Her wide blue eyes narrowed to laser beams. “I’m a friend of the family, Tom.”
Augustine nodded in thought as he looked her up and down. “Ah . . . I see.”
“Are you here for a reason, Augustine?” Tozzi asked. “A real reason, I mean.” He rolled his head and listened to the cricks. There was a tremendous knot between his shoulder blades.
Augustine seemed wounded. “I told you, Mike. I came to pay my respects.”
“Thank you.” Tozzi sipped his coffee and glared at him over the rim of the cup.
Augustine tipped his head back and looked down his nose. “You’re very welcome.”
“You must have someplace to go, don’t you? You don’t have to stay on my account.”
Again Augustine looked like he was about to say something, but he caught himself and smiled like an undertaker. He looked down at Patricia then. “Sometimes people become very angry at other people when they’re really angry at themselves. Did you know that?”
Patricia retreated behind her mother’s leg. There was fear in her eyes. Maybe this was how you talked to WASP kids, but he was coming off like Captain Hook.
Tozzi moved between him and Lesley and Patricia. “You’re scaring her.”
Augustine stood up to his full height and looked down his nose again. “Your frustration is understandable, Mike, but you’re taking it out on the wrong person. In truth, I’m the one who should have the attitude. It was bad enough that you made that stupid remark about killing everyone in front of a reporter, but you also made it to me. I could be implicated in the murders, too, you know.”
“So why aren’t you under investigation?”
Augustine’s nostrils flared.
“Hey, Toz, ease up.” Gibbons had his hand on Tozzi’s arm.
“I’m just asking a question, Gib.” He stepped back but kept his eyes locked on Augustine’s.
Augustine tugged on his cuffs. “You’re very different, Mike, very unlike all the other federal agents I’ve encountered. Most agents keep their emotions under wraps, but with you everything seems to be close to the surface. That’s unusual for an FBI man.”
Tozzi grinned in his face. “What do you expect? I’m Italian.”
Augustine nodded. “Indeed, you are.”
Gibbons cut in then. “So how is this independent investigation going? Has McCleery figured out that Tozzi’s innocent yet?”
Augustine looked from Gibbons to Lesley and back. “I’m not at liberty to discuss this in front of defense counsel.”
“You go right ahead, counselor,” Lesley said. “Come on, Patricia. I think I saw some brownies in the other room.”
After Lesley led Patricia away, Augustine made sure no one was listening and spoke under his breath. He looked at Gibbons and avoided Tozzi’s gaze. “The New Jersey State Police have been asked to assist the local police. They seem to be handling it well. I received their preliminary report just this morning. The way the police have reconstructed it, it must have been a brutal slaughter. Merciless. The bullets they recovered came from two different guns, so they’re theorizing that there were two killers. Apparently they were cold-blooded and very efficient.” He paused and let that sink in as if no one knew that already. “Bloom, Giordano, Santiago, Cooney . . . terrible. I see things like this all the time, but it’s still impossible for me to imagine what really happens inside a person that allows him to do something so horrible.”
Gibbons just shrugged. There was no answer to that one. “How about motive? They come up with anything unique there?”
Augustine shook his head. “No, they’re sticking with the obvious one, and I don’t disagree with them. The Sicilians figured they could kill two birds with one stone: silence Giordano before he took the stand while putting in an excellent bid for a mistrial by killing a lawyer involved with the case. It’s a tactic the Mafia has been using in Italy for years, intimidating the courts. It was just your bad luck, Mike, that your incriminating statement was published the day of the murders. If the timing hadn’t been so rotten, you probably wouldn’t be going through all this.” Augustine let out a long breath. “It’s going to take an awful lot to keep this trial afloat now.”
There was something in Augustine’s voice that made Tozzi doubt his sincerity. It was that perfunctory, officious tone he used with everyone, the same way he breezed in here and expressed his sympathies for the death of a man he never knew. It was all bullshit.
Augustine flipped his wrist up and looked at his watch. “I have to run.” He extended his hand to Tozzi again. “Keep your chin up, Mike. It looks grim now, but I’m sure it’ll be over soon.”
“Not soon enough.” Tozzi reluctantly shook his hand.
Augustine smiled reassuringly, then turned and headed for the door. Watching him work his way through the crowd, Tozzi mulled over Augustine’s bullshit optimism. The truth was that he was in deep and he could start sinking fast at any time. The public likes to see cops hung out to dry every once in a while. It makes it look like the politicians are keeping an orderly house. Feds used to be immune to this kind of public hanging, but not anymore. Prosecuting a dirty fed earns a lot more bonus points these days. It’s the kind of thing that could launch a successful political career. Actually, Augustine could make a lot of political hay out of prosecuting him, especially if he really was planning to run for mayor.
Tozzi watched Augustine work his way to the door, smiling and nodding to the old ladies, very charming. He looked just like a pol working a room. Tozzi rolled his head on his shoulders. The knot in his back wouldn’t ease up.
Tozzi went over to the front window and saw Augustine’s official car, a black Chrysler with a driver, double-parked out front. Augustine was just coming down the steps, and McCleery was down on the sidewalk, waiting for him. Fucking McCleery had been out there all morning, standing in the cold sunshine, watching the mourners coming in and going out. He must like the cold, the stupid bastard.
“Well, that was very smart.” Gibbons came up behind him.
“What?”
“Playing tit for tat with Augustine. Whattaya gettin’ cute with the guy for? He could help you, for chrissake.”
“Yeah, he’s been a big help so far.”
“I know you, Tozzi. You just don’t like him because he’s rich. You got this thing about rich people, especially rich people who didn’t have to work for it.”
“You’re right, I admit it. I don’t like rich people. But with Augustine it’s something else.” He rubbed the knot as best he could as he watched Augustine getting into his car and driving off. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in on it.”
“On what?”
“On framing me.”
“Who?”
“Who we talking about? Augustine.”
Gibbons looked all around to see who might’ve overheard him. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Tozzi? When’re you gonna learn to keep your stupid opinions to yourself? Huh? That guy is probably gonna be the next mayor of New York. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that it wouldn’t be very smart to have him for an enemy.”
“I don’t give a shit if they make him queen of England.”
“But why do you have to say stupid things like that? Why does everything that goes into your head have to come out your mouth?”
“I’ve just got a bad feeling about him. There’s something about him that isn’t kosher.”
“I don’t like the look on your face, Tozzi. I know you. You’re gonna do something stupid. I know that look.”
Just then Tozzi glanced out the window and saw Lorraine coming down the front steps without her coat. She was carrying a steaming cup of coffee, bringing it to a very grateful Jimmy McCleery, who bowed grandly as he met her at the bottom of the steps. Lorraine stood there in the cold, hugging herself, laughing at something funny McCleery must’ve said. Tozzi looked at Gibbons, who was glaring out the window.
“You oughta see the look on your face, Gib.”
“Shut up.”
— 12 —
“. . .Sì, sì, nostro patron’. Our wonderful patron saint, eh? Patron saint d’avvocati . . .”
Gibbons stopped the tape, took the headphones off, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He mustVe heard God-knows-how-many surveillance tapes like this in his time, listened to literally hundreds of wiseguys talking in that veiled symbolism that seemed to come so natural to them, but this one was giving him an incredible headache because he’d never heard anyone as hard to follow as Salamandra. Besides the guy’s thick accent and the fact that he switched back and forth from English to Italian without warning, what he talked about made absolutely no sense.
He stared down at the transcript open in front of him, as thick as the Brooklyn telephone directory, and checked the translation for what he’d just heard. . . . yes, yes, our patron saint. Our wonderful patron saint, eh? Patron saint of lawyers . . .”
Who the hell did that refer to? Salamandra’s tone reeked of sarcasm, so whoever it was he was talking about, he wasn’t pleased with him.
Gibbons checked the date and location of the surveillance. It was last spring, right after the Figaro Connection indictments came down, at a beauty parlor in Totowa, New Jersey. Salamandra and Shorty, the mysterious little short guy whose name they didn’t even know. On another tape, one of the Zips talks about a “little Nemo.” Maybe this was him. Who knows?
Gibbons picked through the mess of black-and-white glossies spread out in front of him and found one of the few photos they had of the mysterious short man. He was standing at a phone booth with Salamandra and there was snow on the ground. Salamandra was wearing a long wool coat; Shorty had a leather jacket on. You could only see the short guy’s back, the bald spot at the crown of his head, a little of his face but not much. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses. He wasn’t really a dwarf or a midget, but his muscle-bound chest and arms made him look sort of freaky. He kind of reminded Gibbons of that actor on TV, the one on that old show about the taxi company.
Well, at least the short guy spoke English most of the time. You could understand him. Whoever the hell he was.
Gibbons tossed the photo back on the pile and put the headphones back on. With his finger poised on the “play” button of the reel-to-reel, Gibbons found his place in the transcript, focusing on what he’d just heard Salamandra saying. “Patron saint of lawyers.” From what little Gibbons knew of Italian, Salamandra wasn’t referring to his own lawyer. “Nostro” had a masculine ending. His lawyer was a woman. Maybe he was talking about Marty Bloom? Gibbons scowled. He didn’t want to believe that. Not Marty. He wasn’t a mob lawyer, not that way he wasn’t. So who was Salamandra talking about? Who’s the Zip so annoyed with?
Before pressing the button to continue the tape, Gibbons arched his back and stretched. He’d come in before seven this morning, and he’d been listening to tapes for four hours now. The stack on the floor that he hadn’t gotten to yet made him groan. On a hunch, he’d decided to go through all the ones that had references to lawyers, law, or the courts, hoping to find something that might vindicate Tozzi. He was working on the assumption that Giordano wasn’t the principal target in the hit, that Marty Bloom was. He knew he was grasping at straws to get Tozzi off the hook, but he had to try. Tozzi was vulnerable, and his innocence was beside the point. He could end up taking the big fall just so they could keep the Figaro trial alive. Tom Augustine seemed determined about that.
He hit the button and the tape started to roll.
The short guy was talking. “It’s gonna be okay, don’t worry. That’s what we got the guy there for, right? That’s why we’re paying him. So he’ll take care of it.”
Gibbons stopped the tape and furrowed his brow. Take care of what?
“So, this is where you’ve been hiding yourself, Cuthbert. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Gibbons looked up from the desk. He could hear the bastard even though he had the headphones on, unfortunately. Standing at the entrance to his cubicle with his hands in the pockets of his tweed overcoat was none other than His Royal Irishness, Special Investigator McCleery. Gibbons was surprised McCleery hadn’t gone out to a dime store and picked up a tin badge for himself.
“You can take the headphones off. I’ll be staying awhile.” McCleery unbuttoned his coat and pulled up a chair.
Gibbons took off the headphones and hung them around his neck. “Whattaya want? I’m busy.”
“And by that statement are you implying that I’m not?”
“State your business, McCleery. My time is valuable.”
“Indeed it is. I’d say your time is precious. And limited.”
“What is this, one of your clever Irish limericks?”
McCleery’s brows took on a mournful slant. “It saddens my heart to think of your poor wife eking out her days all alone while her husband is doing twenty-five to life in some federal pen halfway across the country.”
Gibbons ground his molars when he heard McCleery mention Lorraine. “Take a hike, McCleery. I don’t need you today.”
“Am I to take it then that you’re under the misconception that you’re not just as much a target of this special investigation as your partner Tozzi?”
“What?”
“You’re not much of an actor, me boy, so don’t try to pretend with me. You and Tozzi have been partners—for what?—at least ten years. Close as could be, I’m told. One goes to the john and the other wipes, the way I hear it. And cousins-in-law, too, now. So it would only seem logical that if one man were planning a cold-blooded execution, his partner would at the very least have an inkling of his intentions. The partner wouldn’t necessarily be an active accessory to the crime, but perhaps a passive supporter, shall we say. Someone who knew what the killer was going to do and did nothing to stop it.”
Gibbons just stared at him. “McCleery, if you had a brain, you’d be dangerous.”
The Irishman clucked his tongue. “I understand your bitterness completely, Cuthbert. But I suggest that you and your partner savor your last days together. You must know that they’re numbered.”
McCleery was smiling, waiting for Gibbons to react, but Gibbons wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Maybe if he ignored the ignoramus, he’d just go away.
“But, of course, now that I think about it, this could all work out just fine for you. You can stop working without the embarrassment of actually having to retire. I imagine you must be pretty close to retirement age now—well past it actually. I can understand why a man would forget a few birthdays to avoid being put out to pasture. You shouldn’t be ashamed, Cuthbert. It’s perfectly understandable.”
The muscles in Gibbons’s jaw were working. The only thing he hated more than people using his given name was people making cracks about his age. Anyone who knew him at all knew that it was Gibbons, just Gibbons. And though he was only fifty-eight, his age was none of anyone’s goddamn business. He could still do the job as well as any other agent in the Bureau. Certainly better than McCleery ever did when he was an agent.
Gibbons looked at his watch. “It’s quarter after eleven. Shouldn’t you be in a bar by now?”
McCleery laughed his mellifluous Irish tenor laugh as he got up out of his chair. “As a matter of fact, I must be going. Before I go, though, I’d like to wish a happy holiday to both you and your lovely wife, Cuthbert. And rest assured, my friend, that in the unfortunate event that my investigation turns against you personally, and they do put you in the hoosegow, I’ll be sure to look in on Lorraine from time to time to see how she’s getting along.” McCleery left then, but his shit-eating grin hovered over Gibbons’s desk like a cloud of gnats.
Look in on Lorraine, huh? Over my fucking dead body.
As he put the headphones back on and stared down at the transcript, he tried not to think about Lorraine’s gushing on about how McCleery could recite Yeats or Keats or whatever goddamn poet it was. He started reading, but he couldn’t concentrate. He read the s
ame sentence over and over, not comprehending, because all he could think about was His Royal Irishness dropping in on Lorraine while he was gone, sniffing around her like a horny dog, bringing flowers and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. Reciting fucking poetry.
When the wave of fury passed, he realized that his hand was inside his jacket on the butt of Excalibur, the .38 Colt Cobra he’d carried from his very first day with the Bureau. He removed his hand. It would be an insult to shoot McCleery with so noble a weapon. Even a Saturday night special was too good for that bastard.
He forced himself to concentrate on the page in front of him, scanning for his place so he could start up the tape again. But something suddenly caught his eye, something that didn’t look right. At the bottom of the page he spotted the word “drug.” He read the line: “What about the big drug? Is coming now?” Salamandra was supposed to have said that. Gibbons made a face. Impossible.
He went to the middle of the page, to the conversation that preceded this.
Short man: I sent sixty-six combs over the other day. The man over there will send us the shampoo as soon as he gets his combs. The guys down there will get a few bottles—you know, for the combs—and we get the rest.
Salamandra: Bène, bène.
Short man: Is he still happy? The man over there—I heard he wasn’t happy.
Salamandra: Niènte paura. He like you very much. Nostro santo, our saint, he make him mad.
Short man: Is he gonna stop sending us stuff? You know, shampoo?
Salamandra: No, no, don’t worry.
Short man: Good.
Salamandra: What about the big drug? Is coming now?
Short man: Not this time. Maybe soon, I hope.
Salamandra: Yes, I hope so, too. I like big drugs, looks nice for me.
Gibbons couldn’t believe this. He’d read thousands of transcripts like these over the years, listened to hundreds of hours of tapes. He knew how these guys talked, and they never called drugs drugs. It was always something else—shirts, pants, shoes, cheese, wheels, olive oil, shampoo, combs, towels, anything but what it really was. Whoever transcribed this tape must’ve misheard it. Gibbons checked the numbers in the margin of the transcript that corresponded to the tape position, then fast-forwarded the tape recorder to the place just before where Salamandra supposedly said “big drugs.”
Bad Business Page 13
