Bad Apple (8 page)

“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.

“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 stomach 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.

Yeah, he knew all about Mikey-boy making a big play for Gina. What Freshy hadn't told him, he'd pretty much pieced together himself. It wasn't hard to figure. Santoro was trying to use all his Mr. Clean charms to sweep Gina right off her feet and right into his bed. See, he thinks he's better than everybody else. He thinks just like her. She thinks she's better than her upbringing. But in her case, that was okay. He liked the fact that she had a backbone, that she told people to go to hell all the time, and that she said she wanted nothing to do with wiseguys. That was okay.

But on Santoro, this attitude wasn't so becoming. It just
showed him up for what he really was, a snot-nosed shitass. He needed to be taken down a few pegs, and Bells was just the guy to do it. That's what he gets for messing around with Gina. That was the only reason he'd gone head to head with Buddha over getting these two mamelukes their loan. Sure, they were gonna get their money, and he was gonna encourage them to use it on their business right away, all of it. He was gonna lead them down the garden path because he wanted them to fuck up. And they
would
fuck up, he'd make sure of that. And when they did, they'd have to deal with their good ole shy, who was gonna be right there to wipe that smile off Santoro's face. First off, Bells was gonna have to take over their porn business and run it himself to satisfy the loan. He'd keep Freshy around to run the day-to-day stuff, out of the goodness of his heart, of course. But Mikey-boy would have to go. And Gina, if she was brought up right, which Bells knew she basically was, would thank him from the bottom of her heart for saving her little fuck-up brother's ass. In fact, he
knew
she would thank him, even though she might not make a big show of it, because he knew she was devoted to the little jerkoff and worried all the time about Freshy getting his head blown off or being sent to jail or something. She'd told him.