Bad Guys

by Anthony Bruno

  He felt like he’d slammed up against a brick wall because he didn’t have a clue as to what he was going to do next. If he went to Ivers with what he knew, it might compromise Tozzi. He considered tailing Kinney after work but vetoed that immediately. An experienced agent can pick up on a tail in no time. He thought about confronting Kinney directly, but that was too risky. They had no real proof that Kinney was Varga’s hangman, so Kinney could deny everything, and then if he brought the matter to Ivers, Gibbons would have to face a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer. It was frustrating knowing as much as he did about Varga and Kinney. He felt like he was sitting at a poker game with a pair of aces in his hand but he just didn’t know how to play them. He was up most of the night, trying to come up with a solution.

  Right now Gibbons needed coffee badly. He went into the Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee shop where he always had breakfast, and shuffled through the crush of people lined up for take-out orders. Everybody was complaining about the heat. The air-conditioning inside was minimal, but at least it was a relief from the humidity outside. Office workers sat shoulder-to-shoulder at the winding counter, lingering over their coffees, no doubt trying to forestall going outside for a few more minutes. Gibbons was scanning the place for an empty stool when he spotted someone in back waving to him. It was Kinney, and he just happened to have an empty seat next to him. What a coincidence.

  “Morning, Bert,” he said brightly as Gibbons came over.

  “Morning.” Gibbons sat down and saw that Kinney was eating one of those all-in-one breakfast sandwiches—a slice of ham, a fried egg, and a slice of cheese on a toasted English muffin. He wondered if Kinney knew that he knew.

  “Those any good?” he asked, indicating Kinney’s sandwich.

  “They’re okay.”

  The waitress came over, her pencil already poised over her order pad. She was about eighty years old with a face like Whistler’s mother, but she was built like a bowling ball and she knew how to hustle. Gibbons noticed her every morning, swerving around the young girls who took their time about everything. “Can I help you?” she asked. There was the bare hint of a Slavic accent in her voice.

  Gibbons glanced at Kinney’s sandwich again. “Coffee and a sweet roll,” he said.

  “Heat the sweet roll?” she asked.

  “No thanks.”

  She reached under the counter and came up with a sweet roll in a wax-paper bag. She set it down in front of Gibbons with an empty mug which she filled quickly and accurately. The other waitresses always spilled a little. Sometimes they spilled a lot, but the old lady never missed.

  After she left, Kinney said, “So . . . I hear you were in Pennsylvania recently.”

  Gibbons stirred his coffee with a wooden stick, looking down at his breakfast. Kinney was an aggressive player. Gibbons considered playing dumb, but Kinney had no time for his deliberations.

  “Our friend Mr. Davis in East Stroudsburg,” he said. “I heard all about your little visit the other night.”

  Gibbons unwrapped his sweet roll. “News travels fast.”

  Kinney didn’t respond.

  Gibbons blew on his coffee and took a sip. “I suppose now there’s a contract out on Tozzi and me.”

  Kinney shrugged and bit into his sandwich. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “No? You’re the butcher of Buchenwald, aren’t you? I thought slicing up agents was your specialty.”

  Kinney took a long sip of his coffee. Gibbons caught the gleam of the garnet stone in his big college ring. “You’re treading on thin ice, Bert.”

  “Am I?”

  “Think about it. If you go telling tales about me, I’ll tell some tales of my own about you and Tozzi. Aiding and abetting a renegade agent suspected of murder is a very nasty charge.”

  “You’re blowing smoke, Kinney.”

  “I have pictures.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “You want to see?”

  “I believe you.”

  The old waitress scooted back with a fresh pot of coffee. “More?” she asked.

  “Please,” Kinney said, pushing his mug toward her. The bastard had the manners of a prince.

  “I’m okay,” Gibbons said to her and she passed on to the next customer. “Suppose I went ahead and told Ivers about your moonlight job. You could make all kinds of charges against me in retaliation. But what about Tozzi? He’s crazy, and he’s got nothing to lose. He’d come gunning for you sure as shit.”

  Kinney smiled. “Tozzi’s no problem. We’ll find him.” He was getting cocky now.

  “I’m a pretty old guy,” Gibbons said. “With a good lawyer, I could do like the mob bosses do, play sick, stretch out my appeals, use all those tactics. What if I decide it’s worth facing prosecution just to nail your ass to the wall?”

  Kinney picked up his check. “Who knows?” He dug into his pocket and counted out the exact amount.

  The old waitress whizzed by and scooped up his money and the check as soon as he put it down. Kinney swiveled on his stool to get up.

  “Tell me something,” Gibbons said. Kinney stopped to face him. “Is it hard to cut a guy’s head off?”

  The corners of Kinney’s lips turned up as he shook his head. “Not at all. I recommend a heavy machete with a sharp edge. Start from the throat, not the back of the neck. It’s easier that way.” He stood up and reached into his pocket. “It’s the eyes that are tricky.” He put a quarter down on the counter. “See you around, Bert,” he said.

  Gibbons watched him walk out the door, as straight and confident and unwrinkled as a senior-class president.

  He finished the last piece of his sweet roll and drained his cup. The waitress appeared instantly for a refill, but Gibbons declined. She immediately moved on to offer refills to her other customers, a model of early-morning service and efficiency. As he stood up to go, he stared at the miserly tip Kinney had left. Gibbons picked up the quarter, put it in his pocket, and replaced it with a dollar bill.

  Walking toward the door, he was conscious of Kinney’s quarter in his pocket the same way you’re conscious of the bottom of your shoe even after you’ve scraped off the dogshit. He pushed through the glass doors and went outside. It was like moving through warm Jell-O out there. For a moment he wondered whether Kinney was really human.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tozzi wandered through the big old house and picked up information all around him like a video camera. The teenage girl’s name was Chrissie. It was engraved on a locket Tozzi found on her bureau: “To Chrissie with all our love—Mom and Dad.” Two of the boys shared a very cluttered room with bunk beds. There was a handmade sign on their door: “DO NOT TRESPASS—ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT—GREGORY KINNEY AND BILL KINNEY, JR., PROPRIETORS.” The two younger girls shared another room, a very pink room. One was named Virginia; Tozzi saw it written on the page edges of a geography textbook. The other girl’s name remained a mystery. In a small room no bigger than a good-sized closet, Tozzi found the little boy’s room. It was the room on the second floor directly over the foyer. Tozzi leaned over the crib and parted the curtains with the barrel of the .38. He was a little nervous about the Buick. It had been in this neighborhood since nine o’clock this morning, and now it was just after two. His wasn’t the only car parked on the street, though, so there was no reason for the cops to get suspicious. And actually the big old sedan looked like the kind of car someone’s maid might drive.

  Sitting in the Buick that morning, he’d watched the house, watched a school bus come for the two boys and the two younger girls, probably taking them to day camp. He watched the mailman making his rounds, watched gardeners and plumbers come and go, watched housewives leave then return with bags of groceries. Surveillance was always boring, and it made him edgy. Tozzi started worrying that he’d never get a look at Kinney’s wife. But just as he was about to chuck it all and get some lunch, a small blonde finally came out the front door. She had the little boy with her, holding
his hand as they walked down the front path. Tozzi could see that she was talking to him. When they got to the driveway, she scooped the kid up, kissed him, and put him in the car seat in the back of a metallic-blue Dodge Caravan. She got behind the wheel, turned the engine over, and backed out of the drive.

  Women never let their cars warm up, Tozzi noticed. If you don’t let the oil circulate for a minute or so, it can be murder on the valves down the line. Tozzi imagined Kinney lecturing his wife about the expense of a valve job. He’d never met Kinney, but he imagined him as being pompous and critical. Gibbons described him as an Ivy League type. Observing his home, Tozzi pictured him as a Yuppie. But Kinney was also a trained professional with strong psychopathic tendencies, capable of committing murder to accomplish his dubious goals. It was a description that could also fit himself, Tozzi realized. He was sure that was how Ivers viewed his little runaway.

  Gibbons had called late last night at the motel and told him about his breakfast meeting with Kinney. He gave Tozzi an address in Montclair, New Jersey, told him it was Kinney’s home address.

  “Check out the place in daylight,” Gibbons had suggested. “Watch his wife, get a description for me, the kids too and where they go to school. Find out what kind of cars they drive. I need to know intimate things about his home life so I can make him think twice before he does anything. We mean business too, I want him to understand that. Right now he thinks we’re sitting ducks. We’ve got to make him realize that retaliation is part of the game.”

  “You sound like me,” Tozzi said.

  Gibbons didn’t respond.

  “How’d you manage to get his address?” All agents had to have unlisted home phone numbers, and only SACs, their assistants, and the brass in Washington had access to personnel files.

  “I followed him when he went out for lunch. He went to a discount sporting-goods store over by City Hall and bought himself a pair of sneakers. I saw that he paid with a credit card. Later that afternoon, I waited till he went to the File Room, then I went to his cubicle. The sneakers were in a plastic bag behind his desk. He left his MasterCard receipt in the bag. As I suspected, he had to write his address and home phone on the slip.”

  “You’d think he’d be more careful.”

  “Well, he wasn’t.”

  Walking through the silent house now, Tozzi wondered if he could be so careless. A simple oversight like that could cost him his life. He thought back over his actions of the past couple of days, looking for the fatal mistake. He couldn’t think of any. But of course, Kinney’s carelessness probably wouldn’t occur to him right away either. Not until it was too late.

  Tozzi left the toddler’s room and went into the master bedroom, which was dominated by a large four-poster bed. The oak posts were thick and imposing; the tops were carved pineapples. It crossed his mind that the Kinneys might be kinky.

  On the dresser there were some family pictures. Tozzi studied the group shot of the kids sitting in a line back to front. It must have been taken a few years ago because Chrissie still looked like a kid. Tozzi had seen a more recent photo in her room. She was cute.

  There was a picture of Mrs. Kinney sitting on a donkey with a big sombrero on her head. She looked happier in this picture than she did in person. The Kinneys’ wedding picture was also there, a studio portrait, him in a tux sidled up behind his beaming bride. Tozzi studied Kinney’s face. He had the sharp features of a go-getter and a Kennedy haircut. In fact, he looked like he could be some distant cousin of the Kennedys. He had that look of aggressive privilege. What he didn’t already have he’d go out and get for himself.

  Tozzi glanced back at the picture of mousy Mrs. Kinney sitting on the donkey and he thought about Joanne. Why was it that guys like Kinney always have everything? Wife, family, nice house in an upscale neighborhood. Even if he hadn’t chosen to go renegade, Tozzi doubted that he could ever have all this. Certainly not with Joanne. Maybe the Irish just assimilated better than the Italians. Italians are born suspicious, and their suspicion makes them suspicious to others, automatic outsiders. Who knows? Maybe he’d just made the wrong choices. He’d become the wrong kind of criminal. A vigilante just isn’t bad enough to get the kind of rewards Kinney got. What was that phrase he saw on a hooker’s T-shirt once?—“Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere.”

  In the bathroom off the master bedroom, Tozzi found a pair of beat-up New Balance running shoes, size ten. On a hook behind the door hung a pair of blue nylon running shorts and a heavyweight gray T-shirt. There was an L.L. Bean label in the neck of the shirt. On the sink there was a tube of Aim toothpaste. Opening the medicine cabinet, Tozzi saw that they had both Anacin and Tylenol. Mrs. Kinney also had a prescription for Placidyl, a mild tranquilizer. He saw from the prescription that her first name was Elaine. Tozzi poked around some more and discovered Mrs. Kinney’s diaphragm next to a crushed tube of spermicidal jelly. A woman with six kids wasn’t much of a recommendation for the diaphragm, he thought.

  Suddenly he heard something. He stopped breathing, the gun clutched in his hand, pointed up. It came from downstairs, sounded like a door closing.

  “Anybody home?” It was a girl’s voice, most likely Chrissie the teenager, though it could’ve been Elaine Kinney.

  Tozzi went back into the bedroom and stood by the open doorway, listening.

  “Any of you assholes home?” she repeated bitterly. It had to be the teenager.

  Tozzi heard some banging, and he imagined her just getting home from a summer job or maybe summer school, dropping her bag on the wood floor, and moodily skulking around the house. He wondered what he’d do if she found him there. She was just a kid, no threat, and so what if she saw his face? Still, it would be better if Chrissie didn’t see an intruder in the house. Kinney should remain confident of his family’s security. It would shake him up all the more when Gibbons let him know that his home had been violated.

  Tozzi peered out the doorway and waited for Chrissie to give him an indication of where she was so he could decide how he’d get out of the house. Then in the small antique mirror hanging at the top of the stairs, he saw her. She was coming upstairs. She had a can of soda in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  He stepped away from the doorway and got behind the door. He could hear her going into the bathroom off the hallway. It was on the other side of the wall right behind him. He could feel her presence in there.

  “Shit.” She said it in a prolonged whine.

  He felt her footsteps leaving the bathroom. He moved closer to the doorway. He waited. When he dared to peer out into the hall again, he saw that the phone that had been on a table at the top of the stairway was gone and the cord extended into Chrissie’s room.

  Good, he thought as he rolled up his pant leg and put the .38 in his ankle holster. Once she started yakking, he could slip downstairs and out the side door through the kitchen, the same way he came in.

  Treading carefully, he went out into the hallway, concentrating on getting past Chrissie’s door. He was relieved when he saw that she’d closed her door and he hurried to get to the stairs, but as he stepped over the telephone wire he could hear that she was sobbing. He gently pressed his back against the wall and listened for a moment.

  “No,” she whined. “Nothing. I just checked . . . They’ve been sore all week . . . No, not in the morning. It’s always just before dinner. I don’t think any of them know I’ve been throwing up every day, but they’re gonna find out sooner or later, I know it. What am I gonna do?”

  Her sobs were heartbreaking. Tozzi stayed and listened.

  “No, that’s no good . . . How can you say that, Jenny? He didn’t do it on purpose . . . I can’t tell him, are you crazy? I don’t want anyone to know. Come on, Jenny, think of something. Do you think your sister might let me use her driver’s license? . . . So I can get an abortion without my parents knowing about it, that’s why. Sometimes you’re so stupid . . .”

  Tozzi started down the stairs. He’d heard
enough to know the story. He just wasn’t sure whether he’d tell Gibbons. Hearing the news about his daughter’s pregnancy from Gibbons’s mouth would certainly rattle Kinney, but it made Tozzi uncomfortable. It didn’t seem right to take advantage of the kid’s situation. She had enough problems. He’d have to think about this.

  He got to the bottom of the stairs and headed for the kitchen. It was the kind of kitchen you see in commercials for floor wax, everything clean and shining. The appliances seemed relatively new, and though the counters were cluttered and the refrigerator door was a display space for crayon drawings held up by magnets shaped like barnyard animals, this kitchen just didn’t have the appropriate amount of wear and tear that a family of eight should give it. Tozzi hated it for its pristine condition. It was so perfect, such a deception. Lando’s wife kept their kitchen spotless, but he deserved perfection. Any man who could kill the way Kinney killed Lando, Blaney, and Novick deserved to eat in a slaughterhouse.

  Suddenly he heard the front door opening. Loud voices, the boys. Tozzi looked around the room frantically for something he could steal, something he could take away from Kinney. He wanted to hurt this monster, get back at him any way he could.

  The morning’s mail lay on the counter: a few bills, a letter, the latest Redbook, a flier from ShopRite. Quickly Tozzi snatched the envelopes and slipped out the side door. His head was throbbing as he hid in the shrubs and waited for Kinney’s kids to get inside and shut the door. The school bus was pulling away from the curb. They must’ve just gotten back from day camp. When the kids were inside and the bus was gone, Tozzi walked briskly across the lawn and headed for the Buick. The envelopes were crumpled in his hand. He was furious. Kinney didn’t deserve all this, the bastard. It wasn’t fair.