Bad Guys (6 page)

“Ms. Varga, are you suggesting that I'm a policeman?” He wasn't very good at righteous indignation either, but so what? The jig was up.

“I'm
sure
you're a cop of one kind or another. I called Citibank this morning. They have no Robert Thompson in Customer Relations. You shouldn't have made an appointment in advance. Most undercover cops just show up, apologize, and say they just happened to be in the neighborhood, something lame like that.”

“You're not the type to see visitors on the spur of the moment, Ms. Varga, not even from Citibank. Corporate vice presidents tend to insist that you make an appointment.”

She smiled and leaned back in her high-back leather swivel chair. “Life is tough.” And it could get tougher, she thought.

Tozzi unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. “I don't know what to say.”

“Oh, come on. You're not giving up that easy, are you?”

Tozzi covered his lips with his fist and nodded thoughtfully. “Okay . . . suppose I am a cop. What do you think I want with you?”

“Well, since you came in with that cock-and-bull story about Richie's CDs, I assume it has something to do with him.”

“So what is it I want to know about him?”

She picked up a carved jade letter opener and held it lengthwise between her index fingers. She knew what he wanted. “Now that's an interesting question, seeing that you guys have him socked away in the Witness Security Program. Don't tell me that after all this time you're beginning to doubt the gospel according to Richie Varga?”

“You're referring to Varga's federal grand jury testimony against your father and the other”—he paused deliberately as if searching for the right word—“reputed mob bosses?”

“Hallelujah,” she muttered. Where'd they find this one?

“I take it you think your husband did your father dirty?”

“That's putting it mildly. Do you know how many lives he ruined
with his testimony? Do you know how many people were killed because of him? Do you? Richie put terrible doubts into people's minds. They couldn't trust each other after Richie started telling his tales. And in any business, Mr. Thompson, if you can't trust someone, you don't need him.” Sometimes she startled herself with this forthright sincerity. It wasn't easy keeping a straight face.

“These people you're referring to are the other bosses Richie fingered?”

“Not just them. Everybody on down the line under them.” She shook her head. “You guys never got it, did you? Richie Varga
destroyed
the New York families. He violated their trust and screwed them royally, blew the entire system to pieces. And goddamn Richie did it all by himself.” Those hard eyes were glinting with fury now.

“So what's left?
Capos,
lieutenants, soldiers—all of them either dead or in hiding,” Tozzi said. “No one answers to no one anymore. It's all freelancers and rookies out there now. And a lot of people are getting hurt as a result.”

“That's right, Mr. Thompson. But if you know all this, what do you want from me?” I want Richie, Ms. Varga.

“I want to know about Richie.”

“Why don't you go talk to him yourself? He likes to tell stories.”

When Tozzi didn't answer, she leaned forward and laid the letter opener on the blotter. She studied his face for a moment. “You're
not
a cop, are you? You want to know where Richie is. Somebody finally put a hit on him.” She relaxed her face for the first time and hoped she was convincing.

Tozzi said nothing

She looked at the ceiling and shook out her thick dark hair. “Boy-o-boy, do I ever wish I could help you.”

“You don't know where he is?”

She glared at him. “If I did, he wouldn't be breathing now. My father would see to that.”

“If your father still has connections, why can't they track Richie down?”

Joanne picked up the letter opener again and held it by the tip as if she were going to throw it. “Who're you working for?”

Tozzi just stared at her.

“You're not working for my father, I know that. So it's got to be either Giovinazzo, Mistretta, or Luccarelli. Or maybe all three of them.”
She wondered how he'd react to her mentioning names. Would he think she knew more than an innocent woman should?

“Why would I be working for them?”

She laughed out loud. The answer was obvious. “Betraying a family is one thing, but betraying the three biggest families in New York and getting away with it is unimaginable. There's a lot of besmirched honor at stake here. In their eyes, Richie
has
to die.”

“How about you? Do you want him dead?”

“Let's just say I wouldn't be a grieving widow.”

“But you wouldn't take up a collection to buy the bullets?”

“Look, Mr.
Thompson,
I'm not a Mafia princess, if that's what you're insinuating. I've worked for this company for six years and I'm proud of my position here. What my father and his buddies do has nothing to do with me.”

“But you were married to Richie Varga, not exactly Mr. Clean.”

“My old man arranged that when I was nineteen. Richie was pretty good-looking back then, before he turned into a blimp. He was a big spender, and my father loved him like the son he never had. I liked what money could buy and I wanted to please my father, so I married him. Pure and simple.”

“Did you love him?”

Joanne rocked in her chair and gave him a sarcastic what-do-
you
-think look.

Tozzi looked embarrassed.

She swiveled toward the window and stared out at the cars rushing by on the parkway. She sighed and wondered how tenacious this guy was going to be. “Richie is somewhere out there with a new name, a new address, maybe a new wife, who knows? I've heard that the government even arranges for plastic surgery for some witnesses. If it was available I'm sure Richie got himself a new face too. Richie takes whatever he can get. It's funny, though. He did so much damage, yet he wound up a hero because he cooperated with the federal prosecutors. A real all-American boy. He fucked us all . . . and he got away with it.”

Tozzi pressed his lips together and nodded. After a moment, he grabbed his briefcase and got up to leave. She turned and looked up at him. He seemed frustrated. Maybe he didn't like the idea of sympathizing with Jules Collesano's daughter, of all people.

“Just one more thing,” he said, standing over her desk. “Does
Richie have any distinguishing features, characteristics, mannerisms, something that can't be fixed with plastic surgery, anything that might give him away?”

She looked away, a wicked little grin playing over her lips. “Well, there is one thing . . .” She let it hang coyly.

“What's that?”

She glanced at her wristwatch. “Take me to lunch, Mr. Thompson, and we'll discuss it.”

This was getting boring. Gibbons finally took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the pink vinyl kitchen chair he was sitting in. He rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt but left his collar buttoned and his tie up. Back in the old days, it was against the rules for an agent to loosen his collar while on duty. It had become a habit with Gibbons.

The small apartment was hot and stuffy, but he hadn't opened any windows. Open windows just broadcast your presence. But it wasn't the heat that was bothering Gibbons, it was the place itself, the furnishings, the invisible presence of the old lady.

The kitchen was permeated with the smell of garlic, tomatoes, and anisette. There was a crucifix in every room, a crimson-robed statue of the Infant of Prague enshrined on the dresser in the bedroom, and a portrait of the Virgin Mary over the TV. Even the light-switch plates had saints on them. Gibbons wondered where the hell you could buy these crappy things. Maybe Catholics traded them like baseball cards.

He stayed in the kitchen because the living room was excruciating. Clear plastic over imitation baroque furniture, plastic roses in little white vases, stupid porcelain party favors from too many weddings, and pictures of the old lady's guinea relatives everywhere. Gibbons hated Italians. If they weren't all in the Mafia, they were penny-ante crooks begging to get in.

Of all those photos scattered around the living room, Gibbons had given a second look to only two. One was a faded color snapshot in a small gilt frame on the end table by the sofa. A dark-haired little
kid, maybe six or seven years old, sitting on a Shetland pony and scowling at the camera. A monkey on a pony. He was pretty sure the monkey was Tozzi.

The other was a five-by-seven of a tall, giddy-looking girl in a cap and gown. It was Lorraine at her college graduation: Barnard, class of '60.

Gibbons glanced at his watch. He'd been waiting for four hours and eleven minutes, and it was just beginning to get boring. He could remember being on plenty of plants that went on a lot longer than this. Plants were never fun, but he'd learned how to do it. You just took it all in stride. That was what being an agent was all about, really. If Tozzi didn't show up this morning, he'd just keep digging until he found another lead, another place, another connection.

Gibbons fingered the butt of Excalibur, his .38 Colt Cobra, the revolver he'd carried during his entire career as an FBI agent. He sniffed his fingers, getting a familiar whiff of gun oil and leather to counteract the smell of the old Italian lady. The other thing that bothered Gibbons about this apartment was the stagnant feeling of loneliness the place had, the imprint of one person winding down her life all by herself in three tiny rooms. It reminded him too much of his own apartment.

He glanced at his watch again. It was a little after seven
A.M.
If Tozzi was camping out here, he'd probably be back by now. Even if he'd been out all night with some woman, Tozzi had never been the type to stick around for scrambled eggs and small talk.

“Shit,” Gibbons muttered. He thought he had him this time. It had been two and a half weeks since Ivers had reactivated him, and in that time Gibbons had studied the Bureau files on the three hits, interviewed other agents about Tozzi, tailed all the old girlfriends he could recall, checked Tozzi's old hangouts. But he came up with nothing.

He then took a trip to the neighborhood where Tozzi grew up, Newark's Vailsburg section, and tracked down Tozzi's sister and a couple of cousins. In Gibbons's experience, people who do desperate acts sometimes return to their hometowns, figuring there's more safety in familiar surroundings. Sort of like running home to mommy. He didn't think Tozzi was one of those, but it was worth a shot. No one had heard from him since he'd been reassigned to Montana, or so they claimed.

One of the cousins, Sal Tozzi, sold car insurance out of a storefront on South Orange Avenue. Sal looked a lot like Tozzi but was much
shorter. When Gibbons dropped in on him, he was wearing a black knit shirt under a cream-colored sports jacket, and he didn't stop smiling the whole time Gibbons was there.

“Hey, tell me the truth,” Sal suddenly said to Gibbons in the middle of their conversation. “Mike's up for a big job down in Washington, am I right? That's why you're here. Character check and all that stuff.”

Gibbons almost laughed out loud. “Could be,” he said.

“I knew it!” Sal slapped his desktop. “I always knew Mike'd be the one to make us proud. I mean he
has
made us proud. You know, locking up drug pushers, chasing down Mafia guys, all that stuff. He's got balls, that cousin of mine. And he's smart too. My old man was always throwing it up to me how my cousin always got A's. You should never compare kids, you know that? It gives them an inferiority complex, and that stays with you all your life. I admit I was kinda lazy, but that Mike, man, he was always a real hard worker. And a real hardhead, too, sometimes. A one-track mind, his mother used to say. But I can see why the government would want a guy like him for a special job. Tell me, what's he up for?”

A life sentence, the way he's going, Gibbons thought, suppressing a grin. “I'm really not at liberty to say, Mr. Tozzi.”

“It must be real top-secret. Just tell me one thing—is it something domestic or will he be working overseas? The Middle East maybe. That's what it is, I'll bet. I had a feeling that whole Montana business was just cover for something big.”

Gibbons shook his head. “Please, I really can't talk about it. I'm sorry. I have to go now.”

Gibbons pictured Sal running a concession on the boardwalk selling Mike Tozzi T-shirts and key chains.

“Hey, you know, I just thought of something.” Sal tapped his forehead. “You ought to talk to my cousin Lorraine. She was real close with Mike. She'd be a real good character reference.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, she's a lot older than me and Mike, but they always got along. They were the two smart ones. Lorraine used to baby-sit for Mike when he was a little kid. You ought to talk to her.”

Gibbons just nodded.

“She teaches down at Princeton. Her name is Lorraine Bernstein. Bernstein is her married name. I don't know why she kept it, though. The marriage didn't even last a whole year. After the wedding, she
found out he was queer, the bastard. Personally I don't think she ever got over that. Hell of a thing to happen to a person.”