Bad Apple Page 5

  Tozzi sat there and watched her unpack the groceries. He didn’t dare say anything even vaguely nice, like hello, because he knew what her reaction would be. Besides, Mike Santoro was a slime-bucket pornographer, so he couldn’t be polite or anything. Anyway, he’d already tried and failed with her on their one-afternoon stand when she’d refused to believe that he thought she was attractive.

  It had been one of those incredible warm but colorful fall days when the leaves have already begun to turn, but it’s still sunny and lazy like the end of August, a day plucked out of time, the kind of day when you want to do something wild because you think days like this don’t really exist on anybody’s real-life calendar so whatever you do will be your secret.

  One of Gina’s cousin’s kids was getting baptized that day, and Freshy had invited him to the ceremony and the party afterward. Tozzi never made it to the party because while the baby was screaming its lungs out as the priest poured holy water over its little head, he and Gina had been flirting like crazy. She didn’t know he was into porn. As everyone left the church, Gina started walking back to her apartment instead of following everyone to her cousin’s house for the party. Tozzi followed her, and it was like one of those wonderfully horny dreams you wish you’d never woken up from. She strolled nice and slow, zigzagging down the sidewalk, stirring the orangy yellow leaves, sneaking glances back at Tozzi. Tozzi stayed about three car lengths behind her, watching the spears of sunlight pierce the falling leaves and shine through her loose light-brown hair. When they got to her apartment building, she stopped and turned around and just looked at him, grinning a sly little grin, waiting for him to do something. He sauntered up slowly. Even though they didn’t know each other that well, they both knew what they wanted, except neither one was ready to make the first move. Then he started to laugh, and she started to laugh, and pretty soon they were hysterical, out of control, howling like a couple of lunatics.

  “You wanna come up for coffee?” she asked, brushing tears out of her eyes.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Or would you rather go back to the party?”

  “No thanks.”

  She shook her head. “Me neither.” The way her hair shushed over her shoulders made him dizzy.

  Her apartment was small and functional. Bare wood floors and blinds. No curtains, no knickknacks, no flowers. Just a lot of framed black and white photographs of laughing kids on the walls. She said she’d taken them herself.

  Tozzi sat down on the couch, threw his arm over the back, and watched her make coffee.

  “Don’t do that,” she said with a self-conscious grin.

  He moved his arm. “What?”

  “Don’t look at me. Look at something else.”

  Tozzi shrugged. “If it bothers you.” He turned sideways and stretched out on the couch. Orange sunlight slanted in through the casement windows and encased Tozzi’s feet and face in blocks of warmth. He closed his eyes and almost fell asleep. Then he thought of her.

  He squinted up through the sunlight to see what she was doing and was startled to see that she was standing right over him. She kicked off her shoes and sat on his toes on the other end of the couch. The smell of the brewing coffee drifted in from the kitchenette. She shaded her eyes from the sun and looked into his.

  “So what do you think?” she said.

  He smiled. “I dunno.”

  She tucked her feet up and turned sideways to face him, leaning back against the arm of the couch. Her toes burrowed under his butt. “My feet are cold,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “About what?”

  “Getting them warm.”

  Tozzi grinned. “I may have a few.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Get them warm.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He reached between his legs, pulled out one of her feet, and rubbed her toes between his hands. “How’s that?”

  “Good. Do the other one.”

  He took the other foot and rubbed that one. “Better?”

  Her eyes were closed, head tilted back. “Yeah . . . that’s nice.” When he stopped, she opened her eyes. “I’m still cold, though.” She was smiling.

  “Oh. What parts are cold?”

  “All of me.”

  “Well, where would you like me to start?”

  She grabbed his forearms and pulled herself up until she was on top of him, nose to nose. “How about right here?” she said, and kissed him. And kissed him. And kissed him some more. And then he kissed her. A lot. And then they started exploring with their tongues and toes and fingers. And Tozzi started to get light-headed it was so nice, with Gina on top of him, and the sun all over the room, and her skin so white and soft, and her silky hair between his fingers, and her lips and her shoulders and her ears and her nipples and . . .

  And they never got around to having that coffee.

  Gina banged a can of plum tomatoes on the countertop, yanking Tozzi out of his sweet memories. He stared at her, remembering what Buddha Stanzione had said to Bells about her last night. Tozzi considered the possibility again, but the two of them seemed like such a mismatch. Except Buddha’s comment wasn’t the only evidence he had. There was the message he had heard on her answering machine that day while they were lying on the couch.

  They’d been dozing in twilight bliss, her head nestled on his shoulder, when the phone suddenly rang. Neither of them moved to get it. Four rings, then Tozzi heard her voice on the recording telling whoever it was to leave a message after the beep. “Gina, it’s me,” the caller said. “Gimme a call.” Tozzi had recognized the voice right away. It was Bells.

  He watched her putting vegetables away in the refrigerator now. He didn’t like being ignored, so he decided to risk a question. “You bring any milk?”

  She looked at him as if he were a worm. “What’s the matter? You can’t say hello?”

  “Hello. Did you bring any milk?”

  “Hello. No.” She went back to unpacking the groceries, reaching into a bag and pulling out a big turkey. She opened the refrigerator again and put it on the bottom shelf.

  “You didn’t have to buy that,” he said, nodding at the bird. “Your brother says he’s got a whole bunch of turkeys.”

  She glared at him. “Did they fall off the truck?”

  Tozzi shrugged and didn’t pursue it. She was in a mood. Gina was supposedly the straight arrow of the family. She had a real job as a children’s clothing buyer at Macy’s in Manhattan. A couple of her relatives—an uncle and two cousins—had done time for auto theft, and her father always seemed to have something hot for sale in the trunk of his car. None of them were big-time hoods, except for her brother Freshy, who had been trying his best to work his way into the Mafia when the FBI presented him with a alternative career path. But like a lot of people whose family members have no problem breaking the law, Gina didn’t want to know anything about it. She didn’t participate, but she didn’t preach to them either. She loved her family because they were her family, and she was devoted to her screwy little brother because he was her screwy little brother, but if they sold stolen turkeys, or they knew where to get stolen cars, or they smoked cigarettes that didn’t have the federal tax stamp on the pack, she didn’t want to know anything about it. That was their business, not hers.

  Supposedly.

  In his head, Tozzi kept hearing Bells’s voice on her answering machine. “Gina, it’s me. Gimme a call.” At the time, she’d picked her head up off his shoulder, rolled her eyes, and made a face at the machine, but she didn’t offer an explanation, and Tozzi didn’t ask for one. But now he was starting to wonder about her and Bells.

  The first thing Gina unpacked from the second grocery bag was a cellophane package of bread stuffing. Tozzi’s stomach growled. It wasn’t crispy-edged home fries, but it was food. He stood up and ambled over toward the counter.

  She looked at him warily over her glasses, like a dog eyeing a ca
t coming too close to her bowl. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. Her eyes didn’t leave him.

  He glanced down at the package of stuffing. He knew this was probably for the DeFrescos’ Thanksgiving dinner, but he was starving. He was dying to rip the bag open and shove a handful of the dry bread cubes into his mouth, but that wouldn’t be right. Of course, he wasn’t Mike Tozzi, he was Mike Santoro, and Santoro was a bad guy as far as Gina knew. So why shouldn’t he open the bag and take some? It would be consistent with his character. And anyway he was hungry.

  He reached for the bag and the sound of rustling cellophane invaded the quiet kitchen. The steely glint in her eye made him freeze.

  “You like that hand?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She looked down at his hand on the bag. “You like that hand?”

  “Yeah. I like it.”

  “Then keep it to yourself before I cut it off.” There was a knife rack on the counter behind the bags of groceries.

  Tozzi looked her in the eye and grinned, but she was serious. The DeFrescos were Sicilian.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Just lemme have a few.”

  “No.”

  “C’mon. You’re not gonna use the whole bag.”

  “No.” She pulled the bag of stuffing out from under his hand, threw it in the cupboard, and slammed the door shut.

  Tozzi shrugged and gave her a helpless look. “Gina, why so mean? What’d I ever do to you?”

  “You don’t know?” She was weighing a can of cranberry sauce in her hand.

  “Oh, c’mon, will ya? You make it sound like I forced you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, then what are you saying?”

  She put the can on the counter and pulled another one out of the bag. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed, exasperated. “Why don’t you just go away?”

  “We had fun. It was great. Why don’t you want to talk about it?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Then go outside and talk to yourself.” She pulled out a package of walnuts, and Tozzi’s stomach growled out loud.

  She looked down at his gut and shook her head.

  Tozzi frowned. “You know, Gina, I don’t get you. I bend over backward to be nice to you, and you treat me like shit. For a while there I thought maybe we coulda had something together, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “See? You’ve always gotta be nasty. Why? I’m nice to you, but you’re nasty to me. That’s not right.” This was Mike Santoro talking, but Tozzi was getting into it. His undercover identity gave him license to be totally Italian.

  “I’m nasty with you because you’re an infantile jerk who sells dirty movies for a living. Do I need any more reason to be nasty to you?” She sounded very logical and reasonable as she told him off, and for some reason that made her even more appealing to him.

  “Hey, Gina, you make it sound worse than it is. It’s good wholesome stuff I sell. Softcore, that’s all. I’ve got sex therapists who buy from me. They tell me my stuff is very therapeutic. Perks their patients right up.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “No, I’m telling you the truth. I don’t do hardcore. No snuff, no heavy bondage, no animals, and definitely no kids. Never ever would I deal kiddie porn. It turns my stomach just thinking about it.”

  His stomach gurgled.

  She looked at him over her glasses.

  “I’m telling you the God’s honest truth, but I can see you don’t believe me. You’ve just got it in for me, that’s all. But I don’t know why. I’m a nice guy.” Tozzi flashed a cocky grin, thinking Santoro. “I’m very sensitive, too, and you hurt my feelings. I gave myself to you that day, and look what I get for it.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “You heard me. I gave my heart and soul to you, and this is the thanks I get.”

  She picked up the package of walnuts and flung them at him. It hit his shoulder and broke open. A downpour of walnuts hit the linoleum, rattling and clicking, rolling all over the place.

  “Now look you what you did,” he said. “Was that necessary?”

  “Pick those up,” she snapped.

  “You help me.”

  “Pick those up!”

  Tozzi stooped down and picked one up, grinning up at her, being a real wiseguy. But inside he was still wondering about her and Bells, hoping it wasn’t true.

  “I said, help me pick those up.”

  “If I do, whatta’ya gonna do for me?”

  “Go to hell!”

  “C’mon, Gina, I’m kiddin’—Hey, where you going?”

  “To the bathroom. You mind? And I want those things picked up. I’m serious.”

  Gibbons was listening through the headphones. He crossed his brows and looked over at Dougherty, the surveillance technician who was working the equipment. Gibbons still had the toothache, but it seemed to be in remission for the moment. He knew it was only temporary, though. Eventually the sledgehammer would start up again. They were parked down the block from the DeFresco house, sitting in the back of a dark blue FBI surveillance van with B & B PLUMBING AND HEATING painted in white and red along the sides, listening to Tozzi flirt with Freshy DeFresco’s sister. Gibbons couldn’t figure out what they were talking about now, what she wanted him to pick up. He shrugged at Dougherty to show his confusion.

  Dougherty shrugged back. The top half of the technician’s face looked concerned, but the bottom half was overjoyed. Dougherty always had a big smile on his face, no matter what, a big openmouthed smile that gave him that mad scientist look. Gibbons was beginning to think it was some kind of palsy. Either that or he was a born-again Christian. Somehow Gibbons doubted it, though. For most Irish Catholics it’s bad enough the first time around. They don’t need to be born again.

  Gibbons slid the headphones off one ear, but kept them on his head. “Sounds like she broke a string of pearls, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so.” Dougherty’s eyeballs were tucked up under his lids as he listened. He pointed to a pair of VU meters on the console, their needles relatively still now that Gina was out of the room and Tozzi was by himself in the kitchen. “The sound wasn’t quite right for pearls. It would’ve been higher in pitch, a sudden cluster of sharp clicks. This was much lower, and it had a rattle to it.”

  Gibbons shrugged. He was willing to give Dougherty the benefit of the doubt. The guy knew sound. He was one of the best surveillance techs the FBI had, and his weird balding pattern attested to his devotion to the science. A hairless path ran across the top of his head in a direct line from ear to ear. Years of wearing headphones day and night had worn his hair away.

  “Where’s Tozzi wearing the wire?” Gibbons asked.

  “He’s got a transmitter in his beeper. He’s wearing it on his belt. Nice clarity, huh?” Dougherty was proud of his work.

  Gibbons nodded. He didn’t care so much about the sound quality. It was the content that concerned him. “What’s going on with these two? I don’t remember seeing anything in Tozzi’s daily reports about DeFresco’s sister.”

  Dougherty’s Labrador retriever smile turned into a lurid grin. “There’s a reason for that.”

  Gibbons’s tooth started to throb. He knew it. Goddamn Tozzi, thinking with his dick again. A sharp twinge froze Gibbons’s face in the middle of a wince. “He screw her yet?”

  Dougherty was leering, like a dirty mad scientist. “C’mon, Gib. Some things are private.”

  “Not to you they aren’t. Spill it, Dougherty. Did he do her yet?” Between the nagging pain in his tooth and his dumbshit, fuck-happy partner, he was ready to punch a hole in the wall of the van.

  “Well . . .” Dougherty took off the headphones and hung them around his neck. “Yeah, he did. But just once.”

  “And you listened in on it?”

  “Tozzi lef
t the transmitter on. What could I do? Shut him off?”

  “Yes. You could have.”

  “Gib, I swear to God, I didn’t know where he was going at the time. I’m supposed to monitor everything he does, right? I didn’t realize till things started heating up with Ms. DeFresco that he wasn’t at her apartment to gather information, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Frigging peeping Tom.

  “I’m telling you, Gib. It’s not what you think. Tozzi should’ve deactivated the transmitter if he wanted privacy. But as long as it’s transmitting, I have to record it. Those’re the rules.”

  “You have it on tape?” Gibbons rubbed his swollen jaw.

  “Of course. I have to account for my time.” Dougherty reached over to a plastic milk crate full of reel-to-reel tape boxes, ran his finger down the line until he found the one he wanted, then pulled it out. “Here. You wanna listen to it.”

  Gibbons scowled at the box. “No. But just tell me this. How long has he been boffing her?”

  “As far as I know, it was just that one time. But he’s been trying hard ever since. If you ask me, I think Ms. DeFresco regrets that she gave it up so quick.”

  “Who are you? Dr. Ruth?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “How exactly did it happen?”

  A sheepish grin replaced the leering one on Dougherty’s face. “C’mon, Gib, that’s Tozzi’s business. I feel funny—”

  “My dumbshit partner goes to bed with the sister of a unstable flake like Freshy DeFresco, who can fuck us up royally, and I’m not supposed to know everything that’s going on? What’re you, crazy? Tozzi could end up eating a couple slugs the way Petersen did this morning if those guys ever find out he’s a fed. What if Freshy double-crosses Tozzi? He’s nuts enough to do it. What if he gets pissed off because Tozzi screwed his sister? What better way to pay him back?”

  Dougherty stopped grinning. “I suppose that’s always possible, but I don’t think he’d do that to Tozzi. They seem to be getting along pretty well. All things considered.”

  “Dougherty, you don’t know shit.” Gibbons gritted his teeth as a new wave of agony washed over his jaw and seeped through his body.