Bad Guys

by Anthony Bruno

  Finally Gibbons nodded slowly, and Tozzi laid a grateful hand on his shoulder. Gibbons glared at it. He didn’t like being touched.

  “So tell me, Sherlock. What’s your hunch?”

  “Okay. Lando, Blaney, and Novick worked for different families, but were obviously killed in the same hit. Very uncharacteristic for the mob. That kind of cooperation is almost unheard of. The families may have been tipped off about the undercovers at the same time, but why would they get together for the punishment?”

  “I give up. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Tozzi said, “but I do think there’s someone who may know, someone who was intimately connected with Luccarelli, Mistretta, and Giovinazzo.”

  “Richie Varga?”

  “You got it. He was their golden boy before he ratted on them. They loved him. I’ve got a feeling Varga may know something.”

  Gibbons laughed out loud. “Boy, are you whistling Dixie! You ever try to question someone under witness protection? To do it legit, you’ve got to put your business in writing, then submit it to the Justice Department. Then, when and if they get around to it—”

  “Fuck the Justice Department,” Tozzi said, grinning. “I’ve got my own channels.”

  Gibbons shook his head and smiled slyly. “I don’t doubt it,” he said.

  EIGHT

  Joanne Collesano Varga stuck her tongue in Tozzi’s ear. “Wake up, Mr. Thompson,” she purred. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  Tozzi stretched under the sheets, then rubbed his nose. The clock-radio on her side of the bed was tuned to a classical station. The volume was low—a string quartet playing something modern and atonal—just loud enough to be annoying.

  “Turn that shit off,” he groaned.

  “Don’t tell me you’re the type who listens to rock first thing in the morning.” She seemed mildly disappointed.

  “No.” He was lying. He could really go for some Springsteen or maybe Dire Straits right now. That and another go-round with Joanne.

  He turned toward her, pulled her close, and kissed her, and again he was surprised by the tobacco taste in her mouth. He didn’t smoke himself, but he could live with the taste. Considering what came with it, who wouldn’t?

  He palmed the back of her head, felt the glory of her thick dark tousled hair, and grinned under that kiss. She was the first really Italian-looking woman he’d ever slept with.

  She pulled away from him slowly. “I’ve got to go to work,” she whispered.

  “You’re a vice president. They won’t can you if you’re late. Call in sick and we’ll spend the day in bed.”

  She shook her head and grinned. A stray lock of raven hair curled up salaciously under her eye and gave him another hard-on.

  “It’s a tempting offer, Mr. Thompson, but . . .”

  “But what? You never had it so good. Admit it.”

  Under the sheets she ran her fingernail up the length of his dick. “Not with Richie, that’s for sure.”

  “Poor bastard,” Tozzi said. “Married to you and out of commission. Tragic.”

  “Unfortunately, he didn’t exactly see it that way.”

  “No?”

  “Hope always sprang eternal, even if he didn’t. We’d try it, he’d fall down on the job as usual, then he’d slap me around to work off his frustrations. It didn’t happen often . . . but often enough.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Only once.”

  Tozzi shook his head. Those violins were driving him nuts. “I can’t believe your father would let him get away with that. I’d have thought ole Jules’d make him live to regret the day he laid a hand on his little girl.”

  “Richie was the golden boy, the heir apparent. Jules Collesano just told his little girl to go back home and try harder, that it would all work out, don’t worry. My father took for the bastard.” She turned on her back and looked at the ceiling. “Richie was like a little dog, always eager, always loyal, ready whenever my father wanted him. That’s why he loved Richie, because he never disappointed him. Until the shit double-crossed him, that is. But before that my father considered Richie the ultimate ‘nice boy.’ Christ, he’d known Richie since he was a little kid.”

  “Yeah?”

  She pushed the curl out of her eye. Tozzi wished she’d left it.

  “Richie’s half-Cuban,” she said. “Did you know that? His father worked in a casino my father owned down in Havana before Castro took over. When Batista was in power.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” Tozzi stared at her as she stared at the ceiling and talked.

  “When the revolution came Richie’s family left Cuba and came to America. They were pretty desperate, apparently, when Manny—that’s Richie’s father—went to see my father. Manny had always been a good guy as far as my father was concerned, so he gave him a job running one of his bars in Camden. Nothing very glamorous, but my father-in-law was honored to work for Jules Collesano. You know, all that beholden Latino ‘I-am-forever-indebted-to-you’ crap. By the way, Richie changed his name, did you know that? It’s really Vargas. After his father died, he dropped the s so it would sound more Italian.”

  “No shit.” Tozzi wished the fuck those violins on the radio would drop dead.

  “Anyway, Manny pushed Richie into the business, always making a big show out of his kid paying respect to my father and his mob buddies. My father ate it up with a spoon. After Manny died, my old man took Richie under his wing, the son he never had. After a while it was just sort of understood that we’d get married.”

  Just like Ricky and Lucy. “How long were you married?” Tozzi asked.

  “I told you, technically we’re still married. I suppose I could divorce him now, but with him in hiding it hardly seems worth the effort. And can you imagine what an incredible hassle it would be trying to take him to court, with him in the Witness Security Program?”

  “While you were married—together I mean—did you ever get an inkling that he wasn’t on the up-and-up, that he really wanted to fuck your father over?”

  She glared at Tozzi and squeezed his dick hard. “Why are we talking about him? I’m not about to take the morning off just to talk about that asshole.”

  Tozzi grinned and got up on one elbow. As he kissed her again, running his tongue over her teeth, he reached over and spun the dial on the radio. He found a stronger station and David Bowie blared across the room. Quickly Tozzi turned down the volume and started to mumble-sing along with the radio. “Let’s dance, ba-da, ba-da, bum, bum, bum, ba-da-dum, dum, dum. Let’s dance . . .”

  He cupped her ass in his hands, buried his face in all that beautiful hair, and bit her earlobe. Bowie would do just fine.

  He felt her reach down and take his balls in both hands. She started to guide his rigid dick into her, arching her back to meet him. He was surprised to find that she was already wet and satiny. Suddenly he was in up to the hilt and she was pulling him closer, grinding into him, gyrating her hips around him.

  “Get up on your knees,” she whispered.

  When he did, she wrapped her arms around his back and pulled herself up into him, thrusting again and again with sweet, slow deliberation. She kept up the rhythm, twisting just a little with each thrust to change the angle of projection and drive him crazy.

  Then he felt it rising in him, and he tried to stop it, straining to keep from coming before she did.

  “Don’t hold back,” she said, licking his lips. “Let it go.”

  Her hips slammed against his and he couldn’t hold it any longer. It was like coming over the crest of the scariest part of a roller-coaster ride, a rush in the pit of your stomach as you go over the top, then falling fast out of control, rushing for the thrill. As it was happening, in the blur of ecstasy, he vaguely realized that he’d never experienced anything like this with a woman before. Not even remotely close.

  The phone rang while Tozzi was in the shower. Joanne answered it in the kitchen.

  “Hello?”

 
“What’s going on in there?”

  She paused and took a sip of coffee from a deep blue mug. “He’s in the shower now. I’ll get him out of here in a half hour.”

  She could hear his breathing on the other end. She knew he was mad.

  “I think he’s in love with me,” she said, grinning into the phone. “We did it twice last night and once more this morning.”

  “I hope he’s got AIDS.”

  She laughed. She knew he’d be pissed, and she loved it. Richie was so proprietary.

  “Everything’s all set,” he said. “Don’t take all day.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be out soon.”

  She hung up the phone, picked up her mug, and headed back to the dressing room to finish putting on her makeup.

  It was a little after ten, and they were standing in the parking lot behind her building making out like teenagers, him sitting on the fender of his cousin’s 300ZX, her in a navy-blue business suit leaning over him with her arms draped around his shoulders. They both wore shit-eating grins.

  This is outrageous, he thought.

  “I, ah, think I better get going,” she said with a throaty laugh, then ran her tongue over his lips.

  “You been saying that since seven o’clock this morning.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Tozzi glanced up at the elderly gentleman glaring down at them from his balcony. He had that pissy look of someone who’d paid two hundred grand for his small two-bedroom condo and for that price didn’t need two hot bods down in the parking lot showing him what he wouldn’t be getting anymore, if he’d ever gotten any in the first place. Tozzi was a little concerned, though, that the old guy might call the cops, and that kind of attention he didn’t need.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess you’re right. We better break this up before your neighbor up there has a coronary.”

  She didn’t bother to look up at the neighbor, just pressed her weight against Tozzi and ground her lips into his, her tongue going like mad. The springs of his cousin’s car squeaked under the weight of that incredible kiss. Tozzi suddenly remembered the term “soul-kissing” from high school.

  When they finally let go, she ran her hand affectionately over his cheek, kissed him once more lightly, and said, “I have to go.” She turned and walked away.

  “Hey,” he called after her, “Joanne, can we—will I be seeing you again?”

  She turned and smiled coyly as she kept walking, her heels keeping time. “That’s up to you, Phantom. You know where to find me . . . Mr. Thompson.” She dug her keys out of her shoulder bag and unlocked the door of a maroon Saab 900 Turbo. It looked new. The engine had a nice quiet purr as she pulled out of her space, waved to him in the rearview mirror, and took off for work.

  He waved back and got off the fender of his cousin’s silver Nissan. If Bobby only knew that he had his precious car, he’d go nuts, Tozzi thought. But he’d never find out, not unless he checked the odometer. Tozzi imagined fat Bobby coming home from his regular business trip to California, unlocking his garage, starting up the car, letting the engine get warm, then staring down at the mileage and having a shit fit, wondering how the hell they got into his garage, took his car, clocked over a thousand miles, and got it back in as if it’d never been touched.

  Tozzi reached into his pocket for the universal ignition key he’d “borrowed” from the Bureau and opened the car door. The day was already getting hot, so he took off his jacket and leaned inside to toss it in back. That’s when he sensed that something wasn’t right. It smelled different, like a cigar smoker’s clothes. Bobby chain-smoked cigarettes, not cigars, not those shitty little crooked ones from Italy, the ones that smelled like this. Tozzi glanced through the windshield. That old man was still glaring at him from his balcony.

  He backed out of the car carefully and crouched down to look under the dash. Then he contorted his body and tried to get a look under the seat. He noticed a bend of yellow wire that shouldn’t have been there.

  Tozzi stood up and backed away from the car, considering his alternatives. Call the cops to check it out, and he loses his wheels. Worse, they trace the registration to his cousin and the Bureau will automatically assume he took it. They check out who lives in the building and make the connection with Joanne Varga. No good.

  But he couldn’t just abandon the car. In a couple of days, the building superintendent would call a tow truck, and some dumb kid would get behind the wheel and get his ass blown to kingdom come. No, he couldn’t just leave it here.

  Shit. There was only one solution, which really wasn’t much of a solution at all.

  Tozzi backed away a few more steps to the hedges at the edge of the lot where he found a broken half of a cinder block in the dirt. He picked it up, weighed it in his hand, then remembered the old guy who was still up there watching him.

  “What’re you looking at, you old bastard? Get the fuck inside,” Tozzi yelled up at him.

  Tozzi could see him bristling. “I said, get inside and mind your own fucking business!”

  The old man sputtered something Tozzi didn’t understand.

  “Stubborn asshole,” Tozzi muttered, and then gave the guy the finger, which sent him scuttling back inside, shouting indignantly that he was calling the police.

  “Good, you do that,” Tozzi murmured as he took aim with the piece of cinder block, swinging it nice and easy. He pitched it into the car like a horseshoe.

  The cinder block skinned the edge of the door, hit the steering wheel, and landed on the driver’s seat, which was just enough pressure to depress the concealed spring plate under the seat and make contact with what’s generally known as a loose-floorboard bomb. Tozzi was already facedown on the asphalt with his arms over his head. The explosion made his ears pop. When he looked up, the inside of Bobby’s 300ZX was a furnace, flames curving out the windows and licking what was left of the roof.

  Shit. Bobby was gonna be pissed.

  Tozzi stood up, brushed himself off, and started to walk away fast. Walk, don’t run, just get away from the scene, pronto.

  He looked over his shoulder and stared at the burning wreck for a moment. Well, that’s why God made insurance, Bobby.

  Gibbons had just bitten down on an Oreo when the phone rang. He closed the book he’d been reading on his finger and chewed thoughtfully. The book was a scholarly work on the influence of the Teutonic barbarians on their Roman conquerors, how their alien culture seeped into the empire and persevered despite all Roman efforts to eradicate it. Gibbons saw many parallels with the present.

  The phone kept ringing. Gibbons sat up on the sofa and reached for the receiver, dropping his book in the process and losing his place.

  “Hello,” he said, still chewing.

  “It’s me.”

  Gibbons recognized Tozzi’s voice, even though it sounded like he was underwater with traffic in the background. “What’s up?”

  “Someone tried to kill me this morning.”

  Gibbons picked up another Oreo. “No kidding.”

  “Bomb under the driver’s seat.”

  “You get hurt?”

  “No, but there could be problems.”

  Gibbons paused to swallow. “What kind of problems?”

  “The car can be connected to me. It’s my cousin’s car. He’s in San Diego on business and won’t be back for another couple of weeks. But if they connect me with the wreck and where it is, it could fuck things up. Hey, your phone’s not bugged, is it?”

  “Hope not.”

  “Okay, listen. My cousin’s name is Benedetto not Tozzi, so the connection won’t be obvious right away. Plus, it happened in Jersey, out in Morristown, so if the Bureau gets called in, it’ll be the Newark office, not ours.”

  Ours: Gibbons took note of that. “You sound paranoid again,” he said. “Even if the New York office did get wind of it, how could a burnt-out wreck lead them to you now?”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about. The car was parked outside Joanne Va
rga’s apartment. If they canvass the building, they’ll find out Richie Varga’s ex lives there. It’s not a connection I want them to make.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. Not yet.”

  “You think she set you up?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. We were together sitting on the fender for at least twenty minutes, a half hour.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Use your imagination.”

  Gibbons picked another Oreo out of the package and held it near his mouth. “You’ll never learn, will you? Don’t trust her.”

  “If she was setting me up, she wouldn’t have hung around the way she did.”

  “Don’t trust her,” Gibbons repeated. “Just remember who the hell she is and where she comes from.”

  “I know, I know. She seems legit, but who knows? I just need to string her along for a while. I have a feeling she might be able to lead me to Varga.”

  Gibbons listened to Tozzi trying to sound like a hard guy. He knew damn well that Tozzi was sleeping with the broad and enjoying it too. He was getting sweet on her, the stupid asshole.

  “Listen,” Tozzi said, “I’ve been trying to make sense of all this. It’s the sequence of events that bothers me. First, Varga double-crosses his father-in-law and feeds inside information to Mistretta, Giovinazzo, and Luccarelli, in effect giving them Atlantic City. Then Lando, Blaney, and Novick. Then Varga turns on his three godfathers and rats on them to the grand jury. Organized crime in New York is supposedly dealt a fatal blow, but in no time the heavy business gets worse than ever. Now what I want to know is who’s fronting the money for these freelancers? Small-time dealers are buying in volume now—where are they getting the cash? They haven’t been in business long enough to have that kind of capital. Guys like Vinnie Clams. How did he get so big so fast?”

  “I give up, how?”

  “I think there’s a new boss, somebody we don’t know, somebody working very cleverly behind the scenes. Maybe all the heavy action on the streets isn’t random, maybe these guys aren’t freelancers at all. Maybe this is a whole new family, a very powerful family who’s got a monopoly on New York now that Mistretta, Giovinazzo, and Luccarelli are out of the picture.”