Bad Apple (2 page)

Slumped across the seats, he knew he'd been shot, but he didn't know where. He was aware of the car door opening then, and he did feel a hand leaning on his hip, but he couldn't move. He was all clenched up, his whole body.

Shit, he thought, grinding his teeth. His father-in-law was really gonna bust his wife's balls now. Shit!

He blinked with watery eyes as the royal-blue blur of the Cookie Monster backpack was dragged over the transmission hump. He thought about going for the gun in his belt just before he blacked out.

“Bert, are you all right?”

FBI Special Agent Cuthbert Gibbons took the icebag off his cheek and glared at his boss, Brant Ivers, over the roof of Gary Petersen's white Mercury. “I'm fine,” he growled.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The assistant director in charge of the FBI's Manhattan field office just looked at him. “You look like you're in a lot of pain, Bert. Go home if you're not feeling well.”

“I said I'm fine.”

Ivers furrowed his brows as he pulled up the zipper on his tan suede jacket. He let out a sigh, and his breath materialized over his head like a dialogue balloon in the funny papers. “We have enough problems here tonight, Bert. Let's not make it any worse, shall we? Why not just go home and see a dentist first thing in the morning? I don't want to have to order you to go.”

Then don't, Gibbons thought.

He put the icebag back on his face and held his tongue. Not because Ivers was his boss. He never had any problem telling off this aging preppy shitass. He was keeping his yap closed because his tooth was killing him, one of the back molars on the bottom. Without warning it would start hurting like a bastard. There was
a dull, throbbing pain that was pretty constant, and that he could put up with, but when it started to scream—like right now—all he could do was clench up his face and bear it until it passed.

Gibbons's wife had told him to go to the dentist when it started to give him trouble, but he'd been too busy to take the time off. Now he wished he had listened to Lorraine. Of course, he'd never admit to her that she might have been right about something. When it came to being right, Gibbons believed that women should never be encouraged. It could just lead to other things.

“Go home, Bert. We can handle things here.” Ivers was giving him the fatherly routine now. That was almost funny since Gibbons had at least five years on him, maybe more.

When Gibbons didn't answer him, Ivers switched to a motherly tone. “Now, Bert, don't be so stubborn.”

Gibbons tried to ignore him. He hated it when people called him “Bert” because he hated his first name, which was actually Cuthbert, and he had always hated it. He was Gibbons, just Gibbons, and he must've told that to Ivers at least a hundred times over the years, but he wasn't gonna say it anymore. His tooth hurt too much, and this self-absorbed, self-promoting asshole was just too dense to get it. Besides, compared to what had gone down here tonight, Ivers's deliberate stupidity about Gibbons's name wasn't worth mentioning. An agent had been shot tonight, an agent on a sensitive undercover. That was what mattered to Gibbons right now. Not his name or his tooth or his stupid boob of a boss. An agent had been shot.

Gibbons peered through the Mercury's passenger side window at the bloodstained seats. He stepped back to see if there was anything in the backseat, and the glass mirrored his own face. Gibbons inspected his reflection. His face was pretty swollen on one side. Didn't make him any uglier, though. He was
pretty ugly to begin with. Mostly bald, with small mean eyes. Nose like a big chili pepper hanging over thin bloodless lips. The beginnings of a baby turkey wattle starting to grow under his chin. He pulled his open shirt collar together, then let it go. He'd forgotten to grab a tie when he ran out of the house, and he always felt naked without a tie. Unlike shitass Ivers, Gibbons had come up through the ranks when J. Edgar was in charge, back in the days when FBI agents did not go anywhere without a tie, a suitcoat, shined shoes, and a hat. Wearing a tie was a habit Gibbons had never gotten out of. It was a habit that a lot of the younger agents, particularly the undercover jockeys, had a hard time getting into. Gibbons glanced over the roof at the assistant director in charge in his crewneck sweater and wondered what his excuse was.

Ivers was standing with the two New Jersey state troopers who had been the first ones on the scene. He looked real cute taking down notes on a clipboard in his tan suede jacket, bottle-green Shetland sweater, pressed jeans, and oxblood tassel loafers. If he didn't have that big square head of his and that phony-looking dye job with the artfully graying temples, he'd look like a Ralph Lauren ad. What an asshole.

Ivers was just wasting those troopers' time with that stupid clipboard because Gibbons had already gotten all the particulars when he first got there. A trucker from South Carolina named Nelson had been asleep in his rig when he heard somebody leaning on his horn. He ran out with an aluminum baseball bat intent on bashing some Yankee head in when he found Gary Petersen slumped against his steering wheel, bleeding all over the place. The trucker ran back to his rig and called for an ambulance on his CB. Petersen was semiconscious when the trucker got back to the car. He said he opened the door and hunkered down next to the wounded man, held his hand, and
kept him talking until the rescue squad got there. The trucker also said he didn't see a soul in the parking lot when he first came out with the bat.

Gibbons had gotten all this directly from the trucker, and he'd already told Ivers, but Ivers was the big cheese here, and he had to
look
like he was in charge. The clipboard was a good prop for a big cheese.

Gibbons winced as another wave of screaming pain carved its way through his jaw. It was the kind of pain that made him think of power tools—lathes and routers and crap like that. He tilted his head back and looked straight up at the sky, holding the icebag to his face and blinking at the glare from the pole lights until it finally subsided. The damn tooth hurt like a bastard, but he had no right to complain. Not when Gary Petersen was in an emergency room, fighting for his life.

Gibbons's face was clenched again, but not because of his tooth. He was steamed. Petersen shouldn't have been shot. This should
not
have happened. Petersen wasn't supposed to have been in any danger at this stage in his undercover. Ivers had already speculated that this could've been a simple armed robbery, a plain case of bad luck, Petersen being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, the asshole could theorize and postulate all he wanted with that goddamn clipboard of his, but as far as Gibbons was concerned, there was only one plausible reason for Petersen being shot. His cover had been blown. Period.

But even if Petersen's cover had been blown, this still shouldn't have happened. Gibbons had worked organized crime for over twenty-five years, and he knew better than anyone that there were unwritten rules between the Mafia and the law, and Rule Number One was that wiseguys do not kill cops, not even undercover cops. They could beat a cop silly if they ever caught one trying to infiltrate their ranks, but that was the extent of it.
No mob boss anywhere would ever sanction a hit on a cop or a fed. It just wasn't done. None of them want the kind of heat something like this creates. But shooting Petersen was a severe breach in that unwritten contract, and whoever was responsible was gonna suffer.

Gibbons had seen things like this before. Every few years some cowboy comes along who thinks he's invincible, that he can get away with killing a cop. But it always ends up ugly. Whoever shot Petersen may not realize it, but he'd be better off if he turned himself in. At least he'd get a trial. If the mob finds him first, they'll go straight to sentencing, and wiseguys are firm believers in capital punishment.

Of course, the way Gibbons was feeling right now, he wouldn't mind having the bastard alone in a room for fifteen minutes before the legal process officially kicked in. Back in the old days, they used to stop the clock for special cases like this. But then the Supreme Court stepped in and said suspects had rights. Gibbons didn't exactly disagree with that. He just felt that cops should have rights, too. Like the right to temporarily break the rules when bad guys break them first. It was only fair.

Ivers walked around the front of the Mercury to where Gibbons was standing. The heels of his loafers made a nice click on the asphalt. Very tony. “Bert, has McDaniels arrived yet?”

Gibbons shook his head. “He's on his way.” McDaniels was Petersen's partner.

Ivers sighed and looked down at his clipboard. “What do you know about Petersen's assignment here tonight?”

Gibbons frowned and shrugged. “I know what you know. He was meeting Tony Bellavita to give him some cash. I don't know how much.”

“Were those bills marked?”

Gibbons shrugged. “I don't know the particulars. McDaniels will know.”

Ivers pressed his lips together and stared down at his clipboard. He muttered something to himself.

Gibbons rattled the icebag. The ice had mostly melted, but it was still pretty cold. The only problem was, it didn't seem to be doing much good for his throbbing tooth. Shit.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gibbons noticed a dark blue van pulling into the lot. One of the troopers flagged it down and went over to the driver's side. It was about forty feet away, headlights on, motor running.

Ivers was pressing his knuckle into his lower lip, intent on his clipboard. He looked up suddenly and stared at Gibbons from under his brow. “We've got a big problem here, Bert.”

No kidding. Gibbons put the icebag back on his face.

“We've got eleven undercover agents out on this operation. If Petersen was shot because his cover was blown—and at this point, I suppose we have to assume that that's the most logical reason—then every other agent out there is in jeopardy. If they uncovered Petersen, they may have uncovered others.”

Gibbons rolled his eyes and nodded. Outstanding deduction, Sherlock.

“Now the question is, do we pull in those other agents and shut down Shark Bite, or do we leave them in place until we know more? It would be a damn shame to scrap Shark Bite after all the work and preparation that went into it. Some of those men spent years working their way in. I'd hate to lose all that time and effort. It would take us a good long time to get men in as deep as we have them now. But on the other hand, we can't leave them out in the cold if there's some trigger-happy wiseguy on the loose who knows who they are.”

“Ummm.” Gibbons was only half-listening. He was paying
more attention to that blue van. The second trooper had gone over to join the conversation. The first one was pointing at the white Mercury. Gibbons kneaded the icebag as he kept an eye on the van, wondering what the story was over there.

Ivers was tapping the clipboard with the end of a gold Cross pen. “What's Tozzi's current status, Bert?”

Same as usual, he's an asshole.

Gibbons squeezed his eyes shut then as another screamer suddenly drilled through his tooth. This time he was convinced the mere mention of Tozzi's name had brought it on. Tozzi was the longest-running of all the partners Gibbons had ever had, almost ten years now, and sometimes Gibbons couldn't believe he and Tozzi had been together that long and hadn't killed each other yet. Until Tozzi came along, Gibbons had never been able to keep a partner for more than three days in a row. True, Tozzi was an asshole, a hardhead, and a hotdog who wouldn't know how to follow an order if his life depended on it—and it frequently did. Still, Tozzi was better than every other agent Gibbons had ever worked with. Even though he did have his head up his ass most of the time, at least Tozzi's heart was in the right place. Too bad he was Gibbons's wife's first cousin. Partnering with the guy was one thing. Being related to him was sort of like having a rash that wouldn't go away.

“Bert?”

“Huh?”

“Tozzi's current status—what is it?”

“He's teamed up with an informant, a mutt named DeFresco who's connected to the Luccarellis. DeFresco's introducing Tozzi as his partner in a porno video venture. They're trying to borrow money from Buddha Stanzione with the intention of falling behind in their vig payments. Tozzi wants to get Stanzione's
number-one shy to threaten him, maybe even rough him up a little, and get it all on tape.”

“And who is this shylock?”

“Take a guess. Tony Bells.”

“Bellavita? The person Petersen was meeting here tonight?”

“None other than.”

“Where's Tozzi now?”

“Right this minute?”

“Yes, right this minute.”

“Home in bed if he's got any brains.” Which is doubtful.

“Well, call him and let him know what happened to Petersen. Find out if he's been introduced to Bellavita yet. If he has, tell him to pull back until we find out what happened here tonight. We certainly don't want him to be Bellavita's next victim. In fact, let's get word to all the undercover men working on Shark Bite. Pull back until we know more. In the meantime I'm ordering a manhunt for Bellavita. I want him in custody for questioning ASAP.”

Gibbons's eyelids drooped. Ivers sounded so tough and determined whenever he used words like
manhunt.
Like Tyrone Power in all those old war movies. Of course, the manhunt
had
to be done—that went without question. If they didn't find Tony Bells, the mob guys sure would, and that would be the end of him. And from Gibbons's point of view, life without parole was preferable to the death penalty. Better to make the son of a bitch suffer every single day for the rest of his life than to put him out of his misery in a muzzle flash. The only thing Gibbons had a problem with was calling Tozzi. He knew how Tozzi's warped mind worked. You tell the guy to put it in reverse, he'll put it in drive and floor it. If he finds out about what happened to Petersen, he won't pull back and lay low. Not Tozzi. Putting Tony Bells's head on a plate will become his personal crusade.