Bad Guys Read online

  He stayed in the kitchen because the living room was excruciating. Clear plastic over imitation baroque furniture, plastic roses in little white vases, stupid porcelain party favors from too many weddings, and pictures of the old lady’s guinea relatives everywhere. Gibbons hated Italians. If they weren’t all in the Mafia, they were penny-ante crooks begging to get in.

  Of all those photos scattered around the living room, Gibbons had given a second look to only two. One was a faded color snapshot in a small gilt frame on the end table by the sofa. A dark-haired little kid, maybe six or seven years old, sitting on a Shetland pony and scowling at the camera. A monkey on a pony. He was pretty sure the monkey was Tozzi.

  The other was a five-by-seven of a tall, giddy-looking girl in a cap and gown. It was Lorraine at her college graduation: Barnard, class of ’60.

  Gibbons glanced at his watch. He’d been waiting for four hours and eleven minutes, and it was just beginning to get boring. He could remember being on plenty of plants that went on a lot longer than this. Plants were never fun, but he’d learned how to do it. You just took it all in stride. That was what being an agent was all about, really. If Tozzi didn’t show up this morning, he’d just keep digging until he found another lead, another place, another connection.

  Gibbons fingered the butt of Excalibur, his .38 Colt Cobra, the revolver he’d carried during his entire career as an FBI agent. He sniffed his fingers, getting a familiar whiff of gun oil and leather to counteract the smell of the old Italian lady. The other thing that bothered Gibbons about this apartment was the stagnant feeling of loneliness the place had, the imprint of one person winding down her life all by herself in three tiny rooms. It reminded him too much of his own apartment.

  He glanced at his watch again. It was a little after seven A.M. If Tozzi was camping out here, he’d probably be back by now. Even if he’d been out all night with some woman, Tozzi had never been the type to stick around for scrambled eggs and small talk.

  “Shit,” Gibbons muttered. He thought he had him this time. It had been two and a half weeks since Ivers had reactivated him, and in that time Gibbons had studied the Bureau files on the three hits, interviewed other agents about Tozzi, tailed all the old girlfriends he could recall, checked Tozzi’s old hangouts. But he came up with nothing.

  He then took a trip to the neighborhood where Tozzi grew up, Newark’s Vailsburg section, and tracked down Tozzi’s sister and a couple of cousins. In Gibbons’s experience, people who do desperate acts sometimes return to their hometowns, figuring there’s more safety in familiar surroundings. Sort of like running home to mommy. He didn’t think Tozzi was one of those, but it was worth a shot. No one had heard from him since he’d been reassigned to Montana, or so they claimed.

  One of the cousins, Sal Tozzi, sold car insurance out of a storefront on South Orange Avenue. Sal looked a lot like Tozzi but was much shorter. When Gibbons dropped in on him, he was wearing a black knit shirt under a cream-colored sports jacket, and he didn’t stop smiling the whole time Gibbons was there.

  “Hey, tell me the truth,” Sal suddenly said to Gibbons in the middle of their conversation. “Mike’s up for a big job down in Washington, am I right? That’s why you’re here. Character check and all that stuff.”

  Gibbons almost laughed out loud. “Could be,” he said.

  “I knew it!” Sal slapped his desktop. “I always knew Mike’d be the one to make us proud. I mean he has made us proud. You know, locking up drug pushers, chasing down Mafia guys, all that stuff. He’s got balls, that cousin of mine. And he’s smart too. My old man was always throwing it up to me how my cousin always got A’s. You should never compare kids, you know that? It gives them an inferiority complex, and that stays with you all your life. I admit I was kinda lazy, but that Mike, man, he was always a real hard worker. And a real hardhead, too, sometimes. A one-track mind, his mother used to say. But I can see why the government would want a guy like him for a special job. Tell me, what’s he up for?”

  A life sentence, the way he’s going, Gibbons thought, suppressing a grin. “I’m really not at liberty to say, Mr. Tozzi.”

  “It must be real top-secret. Just tell me one thing—is it something domestic or will he be working overseas? The Middle East maybe. That’s what it is, I’ll bet. I had a feeling that whole Montana business was just cover for something big.”

  Gibbons shook his head. “Please, I really can’t talk about it. I’m sorry. I have to go now.”

  Gibbons pictured Sal running a concession on the boardwalk selling Mike Tozzi T-shirts and key chains.

  “Hey, you know, I just thought of something.” Sal tapped his forehead. “You ought to talk to my cousin Lorraine. She was real close with Mike. She’d be a real good character reference.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, she’s a lot older than me and Mike, but they always got along. They were the two smart ones. Lorraine used to baby-sit for Mike when he was a little kid. You ought to talk to her.”

  Gibbons just nodded.

  “She teaches down at Princeton. Her name is Lorraine Bernstein. Bernstein is her married name. I don’t know why she kept it, though. The marriage didn’t even last a whole year. After the wedding, she found out he was queer, the bastard. Personally I don’t think she ever got over that. Hell of a thing to happen to a person.”

  Gibbons didn’t say anything. Sal didn’t seem to notice.

  “Poor Lorraine. I haven’t seen her in years. She’s been going out with some old guy from the FBI, I don’t know his name. From what I heard she supposedly met him before Mike hooked up with the FBI. Over ten years she’s been seeing this guy. I don’t know why the hell he doesn’t marry her, the jerk.” Sal laughed nervously then. “Hey, I better shut up. For all I know, you could be her boyfriend.”

  Gibbons shook his head. He thanked Sal for his time and left, wondering if that might be the way Lorraine felt about him sometimes. He felt a little depressed recalling that he and Lorraine had been together long before he ever knew Tozzi. He never thought of his relationship with Lorraine in terms of years. Walking to his car, he figured out that Tozzi must’ve been a rookie with the Boston PD when he and Lorraine first met. Hard to believe.

  Tozzi had been married once upon a time, but never happily according to him. Of course, Gibbons realized that partners like to gripe to each other, even when things weren’t really that bad. It’s just the nature of the job: Digging for bad guys brings out the badness in you sometimes. It occurred to him that maybe Tozzi’s wife wasn’t the bitch he always made her out to be. There must have been something good about her for him to have married her in the first place. Maybe now that he was out in the cold, his better memories of her might’ve turned golden and drawn him back for some comfort. Gibbons decided to drive up to Rhode Island to have a talk with the former Mrs. Tozzi.

  He found her in the showroom of her father’s lamp and chandelier factory outside of Providence. She wasn’t the kind of sexy dish he usually associated with Tozzi. She was excruciatingly neat, perfect bangs, not a pale blond hair out of place. Gibbons took note of the pleats in her skirt, which were equally perfect. He didn’t think women wore pleated skirts like that anymore. Her voice was high and sweet, and she spoke with measured precision in a thick New England accent. As soon as he asked her if she’d heard from Tozzi lately, the dim confusion in her finely mascaraed eyes told him that this had been a wasted trip. There was definitely no solace or simpatico to be found in this china doll. But since he was there—and since he’d always been a little curious about Tozzi’s past—he decided to ask her a few questions for the hell of it.

  She offered him a cup of coffee in a shallow, fragile-looking cup, exhibiting the same kind of mechanical cordiality that she must have used on buyers. He took the saucer and cup and frowned at it. The delicate cup had one of those stupid little handles that didn’t fit a man’s finger.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few more questions, Ms. . . .?”

  “
Of course not. And I go by my maiden name, Howard.”

  “When did you see Tozzi last?”

  “Oh . . . it must be about four years ago. In court.” She said court like caught.

  “Any children?”

  She shook her head and Gibbons wondered if she was capable of reproducing.

  “Why did you get divorced, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Will this help you find him?” She must’ve been annoyed by the question because the lines around her mouth appeared briefly. It was the most character she’d shown so far.

  “It might help. The more I know about him, the easier it’ll be for me to figure out how he thinks.”

  “Legally, could you make me tell you? Like with a subpoena or something like that?”

  “If I thought it was that important, yes,” Gibbons lied.

  “Well . . . it’s been four years, so I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Probably not.” Gibbons smiled and nodded encouragingly, the way he thought an understanding father might.

  She looked him straight in the face, her violet eyes as wide as could be. “My father told me to.”

  Gibbons knew better than to be judgmental. “Why did your father want you to divorce him?”

  “Because Michael wouldn’t go into the business.” She made a sweeping gesture toward the lamps and chandeliers glittering all around her, like one of those girls who point out the prizes on TV game shows. “My father wanted to take him in, make him a vice president. Anything to get him to quit the FBI.”

  Gibbons set down his dainty cup. “Does your father have anything against the FBI?”

  “Not really, no. I mean he has had his books audited, but everyone in the lighting business gets it from the government sooner or later. No, my father just thought being an agent was too dangerous.”

  “Are you an only child, Ms. Howard?”

  Her eyes got wider. “No. I have an older sister, Lori. She lives in California.”

  Gibbons nodded sagely. “Thank you, Ms. Howard. I think I have all I need. You’ve been very helpful.”

  He got up, put on his hat, and left the wide-eyed china doll standing in the dazzling glare of the showroom.

  The next day Gibbons had the Research Department at the Manhattan field office do a universal search on the name “Tozzi” in every newspaper in the country east of the Mississippi for the past two years. He wasn’t looking for anything specific, just hoping something might pop up. Something did.

  Research came up with twenty-one Tozzi mentions. One was an obit in the Newark Star-Ledger for a Carmella Tozzi of Bloomfield, New Jersey. It had appeared in a Saturday edition fourteen months ago. The deceased, as it turned out, was Tozzi’s aunt. On a hunch, Gibbons started to check into Carmella Tozzi and discovered something very curious at the apartment building where she’d lived. Her name tag hadn’t been removed from the neatly arranged buzzer grid in the front hallway. It was a nice neat building in a nice neighborhood full of senior citizens. It was the kind of building where apartments don’t stay vacant very long and buzzer tags are kept up-to-date.

  A plaque next to the buzzers said that the building was managed by Blue Spruce Management, Inc., in Montclair, so Gibbons paid them a visit. He purposely waited until lunch hour and predictably scared the shit out of a skinny teenager working in the office for the summer. His broad-nosed, narrow-eyed, hard-ass Aztec deity face scared the shit out of a lot of people. The skinny blonde, who was alone in the office, actually squeaked when he produced his ID. She didn’t dare object when he asked to see the file on Carmella Tozzi, 1005 Broad Street, Bloomfield, Apartment 4K. She nervously apologized and said that all the files were on the computer, then immediately led him to the computer in the boss’s office and called up the file on Mrs. Tozzi.

  According to the management company’s records, Carmella Tozzi’s rent was paid up to date. The apartment hadn’t changed hands in twelve years. As far as Blue Spruce Management was concerned, Carmella Tozzi was still breathing.

  When he politely asked what bank the company used, the skinny girl told him without hesitation. He thanked her for all her help, then walked into the blistering July heat, crossed the street to a Greek coffee shop, and ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of French apple pie. When he finished his second cup, he called Ivers’s office from the pay phone in the rear between the bathrooms and told the SAC’s assistant that he needed some bank records, the Blue Spruce Management account at First People’s Bank of New Jersey. The next morning at the Manhattan field office, there was a white eight-by-ten envelope waiting for Gibbons, photocopies of all the checks written to Blue Spruce Management from Carmella Tozzi for the past thirty-six months.

  He found a secluded cubicle in the File Room and compared the old lady’s handwriting on the checks. The FBI had handwriting experts in Washington, of course, but over the years Gibbons had picked up enough about handwriting analysis to tell him what he wanted to know. Anyway he hated sending evidence to the labs; when all you wanted was a simple yes or no, they always gave you a goddamn term paper.

  Carmella Tozzi’s handwriting was delicate and florid, slanted very slightly to the right. She crossed her sevens the way most Europeans do. At some time in her life, she must have practiced her penmanship assiduously, perfecting the little serifs she embellished her letters with. Gibbons noticed that the serifs on the checks written last spring and summer weren’t so perfect or so delicate, but by the winter, they were back to their old form. The first check to show sloppy serifs was dated last June 1. The obit in the paper said that Carmella Tozzi died on May 12.

  Not bad for an amateur, Michael. But not good enough.

  It looked like Tozzi was paying the rent out of his aunt’s checking account, forging her signature so that he could use the apartment. Pretty clever.

  But what Gibbons wanted to know was where Tozzi was right now. There was no question that he’d been here, but whether he was living here now was hard to tell. In the bedroom, Gibbons had found two pairs of men’s pants, a few shirts, a dark blue suit, some underwear, athletic socks, and a scuffed pair of Pony high-top leather basketball sneakers. Not much stuff if he really was living here. The refrigerator was depressingly bare too. Gibbons was a little disappointed that there was nothing getting moldy in the fridge; he’d always thought of Tozzi as the type who’d just let things go bad.

  But as dawn became early morning and sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, Gibbons realized that Tozzi could be anywhere right now, possibly somewhere stalking another target.

  Shit . . .

  Gibbons got up, put on his jacket, pushed the chair under the table the way he’d found it, and headed for the door, vaguely wondering where the hell he’d start looking for Tozzi next, convinced that he’d be hearing about another murder soon. But for the moment what he really cared about was getting something to eat and then getting some sleep. As he unlocked the dead bolt and turned the doorknob without a sound, he decided he’d worry about Tozzi’s whereabouts this afternoon.

  Suddenly the door whipped open, smashing Gibbons in the shoulder and knocking him into the cluttered hall table. Knickknacks hit the floor and broke. Instinctively Gibbons went for Excalibur before he even saw his assailant. He clicked the safety with his thumb as he pushed against the wall behind him with his left hand to get back on his feet. Gibbons caught a glimpse of the back of the man’s head from behind the door. Then the door slammed shut and a lightning roundhouse kick struck Gibbons’s gun hand. He took the punishing blow but didn’t let go of his weapon.

  Forgetting his exhaustion, Gibbons crouched, lunged, and tackled his assailant before the man regained his balance and attempted another fancy martial-arts maneuver. Together they slammed against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway, and it was only after Gibbons heard the man’s cursing grunt that it registered that his assailant was Tozzi.

  Instantly Gibbons got to his knees and pointed Excalibur in Tozzi’s face. His eyes were locked onto his ol
d partner’s, but he could feel the muzzle of Tozzi’s automatic digging into the flesh just below his sternum.

  “How long have you been out there?” Gibbons demanded angrily. He was pissed off at himself. He should have sensed that someone was waiting for him behind that door. “How long, Tozzi?”

  “I don’t know—over an hour at least.” Tozzi tendered the back of his head with his free hand, then glanced at his blood-smeared fingertips. “Fuck.”

  “How’d you know I was in here?”

  Tozzi smirked and shook his head. “You never did know how to pick a lock, Gib. Fresh scratch marks all over the cylinder. You left your card.”

  Gibbons had never liked Tozzi’s arrogance. “I ought to blow your fucking—”

  “You do and I’ll blow your fucking whatever off, too,” Tozzi said.

  Gibbons looked down at Tozzi’s 9mm Beretta. Suddenly it seemed very peculiar for his partner to be holding a gun on him. It didn’t make any sense.

  Tozzi was laughing, shaking his head and laughing.

  “Is it that funny, Tozzi?”

  “No, not really. But then again maybe it is, I don’t know. It’s just that I had this weird daydream a while back that they’d sent you out to get me. Like a knight in shining armor out to slay the dragon. And now, lo and behold, here you are.”

  “You killed them, didn’t you?”

  Tozzi looked insulted. “Of course I fucking killed them. Jesus H. Christ, if the Bureau can’t figure that out, they’re more fucked up than I—”

  “Why?” Gibbons cut him off.

  Tozzi just stared at him. “I don’t believe you, man. If you don’t know why, then I may as well stick this gun in my mouth and forget about it.”

  Gibbons waited for one of Tozzi’s typically flamboyant gestures, like turning the gun on himself for dramatic effect. But this time he didn’t do it.