When the elevator reappeared on the loading dock, the big Irish kid and the little Latino stepped out slowly, leading with their guns. The little guy looked mean; the big mick looked spooked. Tozzi kept singing. “. . . Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there . . .”
E-man pointed to the trailers with his gun. They hopped off the loading dock and stalked the trailers. “Hey, tweety bird!” E-man yelled. “Come on out. We want your fuckin’ autograph.”
The strained singing didn’t stop. They walked up slowly to the open trailers, ready to plug the first thing that moved. Suddenly the singing stopped.
“Come on out, asshole,” Louis shouted. He tried to sound tough.
“Shut up,” E-man sneered. Feeney was upstairs with the old guy so it was his turn to be Wyatt Earp.
Suddenly Louis jumped. He heard something in the trailer on the far end. E-man heard it too. He pointed his gun into that black hole and stared at it hard.
“Come on,” he whispered to Louis. “In this one.”
When Tozzi saw their legs leave the ground and disappear into the middle trailer, he couldn’t believe it. He was on his back under the end trailer. He’d kicked the underside of it to get them to come closer so he could grab their ankles from below and pull them down. But this was ridiculous. They were making it too fucking easy. Now he could hear them whispering inside the belly of the middle trailer. “Okay, now!” one of them said, and immediately close-range gunfire ripped into the side of their trailer. Apparently they figured they were drilling the song bird inside the next trailer. Spent bullets hit the ground next to Tozzi’s leg. These two evidently knew shit about ballistics. You’d have to be packing elephant cartridges to penetrate two insulated steel walls and stay on course. Assholes.
As the two punks made themselves deaf inside the trailer, Tozzi scrambled under their trailer, crouched to his feet under the tailgate, reached up, and shut the doors on them. He felt the sting of their redirected bullets hitting the doors and he yanked down on the rusty latch with all his weight to close it. He found a discarded u-bolt in the dirt, which he dropped into the hasp for insurance.
What assholes, he thought as he went back to the loading dock.
There was a padlocked steel door on the loading dock. Tozzi shot the lock and forced the door open. The stink made his eyes water. Dirty light beamed into the stairwell from a window on the landing above. The stairs were littered with debris, and the landing and hallway were crowded with steel drums. The smell was overpowering. Illegally dumped toxic waste, no doubt. The brew that made New Jersey famous.
Tozzi climbed the steps, worrying about rat teeth and high-stepping the whole way up. He shoved heavy sloshing barrels aside when he got to the top, making his way to the door. His throat was burning. He kicked the fire door and kept kicking until it opened enough to let him in.
Inside he was greeted by a slug zinging off the corner of the metal door just a few inches from his fingers. Tozzi hit the floor rolling.
“Throw the piece to me, jerkoff, or your friend here is a memory,” Feeney yelled. He was standing over Gibbons, who was slumped down on the floor, handcuffed to the steampipe. There was an automatic in Feeney’s hand leveled at Gibbons’s head.
Tozzi froze, lying on his belly, his heart pumping hard. He stared at the pig-faced boy and thought of that famous picture of a Viet Cong blowing the top of some South Vietnamese guy’s head off. Or was it the other way around?
“Say goodbye, FBI. Both of yous.” The pig-faced boy was a cocky son-of-a-bitch. “Now toss the gun, I said, or else I waste him.”
“Who’s he?” Tozzi yelled back. “I don’t know him.”
“Hey, fuck you, you—”
Gibbons suddenly woke up and grabbed Feeney’s wrist. The automatic discharged into the brick wall. Gibbons held on. Tozzi got up and charged, slamming his hip into Feeney’s chest, both hands clasped around his gun hand. Together they smashed into the window, breaking glass. Tozzi snatched the gun away from him and threw it down.
“You fucking little shit—” Tozzi grabbed him by the flesh under his chin and shoved his head through a cracked windowpane and pulled it out again. He started throwing punches to Feeney’s gut and face, but they weren’t landing hard enough to satisfy Tozzi. He wanted to hurt this little bastard. He wanted the little fuck to suffer. Then he remembered Kinney’s face coming at him with the hammer and he stopped.
Feeney slumped to the floor. He was like a crab that had been left in the refrigerator overnight, no sign of life other than a little movement in the legs. Blood flowed out of his piggy nostrils.
“You finished?” Gibbons asked. He looked like hell, but he sounded fine.
“I think so,” Tozzi said.
“Watch your face,” Gibbons said. He held Feeney’s gun to the chain on the handcuffs, turned away, and fired. He pulled on the hot mangled links until he was free, then hauled himself up and went over to Feeney. He found the handcuff key in Feeney’s pants pocket and unlocked the cuff.
“I would’ve gotten the key for you,” Tozzi said. “Why didn’t you just ask?”
Gibbons ignored the question. “I was just about to throw him out the window when you barged in,” he said, sounding pissed off. “You fucked up my whole plan.”
“Sorry,” Tozzi said. It was good to see the old son-of-a-bitch alive.
“Come on.” Gibbons started for the stairwell.
“Wait up,” Tozzi said, then got down on one knee and lifted his pant leg. He pulled Excalibur out of his ankle holster and handed it to Gibbons. “Here, take this. I’m tired of carrying it.”
Gibbons took his gun and examined it. Then he looked Tozzi in the eye. “Thanks.”
Tozzi thought he detected an aborted attempt at a smile of gratitude. Maybe not, though.
Gibbons stuck Excalibur in the pocket of his jacket. He weighed Feeney’s automatic in his hand before he reared back and flung it through the window and into the tall grass outside. Shards of tinkling glass rained down on Feeney’s chest and stuck to his bloody face.
“You want to take these guys in?” Tozzi asked.
Gibbons looked at Feeney for a moment and thought about it. “They’re dumb enough to be stand-up guys and protect Kinney. Fuck ’em.”
Tozzi shrugged. The stink from the stairwell was beginning to fill the room.
“Come on, let’s go,” Gibbons said.
THIRTY-THREE
“What do you think?” Gibbons said, holding a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee to his lips.
“I want to take a look,” Tozzi said, curling his fingers around the steering wheel of the LeSabre.
They sat in the car watching the fire inspectors pack up their gear. They’d been there all afternoon, sifting through the rubble. There were two of them—the senior guy wore a suit and high rubber boots; the other one, who actually did the dirty work, was in khakis. The guy in khakis was loading up the sample cases he’d been filling all afternoon, picking through the smoldering remains of the brick buildings that used to be Kantor’s Army and Navy Store and Brothers Audio-Video Discount Center on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. The Thorn McAn Shoe Store next door to the Brothers site had sustained quite a bit of damage. A city building inspector had come by earlier, stared at the shoe store for a while, and concluded that this building should come down too. The fire inspectors were more thorough and methodical. They were investigating a possible crime scene, so they took their time. The guy in the suit supervised, conferring with his man, making suggestions from the safe side of the police barricades, occasionally calling in on the radio in the red NYFD station wagon, but mostly schmoozing with the cops securing the scene. Gibbons had noticed that whenever the workhorse wanted to get away from his boss, he went into the charred remains of the building and disappeared for a while. The suit didn’t go in that far.
Gibbons looked at his watch. “They’ll be gone soon.”
“Says who?” Tozzi asked.
“It’s almost five. The s
uit’s management, and management doesn’t get paid overtime.”
Tozzi shook his head. “Another dedicated civil servant,” he said. “You think they found anything?”
“Doubtful. They know it was set, but it’s a hard thing to prove. Unless the torch was a real dummy and left gas cans behind.”
“Tortorella knows what he’s doing. I’ve seen him work.”
Gibbons sipped his coffee. “You seem pretty sure this was Tortorella’s work.”
“I’m not sure about anything.” Tozzi rubbed the back of his neck. “All I know is that I saw Tortorella torch a store like this in Edison, and then I heard him and Kinney talking about a job in the Bronx.” Tozzi looked beat.
“Didn’t you sleep last night?” Gibbons asked. They’d spent the night at Lorraine’s house. Gibbons had suggested that they go there, saying that it would be safer out in the country. In fact, it wasn’t any safer there than anywhere else, except that Lorraine was there, and after sleeping on a splintered floor handcuffed to a steampipe for the past two nights, he had an urgent need to be with her. He also wanted her to see that her cousin was all right.
“I slept okay,” Tozzi said. “I’m glad we went down there. I wanted to see her once more before—It was good seeing her.”
Gibbons nodded pensively. “Yes. It was.”
The inspector in khakis packed up his cases and got into the red station wagon. The suit was already behind the wheel. The station wagon pulled away from the curb and made a right at the first corner. As soon as it was out of sight, one of the two police officers got into their patrol car and took off down Jerome Avenue in the same direction, leaving his partner behind to watch the scene. Getting out of the Buick and crossing the street, Gibbons noticed for the first time that the cop who was left on guard was a woman. She was tall but slight, and the uniform made her look like a kid playing dress-up. Why the hell didn’t the department get these broads uniforms that fit right? Gibbons thought. No wonder punks give them shit, looking like that.
Gibbons cut in front of Tozzi and walked right up to the cop. “FBI,” he said, showing her his ID. Tozzi stood back, poker-faced. “We want to take a look at the scene,” Gibbons said.
She touched the edge of the ID in his hand as she examined it. “Sure, go ahead,” she finally said.
“You here alone?” he asked. He could hardly see her eyes under the visor of her hat.
“My partner went for dinner,” she said.
The sun was going down over the ghetto. It was Miller time. You mean your partner went for a few beers, Gibbons wanted to say. This was a borderline neighborhood, borderline between bad and worse. He bet she was glad to have them there.
Gibbons squeezed through the police sawhorses. Tozzi followed without a word to the cop. They split up and started poking around.
Gibbons stepped over charred bricks, wet carpeting, melted plastic, soaked cardboard boxes, the blackened electronic insides of one thing or another. As far as fires go, it looked kosher to him, but FBI agents don’t know a whole lot about arson. Unless it’s a federal facility that’s burned, arson is always handled by the local police. He kept looking, though. He might get lucky. You never can tell with these things.
“There ain’t shit here, man. Just like the other place.”
Gibbons peered over a pile of bricks, plaster, and lathing. A gang of black kids was looking through the rubble, searching for salvageable goods, no doubt. They angrily shoved beams and hunks of plaster out of their way. “Shit . . . shit . . . shit . . .” The one wearing a black nylon do-rag around his head cursed every time he tossed a brick and came up empty.
“Not even a fucking Walkman,” a kid with no front teeth said. “This is jive.”
It was then that Gibbons realized these weren’t kids. These were what the papers called “youths” and politicians not up for reelection called the “hardcore unemployed.” Cops usually called them “fucking dangerous.”
“Maceo,” the one in the purple muscle T-shirt called, “you say that other store was like this?”
“Shit, yeah,” the guy with no front teeth said. “Sound King, on a Hundred Sixty-ninth, you know? Burned down just like this place, but there was nothing to take there neither. And that time I know I was the first dude to get down there. Damn.”
“I need me a box, man,” the do-rag declared. “Yo, white man! What you doing there?”
They spotted Tozzi coming around back from the alley side, and they all raised their backs like cats at the sight of him. Tozzi was dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a bush jacket. He didn’t look like a cop to them.
Gibbons then saw the flash of blades and narrow-eyed faces. These guys felt cheated, and they were ready to take it out on someone.
Tozzi squared off. He had that look on his face that Gibbons didn’t like. Gibbons looked back toward the cop on the sidewalk, but she made like she didn’t hear and kept her back to the whole affair, the bitch. The feds can take care of themselves, she must’ve figured. Let the feds hang themselves, who cares? Feds are the PD’s natural enemy. Damn cops watch too much TV.
Gibbons pulled his gun and cocked the trigger so everyone could hear it, just like they do in the movies. “Okay, boys, time to go home.”
Mean faces snapped around in his direction. “Eat it, old man,” one of them said. Two of them turned to take him on. Blades against bullets—hardcore wasn’t the word for this bunch.
Tozzi reached into his jacket, and the purple muscle shirt made a move toward him. Gibbons winced, waiting for the muzzle flash, but just the sight of Tozzi’s 9mm was enough. The gang left in a cloud of mumbles and curses.
Gibbons put away Excalibur and took out his notepad. He scribbled down “Sound King—169th.”
Tozzi climbed over a charred beam. “Taking notes for your memoirs,” he asked.
“The brothers said something about another fire just like this one. No salvageable merchandise there either.”
“You think it’s a bust-out scam?”
“Could be. Empty out the merchandise before the blaze, collect on the insurance, then sell the merchandise or move it to another store and have it ‘burn’ again. They can keep moving the stuff and collecting on it until it’s outdated.”
Tozzi folded his arms and looked at the ground. “It’s not hard to find surplus hardware to burn. Melted plastic, pressboard cabinets, fried circuit boards—it all looks pretty authentic.”
“So Varga’s running a bust-out scam with Kinney as his foreman,” Gibbons said.
Tozzi shook his head. “Doesn’t really make sense. You can burn down two, maybe three stores, but that’s it. The insurance companies must get hip to what’s going on. Varga’s financing a whole new family, for chrissake. Can’t buy that much dope with the profits of an operation like this. How many men could he afford to keep on the payroll? I mean, how much do you think it’s costing him to keep Kinney alone in his pocket?”
Gibbons looked at their long, jagged shadows on the rubble. “Varga’s pretty inventive. He may have put a new wrinkle on this scam.”
“You have any ideas?”
He did, but he didn’t want to tell Tozzi yet. He knew Tozzi was touchy about certain things, and there was no sense getting him all riled up if his hunch turned out to be wrong. “Nothing definite,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll see what I can dig up at the office.”
“What about Ivers? Isn’t he going to want to know where you’ve been all week?”
“Probably.”
“What will you tell him?”
Gibbons shrugged. “If I’m lucky, he won’t be in and I won’t have to lie to him. I’ll make sure I show up late. He’s usually tied up in meetings after ten. Come on, my throat’s dry. I need something to drink.”
They headed back toward the police barricades.
“Find what you were looking for?” the lady cop asked. She didn’t even try to hide the sarcasm in her voice. Gibbons remembered a time when uniform cops bit their tongues in the presence of s
pecial agents, a time when the only women in uniform were crossing guards.
“Sorry, I can’t talk about ongoing investigations,” he said politely. “By the way, what happened to your partner, officer?”
“He’s on dinner break, I told you.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Gibbons nodded and tapped his forehead. “You did say that. Well, would you like us to stay until he returns?”
“Fuck off,” she growled.
Tozzi squeezed his nose and snorted a laugh.
“Suit yourself,” Gibbons said, turning away and crossing the street.
As they drove away in the Buick, he could see her long shadow on the pavement as she stood alone guarding nothing. The sky was hot orange behind the grim tenements. He could hear congas beating on the rooftops, rap blaring from ghetto blasters in the street. Her partner had some sense of humor. For her sake, Gibbons hoped he had a little mercy too.
THIRTY-FOUR
She wore a black leotard and black spiked heels, that’s all, and she kept running her pointy red fingernails through the mounds of white blond hair that piled on her shoulders and spilled down her back as she dug her feet in and ground her ass into the front plate-glass window of Spyro’s on Eighth Avenue. Tozzi took another bite of his souvlaki and marveled at the hooker’s ingenuity. She was working the street outside while coming on to him inside at the same time. And the way she was goosing that window, there’d be big kiss marks on the glass pretty soon. He had to admit it was advertising that worked. He was hard as a rock.
Tozzi sat at the window table, watching the hooker’s ass, occasionally glancing around her to see the afternoon rush-hour crush, people marching down Eighth Avenue toward the Port Authority to catch a bus home, cars backed up on Forty-seventh Street inching toward the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel at Fortieth and Ninth Avenue. The Times Square vicinity was a funny place at this time of day, like two simultaneous spirit worlds occupying the same space. The hookers and hustlers went about their business while the secretaries and businessmen floated around them, the straight people all moving in the same basic direction, eyes ahead, undistracted, like an army of zombies.
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