Varga just stared at him. He was thinking. “Okay,” he said softly, nodding his head slightly, then he reached over and took Kinney’s beer bottle and drank what was left in it. “Will this affect your other work?”
Kinney shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ve been getting down to Atlantic City at least once a week. I’ve already got one store lined up, and I’m working on four more in the area. We’ve got the warehouse in Margate, and I’ve got a line on a torch who lives down near there. He’s a little crazy, a Vietnam vet who can’t find work anywhere, but he’s got a clean record. I’ve checked.”
Varga didn’t react one way or the other, the fat bastard. A little approval would be nice.
“Let me know if you get tied up with this Tozzi thing. I want to get the Atlantic City operation rolling soon.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have everything ready in six weeks. Eight weeks max.” What a fucking old lady.
Varga started nodding again. “Have you thought about the ‘catering job’ I asked you about?” he said, abruptly changing the subject.
“Yeah. How many this time?”
“Just one.”
“Who?”
“Orlando Guzman. He’s an independent dealer from East Orange who thinks he doesn’t need me. He’s got a very big mouth, and I don’t like that. The other independents have to see that they can’t work alone anymore. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“You want to make an example out of him. I understand.”
“So are you interested?”
Kinney swirled the beer in his glass as he thought about it. Killing was no big deal, and when you came down to it, taking a man’s head off was no worse than putting a few bullets into his chest. The result was the same—dead is dead. Lopping heads off was just something he could do that no one else could seem to stomach. It wasn’t that he enjoyed it or anything. Not really.
“You said thirty thousand, right?”
Varga nodded. “I’ll make all the arrangements. You just show up.”
Kinney picked up an unused butter knife from the table and held it like a scalpel with his index finger over the back of the blade. “Do I have to bring my own?”
Varga shook his head. “I’ll have knives there waiting for you.”
Kinney scratched the back of his head. He was considering his chances of bargaining for a higher fee.
“Tell me,” Varga suddenly said. “How’re the kids, Steve?” He was grinning like a sultan.
“Fine.” Kinney put down the knife. “All right. I’ll do it.” You fat bastard.
“I’ll give you the details next week sometime.” Varga pulled a twenty out of the side pocket of his jacket and threw it down on the table, then he raised two fingers and waved to Feeney.
In the mirror, Kinney saw the punk get off his stool and face Varga, standing there with feet spread apart and his head cocked to one side like a Jimmy Cagney tough guy. What a joke.
“I’ll be talking to you,” Varga said, hauling himself out of the booth.
“Yeah, take it easy.”
Varga stood over him and looked him in the eye. “Yeah . . . you too.”
Kinney started thinking about his house in the suburbs, the layout of the first floor, where the ground-floor windows were and which ones were partially covered by high shrubs. He wondered how much it would cost to put in a good alarm system. He glanced into the mirror and saw Varga’s enormous hips going out the door. Fat bastard.
FIVE
Tozzi wanted to unbutton his collar in the worst way, but he knew he couldn’t. It would be out of character for a bank executive. Instead he consciously sat up straight, one leg neatly crossed over the other so as not to wrinkle his pants, and flipped through a back issue of Datamation magazine. He stopped at an article on CAD/CAM systems for small manufacturers because it looked like something a bank vp would probably read. He read the first couple of paragraphs, wondering what the fuck a CAD/CAM system was. He glanced up at the receptionist, who was busy scribbling down a telephone message on one of those pink while-you-were-away pads.
Would a banker get off on a shelf like hers? he wondered. Sure, why not? He kept on admiring her anatomy until her intercom buzzed and she suddenly looked up at him.
“Mr. Thompson?” she said, holding the phone to her ear as she flashed him the sweetest smile he’d gotten from a woman in a long time. “Ms. Varga will see you now.”
Tozzi smiled gratefully at the fetching brunette who smiled back so cordially. The company logo hung on the wall over her head, squat chrome letters that spelled out DATAREACH, INC. “Go down this hallway all the way,” the brunette said, “then turn right. Ms. Varga’s is the corner office.”
“Thank you,” he said. He picked up his briefcase, which was empty except for a 9mm Beretta folded inside a copy of yesterday’s unread Wall Street Journal. Tozzi didn’t like having his weapon there, out of reach, but his good suit, the blue European-cut double-breasted, was too tight for a shoulder holster or even a belt clip, and for this one the image was more important than accessibility to firepower.
He turned right down the carpeted corridor, mindful of his strides. Cops have a certain walk, a woman once told him. If you know the walk, you can spot a cop a block away. Unfortunately she never told him what it was about a cop’s walk that gives him away. Anyway, technically he wasn’t a cop anymore, he was a fed. Tozzi glanced into the open doorways of the offices he passed. Each one contained an intense-looking executive with a phone on his shoulder and a faithful computer terminal beaming green by his side. None of these guys looked over thirty.
At the end of the hall just outside Ms. Varga’s office there was a big picture window. In the foreground two squat futuristic black-glass-and-steel office buildings squared off like robot pit bulls across a blacktop parking lot. In the background the Garden State Parkway raced by.
Tozzi poked his head through the doorway. “Ms. Varga?” he said, forcing that cordial smile. “Robert Thompson.”
This brunette stared hard at him from behind an oversized desk. The high cheekbones gave her a cunning hard-ass look, like a female Jack Palance. She was wearing a gray worsted suit over a peach silk ascot-collared blouse with a gold stickpin; she wore her clothes like armor. Her eyes were oval, dark, and slightly upturned. They were classic suspicious Sicilian eyes, just like her old man’s.
“Have a seat . . . Mr. Thompson.” There was a sardonic edge to the way she said that. Tozzi immediately wished he had Gibbons working with him on this one. Gibbons was always better at playing a businessman. WASPs always seemed more normal in an office, more believable.
He noticed the brass nameplate on her desk as he sat down, JOANNE c. VARGA. Why the hell did she still use his name? But then it occurred to him that her maiden name might be just as awkward for her in the business world. Tozzi somehow felt better thinking of her as Joanne Collesano, though.
Tozzi reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the phony business card he had ready: Robert W. Thompson, Vice President, Customer Relations, Citibank. She ignored the card and abruptly stood up and went to close the door.
Tozzi got that sinking feeling that he was blowing it before he even got started.
“Ms. Varga, we have a rather unusual problem and I’m hoping you can help us. You see, your ex-husband—”
“We were never divorced,” she said, cutting him off curtly as she went back to her desk.
“Oh . . . Well, to get to the point, Mr. Varga had purchased several certificates of deposit from Citibank, all with long-term maturity dates, and now they’ve matured. These CDs are currently worth in excess of eighty thousand dollars. Our problem is that obviously we can’t locate him to find out whether he wants to reinvest this money in new CDs or cash them in.”
Tozzi thought he’d made a mistake the moment he heard himself say “cash them in.” There had to be a more professional banking phrase for that. But he couldn’t stall now. The best thing to do was to keep talking and hope she did
n’t suspect anything.
“We’ve tried to get in touch with him through the Justice Department and I personally discussed the matter with the people there in charge of the Witness Security Program, but that was eight months ago and I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory reply. Legally, Citibank is in an rather sticky situation here. We can’t hold on to his money without his expressed intention of how he wants it invested, and yet we can’t treat this the way we would treat, say, the estate of a deceased customer. So, Ms. Varga, we were hoping you could help us get in touch with him . . . if that’s possible.”
She stared right through him, those hard Sicilian eyes just waiting for him to hang himself.
“Who the hell do you think you’re kidding?” she said.
“Pardon?”
She lit a cigarette and just held it poised between her fingers, her elbow resting on the desktop. Her nails were Chinese red.
“Mr. Thompson, when I was in second grade, I came home from school one day to find three strange men sitting in the living room with my father. They wore dark suits and overcoats, and they kept their hats on in the house. One of them tried to be nice to me, asked me how my day at school was, but my father told him to shut up and leave me alone. Then he told me to go into the kitchen with my mother for cookies and milk. By the time I came back, everybody was gone, my father too. They were federal agents, there to arrest my father.”
I bet one of them was Gibbons, Tozzi thought.
“I’ve seen a lot of cops in my life, Mr. Thompson. Local cops, state cops. All kinds of federal cops, FBI agents, Treasury agents, marshals. As you might imagine, the daughter of a big bad mobster eventually becomes sort of an expert on cops. There’s something about cops, all cops, whether they’re in uniform or undercover, no matter what their rank is. It’s something I can smell. And you know what, Mr. Thompson? You reek.”
He couldn’t hold back the grin. He was beginning to like her.
“Ms. Varga, are you suggesting that I’m a policeman?” He wasn’t very good at righteous indignation either, but so what? The jig was up.
“I’m sure you’re a cop of one kind or another. I called Citibank this morning. They have no Robert Thompson in Customer Relations. You shouldn’t have made an appointment in advance. Most undercover cops just show up, apologize, and say they just happened to be in the neighborhood, something lame like that.”
“You’re not the type to see visitors on the spur of the moment, Ms. Varga, not even from Citibank. Corporate vice presidents tend to insist that you make an appointment.”
She smiled and leaned back in her high-back leather swivel chair. “Life is tough.” And it could get tougher, she thought.
Tozzi unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not giving up that easy, are you?”
Tozzi covered his lips with his fist and nodded thoughtfully. “Okay . . . suppose I am a cop. What do you think I want with you?”
“Well, since you came in with that cock-and-bull story about Richie’s CDs, I assume it has something to do with him.”
“So what is it I want to know about him?”
She picked up a carved jade letter opener and held it lengthwise between her index fingers. She knew what he wanted. “Now that’s an interesting question, seeing that you guys have him socked away in the Witness Security Program. Don’t tell me that after all this time you’re beginning to doubt the gospel according to Richie Varga?”
“You’re referring to Varga’s federal grand jury testimony against your father and the other”—he paused deliberately as if searching for the right word—“reputed mob bosses?”
“Hallelujah,” she muttered. Where’d they find this one?
“I take it you think your husband did your father dirty?”
“That’s putting it mildly. Do you know how many lives he ruined with his testimony? Do you know how many people were killed because of him? Do you? Richie put terrible doubts into people’s minds. They couldn’t trust each other after Richie started telling his tales. And in any business, Mr. Thompson, if you can’t trust someone, you don’t need him.” Sometimes she startled herself with this forthright sincerity. It wasn’t easy keeping a straight face.
“These people you’re referring to are the other bosses Richie fingered?”
“Not just them. Everybody on down the line under them.” She shook her head. “You guys never got it, did you? Richie Varga destroyed the New York families. He violated their trust and screwed them royally, blew the entire system to pieces. And goddamn Richie did it all by himself.” Those hard eyes were glinting with fury now.
“So what’s left? Capos, lieutenants, soldiers—all of them either dead or in hiding,” Tozzi said. “No one answers to no one anymore. It’s all freelancers and rookies out there now. And a lot of people are getting hurt as a result.”
“That’s right, Mr. Thompson. But if you know all this, what do you want from me?” I want Richie, Ms. Varga.
“I want to know about Richie.”
“Why don’t you go talk to him yourself? He likes to tell stories.”
When Tozzi didn’t answer, she leaned forward and laid the letter opener on the blotter. She studied his face for a moment. “You’re not a cop, are you? You want to know where Richie is. Somebody finally put a hit on him.” She relaxed her face for the first time and hoped she was convincing.
Tozzi said nothing
She looked at the ceiling and shook out her thick dark hair. “Boy-o-boy, do I ever wish I could help you.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
She glared at him. “If I did, he wouldn’t be breathing now. My father would see to that.”
“If your father still has connections, why can’t they track Richie down?”
Joanne picked up the letter opener again and held it by the tip as if she were going to throw it. “Who’re you working for?”
Tozzi just stared at her.
“You’re not working for my father, I know that. So it’s got to be either Giovinazzo, Mistretta, or Luccarelli. Or maybe all three of them.” She wondered how he’d react to her mentioning names. Would he think she knew more than an innocent woman should?
“Why would I be working for them?”
She laughed out loud. The answer was obvious. “Betraying a family is one thing, but betraying the three biggest families in New York and getting away with it is unimaginable. There’s a lot of besmirched honor at stake here. In their eyes, Richie has to die.”
“How about you? Do you want him dead?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be a grieving widow.”
“But you wouldn’t take up a collection to buy the bullets?”
“Look, Mr. Thompson, I’m not a Mafia princess, if that’s what you’re insinuating. I’ve worked for this company for six years and I’m proud of my position here. What my father and his buddies do has nothing to do with me.”
“But you were married to Richie Varga, not exactly Mr. Clean.”
“My old man arranged that when I was nineteen. Richie was pretty good-looking back then, before he turned into a blimp. He was a big spender, and my father loved him like the son he never had. I liked what money could buy and I wanted to please my father, so I married him. Pure and simple.”
“Did you love him?”
Joanne rocked in her chair and gave him a sarcastic what-do-you-think look.
Tozzi looked embarrassed.
She swiveled toward the window and stared out at the cars rushing by on the parkway. She sighed and wondered how tenacious this guy was going to be. “Richie is somewhere out there with a new name, a new address, maybe a new wife, who knows? I’ve heard that the government even arranges for plastic surgery for some witnesses. If it was available I’m sure Richie got himself a new face too. Richie takes whatever he can get. It’s funny, though. He did so much damage, yet he wound up a hero because he cooperated with the federal prosecutors. A real all-A
merican boy. He fucked us all . . . and he got away with it.”
Tozzi pressed his lips together and nodded. After a moment, he grabbed his briefcase and got up to leave. She turned and looked up at him. He seemed frustrated. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of sympathizing with Jules Collesano’s daughter, of all people.
“Just one more thing,” he said, standing over her desk. “Does Richie have any distinguishing features, characteristics, mannerisms, something that can’t be fixed with plastic surgery, anything that might give him away?”
She looked away, a wicked little grin playing over her lips. “Well, there is one thing . . .” She let it hang coyly.
“What’s that?”
She glanced at her wristwatch. “Take me to lunch, Mr. Thompson, and we’ll discuss it.”
SIX
This was getting boring. Gibbons finally took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the pink vinyl kitchen chair he was sitting in. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt but left his collar buttoned and his tie up. Back in the old days, it was against the rules for an agent to loosen his collar while on duty. It had become a habit with Gibbons.
The small apartment was hot and stuffy, but he hadn’t opened any windows. Open windows just broadcast your presence. But it wasn’t the heat that was bothering Gibbons, it was the place itself, the furnishings, the invisible presence of the old lady.
The kitchen was permeated with the smell of garlic, tomatoes, and anisette. There was a crucifix in every room, a crimson-robed statue of the Infant of Prague enshrined on the dresser in the bedroom, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary over the TV. Even the light-switch plates had saints on them. Gibbons wondered where the hell you could buy these crappy things. Maybe Catholics traded them like baseball cards.
Bad Guys Page 4