeping together. Not making love, just sleeping, every night, together. It sort of shifted his perspective on them all of a sudden. They’d been a couple a long time, but Tozzi had never thought of them as together. But they were. Gibbons came on like a tough guy, all alone on the mean streets, but he wasn’t. He had Lorraine. And she had him. And this was where they had each other. Suddenly Tozzi felt like he shouldn’t be here.

  He looked at the slip of paper in his hand and read the number. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. What was he gonna say to Gina? How was he gonna start the conversation? He didn’t know what he wanted to say. What he really wanted was for her to do the talking. He wanted answers. He wanted her to have one of those automated telephone systems. Press one if you want to know why I’m wearing Margie’s ring. Press two if you want to know more about the Sicilian girl. Press three if you want to know who I really care about. . . .

  Stupid.

  Tozzi grabbed the receiver and started to punch out the numbers. He was an FBI street agent, for chrissake. He’d just been involved in a major arrest. And a kidnapping. He was calling her to follow up on the case, see if she was all right, what her condition was, if she needed anything. A courtesy call, that’s all. It was the professional thing to do. Don’t make a big deal about it. He’d do all the talking. If she had an
ything she wanted to say to him, she’d say it. He wasn’t gonna pull teeth to get it out of her.

  He punched out the last digit and sat down on the edge of the bed, listening to the first ring, ignoring the Keebler elves running around in his nervous stomach. He was just calling to see if she was all right. Just keep it professional, he told himself.

  It rang twice.

  Keep it professional.

  Three times.

  Don’t even try to drag it out of her. If she wants to talk, she will.

  Four times.

  Forget it. She isn’t home. It’s Thanksgiving, and her brother’s in jail, and—

  “You have reached 555-7846. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll get back to you. And don’t forget to wait for the beep. Bye.”

  Tozzi frowned. The answering machine. She sounded friendlier on the machine than she was in person. At least toward him.

  His heart was slamming as he listened for the beep. He was about to hang up—

  Beeeeep.

  “Gina, it’s me—” he started, then suddenly remembered Bells’s voice on her machine. “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call.”

  He started again. “This is Mike Tozzi. I was just calling to see how you were doing . . . I mean, how you are . . . your condition, that is, after the . . . the incident yesterday. Ah, please feel free to call me if you have any questions.”

  He hung up the phone fast. His face was red. He sounded like an ass. What kind of questions was she gonna have? He was the one who had the questions. She was gonna have a real good laugh when she heard this.

  Then he realized that he hadn’t left his phone number on the message. Shit.

  The FBI’s number is in the book. If she really wanted to talk to him, she’d find it.

  But does she know that he’s with the Manhattan field office, not the Newark office?

  Newark will just tell her to call New York, right? Sure. Probably. He couldn’t call her machine again to leave the number. That would sound even more stupid. And desperate. He didn’t want her to think he was desperate because he wasn’t. He was just being professional.