TWENTY-NINE
Gibbons had a lot on his mind. He looked at his watch again as he walked down Centre Street. It was just after ten A.M. Kinney would be late for his meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s office. Good.
The heat had let up some, but Gibbons really hadn’t noticed. He did notice that the traffic in the city was somewhat lighter than usual, the pace of the pedestrians a little more relaxed. Late August in Manhattan was always like this, slow and lazy.
But Gibbons couldn’t relax. He had too much on his mind. The names of Kinney’s children rolled around in his head like glass marbles, colliding with all the other miscellaneous information Tozzi had picked up about the Kinney family. He imagined the eight Kinneys and how they lived their lives, and his head became their big Victorian house. He wondered about them. He wondered whether Elaine Kinney had any inkling that she was married to a killer. He wondered how screwed up the kids would become after they found out the truth about their father. He wondered which ones would become bitter and resentful of their father and which ones would defend him with blind loyalty. He wondered if it would be better for them if New York had the death penalty so that at least Kinney’s physical presence could be obliterated. He wondered about Chrissie and whether he should use what he knew about her being pregnant. He wondered about Tozzi, whether he found the key or not. He wondered whether Tozzi remembered to get everything. He wondered about a lot of unimportant things so that he didn’t have to wonder about himself. Because if he started worrying about himself, he’d smell like bait for sure.
He kept walking until Centre Street widened at Foley Square. The courthouse with its imposing row of Greek columns loomed over the square, and Gibbons suddenly remembered something a female defense attorney had once told him. Walking up those courthouse steps scares the shit out of everyone who goes on trial here, she’d said. The sight of those columns just kills any hope you might have had left because they tell the future. Defendants see prison bars in those columns. They see cops standing at attention, they see gun barrels. Defendants who’d already served some time see rock-hard dicks, and they cringe at the thought of going back to jail. Gibbons always remembered these images when he came down this way. He also remembered that it was the first time he’d ever heard a woman use the word “dick.” She was a judge now.
He headed for the small park across the street from the courthouse. Kinney was standing with his foot up on a bench right where Gibbons told him to be. As usual Kinney looked poised, relaxed, and confident. Kinney looked like an ad for the black pinstripe suit he was wearing. He hardly looked like someone who was already fifteen minutes late for an important meeting.
“What’s so urgent, Bert?” Kinney’s tone had the kind of smugness rich people use with workmen, a false friendliness meant to underline his perceived position of control. Gibbons wondered whether Varga used that tone with him, and now Kinney finally had the opportunity to use it on someone else.
Gibbons stared at the courthouse. “Eighty-five Dodge Caravan, metallic blue, Jersey plates ATJ-79H.”
The smirk disappeared from Kinney’s face.
“68 Mount Holly Avenue. A yellow Victorian with blue trim.”
“It’s buff, not yellow,” Kinney said.
Gibbons focused on the column just to the right of the front doors and continued. “The master bedroom is dark blue and light brown. You sleep in a four-poster bed with pineapples on the heads. The master bathroom has speckled tan tiles. You like New Balance jogging shoes. There’s a dirty gray T-shirt and blue nylon shorts hanging up behind the door. You use Aim toothpaste and Mitchum deodorant. Your wife rode a burro once and wore a sombrero.”
“If this is your best shot at blackmail, my friend—”
Gibbons cut him off. “Gregory and Bill Junior share a room. They both go to the Frelingheysen Middle School. Chrissie goes to Montclair High. The younger girls go to Grover Cleveland Elementary. Your little boy’s name is Sean, and there are clowns on the wallpaper in his room.”
“Very stupid, Bert. Why tell me that Tozzi broke into my house? Now that I know, do you think I’ll let it happen again? You wasted your best shot.”
Gibbons could hear the tension in his voice. Kinney was trying very hard to maintain his air of smug superiority.
“Your wife is a dyed blonde, about five-one or -two. She smokes Trues and takes Placidyl for her nerves. She uses a diaphragm and jelly.”
“I’m singularly unimpressed, Bert. This is the senseless, useless, and desperate act of a doomed man. No, two doomed men.”
Gibbons clenched his fist. He had no choice. Kinney had to be pushed as far as possible. “Your daughter Chrissie doesn’t use anything,” Gibbons said flatly. “She just found out she’s pregnant.”
He could hear Kinney’s erratic breathing. When he glanced at his face, Gibbons finally caught a glimpse of Steve “the Hun” Pagano. Kinney’s face contained all the pure, mindless hate of an attack Doberman baring its teeth at a stranger. This was the monster who slaughtered Lando, Blaney, and Novick.
The revelation was brief, and it chilled Gibbons to the bone, but he was satisfied that he’d accomplished his goal. He looked Kinney in the eye to seal the dare, then turned his back on the courthouse and walked away. It was then that one of the rare moments in the city happened to occur. By some fluke of traffic control, there were no cars, buses, or trucks within earshot, and Gibbons could hear his own footsteps on the pavement as he headed back to the field office.
There was a man on first and a man on third, and Gary Carter was up at bat. The count was two and one. Tozzi strained to see the TV in the living room as he unpacked the groceries in Gibbons’s closet of a kitchen. Goddamn cheap son-of-a-bitch. A thirteen-inch black and white. Nobody’s got black and white anymore.
Tozzi wasn’t much of a baseball fan, but he turned on the Mets game as soon as he got into the apartment. He was nervous and he needed some noise. He wished the hell Carter would blast the next one. He was itchy for some action.
He left the jar of instant coffee out on the counter and put the big plastic bottles of Coke in the refrigerator. Get a lot of stuff with caffeine, Gibbons had told him.
The cans of Spam, beans, and vegetables went into the cupboard with the big can of Crisco. Tozzi was still skeptical about Gibbons’s greasy-food theory. He claimed that back in the bad old days when the Bureau looked the other way on marathon interrogation sessions, one of the tricks was to feed the suspect the greasiest shit you could make. Once the sludge started to build up in the suspect’s stomach, his resistance started to melt. A few days’ worth of Crisco-fried everything served with a bottomless cup of muddy coffee often lubricated the lips. It sounded a little too Dragnet for Tozzi, but Gibbons swore that it had broken some pretty hard-ass punks in his day, and Gibbons seemed pretty eager to take care of Kinney the old-fashioned way. Tozzi was prepared to eat a lot of take-out for the next few days.
From what he knew about Kinney, though, Tozzi doubted that this guy would admit to anything. Which was fine with Tozzi. If Kinney didn’t want to confess, he was prepared to take care of him the way he took care of Vinnie Clams and the faggot congressman and the lawyer Lefkowitz. He didn’t believe that Kinney was the only way to get to Varga. He could see Kinney clamming up and just sitting tight through all this because Kinney probably knew there was no hard evidence that could be used against him in court. But that was okay because there was no way that Tozzi was going to let Kinney fly, no matter what Gibbons said. Right now all Tozzi was worried about was Kinney taking the bait and following Gibbons back here. As Tozzi saw it, it all depended on how pissed off Kinney would get about having his privacy violated and how reckless it would make him. But unfortunately Kinney didn’t get ruffled easily. He was very cool. Tozzi hoped Gibbons decided to tell him about his daughter.
Tozzi grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and sat down on the couch. The pitcher threw the ball and Carter just watched it sail by. It looked like a strike to Tozzi, but the umpire
called it a ball. Carter walked and now the bases were loaded.
“Fuck you, Carter,” he said as he popped the top on the beer can.
Tozzi wanted to see a homer.
From the entrance of the underground parking garage on Centre Street, Gibbons could see Kinney’s silver Volvo double-parked up the block. He was being too obvious, and that made Gibbons suspicious. Gibbons hoped that this carelessness was due to his rage. Otherwise what Kinney was doing was playing decoy, which meant he had called Varga for support troops. Even on short notice, Varga could probably provide shooters.
Gibbons scanned the area around him. It was about five-thirty. There was a pack of executives waiting for their cars to be brought up. There was the crew of attendants. There were plenty of pedestrians passing by. Any one of them could be a shooter, and every one of them could end up an innocent victim. He kept his right hand free just in case he needed Excalibur in a hurry.
Cars kept coming up the ramp, and Gibbons wondered whether one of them would have a shooter slumped down in the backseat. Kinney probably regretted that this wasn’t one of those garages where you went to get your own car. That would’ve been perfect for a hit. Kinney probably could’ve handled that alone.
When his green Ford LTD arrived, Gibbons tensed. He walked around the back of the car and checked the backseat. Empty. The Puerto Rican attendant must’ve thought Gibbons was checking to see if he stole anything. He got out of his car and shoved the ticket at Gibbons. “Thirteen-seventy-five,” he said belligerently. “Pay the cashier.”
Gibbons already had a twenty ready. “Here, you pay the cashier,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. Keep the change.”
The Puerto Rican didn’t object. Gibbons didn’t want to get tied up with change.
He glanced into the backseat once more before he got into the car. He put it in gear with his right hand, then steered with his left, replacing his right on the butt of his gun under his jacket.
He drove past the silver Volvo and caught the light at the corner. In the rearview mirror he saw the Volvo pull into traffic and get in line behind him. There was a cab between them. He waited, watching the mirrors. When the light turned green, Gibbons turned left onto a side street, heading for Church Street. At Church Street he turned right and proceeded north. As he crossed Canal Street, traffic started to flow a little better and he took the wheel with his other hand.
Tozzi tuned the radio back to Gibbons’s all-news station, then shut it off. He went to the window in the living room and looked down at the back alley and the line of garage stalls where Gibbons parked his car. Gibbons had told him that he wouldn’t be able to see his space from the apartment because it was down near the end of the alley, but Tozzi looked anyway. He knew Gibbons should be on his way home now. He’d be coming through the Lincoln Tunnel, taking the first exit, then following Boulevard East into Weehawken to his apartment just one block off the palisades that overlooked the river. Tozzi could see the tallest buildings on the Manhattan skyline over the top of the apartment on the other side of the alley. His eye went right to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It was about a ten-minute walk from the field office.
He’d watched the Mets lose it in the tenth inning, then switched to the Yankees-Tigers game, which was just starting up in Detroit. Smokey Robinson sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” and did an amazingly catchy rendition. After two dull, scoreless innings, Tozzi turned off the TV, tuned in a classic-rock’n’roll station on the radio, and read the newspaper. He’d listened until they played “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” then he shut it off. He’d hated Crosby, Stills, and Nash in the sixties, and he still hated them.
The plan was pretty straightforward. He was supposed to wait in the apartment, out of sight, while Gibbons lured Kinney up to his place. They figured it was likely that Kinney would pull a gun on Gibbons and order him upstairs. When they got inside, Tozzi would ambush him and disarm him. Simple.
Right. Unless, of course, Kinney didn’t take the bait. Or he called for support troops. Or he ambushed Gibbons before they got to the apartment. Or, or, or . . .
There was too much room for a screwup. Maybe their plan was simpleminded, not simple. The FBI operates on three basic principles: overwhelming manpower, overwhelming firepower, and the element of surprise. That’s the way Tozzi learned it at Quantico. But as he thought about what Kinney did to Lando, Blaney, and Novick, he wasn’t so sure two against one was overwhelming enough. Tozzi realized that there were too many variables they’d overlooked. They were counting on Kinney becoming irrational, but so far he’d shown no signs of ever losing his cool. And what about Gibbons? Was he really up to this? Were his age and the time he’d spent in retirement factors to consider? Tozzi worried that they were.
He shut off the air conditioner and opened a window. If it was too cool when they walked in, Kinney would be suspicious. Tozzi looked down at the alley again, then picked up the paper from the coffee table. He returned to the couch and started reading the personals to take his mind off his concerns for his old partner.
Gibbons turned into the cobblestone alley, and all he could hear over the whoosh of the air conditioner were the thumps and squeaks of his tires going over the uneven stones. Rush-hour traffic was as bad as usual, and this short trip down the alley always came as a welcome relief. But not today.
He’d lost the silver Volvo somewhere on the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel, but that didn’t matter. Kinney was a clever guy and an experienced agent. If Gibbons could find out where he lived, he could find out where Gibbons lived.
Pulling up to his stall, Gibbons wondered if Kinney could’ve possibly beaten him through the tunnel. He put the car into reverse and started to back into his space. A blazing orange sun reflected off the windows of the building across the alley. He wondered if Tozzi was ready. In the rearview mirror he could see the cool shadows under the stall, then the glint of his approaching back-up lights on the fenders of the cars on either side. When he cut the engine and put it in park, he just sat there for a moment. It was quiet and dark and insulated under there. For a moment, Gibbons almost felt safe.
Tozzi was going nuts. It was twenty of seven and no one had showed. Something had gone wrong. He was worried about Gibbons.
Suddenly there was an insistent knock on the door, four quick raps.
Tozzi drew his weapon and got behind the door. Why was he knocking? Why would he be knocking?
The knocking turned into pounding. “Hey, anybody home?” an annoyed voice called through the door.
Tozzi pictured the door flying open, followed by a hail of gunfire. “Who is it?” he answered, his heart pounding.
“Pizza.”
“What?”
“Pizza, pizza. I got a pizza for 6D. Gibbons, right?”
Tozzi paused. It was a trap, he knew it. He crossed the doorway quickly and put on the chain lock. Standing away from the door, gun ready, he opened it a crack. There was a woolly-headed black kid in bright yellow high-top sneakers holding a pizza box. The name “Gibbons” was scrawled on the box in black crayon.
“Take it, man. It’s already paid for,” the kid said.
“What do you mean it’s already paid for?”
“Look, man, I just deliver them.”
Tozzi didn’t move.
“Hey, look, Jack, I got no time for this. I’ll just leave it right here, okay?” The kid put the box down on the floor and left.
Tozzi stared at it. His throat was so constricted it ached. Lando, Blaney, and Novick. Oh, God.
He stared at it for a few minutes, afraid to open the door because he was afraid to open the box. But he had to know. Sliding the chain from the plate, he opened the door and peered out, right and left, the .38 clutched in his hand. The hall was empty.
He slid the pizza box in with his foot, then shut the door and locked it. He stared down at it for a moment before he picked it up and laid it on the table. He broke the tape on the sides and front, then slowly opened the lid.
Sitti
ng in the middle of the pizza was a gun, a .38 Colt revolver, Gibbons’s gun, Excalibur. It lay there on its side in a puddle of tomato-tainted oil like a dead fish.
Strings of mozzarella cheese clung to Excalibur as he lifted it from the pizza. His hand was trembling as he stared at it. “Oh, shit,” he murmured.
THIRTY
Gibbons was on his hands and knees, his head tucked into his chest, taking slow shallow breaths to minimize the pain that racked his body. It was all he could do, handcuffed to the steampipe the way he was. Conserve your strength, he kept telling himself. But what for? Another whack with the rubber hose? He looked at his watch. This had been going on for fifty minutes now, and he had a feeling Kinney was just beginning.
Just then another punishing blow landed on that same shoulder. He kept thinking it must be separated by now, though he had no idea what a seperated shoulder should feel like.
Kinney performed with that damn length of black hose, like a ballet dancer, slowly getting up on his toes for every stroke, whipping it down backhand across Gibbons’s back and shoulders, always careful with his follow-through. Kinney took his time and placed the blows precisely, pausing now and then to explain his method.
“Never go fast with a beating, Bert,” he said, pausing to take aim again, this time making Gibbons’s tailbone throb. “Speed anesthetizes the experience. You fall into a rhythm and mentally the victim prepares for the blows. The hose does the damage, yes, but it’s pain without fear, and that defeats the purpose. Your man has to wonder when it’s coming next. He’s got to taste that terror of anticipation, Bert.” Suddenly the hose ripped into the back of Gibbons’s head. “Give him time to think that maybe it’s finally over. Present him with hope . . . then take it away.”
Bad Guys Page 22
