Bad Apple

by Anthony Bruno

  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.

  But that was all right, Gibbons figured. He’d been looking for an excuse to shoot the dumb bastard in the foot to keep him from doing something stupid.

  “Now
, Bert, I have a list of all the undercover men on Shark Bite. Tell me where . . .”

  Gibbons was listening, but all of a sudden Ivers’s voice started to fade out as another screamer started building up steam. It rumbled through his head like a B-52 coming out of the clouds with a full load. The bomb-bay doors were open, and the fat boys tumbled out, speeding through the sky, zeroing in on Gibbons’s tooth. The initial explosion made sweat bead on his freckled forehead despite the November cold; the ones that followed came so fast, they rolled together into one big annihilating wave of excruciating killer pain.

  “Bert? Bert? Are you all right?”

  Gibbons held on to his jaw and kept his eyes squeezed shut until the pain finally went back to being a manageable dull ache. The first thing he focused on when he opened his eyes was that blue van. It was parked now, as close to Petersen’s car as it could get. The back end was open, and two guys were loading themselves down with some kind of equipment. At first, Gibbons thought they might be forensic people from the state, but on second glance, they didn’t look right. Leather jackets, jeans, running shoes. One of them had funny-looking gold-rim glasses, too trendy for any bone-picker he’d ever met. Then he saw one of them hoist a video camera onto his shoulder, and he realized who these guys were. A freelance film team, ambulance-chasers who prowl the streets all night looking for juicy disaster footage that they can peddle to the local TV news shows. Fucking bloodsuckers.

  Gibbons charged around the white Mercury and started shouting, “Hey! Hey! Pack up your gear and get the hell out of here.”

  The sound man, the one with the trendy glasses, gave him a dirty look and raised his boom mike on a stick as if he were going to defend himself with it. The cameraman, a tall, lanky guy in his early thirties with floppy blond hair, flashed a too-friendly smile and sauntered over toward the yellow tape that the state police had used to cordon off the crime scene.

  “What’s the problem, man?” the cameraman said. “We’re just here to cover the story.”

  Gibbons watched the guy’s eyes darting to the interior of the car. He was looking for something gory. The worst part about it was that the sneaky bastard was making like the camera wasn’t rolling. Who the hell did he think he was kidding?

  Gibbons moved in and cut him off, blocking his view of the car. He couldn’t take pictures now, for chrissake. The forensics guys hadn’t even gotten here yet. “Take a hike, the two of you. Now get going.”

  “C’mon, man. We’re just doing our job.”

  “Do it somewhere else.”

  The cameraman ignored Gibbons and pointed the camera around him, going for the interior of Petersen’s car.

  “Hey, I’m warning you two little shitasses—”

  “Bert!” Ivers called from the other side of the car.

  Gibbons stepped in front of the video cam and put his hand over the lens. The camera guy reared back, moved to the side, and kept shooting. “Hey, I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, man, but we’ve got a right to be here. Freedom of the press—you ever hear of it?” The guy kept shooting.

  Suddenly the B-52 made another run on Gibbons’s tooth. It came fast and without warning this time. The pain was beyond belief. Gibbons clenched his fist, his face twisted, and hammered the car door with a King Kong backswing.

  “Get out of the way, will you, man? This is news.”

  “He’s ruining my reading,” the soundman complained.

  Ivers called over the roof of the car. “Let the state police deal with them, Bert.”

  The cameraman craned his body over the yellow police tape, shooting into the open window on the driver’s side. Gibbons saw red. He went for Excalibur, his prized .38 Colt Cobra, the gun he’d used his entire career as an FBI agent in violation of the standard-issue weaponry rules, and he stuck the muzzle into the lens of the video cam. Gibbons growled, low and mean. “Move on. Now. Or I’ll blow your fucking eyes out.”

  “Jesus Christ!” The soundman clutched his headset and hightailed it back to the van.

  The cameraman dropped the unit to his waist and glared at Gibbons. “What the fuck is your problem, man? We’re only trying to get a story.”

  “Move on.”

  The cameraman started to backstep toward the van. “You’re gonna hear from our lawyer, man. This is a clear violation of our freedom of the press rights. A clear violation.”

  “You can write to Ann Landers for all I care. Just get the hell outta here.” Gibbons kept Excalibur leveled on the two bloodsuckers until they packed up and drove off.

  Ivers came up behind him. “Put your weapon away, Bert. That was uncalled for.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Gibbons holstered his gun and turned on him. “Gary Petersen deserves better than twenty seconds’ worth of footage of his bloody car seat in a stupid TV report that doesn’t say anything about anything sandwiched in between some garbage about what Madonna had for lunch and a commercial for Ex-Lax. The guy’s got a wife and kids. He’s a decent guy and a damn good agent, but nobody’s gonna say shit about that because nobody gives a shit about the guy who takes the bullet. It’s always the other guy, the one who pulls the trigger, who gets all the press. The victim is always just a prop for the bad guy in these things.”

  Ivers took off his half-glasses. “I agree with you entirely, Bert. But that cameraman was right, too. The First Amendment guarantees his right to cover this event as a journalist.”

  Gibbons was looking around on the ground, grumbling. “Yeah, well, maybe the Supreme Court will get around to fixing that, too.”

  “What?”

  Gibbons found his icebag on the pavement by the front of the car. “Never mind.” He brushed off the bag and put it back on his cheek.

  That was the goddamn problem with this country, he thought. Everybody knows his rights, even when it’s wrong.

  THREE

  3:37 A.M.

  Tozzi’s arm lay on the table in front of him like a dead fish. The squeezed lime wedge in the glass of dark rum in front of him looked like a dead fish, too, a little green one. He stared down at his watch. It took a few seconds for the time to register in his brain. Twenty minutes to four. In the morning. He closed his weary eyes. This was nuts.

  The place was called Joey’s Starlight Lounge, but the only light in there came from behind the bar, and it gave everybody who got near it a sinister Phantom of the Opera kind of look. Joey’s Starlight Lounge was a peek-a-boo bar where topless dancers in g-strings shook their booties with their hands over their nipples. When a patron at the bar gave a girl a buck, he’d get a peek. For five, he could have a gander. For ten, he could get up close. For twenty, he could touch. But right now there was hardly anyone there, and Annette, the only girl on duty, was sitting in a folding chair behind the bar, wearing a Seton Hall warm-up jacket to cover her assets, reading a paperback copy of King Lear. She had jet-black hair chopped at the collar, and she said she was studying acting at Juilliard. She worked here, she said, because she refused to waitress, and the tips were a lot better.

  Tozzi finished off what was left of his drink, which was pretty watery now that all the ice had melted. That was okay. He was just thirsty.

  He looked into the bottom of his empty glass and saw his reflection under the little dead lime. The dark hair was getting thinner every day, but it still covered what it was supposed to. The dark deep-set eyes were tired, so they were even more deep-set and that much more suspicious. Heavy brows, Roman nose, slightly thick lips—a thug if there ever was one. But not a bad-looking thug. He wasn’t DeNiro, of course, but he wasn’t a toad either. Not on a good day.

  Tozzi leaned out of the booth where he was sitting and squinted into the gloom in the back room. It was even darker back there, but in the dim light of a wall sconce he could make out the two figures huddled over a table, clasping their glasses in front of them. He couldn’t see the muscle, but he knew they were back there, too, four of them, all bruisers. The thin guy was Tony Bells, the loan shark. The little guy was his
boss, Buddha Stanzione. Tozzi knew what they were talking about. Him.

  Tozzi scanned the bar, looking for his “partner,” but the only person at the bar was Stanley Sukowski, Tony Bells’s driver. Stanley wasn’t a made guy and never would be because he was half-Polish. He was what they called a “mob associate.” Stanley was the loan shark’s right-hand man, and he was friendly enough, considering that his primary function was collection agent, which meant legbreaker. Tozzi had first met him last summer at a picnic Bells had thrown for a few of his associates, and Stanley had been wearing a T-shirt he said his daughter had given him for his birthday. It had a big picture of the Tazmanian Devil on the front, that hairy evil-looking cartoon charcter with the teeth and the big slathering jaws who was always trying to eat Bugs Bunny. Stanley, with his pronounced underbite, nonexistent neck, and squat build, actually looked quite a bit like the Tazmanian Devil, Tozzi had thought at the time, and now he always thought of that T-shirt whenever he saw Stanley.

  Tozzi nodded at Stanley, who nodded back, and wondered where the hell his “partner,” Mr. Fuckhead DeFresco, had gone. Bobby “Freshy” DeFresco and he were supposedly in the porno distribution business. Freshy knew Bells from their old neighborhood in Bayonne, and he was the one who was going to get them their “business loan” from Tony Bells. It was all “in the bag,” Freshy kept saying. “In . . . the . . . bag.”

  In the bag, my ass, Tozzi thought. Nothing was in the bag. Bells didn’t know shit about “Mike Santoro,” Tozzi’s undercover name, and the loan shark must’ve had some doubts about him, otherwise he wouldn’t be having this meeting with Buddha. They were asking to borrow $150,000 at a point and a half a week, which was not the preferred bad-guy rate. What Tozzi couldn’t figure out was why Bells needed Buddha Stanzione’s okay on this. As far as Tozzi knew, Bells had a free hand to loan money as he saw fit. Why all of a sudden was this case different?