Bad Apple (12 page)

As he moved closer to the snack bar, he saw that Gina had her finger in one boy's face. “Jason, if you play Guns 'N Roses one more time, I'm gonna break your hand.”

“Not if you like your job you won't.” The kid had a face like a choirboy, but he wore a small gold hoop in one ear and a black wool baseball cap and had the kind of sneer that started fights.

The older kids egged them on, congratulating Jason on “dissing Gina good.” Tozzi had to smile. He got a kick out of hearing middle-class white kids talking black. He'd love to leave someone like this Jason kid on 125th and St. Nicholas Avenue some night and see if he could communicate his way back to Scarsdale before he got his ass kicked good by the real brothers.

The kid reached over and dropped a few quarters in the slot, then punched out his selections without even looking. The other kids started to hoot for Jason's victory. The music started, and Axl Rose let out the pig squeal from hell. Jason leaned over the counter and sneered in Gina's face. “Deal with it, babe.”

Gina met his gaze with the Sicilian look of death. She glanced over at the poodle-skirt blonde, raised her arm, and pointed down at the jukebox. A moment later Axl was cut off in mid-squeal as the blonde pulled the plug and the jukebox went dead.

She sneered into Jason's face. “Deal with
that
, mega-turd.”

The kids hooted louder. She'd dissed him better. Jason maintained his sneer, but he knew she'd got him and got him good. Little Bart Simpson was going down in flames. Tozzi grinned.

“Hey, Gina, Gina.” Freshy walked up to the booth. “Where you been? We been looking for you?”

One eyebrow rose over Gina's purple glasses. She didn't look too happy to see her little brother.

“What're
you
doing here?” When she noticed Tozzi, she
glanced over at the innocent-looking girl with the long blond Alice-in-Wonderland hair sitting at the end of the booth, then smirked up at him. “You getting into kiddie porn now?”

Tozzi just stared at her. He imagined her with Bells on her living-room couch. He wasn't sure if he liked her so much anymore.

“Bells is looking for you,” Freshy said. “C'mon. He's got something for you.” Freshy sounded annoyed but resigned to his duty. He didn't know the troops were on the way. He'd been in the bathroom when Tozzi had made the call.

Gina's eyes narrowed. “Bells is here?”

She didn't sound particularly upset. Of course, she didn't sound very happy either. At least Tozzi didn't think so.

Freshy nodded like a horse. “Yeah. He's here, he's here. Why the hell else would we be here? To go shopping, for chrissake? Jeez.”

Young Jason looked Freshy up and down. “Wouldn't be a bad idea.” Freshy was wearing a shiny electric blue suit under his bone-white brushed wool topcoat.

Freshy scowled and started to give the kid the finger when Gina caught his eye and changed his mind. The aborted gesture just ended up looking retarded with Freshy pulling on his ponytail in a lame attempt to save face. The kids all laughed.

Gina laughed with them. She laughed like a little kid, with her eyes. She wasn't laughing at Freshy so much as she was laughing
with
the kids, and in that instant Tozzi changed his mind about her again.

Freshy waved his arms as if he were helping a truck back up. “C'mon, Gina, c'mon. Bells is gonna be waiting up by your office. Let him give you the thing so we can get outta here. Okay? C'mon.”

Gina frowned. She held up her palms and looked at all the kids around her. “How? How can I leave?”

“Mike'll watch 'em. C'mon.”

She glared up at Tozzi. “Like hell, he will.”

Tozzi flashed his wiseguy grin. He was glad to see she wasn't jumping to go get her surprise. He was also glad that she was staying put here with the kids so he could watch them. He'd decided it would be better to let the arrest team find Bells. They'd be armed.

Bells breezed through the electronics department, scanning the area for a brunette with a bunch of kids. The computer department was supposed to be down this way someplace. Kids like computers. Maybe they were down here. He kept jingling the bracelet with the purple stones in his pocket like a pair of dice. Mikey-boy was right—she did like purple. He knew that.

“You looking, Stanley, or what?” he asked, but he was talking to himself. When he realized that Stanley wasn't with him, he stopped and looked over his shoulder. Stanley was back by the TV sets. The friggin' guy was watching TV.

“Hey, Stanley, what the hell're you doing?” Bells went back to get his man, who was in a trance, his brow all wrinkled as he stared at the rows of TV sets lined up on the wall. He was watching the goddamn news.

Bells stopped to see what was so interesting. Just a bunch of cops hanging around this white car, yellow police tape all around. There was a close-up of some blood on the front seat, but you could barely make it out. The reporter was saying something about this being “off the New Jersey Turnpike in Ridge-field, New Jersey.”

Bells furrowed his brow as he watched the broadcast on a fifty-four-inch projection television. He listened carefully to the
reporter's voice-over as the camera panned some of the cops hanging around the white car.
“Local police and federal authorities have joined forces to apprehend the prime suspect in the attempted murder of FBI Special Agent Gary Petersen. Right now they are focusing their efforts on this man: Anthony Bellavita, who police say is also known as ‘Tony Bells.'”

“Bells! Did you hear that?”

“Shut up.” Bells stared at the giant television. His picture was on the set. A black-and-white shot of him walking down the street in a short-sleeve shirt. A friggin' surveillance photo.

In his pocket, Bells fingered through the stones on the bracelet as if they were rosary beads.

“Law-enforcement personnel are always particularly upset when one of their own is shot in the line of duty, and FBI agents are no different, as you can see from the angry response one FBI official had to the presence of our camera crew.”

“Move on. Now. Or I'll blow your
bleep-
ing eyes out.”

On the screen, some ugly old guy was pointing his gun right into the camera lens. You could hear the film crew arguing with him.

The purple stones were flying through Bells's fingers. His mind was fixed on that picture of himself he'd just seen on TV.

He stared blankly at the old grouch on the screen, then suddenly noticed that the guy's face was all swollen on one side. Bells stepped closer and focused on the guy's face. That was the old guy that Mikey Santoro had been talking to on the corner this morning in Bayonne. The old guy who was supposedly looking for a dentist.

Dentist my ass.

Bells looked up from the big television and saw that swollen face on every other set in the store. Three long rows of the ugly
mother filled the whole wall, floor to ceiling, five inches to thirty-two inches. Son of a bitch. Son of a
fucking
bitch.

That surveillance photo came back on, Bells walking down the street in black and white times a hundred.

“Authorities are asking for any information that will lead to the arrest of this man, Anthony ‘Tony Bells' Bellavita. If you have any information, please call the number you see at the bottom of your screen.”

Bells ground the bracelet in his fingers.

Stanley was hopping around like a flea. “Bells? Bells? We better get outta here. Jesus Christ! C'mon!”

But he didn't hear Stanley. He didn't hear anything. His mind was fixed on Mikey-boy Santoro, or whoever the fuck he really was. He was either a cop working undercover or some punk the cops had flipped. Whichever he was, it didn't matter because what he really was was a rat. A big fuckin' rat.

Bells pulled the bracelet out of his pocket and stared at it in his palm. Yeah. A big fuckin' rat with big fuckin' ideas. Too big. He put the bracelet back in his pocket and started to walk toward the escalators, nice and easy, not running, wondering just how the hell Mikey the rat knew she liked purple. How?

“Bells? Bells? Whatta'ya doing? We gotta get outta here.”

Stanley trailed behind, but Bells didn't pay any attention to him. He kept walking, not fast, not slow. He was looking for a fuckin' rat and his Minnie Mouse. And he was gonna find them. Oh, yes. He was gonna find them.

Bells was walking fast now, shaking that bracelet in his pocket like a maraca, scanning the departments, the racks of clothes, the shoe departments, the shirt departments, the furniture, the luggage, the towels, the curtains, everything. He looked at everything,
but he didn't see any of it because he only had one thing on his mind. Finding Gina and Mikey-boy.

He was aware of Stanley trailing behind, trying to keep up, squawking that they should get outta there fast. Well, they
were
gonna get outta there. He had every intention of getting outta there. He just couldn't put anything into words right now because he was like a guided missile. He only had one function: Finding them.

As he hopped on another escalator and loped down the moving steps two at a time, slipping around shoppers and leaving Stanley behind, his mind was a blur. He had no plan. He wasn't sure what he thought about those two just yet. All he knew was that someone was fucking with him, and that had to be dealt with.

Bells leaped off the last three steps of the escalator and picked up his pace, scanning the faces of the women in the teens' department, scanning and rejecting, one face after another, searching for the purple glasses. Then suddenly he heard kids laughing, and he turned his head and saw them, in a little snack bar, her sitting at the end of the booth full of kids, looking up at Mikey-boy, those purple glasses looking right up at her Mikey-boy.

Bells stopped and stared at them, and in his mind they gradually became one and the same because they were both guilty of the same thing: Disloyalty to him.

Mikey-boy was working with that ugly old grouch from the FBI. For all Bells knew, Mikey-boy could
be
FBI. But in Bells's mind, being a fed was no excuse for what Mikey-boy had done. The bastard had worked his way into Bells's confidence, had even gotten Bells to vouch for him with Buddha Stanzione. And all the while the guy intended to rat on him, to fuck him over. Mikey-boy was the lowest, the worst of the worst. He was a
traitor, and if there was one thing that Bells could not stand, it was a traitor. To him, there was nothing more important in the world than loyalty. Without it, people were no better than animals. And if a man couldn't be trusted, he deserved to be shot like an animal, a diseased animal.

As for Gina, she was no better. She'd betrayed him, too. With Mikey-boy. Bells could see from the way she was looking at him that she was all wet in the pants for him. Besides, why else would the bastard want to buy her a bracelet? With purple fucking stones.

The jingling bracelet was a little rattlesnake in his pocket.

Stanley came up behind him, huffing and puffing. “What the fuck're you doing, Bells? Forget that broad. Let's get outta here.”

But Bells didn't hear. He was moving now, moving toward those two. He didn't know what he was going to do to them, but he was going to do something. He'd figure it out when he got there.

Without thinking he reached into his coat and pulled out his gun, a .25 Raven automatic. He swooped into the snack bar, and Gina's face changed to shock and horror, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon had just arrived. He held the automatic in his palm like a rock.

Mikey-boy was surprised to see him, too. “Hey, Bells, there you are—”

Bells bashed him over the head with the gun. The kids screamed. Mikey-boy clutched his head and stumbled back, stunned. Bells hit him again, hard, then again. He collapsed to the floor, flat on his face. Bells gazed down at him. Mikey-boy was moving a little, but not much. Bells watched him as if he were a squished bug that hadn't died yet.

“Holy shit!” When Freshy saw the gun, he backstepped out of the snack bar and ducked down behind a rack of red coats.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Gina was on her feet, screaming in Bells's face. “Oh, my God! Are you crazy or what?”

He ignored her. He was waiting to see if Mikey-boy would get up. He hoped he would.

The kids were squealing and yelling. Gina told them to quiet down and stay put. She was down on her knees now, seeing if her Mikey-boy was okay.

“Bells, c'mon—” Stanley took him by the arm, but Bells shrugged him off.

“Hey! What's going on here?”

Bells whipped around to see who the intruder was. A security guard. A greasy old guy with a Latino mustache and a big beer belly hanging out of his maroon Macy's blazer.

“Hold it right there, pal. What've you got in your—?”

Bells smashed him over the head, too. Quick and hard, one shot. The guard crumpled, out cold, flat on his back. Blood started to show below his greasy hairline. Bells wanted to stomp on his big belly and squish him, too, but then he spotted a square brown leather case on the guard's belt. Handcuffs. Bells unbuttoned the case and pulled them out. He stared at the cuffs dangling in his hand, the same hand with the gun, mesmerized by the glint of the light on the shiny metal.

The kids were still screaming, the boys jumping over the sides of the booths to get away.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” Gina screamed. She was still down on her knees with her poor Mikey-boy. “What the hell you gonna do with those, you sick son of a bitch?”

Bells stared down at her. Mikey-boy was rolling his head on the floor, trying to get it together.

Bells squeezed the bracelet in his pocket and realized that he'd been holding it the whole time. He let go of it and switched the gun to that hand. He knew what he was going to do now.

“I've got a little present for you, Gina.”