Bad Guys
BAD
GUYS
GUYS
ANTHONY BRUNO
A Novel
FOR MY SWEETIE
BAD GUYS
PROLOGUE
September 23, 1984
Lando parked the Caddy in the small lot behind Gilberto's, turned off the ignition, and stared at the odometer. There were only 12,000 miles on this car when he'd started this job. Now there were 43,621. Many miles and a lot of time, a little more than two years. Still it wasn't an accurate gauge, not the way he felt. It felt like he'd been on this assignment forever.
He got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the asphalt lot with his hands in his pockets. Even here in Brooklyn it was finally beginning to feel a little like fall. On his way in from Huntington that morning, he'd noticed a few trees just beginning to turn. He thought about his kids and wondered how they were really doing in school this year. The visits were regular enough, but now they were always like formal occasions, a big meal, the kids wearing their best clothes, his wife straining to make everything smooth and perfect. It was worse than being divorced and having to make do with court-ordered visitation rights. It was more like coming back from the dead. They always had that momentary look of amazement whenever he walked in the door.
Other guys at the Bureau had warned him to expect this. It just comes with the territory when an agent goes undercover for an extended period of time, his buddy Tozzi had told him. You have to live away from your family for their own protection, and inevitably you become a stranger to them.
Well, at least he wasn't a stranger to himself. That was supposed to be pretty typical too, getting so comfortable with your cover you
forget who you really are. Fortunately that hadn't happened to him. In hindsight, he felt it was good that he hadn't taken an Italian cover. To the mob, he was Arnie Silver, the Jew accountant. It was good that they thought of him as the Jew, a trusted employee but not quite one of them. Some of Mistretta's associates had their doubts about him at first, but the boss himself liked the idea of having a Jew doing the books for his loan-sharking operations out on the Island. Jews are good with numbers, Mistretta's
consigliere
Richie Varga had reminded the boss, look at what Lansky did. After a while they began to refer to him as “Mr. Spock.”
He had gotten his degree in mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon, and when you came right down to it, the FBI picked him for this job for the same reason the Mafia took him in. The Jew was good with numbers.
Goddamn Tozzi, he thought, smiling and shaking his head. He was originally supposed to take this undercover. But when they found out the Mistretta family was in need of a bookkeeper, the plan was changed. The Bureau had other agents working undercover in the mob as wiseguys, which was what they had in mind for Tozzi. But the opportunity to have someone on the inside with access to the books was too good to pass up. What a resource you'll be, Special Agent in Charge Ivers had said. Just imagine the informationâthe names, the places, the felonious eventsâyou'll be able to feed back to us. It was all true, but every now and then Lando wondered what would've happened if Tozzi had gone undercover in the Mistretta family instead of himself. He would've been right in his element with these guys. He would have loved it. But not enough to turn. Not Tozzi, never. He, if anybody, knows who the good guys are. The lucky bastard.
Lando mounted the back steps of the restaurant. Come through the kitchen, Varga had told him on the phone yesterday when he invited him to this shindig, a surprise anniversary party for Mr. and Mrs. Mistretta. Well, at least the food would be good. Lando buttoned his top button and pulled up his tie, thinking about veal cutlets.
He tried the door but it was locked. When he knocked, Richie Varga poked his head out.
“Arnie, come on in,” Varga said, taking his hand.
“Hey, Richie, how you doing?” Lando shook his hand, pumping Varga's weak grip. Varga was a strange dude, nothing like the other mafiosi he'd met. He always seemed so slow and lethargic to Lando, and there was something vaguely effeminate about him. And he always
seemed to get a little heavier every time Lando saw him. Still he must've had something on the ball. How else do you become
consigliere
to the three most powerful Mafia bosses in New York?
“Mr. Mistretta's not here yet. I forgot Mrs. Mistretta always goes to twelve-o'clock Mass on Sunday. But come on in and have a drink at the bar.”
Varga put a hand on his shoulder and led him down the tiled corridor. Lando didn't like this sudden chumminess. He wondered if Varga was coming on to him.
As they rounded the corner and entered the kitchen, something immediately caught Lando's eye. The first image that flashed through his mind were chickens, trussed-up chickens hanging in the window of the kosher butcher's shop in his old neighborhood in Buffalo. But these weren't chickens, they were men in rumpled suits hanging from meat hooks, hanging by the handcuffs locked around their wrists. Two men without heads, hanging by their arms like chickens.
His stomach lurched. He tried to think. How would Arnie Silver react to this? How would anybody react to this? He felt sick, and he bent forward. Varga was helping him bend forward, holding his wrist behind his back.
“Hey,” Lando gasped as someone grabbed his other wrist. He struggled, but a sudden kidney punch stiffened him with pain. His arms were pulled back, and he felt cold metal on his wrists. Then he heard the click of handcuffs locking.
“You recognize them?” The voice wasn't Varga's.
Lando tried to get a look at the face of the other man behind him, but the bastard was jerking the chain on the cuffs up, keeping him bent over. “Who the fuckâ?”
“Never mind who the fuck I am,” the man said. “Walk.”
Lando was shoved forward and he stumbled into the kitchen. When he looked up, he saw Varga standing over a chopping block. On the block there were two heads on a metal tray. One head was propped up by the other. The eyes were gone.
“Do you recognize them now, Lando?” Varga was smiling.
He couldn't breathe. He blinked to keep his eyes open.
“These are your paisans from the FBI, Lando. Mr. Novick and Mr. Blaney. They were sneaky little bastards who saw too much. Just like you, Lando. And when an outsider, especially a fed, sees what he shouldn't see, this is what has to happen.”
“No . . . no . . .” He couldn't breathe.
“Okay, Steve,” Varga said. “Come on.”
Lando felt his cheek hit the moist wood of the block. He felt the man's knee in the middle of his back holding him down. Varga grabbed him by the hair with both hands and put all his weight on his head, crushing his ear. He saw the man's arm, caught a glimpse of the blade.
“No . . . please, no . . .”
The butcher's long knife was the last thing Lando saw.
July 1986
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Varga?”
“Wait in the living room, Vinnie. I'll be with you in a minute.”
Vinnie “Clams” Clementi nodded. He looked at Varga standing over a ledger open on the dining-room table. Richie Varga was a weird guy, Vinnie Clams thought. He had a shape like a woman and a mind like a snake. He'd invite you in, let you get warm and cozy, then strike. Vinnie was glad he was working
for
Varga and not against him. “I'll be right out here when you want me, Mr. Varga.”
Varga stared blankly at the obese drug dealer until he disappeared, then he shut the ledger and eased his wide hips into one of the dining-room captain's chairs. Stroking his cheek softly, he stared at the two sleeping dogs, one a few feet away at the edge of the rug, the other across the room blocking the doorway to the kitchen. They were big dogs, Rottweilers, black with brown markings on their bellies, paws, and faces. One was named Blitz, the other Krieg.
“Blitz,” Varga said evenly to the dog at the edge of the rug, the pitch of his voice just slightly higher than you'd expect from such a large man.
The dog didn't move.
He plucked a grape from the fruit bowl on the table and called the Rottweiler again, but the dog didn't respond.
Suddenly he whipped the grape across the room and it smacked the dog's shiny black flank. The dog raised her head and growled.
In the same even voice, he said, “Quiet.”
The dog stopped growling, tilted her big square head, and looked at her master in puzzlement. A moment later she settled back down to her nap.
Varga picked a few more grapes from the bunch and set them down on the edge of the table, then reached for the red Trimline phone on the sideboard and started punching numbers.
It rang four times. “Hello?” a child's voice answered.
“Is your father home?” Varga asked.
“Just a minute.”
He heard the kid calling to his father, then the sounds of plates and silverware and people moving around a crowded space. No one told him to have six kids.
“Hello?”
“It's me.”
“I know. What's up?”
“Is everything set for Paramus?”
“All set, don't worry.”
Varga didn't like it when people told him not to worry. “Who do you have doing the job?”
“The jockey. He's good.”
Varga didn't say anything. He stared at the dog for a moment, then flung another grape at her. This one hit her on the ear. She whipped her head up and growled at him again, baring teeth this time.
“Quiet, Blitz,” he said calmly. The dog hesitated, then dropped her head and closed her eyes.
The man on the other end didn't have to ask. He could picture those nasty dogsâoverweight Dobermans, as he preferred to think of themâsitting in the looming shadow of their master. Poor animals.
“You use him a lot,” Varga finally said. “Do you have anyone else on tap besides the jockey?”
“There's one guy who used to work for Mr. L's people. He's experienced, but unfortunately the will isn't there anymore. I've got a kid I'm bringing along. In time I think he'll work out very well.”
Varga picked up another grape and beaned the dog in the face. The pissed-off bitch got up on her front paws, bared her full set of choppers, and alternately barked and growled at him.
“Quiet, Blitz.”
The dog snarled once, then was quiet.
“I was wondering,” Varga suddenly asked, his voice higher. “Would
you be interested in doing another catering job for me? You know, something like what you did in Brooklyn.”
“No thanks.”
“You put out a very nice spread, Steve. I'd like to have that fancy platter again. Maybe not
that
fancy, but something . . . impressive.”