Bad Apple (6 page)

Sitting at the kitchen table, he sipped from a New Jersey Devils mug and made a face. He hated his coffee black, but he needed the caffeine. He was fixated on one of those nice big Greek diners where he could have all the milk he wanted in his coffee, eggs over easy, and a pile of hash browns. Yeah, a mountain of crispy-edged home fries would really fill that hole in the
middle of his gut right now. And toast, too. Buttered rye toast. If friggin' Freshy would only get out of the goddamn shower.

Tozzi arched his back and rolled his head on his shoulders. He felt like a bag of shit. He'd ended up sleeping on that lumpy old couch in the living room here. Last night he'd thought about going back to his own place in Hoboken since Joey's Starlight Lounge was just on the other side of town, but that wouldn't have been smart. Mike Santoro lived down the shore, an hour away. Someone could've followed him home, his real home, and that could've led to his cover being blown. So instead of going back to his own apartment and getting eight hours of sleep so he would be rested for his black-belt test tonight, he'd left the bar as Mike Santoro and gone back to Freshy's parents' house in Bayonne, crashed on the couch for five hours, and wrecked his back. But that was okay. Better this than having Bells and Buddha know where he really lived. But as soon as he got a decent cup of coffee and that mountain of home fries so that he could carb up for the test, he intended to go home, crawl into bed, and get a few more hours. Good hours. If Freshy would only shut up about shaking his goddamn body and get out of the friggin' shower.

He rubbed the back of his neck and wished he'd taken a shower himself. He felt pretty scuzzy, and he'd do anything for a fresh pair of underwear. He looked up at the ceiling toward the sound of the running water. C'mon, goddamn it.

Unconsciously he reached for the mug of coffee and brought it to his lips, then frowned and put it back down. Without milk, it was like battery acid. He gazed out the sunny window, about to dump the rest of the cup down the sink, when suddenly he thought he heard something outside. Footsteps coming up the wooden steps that led to the kitchen entrance. Instinctively he turned in his seat so he'd have quicker access to the gun in his
ankle holster. Then he remembered that he wasn't wearing his gun. He had decided not to bring a gun to the meeting last night. One of Buddha's gorillas could've frisked him, and they would've taken the gun as a sign of bad faith.

A key slipped into the lock from the outside. Through the opaque curtains on the door window, Tozzi could see that whoever it was was carrying two grocery bags. Tozzi figured it must be Freshy's mother, back from the shore.

The door swung open and banged against the kitchen counter.

“What the hell're
you
doing here?”

It wasn't Freshy's mother. It was his sister, Gina.

Tozzi just stared at her, wondering whether that look of disgust on her face was for the smelly garbage or for him. He reminded himself that he was Mike Santoro, not Mike Tozzi, and the hots he had for her weren't supposed to be any different from the hots he had for every other good-looking babe he saw in the course of an average day. Except for Mike Tozzi, that wasn't the case. Gina was special. She was real. She was the Italian-American girl from the neighborhood he'd always wanted.

Gina set down the grocery bags on the counter and pushed her glasses up her nose. The glasses were round with thin purple metal rims, and on her they were sexy. She had soft brown hair that fanned out just below her shoulders, light brown eyes, and a Roman nose. She tended to look mad a lot of the time, but that was just her normal expression. She was slender, about five-five, five-six, somewhere in her early-ish thirties, and she always wore slacks. Never a dress or a skirt, from what Tozzi had seen. Today it was black slacks and black patent-leather flats with a silky banana-yellow top under a green satin bomber jacket. Tozzi thought she looked sharp, very tailored but still hip. But the one
time he'd told her he thought she was very attractive, she told him he was full of shit and said she looked like John Lennon in drag, complaining that her breasts were too small and her can was too big, daring him to agree with her. Tozzi knew better than to fall for that one.

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 cat 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.”