Bad Guys

by Anthony Bruno

  Back at the counter, Spyro was ladling fat drippings over the huge hunk of lamb turning on a towering vertical spit. The fat sizzled, caught fire, and flared dramatically as it dripped off the meat, but Tozzi had gotten used to the sound by now and didn’t even pay attention. Spyro did this every five minutes or so.

  Tozzi wanted to know where the hell Gibbons was. He said he’d be here between five and six, and though it was only twenty to six, Tozzi was concerned. Gibbons was always early. He wondered if Gibbons met Kinney at the office today. Maybe Kinney had followed Gibbons from the office and now Gibbons was trying to lose him. Tozzi remembered a few years back when there was a mob hit on a big-wheel real-estate developer right in front of a fancy steak house on East Forty-fourth at rush hour. The hit man pumped three bullets into the back of the guy’s head, then calmly walked around the corner and disappeared into the crowd. Rush hour was the perfect time for a hit. Where the hell was he?

  He looked at the hooker again. She’d stopped rubbing her ass on the glass. She was negotiating with a beefy-looking guy in a Brooks Brothers suit whose glasses were too small for his head. Tozzi examined the line of her legs and the curve of her ass. It was a very tight little bod. When she walked off with the john in tow, Tozzi felt slightly rejected. He thought he’d at least get a friendly goodbye wink or something. Tozzi picked up his sandwich and took another bite.

  A few minutes later the door opened, setting off the electric buzzer that alerted Spyro that someone was there in case he was in the back or stuck on the can. Tozzi had noticed that Spyro greeted his customers as if they were invading Turks, glaring at them with his flashing black olive eyes, his grim mouth covered by a thick handlebar mustache. When Tozzi realized that the latest arrival was Gibbons, he figured for once Spyro’s suspicions were justified. Gibbons looked meaner than usual, and today that pissed-off Indian-chief face even made him uneasy.

  “What happened?” Tozzi asked as Gibbons sat down at his table. “Was he there?”

  “No. He—”

  “Can I help you?” Spyro demanded belligerently.

  “Yeah. Just bring me a coffee.”

  “One-dollar-fifty-cent minimum.”

  Gibbons glared at the Greek.

  “And a baklava,” Tozzi intervened. He turned back to Gibbons, and Spyro went away. “Kinney wasn’t at the office?”

  “He was there this morning. He asked around if anybody had seen me lately. One of the guys told me he left the office around eleven.”

  “So what did you find out?”

  Spyro returned with Gibbons’s order. There was as much coffee in the saucer as there was in the cup, and the small brown honey-glazed lump looked exactly like what Gibbons thought of it. Gibbons pushed the plate to Tozzi as soon as Spyro set it down.

  Gibbons lifted the lid of the stainless-steel pitcher and sniffed the milk before he poured it into his coffee. “I got some interesting information,” he said. “I was on the phone most of the afternoon. I got hold of an Inspector Langer at the fire department who was unusually cooperative. He heard FBI and I guess he was impressed. Anyway, I asked him about the fires in the Bronx, Brothers Discount Center and Sound King. He told me about another similar fire in Forest Hills. In all three cases, the fires seemed suspicious, but they couldn’t prove arson. Langer was also kind enough to give me the names of the insurance companies who covered those stores.”

  Tozzi grinned as he chewed another bite of his sandwich. “You love it when they spread their legs for you. Did you threaten him with prosecution for obstruction of justice? That used to be your favorite.”

  Gibbons ignored the remark and continued. “I called the insurance companies and talked to people in the security and fraud departments. One guy at Praesidio Mutual had a lot to say. He was a former cop named Ramirez who was fed up with his job and needed to let off some steam. According to Mr. Ramirez, all insurance companies expect to pay out on a certain number of total- or partial-disaster fires every year. It’s only after they reach their quota that they start getting sticky about paying out on fire claims. But the interesting thing is the more fires a company pays out on, the more they can up their premiums the next year. Ramirez told me the companies actually want to meet their fire quotas and even surpass them a little because what they pay out in claims is nothing compared to the higher rates they can justifiably charge. And according to Ramirez, that’s standard for the industry.”

  Tozzi speared a corner off the pastry and ate it. “Yeah, so what’s this got to do with anything?”

  Gibbons winced at the turd on the plate. “Ramirez also told me that before a company reaches its quota, whatever investigations they conduct are just for show. That’s why he’s so fed up with his job, he said.”

  Tozzi took another piece of the turd. “So what’s the point?”

  “Suppose Varga knew which companies hadn’t met their yearly fire quotas. He could target those companies specifically and keep the bust-out scam going, increasing his yield considerably. Before the quota is reached, payoffs are made faster and the investigations are worthless.”

  Tozzi set down his fork. He could see what was coming. “And how would Varga know which companies to hit on?”

  Gibbons pressed his lips together and sighed. “Aside from paying out on recent total-disaster fire claims on audio-video stores, the three insurance companies I called today had something else in common. They all have their computerized files handled by the same data-processing firm—a company in Jersey called DataReach. That’s where what’s-her-name is a vp, isn’t it?”

  Tozzi nodded. Gibbons knew what Joanne’s goddamn name was and he knew she worked for DataReach. Playing dumb was his asinine way of softening the blow, making her seem less important than she actually was.

  Gibbons leaned over the table and tasted his coffee. “So what do you think?”

  “I think we ought to take a trip out to see what’s-her-name.”

  “You call the play on this one, Toz. We handle it any way you want.”

  This was Gibbons’s way of saying he didn’t know how strong Tozzi really felt about Joanne Varga. It was his way of offering consolation for being stupid and trusting her in the first place. Tozzi appreciated Gibbons’s concern for his feelings, but he was angry with himself and he felt like a fool. He didn’t want anyone’s understanding. He wanted to nail Kinney and Varga and bring down Joanne with them. He didn’t want to dwell on his feelings. He wanted to feel smart. He wanted to win.

  Tozzi stood up abruptly, took out his wallet, and left a ten on the check. “Come on,” he said to his partner. “Let’s get going.”

  Tozzi felt funny being in Joanne’s apartment alone with Gibbons. No one had answered the doorbell so they let themselves in. Tozzi used the keys Joanne had given him, and he felt culpable for having them. The keys were just another facet of her deception, something else to win his trust. Gibbons walked in behind him, giving him a wide berth, and his solicitude was aggravating Tozzi.

  Tozzi stood in the living room and looked around. The scene of the crime, he kept thinking. He’d spent a fair amount of time here, and he knew where everything was. He’d used her toilet, washed up in her shower, watched TV on her couch, cooked with her pots, slept in her bed. He knew more about this place than he should’ve. He kept thinking about that old saying about how a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.

  Gibbons walked around with his hands in his pockets like a browser in an antique shop. He found his way to the kitchen, and from the living room Tozzi heard him opening the refrigerator. Tozzi wandered in and saw his partner sniffing a quart of milk to see if it had gone sour. He was looking for signs of recent occupancy. Gibbons hunkered down and pulled out the produce drawer.

  “The lettuce looks pretty fresh,” he said. “No yellow spots on the broccoli.”

  He stood up and opened the freezer compartment. He pulled out a package of chicken breasts and held it at arm’s length so he could read the label. “‘Sell by September 6
.’ That’s . . . Saturday, right? She probably went shopping yesterday, maybe even this morning.”

  She went shopping last night, Tozzi knew. She always shopped at night.

  They moved back into the living room. Gibbons checked the date on the TV Guide on the black-lacquered coffee table. It was next week’s. Tozzi wondered what he’d say to her when he saw her again. This wasn’t a simple betrayal. Under different circumstances, he’d prefer to settle things with her by himself, confront her directly, do what he should’ve done with Roberta way back when. If there weren’t major felonies involved, if this were just a matter between the two of them, he wondered how he’d handle it. Screaming accusations? Mournful disappointment? Righteous indignation? Anguish and pain? Violence? He tried each one on like a hat. There was no perfect fit.

  He saw Gibbons standing over the tub in the bathroom. It was a modern cream-colored tub with handles built into the sides. He didn’t have to see it; he remembered it.

  “There’s a little water around the drain,” Gibbons reported matter-of-factly. “The bar of soap’s still wet. Somebody took a shower not too long ago.”

  Tozzi went to the medicine cabinet, avoiding his own reflection in the mirror, and examined the contents of the second shelf from the top. It wasn’t there, the blue plastic clam, her diaphragm case. Wherever she went, she took it with her. Wherever she was, she was going to be staying overnight. Tozzi looked over the other shelves just to make sure the diaphragm wasn’t there, but it was gone. He shut the cabinet and squinted at himself in the mirror.

  Gibbons had already moved on to the bedroom. He was looking in the closet, probably looking for the absence of a suitcase. Tozzi could’ve told him not to bother. Joanne had an array of luggage and overnight bags, too many to use all at one time. But he didn’t say anything.

  He looked at the quilt hanging on the wall. It was a real Amish quilt, she’d told him. The design was called the log-cabin design. It consisted of varying lengths of black, red, and blue strips set at right angles, but to him it still looked too modern to be called a log-cabin design. He’d said that to her when she first told him about it, but she insisted that it was really a very old design. She said one of the reasons she bought it was because it looked modern yet it was really old. He’d spent a lot of time lying in bed staring at that quilt. By the morning light, it dominated the room. Tozzi looked at the left side of the queen-size bed, the side he slept on, the side with the empty night table.

  “Does she always make her bed like this?” Gibbons asked.

  Tozzi shook his head. “Only on weekends.”

  Gibbons went to her night table. He pressed a button on the clock-radio and the red digital numbers switched from the present time to the time the alarm was set for, 6:55. Gibbons switched on the radio. An alto sax played bebop at low volume.

  Gibbons listened for a moment. “Charlie Parker,” he said, then he shut it off and left the radio the way he’d found it.

  Next to the clock-radio was a white Trimline phone on top of a Panasonic answering machine. The lights on the answering machine weren’t blinking, which meant there hadn’t been any calls since she’d last monitored it. Gibbons turned the playback switch to listen to her old messages. The first thing they heard was a hang-up followed by a few seconds of dial tone. Then a man’s voice came through the machine.

  “This is your father,” the voice said with a self-conscious chuckle. “I guess you’ve already left, right? Okay, so we’ll see you later tonight then. In case you haven’t left yet, we may all go down to the casino for a while, but I’ll make sure I’m back early. Okay? Drive carefully, baby. There’re a lot of nuts on the road. See you later.”

  Jules Collesano sounded a lot more coherent than he did the day Tozzi met him. Tozzi stood over the bed, staring at the pastel plaid bedspread. He had a feeling he’d been seeing some terrific acting jobs lately. Unfortunately even the bedroom scenes. The tape kept running, but there were only more hangups.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Imperial Casino where Tozzi said he had met Jules Collesano was packed. It was almost eleven, and from the looks of things there were a lot of paychecks being blown tonight. Whirring slot machines, clicking big-six wheels, spinning roulette wheels, rolling dice, the soft but steady snap of cards on felt, the nervous silence of winners, the hubbub of losers. Gibbons took in the Imperial’s Roman Empire decor, the plaster columns, the statues of the emperors gazing at each other across a battlefield of greed and false hope. Driving in on the Atlantic City Expressway and seeing the huge, brightly lit casinos standing tall over the landscape, Gibbons thought of false idols, of Sodom and Gomorrah. But here in the casino, he could only shake his head and think of the legendary decadence that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire.

  Gibbons stood with Tozzi on the carpeted landing that led down to the casino, looking out at the madness. “What does Collesano like to play?” he asked Tozzi.

  “He was playing blackjack the day I met him.”

  Gibbons grunted. There were about eighty blackjack tables here, and they weren’t all in the same place. “What are you going to do if we find him?”

  “Ask him where his daughter is.”

  “Then what?”

  Tozzi sighed and pulled on his nose. “I don’t know.”

  That was the part Gibbons was worried about. Tozzi was in an evil mood, and caution had never been his strong suit. “Come on, let’s look around,” he said, wishing he knew a good way to keep his partner on a short leash.

  Walking through the casino, Gibbons got a sense of the class system of gambling. Poor blacks and retirees played the slots; these were the plebeians. Citizens played the bigger-money games, particularly blackjack. Craps was a man’s game; women favored roulette and big six. At the blackjack tables, men preferred to play with men, women with women. The patrician class played baccarat in an exclusive alcove set apart from the hoi polloi.

  “Hey,” Tozzi said, indicating one of the roulette tables, “check that out.”

  A dumpy housewife type with a terrible dye job was standing over a mountain of chips, betting heavily and winning heavily. No one at the table reacted one way or another, although a small crowd of onlookers had gathered around the table. Gibbons noticed a second croupier at the table, an Oriental guy, arranging stacks of chips with the meticulous care of a sushi chef.

  Another small crowd had gathered around an old black man in a crushed ten-gallon hat working two colossal slot machines simultaneously. These machines stood seven feet tall and had computerized screens that simulated the spinning face of a conventional slot machine. He pulled down on the huge arms with cakewalk grace, feeding coins into the giants, then pulling down, moving back and forth in an uninterrupted rhythm. Gibbons noticed that the man didn’t even bother to look at the results. Even when he won, he just kept on going. It was only the loud clanking of those heavy casino slugs hitting the stainless-steel trays under the machines that told him he’d won. If gambling was a sickness, this was the delirium.

  Tozzi touched his arm and gestured impatiently with his head. He wanted to move on, keep looking. In a way, Gibbons hoped they didn’t find Collesano or his daughter tonight. He was afraid Tozzi would get carried away in this bacchanalian atmosphere.

  They turned down an aisle of blackjack tables and Gibbons’s eye combed the faces. The gamblers weren’t all lowlifes, not by a long shot. He was surprised at the number of middle-aged, middle-management types, somber-faced white guys steadily tapping the felt for yet another card, praying for twenty-one, staring at the vicissitudes of the cards and keeping a lid on their emotions, winning some hands, losing most. They reminded Gibbons of Bill Kinney, and he thought about what it must have been like when he was undercover in the Philly mob, playing Steve Pagano. It must have been hard for him to reconcile the hard realities of a special agent’s life with the opulent lifestyles of Richie Varga and his pals. With all those kids of his, he must’ve been terrified by the looming financial responsibilities
he knew he had to face. It must’ve been very easy for him to be seduced by the luxury, the power, and the comfort that he saw money could buy. Slipping from Bill Kinney to Steve “the Hun” Pagano probably became pretty effortless for him. That’s what can happen when guys go undercover. They forget who they really are. Changing personalities probably became so easy for him. eventually he figured he could make it work for him so he could take the best of both worlds and leave the rest. The successful Ivy Leaguer, rising star in the FBI, benevolent patriarch, provider and protector could be bankrolled by the Hun. In his mind it was probably the perfect balancing act. Gibbons could almost understand the guy’s motivations.

  But then he saw three eyeless heads, and that could never be forgiven.

  He sighed and scanned as many faces as he could see, knowing that this was a useless exercise. He only knew Collesano from pictures. If he saw him here in the flesh, most likely he wouldn’t recognize the man. This was all for Tozzi’s benefit. His smoldering guinea temper was having a field day with being the betrayed lover. Well, this was as good a place as any to get it out of his system, Gibbons supposed.

  But then a face caught his eye. Not Collesano, but a younger man. A huge fat face and a strange body, heavier in the chest and shoulders than in the gut. Then he remembered where he had seen that face. The guy in that black Trans Am parked outside Tozzi’s aunt’s apartment in Bloomfield, the dogs in the backseat. He’d been eating an ice-cream cone. Gibbons distinctly remembered that he’d thought this guy looked like an oversized baby.

  Gibbons stared at the man’s impassive face as he threw down chips on a craps table, betting heavily. The dark wavy hair. The cold eyes. It could be him, he thought. It definitely could be Richie Varga.

  Standing next to the heavy man, throwing the dice, was a stocky older man. “Tozzi,” Gibbons said. “See the fat guy at that craps table over there? The guy next to him. Is that Collesano?”