Bad Apple Page 6

  Through the one headphone, he could hear Tozzi talking again. He quickly adjusted the set and put them on both ears.

  “I picked up the nuts. Aren’t you gonna at least say thanks?”

  “Why? You made me throw them at you.”

  “I did not.”

  “Just shut up. You’re annoying me.”

  Gibbons heard departing footsteps.

  “Hey, Gina! Where ya going?”

  No answer.

  “Gina! Where ya going?”

  No answer. A door slammed.

  Gibbons moved over to the small one-way window in the side of the van. He focused on the front of the DeFresco house. A brunette with glasses came huffing down the driveway. Gibbons was surprised. Gina DeFresco wasn’t what he expected. Knowing Tozzi, he’d just imagined that she’d be some kind of Jersey special, a mousse girl with hair all over the place, Dragon Lady fingernails, stacked heels, tight skirt up to her butt, and cleavage you could get lost in. But this woman was . . . normal. Actually he was even more surprised that she could be related to that scumbag Freshy. He tried to get a better look at her face as she turned onto the sidewalk. She was kind of cute.

  Tozzi came trotting down the driveway after her, shrugging into a navy cashmere overcoat. “Gina! Wait! I’ll walk you to your bus.”

  Gibbons walked in a crouch to the back of the van and pulled up on the door handle.

  “Hey, Gib, where ya going?”

  “Gotta talk to Tozzi. He doesn’t know about Petersen yet.”

  “But, Gib, direct contact with a man in the field on an undercover is not kosher. Ivers’ll ream your ass out for—”

  The metal doors slammed shut. Gibbons didn’t give a shit about rules and regs. Tozzi had to be warned before he got himself killed, so that Gibbons could kill him later for being so goddamn stupid.

  Holding his swollen jaw, Gibbons pulled down his hat and headed across the street to catch up with his skirt-chasing partner.

  SIX

  9:26 A.M.

  Tozzi followed Gina as she walked down to the bus stop on Kennedy Boulevard. “What’d I ever do to you? Huh? Except be nice to you.”

  She kept walking, ignoring him.

  “Hey, Gina, you can’t even be decent enough to talk to me now?” Tozzi was trying to sound like Mike Santoro the pornmeister, but the feelings were all his own. He wanted to connect with her somehow. At the very least he wanted to find out why she was treating him like a piece of toilet paper. After all, they had had that incredible Sunday afternoon together. They certainly had connected then, even if it was only for a few hours.

  Tozzi sighed as he watched the back of her head, her brown hair whipping back and forth over huffy shoulders as she walked. Up ahead the morning rush-hour traffic was roaring by on Kennedy Boulevard. He just wished he could tell her who he really was. If she knew he wasn’t really a pornographer, maybe she’d give him a shot at defrosting that cold shoulder the way he’d warmed her toes on the couch.

  A bus pulled up to the curb then. The electronic sign over the windshield said PORT AUTHORITY TERMINAL. It came to a stop with a loud whoosh, and the doors unfolded. Gina climbed up the steps without looking back.

  “Gina!” he called out to her, but the door slapped closed, and the crowded bus pulled away with another airy whoosh.

  Tozzi held his breath until the bus exhaust dissipated, then he shoved his hands into his coat pockets and sighed, “Gina, Gina, Gina.”

  “Gina, my ass.”

  Tozzi snapped his head around, and there was Gibbons, his hat pulled down over his brow, that witch nose of his hanging down below the brim. His mouth was a downturned horseshoe of disapproval. The left side of his face was so swollen, it looked like a blowfish was attached to his cheek.

  Tozzi looked left and right, trying to be subtle about it. “What the hell’re you doing?”

  “Shut up and listen, numbnuts. Gary Petersen was shot last night.”

  Tozzi’s gut clenched. “Oh, shit.” He didn’t need to hear the reason.

  “Last I heard he was in stable condition.”

  A young guy wearing a leather jacket and carrying a briefcase stepped into the nearby bus-stop shelter. Gibbons immediately shut up and walked back to the plate-glass window of the candy store on the corner.

  Tozzi waited a few moments before he joined his partner. “Who shot him? Do we know yet?”

  “He was supposed to be meeting Tony Bells at one last night.”

  “Bells? That fuck.”

  “Ivers ordered a manhunt.”

  “I was with Bells last night. It was after three, though. Jesus.”

  “You know where he is now?”

  Tozzi shook his head. “I don’t even know where he lives. He’s a very strange guy, very secretive.”

  “Well, stay away from him. I don’t think the press has the whole story yet, so we may be able to grab him before they tip him off. Let’s hope.”

  “I could reach out and see if I can find him.”

  “No,” Gibbons snapped. “You’d better not be anywhere in the vicinity when he’s arrested. Buddha Stanzione and his merry men will put two and two together. Then to save your hide, we’d have to get the word out that you’re a fed, and that would be the end of Shark Bite. Ivers wants to keep the operation going if we can, and for once I agree with the shithead.”

  “But I can—”

  “No, you can’t. Go to a movie, go take a ride down the shore, go get laid—just stay away from Bells until we can find him.”

  Tozzi frowned and thought of Gina. He wished he could get laid.

  “By the way, Toz, what’s all this shit with you and Freshy’s sister? What’re you, nuts?”

  The blood rushed to Tozzi’s face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The fuck you don’t. Listen to me, asshole. For once in your life, I’d like to see you keep it in your pants while you’re on the job. Why do you always have to get involved with the wrong women?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Gina DeFresco. She has nothing to do with her brother or the mob. She’s an innocent civilian.”

  “Don’t try to bullshit me, Tozzi. She’s a blood relative of a connected guy ratting on his friends to help us out. I’d say that makes her pretty involved.”

  “You know, I resent you saying that. You don’t know—”

  “I know enough. Just leave her alone, capisce?”

  Tozzi didn’t answer. He wanted to know how the hell Gibbons knew about him and Gina. Then he suddenly remembered the transmitter on his belt. Dougherty. That deceitful mother—

  Gibbons started to go into the candy store.

  “What happened to your face?” Tozzi asked only to stop him. He was still smarting from his partner’s remark about Gina being a wrong woman, and he wanted the last word.

  “Abscessed tooth. Hurts like a bitch.”

  “Why don’t you go to the dentist?”

  Gibbons glared at him. “When do I have friggin’ time to go to the dentist?”

  Tozzi glared back. “Why not have ’em all pulled and get dentures? Then you can just send them out when you have trouble.”

  Gibbons looked him in the eye, puckered his lips, and suddenly four of his upper teeth were hanging out of his mouth. Tozzi stepped back, startled by the sight. He never knew Gibbons had bridgework. It reminded him of something he’d seen on one of those nature shows on TV. A shark’s jaws work independently of the head. The teeth chomp, and the mouth catches up a split second later. He stared at Gibbons’s snaggle-toothed mouth in disgust. He’d always thought of Gibbons as having a crocodile smile. Son of a gun.

  The teeth slipped back into Gibbons’s mouth, but the mean bastard still looked like he was ready to bite. “I gotta go call your cousin,” he grumbled.

  Tozzi wondered if his cousin Lorraine had done something to piss Gibbons off. Over the years, Tozzi had noticed that Gibbons usually referred to his wife as “your cousin” whenever they were fighting about
something.

  Gibbons had his hand on the doorknob of the candy store. “Maybe she can get the goddamn dentist to give her a prescription for some pain-killers. In the meantime, you get lost and make yourself scarce until we find Tony Bells. And call in to the office before Ivers wets his pants.” Gibbons went into the store, holding his swollen face.

  Through the plate-glass window, Tozzi watched his partner lumber to the pay phone at the back of the store. What a grouch. Tozzi wondered how Lorraine could stand him sometimes.

  Tozzi headed around the corner back toward Freshy’s house. He’d have to tell Freshy something, make up some kind of bogus excuse so he could disappear for a while. He couldn’t risk telling Freshy the real reason. Freshy might get cute and try to win some brownie points by tipping off Bells to the manhunt.

  But just as he rounded the corner, he heard two short toots on a car horn. He looked up and saw a silver four-door BMW 735 double-parked at the curb.

  “Hey, Mike. Mike!” Freshy was in the back, the tinted window rolled down. “We were looking for you. C’mon. Get in.” His hair was still wet from the shower.

  Tozzi didn’t recognize the car. He crossed the street and leaned down to see who was inside, trying to hide his suspicion. Bells was in the front passenger seat, a copy of the Daily News open on his lap. Behind the wheel was Stanley, the Tazmanian Devil.

  Bells lowered his window halfway. “Get in,” he said with a smile. “I gotta show you guys something.”

  “Right now?” Tozzi looked at his watch for effect. “I told this guy I’d meet him at ten in Brooklyn—”

  Bells shook his head. “Forget about your meeting. This is more important.”

  “But I—”

  “You want the loan?”

  “Yeah, of course I do, but—”

  “Then get in.” Bells went back to his paper. He was reading the gossip column. He seemed pretty low-key, but the anxiety on Freshy’s face made Tozzi anxious. He did not want to get in with them, but if he didn’t, Bells would get suspicious. He didn’t know Mike Santoro from a hole in the ground, and if he was as paranoid as Tozzi figured, he might start thinking Mike Santoro was an undercover cop. If he did, Bells would flee, sure as shit, and they might lose him for good. He’d get away with the attempted murder of a federal agent—murder one if Petersen died. Tozzi balled his fists in his coat pockets. He had to make a decision and make it fast.

  Bells kept his head in the paper. Stanley had his head bent, looking up at Tozzi from under heavy brows, waiting for him to get in. His underbite looked lethal.

  Freshy’s eyes were pleading. “C’mon, Mike. Get in. It won’t take long, will it, Bells?”

  Bells didn’t answer, and when Tozzi didn’t make a move to get in, Bells turned to Stanley. “C’mon, let’s go. This guy doesn’t wanna do business.”

  Stanley was reaching to put the car into gear when Tozzi suddenly made up his mind. “Hang on. Lemme call the guy I’m supposed to meet and tell him I can’t make it. I’ll be right with you.” He figured he could go into the candy store and quickly tell Gibbons what was going on.

  But Bells rolled his head back and looked up at him, no expression. “Who’s more important to you, Mike? This guy or me?”

  It wasn’t a question. Tozzi had no choice.

  He opened the back door and got in next to Freshy. “All right, all right, let’s go.”

  Stanley put the car in gear and pulled up to the intersection, where the traffic light was red. He signaled to turn right, but there was too much traffic to turn on the red. He had to wait for the green light.

  As they waited, Tozzi noticed Gibbons coming out of the candy store, scowling and holding his swollen face. Tozzi made eye contact with Freshy, who knew Gibbons and had spotted him, too. Freshy’s face was long, cheeks sunken, eyes wide. He was so obvious, Tozzi wanted to smack him.

  Bells turned a page. “Hey, Mike, who was that old guy you were talking to before?”

  Tozzi shot a quick glance at Freshy. Had he said something to Bells and Stanley about Gibbons? If he had, what did he say?

  “Which guy you talking about?”

  “That guy right over there. On the corner.”

  “You mean that guy? The one whose face is all swollen up?”

  “Yeah, that guy. What’d you do, smack him?”

  Stanley started to laugh, but it turned into a raspy cigarette cough. Freshy looked like he was ready to jump out of his skin.

  Tozzi started laughing, too. “Nah, I didn’t touch the guy. What a nut, though. He told me he had a toothache, and it was driving him crazy. He wanted to know if there was a dentist somewhere around here he could go to. I told him I couldn’t help him, I didn’t live around here. But the guy wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept asking me what he should do, he was in agony. I couldn’t get rid of the old bastard. Finally I told him to go look up dentists in the Yellow Pages and leave me the fuck alone.”

  No one said anything, and Tozzi’s heart stopped. He looked at Freshy, convinced that he’d told Bells who Gibbons really was. But as the moment stretched and nothing happened, something else occurred to him. If Bells saw him on the corner with Gibbons, did he also see him out there with Gina? He remembered that phone message Bells had left on her answering machine, and the high-octane paranoia that only a guy in deep cover can experience began to creep through his gut and barber-pole up his spine as he considered the possibility that maybe Bells and Gina really did have something going together. And Bells was definitely the jealous kind. Tozzi’s pulse was in overdrive.

  Bells ruffled the newspaper. “You should’ve smacked the guy,” he mumbled.

  Stanley laughed, then coughed into his fist. The light changed, and he made the turn onto Kennedy Boulevard, heading north toward Jersey City. They made the next two lights but caught the third one and had to stop. A butcher shop called Meat City was on the left-hand corner.

  “So where we going?” Tozzi asked, trying to sound curious but not alarmed.

  No one answered. Bells folded the paper over. Freshy’s eyes were so wide, they would’ve fallen out if he looked down.

  “What is it, a secret?” Tozzi said with an annoyed laugh. “Where we going?”

  Stanley looked at him in the rearview mirror. “You’ll see,” he whispered. He was almost reverent, the way he sounded.

  Bells didn’t lift his head from the paper.

  SEVEN

  10:33 A.M.

  “Coffee break,” Stanley shouted as they filed into the garage through the muffler shop’s waiting room. “Go get some coffee. Hurry up. Go.”

  The two dark-skinned black guys in green coveralls didn’t pay any attention. They continued to work on the cars that were up on the lifts. One was putting new brake pads on a maroon Buick Century; the other was using a pneumatic drill to loosen the bolts on a fire-engine red Celica’s rusted-out muffler. Years’ worth of caked rust and road dirt rained down on his goggled face, but he didn’t flinch.

  Freshy and his buddy Mikey stood off to the side, small mouths and big eyes, waiting to see what they were here for.

  Bells watched them, amused by their uncertain state in an uncertain situation. He turned his head slowly and let his gaze settle on the two mechanics as they worked. He knew they were both from the islands, and that the guy doing the brake job was from Haiti and only spoke French. He scanned the garage bays. The floor under his feet was soft with oily grime. Open tool carts stood against the wall like openmouthed monsters waiting for Holy Communion, showing off neat rows of hanging open-end and box wrenches, like teeth. Rubber belts hung from the ceiling like nooses. Muffler parts hung from the ceiling, too, like spare body parts. Pinned to the back wall was a soiled yellow satin banner with the muffler shop’s name and slogan printed in black: MAXXIMUM MUFFLER—MAXXIMUM QUALITY, MAXXIMUM SERVICE, MAXXIMUM VALUE.

  This was one of those minor-league franchises that looked and sounded a little too much like Midas Muffler. Bells had gotten an empty feeling in the pit of his s
tomach as soon as they’d walked in here. He hated cheap substitutes. He liked essentials, basics, real things. If you needed a muffler, get a good one and then don’t think about it anymore. He didn’t like having cheap crap. Owning stuff like that distracted him. It was like wearing a shirt with a stain. You couldn’t stop thinking about the stain even when you weren’t looking at it. People who borrowed money and then fell behind in their payments were just like stains. They forced him to waste his time thinking about them. People like that were faulty goods and had to be fixed, replaced, or eliminated so that he could unclutter his mind.

  Stanley walked under the Celica. “Did you hear what I said, man? I said go take a coffee break.”

  The man working on the rusted muffler pushed his goggles up onto his forehead. There were dark circles around his bloodshot eyes where the ochre-colored dust hadn’t lightened his skin. “Boss not here, mon,” he said. “Can’na leave now.” His lips were pouty, his expression sullen, and he looked off into the space next to Stanley as he spoke to him.

  “Give ’em some money,” Bells said, a little annoyed with all this dickering. Stanley should know better. You want a guy to get lost for a while, you make it worth his while.

  Stanley dug a five out of his pocket and gave it the guy. He took it, but still wouldn’t look at Stanley. He was looking at his buddy, the French nigger from Haiti, who was just standing there holding a wrench in each hand, his eyes bugging out of his head.

  “Go ’head, go. Cafe time. Whatta’ya, stupid?”

  The guy didn’t move. He was petrified.

  Stanley looked to Bells for advice.

  Bells walked over toward the French guy. “Get going, Frère Jacques,” he said. “And hurry up before I call the tonton macoutes.”

  The French guy’s head snapped up at the mention of the Haitian secret police. Freshy looked confused, as usual, but Mikey Santoro seemed surprised. Bells was insulted. What’sa matter, he didn’t think a guy like him would know about stuff like the tonton macoutes? Asshole. The first time he’d met Santoro, Bells had figured him for someone who thought his shit didn’t stink, one of these guys who thinks he’s a little bit better than everybody else. What’d he think, just because a guy’s a shylock from Jersey, he’s ignorant, he’s some kind of dees-dems-and-dose bum who only reads The Racing Form? Yeah, Bells had known guys like Santoro before, guys who thought they were God’s gift to something. He knew one thing for sure: Mikey-boy thought he was God’s gift to Gina DeFresco.