And what about me? Gibbons thought. Where were his loyalties supposed to be? To his partner the renegade? Or to the organization he'd been with for over thirty years? Loyalty means not questioning authority. But what happens when authority has its head up its ass?
Gibbons threw a pencil into his place in the transcript and looked over at the woman in the painted kimono staring out the window.
And what about Lorraine? What kind of loyalty did they have for each other? Just what the hell was “a good intellectual friendship with sex”?
Gibbons sighed.
He walked over to her and pressed himself against her back, running his hands over her hips. She turned around, almost looked surprised, and he kissed her. His thick fingers touched the angle of her jaw. He felt guilty. He wanted to make it all up to her.
She unbuttoned his shirt blindly as his lips found her aging throat. There was nothing wrong with her aging throat, nothing at all.
By the time her fingers had gotten to his belt they were on the floor, the cool silk kimono spread out under them, like young lovers on a picnic. She pulled him close and kissed him desperately. He knew she was worried about Tozzi.
“Don't worry. He'll be all right,” he said.
She nodded and smiled. “He can take care of himself. He always has.” She ran her fingers over his bare chest and kissed his skin.
They made love by the morning light with the birds singing in the pines outside their window.
Afterward, lying on his back in the sun, holding Lorraine's hand and feeling her delicate fingers, Gibbons could've cried.
But he didn't.
It was two-fifteen Friday afternoon, and Bobo's Video on Springfield Avenue, just over the Newark border in Irvington, was packedâkids, young blacks and Hispanics tired of looking for work, a couple of old guys just hanging out, even an on-duty cop who had his cruiser double-parked out front while he looked for a movie. The linoleum floor was filthy and the place smelled like an all-night poker game. Whenever an empty videotape box fell off a shelf, the clientele just stepped over it and eventually on it, unless of course it was a Clint Eastwood film or one of the
Friday the 13th
movies, which were the hands-down favorites at Bobo's and were treated with due respect. But despite its shabby-verging-on-sinister appearance, the place was a goldmine. Tozzi watched Bobo Bocchino and the black kid who worked for him checking out tapes behind the counter. It cost two dollars for one night's rental, and Bobo must've raked in fifty bucks in the time Tozzi had been there looking over the considerable porno collection, which couldn't have been more than ten, fifteen minutes.
“Hey, Bobo,” a little kid wearing a white T-shirt with a picture of a cross sticking out of a fire-engine-red flaming heart yelled over the crush. “Where's
I Eat Your Skin
?”
“Out.” Bobo rubbed his nose furiously.
“Still?”
Bobo shrugged. “I'm getting another one.”
“When?”
“I don't know, when it comes in.”
The kid scowled. “You been saying that for three weeks.”
“What do you want me to tell you? I got it on order, and the company hasn't sent it to me yet, okay?”
“Fuckin' liar.” The kid in the Sacred Heart CYO T-shirt left in a huff.
Bobo looked like Yasir Arafat, or Ringo Starr, depending on how you felt about him. He shaved maybe once a week, and he usually wore designer jeans that were loose in the ass and a dress shirt with stains down the front. The slob hadn't changed much since high school. Tozzi remembered him always spilling shit all over himself. But it was strange seeing someone from so long ago, someone you thought of as a jerky, acne-ravaged teenager now with thinning hair and a big beer belly. Then something caught Tozzi's eye that would have definitely been out of character for the old Bobo, a very classy-looking gold watch hanging loose on his hairy wrist.
Tozzi waited for the cop to leave before he went up to say hi to his old classmate from St. Virgil's.
“Bobo,” he called out, pushing his way up to the counter. “How's it going?”
“Hi, how ya doin'?” Bobo said automatically. He didn't recognize Tozzi at first; it had been a long time. Then Bobo squinted at him; there was something familiar about the face. “Toz?”
“I knew you couldn't forget me.” Tozzi appeared to be smiling warmly. Of course Bobo couldn't forget him. Tozzi knew that Bobo knew he was a fed, and Bobo knew that Tozzi knew he'd served time.
“How the hell could I ever forget you, Tozzi? Be serious.” Bobo stuck the burning cigarette in his mouth and held out his arms in a grand gesture of bullshit magnanimity. Tozzi wondered if he was offering to be frisked.
“Bobo, I gotta talk to you,” Tozzi said, coming around the counter and jerking his head toward the back room.
“Can't we talk here? I got customers.” Bobo looked nervous.
Tozzi put his arm around Bobo's shoulders. “C'mon, I just want to ask you something. Your man here can take care of things.”
The black kid didn't look at them. He knew better than to pay attention when strangers showed up to see Bobo.
“C'mon. I just want to ask you a couple of things.” Tozzi smiled warmly again and led Bobo into the back room where there were hundreds
of videotapes in brown plastic boxes lining the walls, floor to ceiling.
“I heard you were moving out west, Toz,” Bobo said, grinning like a weasel. “What happened? You come back?”
“That was canceled.” Tozzi glanced at a stack of VCRs on the floor behind the door. “So tell me, how've things been with you?”
Bobo looked confused. “Ah, not bad. Can't complain.”
“I mean since you got into this.” Tozzi pointed toward the shelves full of tapes. “After your boss went to jail.”
Bobo coughed up a weak laugh and nervously flicked cigarette ashes on the floor. “Who's that, Toz?”
Tozzi grinned and shook his head. This was to be expected. Guys like Bobo never admitted that they worked for people like Joe Luccarelli, except when they were bragging to each other. He looked at the stack of VCRs again. “Those for sale?” he asked Bobo. “I'm looking for a good machine.”
“Those? No, sorry, Toz, they're not for sale.”
“No? Then what are they doing there?”
“They're broke. People bring 'em in to be fixed.”
Tozzi looked around the room. “I don't see any tools, Bobo.”
“Well, I don't do it myself. See, I got this guy comes in, picks 'em up, fixes 'em at home. I'm just the middleman, you know what I mean?”
“I don't see any tags on those machines, Bobo. How do you know which one belongs to who?”
Bobo pulled on his bottom lip. “Hey, Toz, is this a social visit or what?”
“I'm just asking.”
“It's all kosher. Believe me.”
Tozzi's warm smile reappeared. “I'm glad, I really am. Because it would be a real shame if someone came in here asking for paperwork on those machines. You know they could give you a hard time about possession of stolen property, and that would be a real shame.”
“You come here to bust balls or what? What the fuck do you want with me, Tozzi?”
“Don't get mad, Bobo. Please. I just want your opinion on a certain matter, that's all.”
“What? What is it?”
“Well, I'll tell you. I look around in the neighborhoodsâNew York, Newark, Jersey City, Brooklyn, the Island, everywhereâand I see
that there's a lot of shit going down. You know, gambling, hookers, protection, narcotics. The kind of things you used to know all about. Right?”
Bobo shrugged. He wasn't admitting to anything.
“Now here's what I can't figure out. The families aren't what they used to be, everybody's doing time it seems like. So where's all this heavy action coming from?”
Bobo kept flicking his cigarette. “Hey, Toz, you weren't born yesterday. If there's a buck to be made out on the street, there's always gonna be somebodyâ”
“But hold on!” Tozzi laid his hand on Bobo's arm and Bobo flinched. “I'm not talking about small-time shit. I'm talking big deals, professional stuff. Somebody's got to be financing it. The way I figure there's got to be an angel somewhere backing up this kind of volume. Who could that be, Bobo? Who's putting up the money?”
“Tozzi, you're out of my league. I don't know nothin' about that kind of stuff anymore.”
The warmth in Tozzi's smile turned cold. “You got a nice business here, Bo. What's really nice about it is that it's all cash. How many tapes you rent in a day? Hundred and fifty, two hundred, two-fifty. That's four, five bills a day times seven days a weekâall cash. Even if you report just half of what you make, you're still way ahead of the game.”
“What're you saying here, Tozzi? You saying I don't run a legitimate business here?” Bobo's jitters were making him belligerent now.
Tozzi stared hard at him. “What I'm saying is that I can get the IRS on your ass in ten minutes if that's what you want. And believe me, they really like guys like you, Bo. They'll look into everything. Those guys'll get so cozy around here, you'll begin to think they're in bed with you at night.”
“Give me a break, will ya?”
“And even if they don't prosecuteâwhich is a long shot given your record, palâthe fucking back taxes and penalties will kill you. Do you doubt me, Bobo?” Tozzi looked down at the VCRs again and tapped the bottom one with his shoe. After a long pause, he asked, “So what do you think, Bo?”
Bobo's face was sweaty. He kept rubbing his mouth and pulling on his lip. “You don't know what you're asking me for, Toz,” he muttered. “This is very heavy, man. Heavy-duty.”
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
Bobo abruptly walked to the back door. He was all hunched over as if he had bad stomach cramps. He looked like he was beginning to shrink. Tozzi followed him. “I shouldn't be telling you this,” Bobo hissed.
“I won't tell anyone where it came from,” Tozzi said.
Bobo's mouth was dry. He was having a hard time breathing. “There's a new boss. There's a whole new fucking family.” Bobo glanced out to the front of the store. “Richie Varga.”
Tozzi wasn't surprised. But how the hell could Varga run a family while he was under witness protection? “Keep talking, Bo.”
“Don't ask me how he's doing it or where he is 'cause I don't know, I swear. All I know is that his people are creepy as hell. A lot of them are leftovers from the old families, but some of them nobody's ever heard of before, especially the enforcers. It's like these guys popped up from nowhere. And that's why they're so creepy. They're invisible.”
Bobo's eyes suddenly widened. He looked at Tozzi and the thought crossed his mind. Tozzi? Nah, not Tozzi.
“I don't believe it.” Tozzi shook his head. “Varga was a little nothing. Even when the big boys took him in for helping them dump Collesano, he was still a little schlump. How could he get that kind of power?”
“Varga may look like a jerk, but believe me, he's not. When he got to New York, he started making connections, doing little deals here and there, building up his bank account.”
“Come on, will ya? What kind of connections could Varga make in New York? Sure, the bosses were happy to have his help against Collesano and the Philly mob, but they weren't that in love with the guy. They kept him on a short leash, they had to. You can't tell me Luccarelli, Mistretta, and Giovinazzo just let him pull whatever deals he wanted. With those guys, you play by their rules.”
“Not with Varga, Toz. With him it was different. They were like broads with him, they loved him. They let him get away with murder.”
“Why?”
Bobo looked very panicky and very pale. “Because he proved himself,” he whispered.
“What do you mean âhe proved himself'?”
Bobo seemed to be having a hard time breathing. “This is only what I heard, you understand? I wasn't there. This is just what I heard, okay?”
“Yeah, I understand.”
“Okay . . . okay . . . See, Varga wanted to prove to them that he was on the up-and-up. He screwed his own father-in-law right up the ass, so he didn't want the big boys to have any doubts about his loyalty to them. Now I don't know how he knew this, but he told them that he found out there were feds working undercover inside the families, at least three that he knew of.”
A gunshot went off in Tozzi's brain. Lando, Blaney, and Novick.
“The bosses wanted to hear names, but Varga said he'd take care of it for them. About a week later he called for a meetingâthe back room of this restaurant in Brooklyn, Gilberto's in Sheepshead Bay. Luccarelli, Mistretta, and Giovinazzo all sitting together, suspicious as hell of each other, waiting to see what Varga had for them. Finally Varga comes in pushing one of those dessert carts.” Bobo couldn't seem to catch his breath. He swallowed hard and went on. “On the cart there's this long tray with one of those clear plastic lids you can see the cannolis and stuff through. But right away, everybody can tell it's not pastry under there. Varga whips the lid off to show the bosses. Three heads. I heard the eyes were scooped out, too. Because they saw what they shouldn't have, you know. The bosses recognized them. One from each family. Varga goes in his pocket then and pulls out their badges to prove that they really were feds. Gave 'em to the bosses as souvenirs. But you didn't hear it from me. You understand, Toz? You did not hear it from me.”