Bad Guys (5 page)

Varga didn't look convinced. He dug into the coleslaw but didn't
seem to be enjoying his meal. Eating was just a routine to him. A strand of milky cabbage hung out of the side of his mouth as he chewed. He was disgusting.

“Tell me,” Varga said, wiping his mouth, “how is it that you got to do the report on the Clam's apartment?”

“After you called me and told me he was dead, I hung around the office and made myself available. I was the only special agent around when Ivers got the call on the Clam's body.”

Varga nodded and speared a few French fries. Kinney looked past him into the mirrored wall behind the booth and focused on Feeney sitting at the bar, slumped over a draft. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why Varga kept that skinny incompetent punk as his bodyguard. All brass and no balls. Stupid little mick.

Silence fell between them as Varga concentrated on his hamburger. Kinney knew from experience that Varga would be preoccupied until all the food was devoured. He could keep talking, but he knew Varga wouldn't be listening, so instead he just waited, sipping his beer and staring into the mirror at the neon-blue haze around the bar. Stanzione's Bar and Grill was a typical lower-echelon mob meeting place down by the docks in Elizabeth. The walls in the back were paneled entirely with mirrors. Mafia joints usually have a lot of mirrors so you can always see who's behind you. Bosses, of course, never sit facing a wall, mirrors or no mirrors. He noticed that Feeney was looking down the row of booths and waving to him in the mirror, flashing that cocky grin of his. He ignored him.

Varga finished up the last of his French fries and washed it down with coffee. He looked up at Kinney then, his sleepy eyes hard and penetrating beneath the heavy lids. “What's Ivers doing about Tozzi? I'm still concerned.”

“He's called Tozzi's old partner out of retirement to find him. A guy named Gibbons.”

Varga looked skeptical. “What has Washington got to say about all this?”

Kinney grinned and shook his head. “Ivers is stonewalling it. He's worried about his career. He figures if he can find Tozzi before Washington gets wind of it, he can save himself the embarrassment of having to explain a renegade agent coming out of his office. Only a few others at the field office know about it now. He's working very hard to keep a lid on it.”

Varga drained his cup of coffee. “I want you to get involved. Just so we know what Tozzi's doing.”

Kinney resented Varga giving him orders when it concerned his work with the Bureau. That was his province. “I've already thought that through. When the time is right, I'll suggest to Ivers that I team up with Gibbons on the hunt for Tozzi. When Ivers thinks about it, he'll realize that I'm the only logical choice. Besides Gibbons, right now I'm the only other field agent who knows about Tozzi because I did the investigation on the Clam's apartment. I've never worked with Tozzi so he doesn't know my face. If Gibbons doesn't find him in a week or so, I'll go in and have a talk with Ivers. I'm sure by that time he'll be so crazy worrying about the renegade he'll go for it.”

Varga just stared at him. He was thinking. “Okay,” he said softly, nodding his head slightly, then he reached over and took Kinney's beer bottle and drank what was left in it. “Will this affect your other work?”

Kinney shook his head. “Don't worry. I've been getting down to Atlantic City at least once a week. I've already got one store lined up, and I'm working on four more in the area. We've got the warehouse in Margate, and I've got a line on a torch who lives down near there. He's a little crazy, a Vietnam vet who can't find work anywhere, but he's got a clean record. I've checked.”

Varga didn't react one way or the other, the fat bastard. A little approval would be nice.

“Let me know if you get tied up with this Tozzi thing. I want to get the Atlantic City operation rolling soon.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll have everything ready in six weeks. Eight weeks max.” What a fucking old lady.

Varga started nodding again. “Have you thought about the ‘catering job' I asked you about?” he said, abruptly changing the subject.

“Yeah. How many this time?”

“Just one.”

“Who?”

“Orlando Guzman. He's an independent dealer from East Orange who thinks he doesn't need me. He's got a very big mouth, and I don't like that. The other independents have to see that they can't work alone anymore. Do you know what I'm saying?”

“You want to make an example out of him. I understand.”

“So are you interested?”

Kinney swirled the beer in his glass as he thought about it. Killing was no big deal, and when you came down to it, taking a man's head off was no worse than putting a few bullets into his chest. The result was the same—dead is dead. Lopping heads off was just something he could do that no one else could seem to stomach. It wasn't that he enjoyed it or anything. Not really.

“You said thirty thousand, right?”

Varga nodded. “I'll make all the arrangements. You just show up.”

Kinney picked up an unused butter knife from the table and held it like a scalpel with his index finger over the back of the blade. “Do I have to bring my own?”

Varga shook his head. “I'll have knives there waiting for you.”

Kinney scratched the back of his head. He was considering his chances of bargaining for a higher fee.

“Tell me,” Varga suddenly said. “How're the kids, Steve?” He was grinning like a sultan.

“Fine.” Kinney put down the knife. “All right. I'll do it.” You fat bastard.

“I'll give you the details next week sometime.” Varga pulled a twenty out of the side pocket of his jacket and threw it down on the table, then he raised two fingers and waved to Feeney.

In the mirror, Kinney saw the punk get off his stool and face Varga, standing there with feet spread apart and his head cocked to one side like a Jimmy Cagney tough guy. What a joke.

“I'll be talking to you,” Varga said, hauling himself out of the booth.

“Yeah, take it easy.”

Varga stood over him and looked him in the eye. “Yeah . . . you too.”

Kinney started thinking about his house in the suburbs, the layout of the first floor, where the ground-floor windows were and which ones were partially covered by high shrubs. He wondered how much it would cost to put in a good alarm system. He glanced into the mirror and saw Varga's enormous hips going out the door. Fat bastard.

Tozzi wanted to unbutton his collar in the worst way, but he knew he couldn't. It would be out of character for a bank executive. Instead he consciously sat up straight, one leg neatly crossed over the other so as not to wrinkle his pants, and flipped through a back issue of
Datamation
magazine. He stopped at an article on CAD/CAM systems for small manufacturers because it looked like something a bank vp would probably read. He read the first couple of paragraphs, wondering what the fuck a CAD/CAM system was. He glanced up at the receptionist, who was busy scribbling down a telephone message on one of those pink while-you-were-away pads.

Would a banker get off on a shelf like hers? he wondered. Sure, why not? He kept on admiring her anatomy until her intercom buzzed and she suddenly looked up at him.

“Mr. Thompson?” she said, holding the phone to her ear as she flashed him the sweetest smile he'd gotten from a woman in a long time. “Ms. Varga will see you now.”

Tozzi smiled gratefully at the fetching brunette who smiled back so cordially. The company logo hung on the wall over her head, squat chrome letters that spelled out
DATAREACH, INC.
“Go down this hallway all the way,” the brunette said, “then turn right. Ms. Varga's is the corner office.”

“Thank you,” he said. He picked up his briefcase, which was empty except for a 9mm Beretta folded inside a copy of yesterday's unread
Wall Street Journal.
Tozzi didn't like having his weapon there, out
of reach, but his good suit, the blue European-cut double-breasted, was too tight for a shoulder holster or even a belt clip, and for this one the image was more important than accessibility to firepower.

He turned right down the carpeted corridor, mindful of his strides. Cops have a certain walk, a woman once told him. If you know the walk, you can spot a cop a block away. Unfortunately she never told him what it was about a cop's walk that gives him away. Anyway, technically he wasn't a cop anymore, he was a fed. Tozzi glanced into the open doorways of the offices he passed. Each one contained an intense-looking executive with a phone on his shoulder and a faithful computer terminal beaming green by his side. None of these guys looked over thirty.

At the end of the hall just outside Ms. Varga's office there was a big picture window. In the foreground two squat futuristic black-glass-and-steel office buildings squared off like robot pit bulls across a blacktop parking lot. In the background the Garden State Parkway raced by.

Tozzi poked his head through the doorway. “Ms. Varga?” he said, forcing that cordial smile. “Robert Thompson.”

This brunette stared hard at him from behind an oversized desk. The high cheekbones gave her a cunning hard-ass look, like a female Jack Palance. She was wearing a gray worsted suit over a peach silk ascot-collared blouse with a gold stickpin; she wore her clothes like armor. Her eyes were oval, dark, and slightly upturned. They were classic suspicious Sicilian eyes, just like her old man's.

“Have a seat . . . Mr. Thompson.” There was a sardonic edge to the way she said that. Tozzi immediately wished he had Gibbons working with him on this one. Gibbons was always better at playing a businessman. WASPs always seemed more normal in an office, more believable.

He noticed the brass nameplate on her desk as he sat down,
JOANNE
c.
VARGA.
Why the hell did she still use his name? But then it occurred to him that her maiden name might be just as awkward for her in the business world. Tozzi somehow felt better thinking of her as Joanne Collesano, though.

Tozzi reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the phony business card he had ready: Robert W. Thompson, Vice President, Customer Relations, Citibank. She ignored the card and abruptly stood up and went to close the door.

Tozzi got that sinking feeling that he was blowing it before he even got started.

“Ms. Varga, we have a rather unusual problem and I'm hoping you can help us. You see, your ex-husband—”

“We were never divorced,” she said, cutting him off curtly as she went back to her desk.

“Oh . . . Well, to get to the point, Mr. Varga had purchased several certificates of deposit from Citibank, all with long-term maturity dates, and now they've matured. These CDs are currently worth in excess of eighty thousand dollars. Our problem is that obviously we can't locate him to find out whether he wants to reinvest this money in new CDs or cash them in.”

Tozzi thought he'd made a mistake the moment he heard himself say “cash them in.” There had to be a more professional banking phrase for that. But he couldn't stall now. The best thing to do was to keep talking and hope she didn't suspect anything.

“We've tried to get in touch with him through the Justice Department and I personally discussed the matter with the people there in charge of the Witness Security Program, but that was eight months ago and I still haven't gotten a satisfactory reply. Legally, Citibank is in an rather sticky situation here. We can't hold on to his money without his expressed intention of how he wants it invested, and yet we can't treat this the way we would treat, say, the estate of a deceased customer. So, Ms. Varga, we were hoping you could help us get in touch with him . . . if that's possible.”

She stared right through him, those hard Sicilian eyes just waiting for him to hang himself.

“Who the hell do you think you're kidding?” she said.

“Pardon?”

She lit a cigarette and just held it poised between her fingers, her elbow resting on the desktop. Her nails were Chinese red.

“Mr. Thompson, when I was in second grade, I came home from school one day to find three strange men sitting in the living room with my father. They wore dark suits and overcoats, and they kept their hats on in the house. One of them tried to be nice to me, asked me how my day at school was, but my father told him to shut up and leave me alone. Then he told me to go into the kitchen with my mother for cookies and milk. By the time I came back, everybody was gone, my father too. They were federal agents, there to arrest my father.”

I bet one of them was Gibbons, Tozzi thought.

“I've seen a lot of cops in my life, Mr. Thompson. Local cops,
state cops. All kinds of federal cops, FBI agents, Treasury agents, marshals. As you might imagine, the daughter of a big bad mobster eventually becomes sort of an expert on cops. There's something about cops, all cops, whether they're in uniform or undercover, no matter what their rank is. It's something I can smell. And you know what, Mr. Thompson? You reek.”

He couldn't hold back the grin. He was beginning to like her.