Bad Apple (7 page)

“Well, then what
are
you saying?”

She put the can on the counter and pulled another one out of the bag. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

She sighed, exasperated. “Why don't you just go away?”

“We had fun. It was great. Why don't you want to talk about it?”

“Because I don't.”

“Well, I do.”

“Then go outside and talk to yourself.” She pulled out a package of walnuts, and Tozzi's stomach growled out loud.

She looked down at his gut and shook her head.

Tozzi frowned. “You know, Gina, I don't get you. I bend over backward to be nice to you, and you treat me like shit. For a while there I thought maybe we coulda had something together, but I guess I was wrong.”

“You've got that right.”

“See? You've always gotta be nasty. Why? I'm nice to you, but you're nasty to me. That's not right.” This was Mike Santoro talking, but Tozzi was getting into it. His undercover identity gave him license to be totally Italian.

“I'm nasty with you because you're an infantile jerk who sells dirty movies for a living. Do I need any more reason to be nasty to you?” She sounded very logical and reasonable as she told him off, and for some reason that made her even more appealing to him.

“Hey, Gina, you make it sound worse than it is. It's good wholesome stuff I sell. Softcore, that's all. I've got sex therapists who buy from me. They tell me my stuff is very therapeutic. Perks their patients right up.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“No, I'm telling you the truth. I don't do hardcore. No snuff, no heavy bondage, no animals, and definitely no kids. Never ever would I deal kiddie porn. It turns my stomach just thinking about it.”

His stomach gurgled.

She looked at him over her glasses.

“I'm telling you the God's honest truth, but I can see you don't believe me. You've just got it in for me, that's all. But I don't know why. I'm a nice guy.” Tozzi flashed a cocky grin, thinking Santoro. “I'm very sensitive, too, and you hurt my feelings. I gave myself to you that day, and look what I get for it.”

“What'd you say?”

“You heard me. I gave my heart and soul to you, and this is the thanks I get.”

She picked up the package of walnuts and flung them at him. It hit his shoulder and broke open. A downpour of walnuts hit the linoleum, rattling and clicking, rolling all over the place.

“Now look you what you did,” he said. “Was that necessary?”

“Pick those up,” she snapped.

“You help me.”

“Pick those up!”

Tozzi stooped down and picked one up, grinning up at her, being a real wiseguy. But inside he was still wondering about her and Bells, hoping it wasn't true.

“I said, help me pick those up.”

“If I do, whatta'ya gonna do for me?”

“Go to hell!”

“C'mon, Gina, I'm kiddin'—Hey, where you going?”

“To the bathroom. You mind? And I want those things picked up. I'm serious.”

Gibbons was listening through the headphones. He crossed his brows and looked over at Dougherty, the surveillance technician who was working the equipment. Gibbons still had the toothache, but it seemed to be in remission for the moment. He knew it was only temporary, though. Eventually the sledgehammer
would start up again. They were parked down the block from the DeFresco house, sitting in the back of a dark blue FBI surveillance van with
B
&
B PLUMBING AND HEATING
painted in white and red along the sides, listening to Tozzi flirt with Freshy DeFresco's sister. Gibbons couldn't figure out what they were talking about now, what she wanted him to pick up. He shrugged at Dougherty to show his confusion.

Dougherty shrugged back. The top half of the technician's face looked concerned, but the bottom half was overjoyed. Dougherty always had a big smile on his face, no matter what, a big openmouthed smile that gave him that mad scientist look. Gibbons was beginning to think it was some kind of palsy. Either that or he was a born-again Christian. Somehow Gibbons doubted it, though. For most Irish Catholics it's bad enough the first time around. They don't need to be born again.

Gibbons slid the headphones off one ear, but kept them on his head. “Sounds like she broke a string of pearls, doesn't it?”

“I don't think so.” Dougherty's eyeballs were tucked up under his lids as he listened. He pointed to a pair of VU meters on the console, their needles relatively still now that Gina was out of the room and Tozzi was by himself in the kitchen. “The sound wasn't quite right for pearls. It would've been higher in pitch, a sudden cluster of
sharp
clicks. This was much lower, and it had a rattle to it.”

Gibbons shrugged. He was willing to give Dougherty the benefit of the doubt. The guy knew sound. He was one of the best surveillance techs the FBI had, and his weird balding pattern attested to his devotion to the science. A hairless path ran across the top of his head in a direct line from ear to ear. Years of wearing headphones day and night had worn his hair away.

“Where's Tozzi wearing the wire?” Gibbons asked.

“He's got a transmitter in his beeper. He's wearing it on his belt. Nice clarity, huh?” Dougherty was proud of his work.

Gibbons nodded. He didn't care so much about the sound quality. It was the content that concerned him. “What's going on with these two? I don't remember seeing anything in Tozzi's daily reports about DeFresco's sister.”

Dougherty's Labrador retriever smile turned into a lurid grin. “There's a reason for that.”

Gibbons's tooth started to throb. He knew it. Goddamn Tozzi, thinking with his dick again. A sharp twinge froze Gibbons's face in the middle of a wince. “He screw her yet?”

Dougherty was leering, like a
dirty
mad scientist. “C'mon, Gib. Some things are private.”

“Not to you they aren't. Spill it, Dougherty. Did he do her yet?” Between the nagging pain in his tooth and his dumbshit, fuck-happy partner, he was ready to punch a hole in the wall of the van.

“Well . . .” Dougherty took off the headphones and hung them around his neck. “Yeah, he did. But just once.”

“And you listened in on it?”

“Tozzi left the transmitter on. What could I do? Shut him off?”

“Yes. You could have.”

“Gib, I swear to God, I didn't know where he was going at the time. I'm supposed to monitor everything he does, right? I didn't realize till things started heating up with Ms. DeFresco that he wasn't at her apartment to gather information, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Frigging peeping Tom.

“I'm telling you, Gib. It's not what you think. Tozzi should've deactivated the transmitter if he wanted privacy. But as long as it's transmitting, I
have
to record it. Those're the rules.”

“You have it on tape?” Gibbons rubbed his swollen jaw.

“Of course. I have to account for my time.” Dougherty reached over to a plastic milk crate full of reel-to-reel tape boxes, ran his finger down the line until he found the one he wanted, then pulled it out. “Here. You wanna listen to it.”

Gibbons scowled at the box. “No. But just tell me this. How long has he been boffing her?”

“As far as I know, it was just that one time. But he's been trying hard ever since. If you ask me, I think Ms. DeFresco regrets that she gave it up so quick.”

“Who are you? Dr. Ruth?”

“I'm just saying.”

“How exactly did it happen?”

A sheepish grin replaced the leering one on Dougherty's face. “C'mon, Gib, that's Tozzi's business. I feel funny—”

“My dumbshit partner goes to bed with the sister of a unstable flake like Freshy DeFresco, who can fuck us up royally, and I'm not supposed to know everything that's going on? What're you, crazy? Tozzi could end up eating a couple slugs the way Petersen did this morning if those guys ever find out he's a fed. What if Freshy double-crosses Tozzi? He's nuts enough to do it. What if he gets pissed off because Tozzi screwed his sister? What better way to pay him back?”

Dougherty stopped grinning. “I suppose that's always possible, but I don't think he'd do that to Tozzi. They seem to be getting along pretty well. All things considered.”

“Dougherty, you don't know shit.” Gibbons gritted his teeth as a new wave of agony washed over his jaw and seeped through his body.

Through the one headphone, he could hear Tozzi talking again. He quickly adjusted the set and put them on both ears.

“I picked up the nuts. Aren't you gonna at least say thanks?”

“Why? You made me throw them at you.”

“I did not.”

“Just shut up. You're annoying me.”

Gibbons heard departing footsteps.

“Hey, Gina! Where ya going?”

No answer.

“Gina! Where ya going?”

No answer. A door slammed.

Gibbons moved over to the small one-way window in the side of the van. He focused on the front of the DeFresco house. A brunette with glasses came huffing down the driveway. Gibbons was surprised. Gina DeFresco wasn't what he expected. Knowing Tozzi, he'd just imagined that she'd be some kind of Jersey special, a mousse girl with hair all over the place, Dragon Lady fingernails, stacked heels, tight skirt up to her butt, and cleavage you could get lost in. But this woman was . . . normal. Actually he was even more surprised that she could be related to that scumbag Freshy. He tried to get a better look at her face as she turned onto the sidewalk. She was kind of cute.

Tozzi came trotting down the driveway after her, shrugging into a navy cashmere overcoat.
“Gina! Wait! I'll walk you to your bus.”

Gibbons walked in a crouch to the back of the van and pulled up on the door handle.

“Hey, Gib, where ya going?”

“Gotta talk to Tozzi. He doesn't know about Petersen yet.”

“But, Gib, direct contact with a man in the field on an undercover is not kosher. Ivers'll ream your ass out for—”

The metal doors slammed shut. Gibbons didn't give a shit about rules and regs. Tozzi had to be warned before he got
himself killed, so that Gibbons could kill him later for being so goddamn stupid.

Holding his swollen jaw, Gibbons pulled down his hat and headed across the street to catch up with his skirt-chasing partner.

Tozzi followed Gina as she walked down to the bus stop on Kennedy Boulevard. “What'd I ever do to you? Huh? Except be nice to you.”

She kept walking, ignoring him.

“Hey, Gina, you can't even be decent enough to talk to me now?” Tozzi was trying to sound like Mike Santoro the pornmeister, but the feelings were all his own. He wanted to connect with her somehow. At the very least he wanted to find out why she was treating him like a piece of toilet paper. After all, they had had that incredible Sunday afternoon together. They certainly had connected then, even if it was only for a few hours.

Tozzi sighed as he watched the back of her head, her brown hair whipping back and forth over huffy shoulders as she walked. Up ahead the morning rush-hour traffic was roaring by on Kennedy Boulevard. He just wished he could tell her who he really was. If she knew he wasn't really a pornographer, maybe she'd give him a shot at defrosting that cold shoulder the way he'd warmed her toes on the couch.

A bus pulled up to the curb then. The electronic sign over the windshield said
PORT AUTHORITY TERMINAL
. It came to a stop with
a loud whoosh, and the doors unfolded. Gina climbed up the steps without looking back.

“Gina!” he called out to her, but the door slapped closed, and the crowded bus pulled away with another airy whoosh.

Tozzi held his breath until the bus exhaust dissipated, then he shoved his hands into his coat pockets and sighed, “Gina, Gina, Gina.”

“Gina, my ass.”

Tozzi snapped his head around, and there was Gibbons, his hat pulled down over his brow, that witch nose of his hanging down below the brim. His mouth was a downturned horseshoe of disapproval. The left side of his face was so swollen, it looked like a blowfish was attached to his cheek.

Tozzi looked left and right, trying to be subtle about it. “What the hell're you doing?”

“Shut up and listen, numbnuts. Gary Petersen was shot last night.”

Tozzi's gut clenched. “Oh, shit.” He didn't need to hear the reason.

“Last I heard he was in stable condition.”

A young guy wearing a leather jacket and carrying a briefcase stepped into the nearby bus-stop shelter. Gibbons immediately shut up and walked back to the plate-glass window of the candy store on the corner.

Tozzi waited a few moments before he joined his partner. “Who shot him? Do we know yet?”

“He was supposed to be meeting Tony Bells at one last night.”

“Bells? That fuck.”

“Ivers ordered a manhunt.”

“I was with Bells last night. It was after three, though. Jesus.”

“You know where he is now?”

Tozzi shook his head. “I don't even know where he lives. He's a very strange guy, very secretive.”

“Well, stay away from him. I don't think the press has the whole story yet, so we may be able to grab him before they tip him off. Let's hope.”

“I could reach out and see if I can find him.”

“No,” Gibbons snapped. “You'd better not be anywhere in the vicinity when he's arrested. Buddha Stanzione and his merry men will put two and two together. Then to save your hide, we'd have to get the word out that you're a fed, and that would be the end of Shark Bite. Ivers wants to keep the operation going if we can, and for once I agree with the shithead.”