Free Bad Apple by Anthony Bruno Page B

go.”
    Stanley put the car in gear and pulled up to the intersection,where the traffic light was red. He signaled to turn right, but there was too much traffic to turn on the red. He had to wait for the green light.
    As they waited, Tozzi noticed Gibbons coming out of the candy store, scowling and holding his swollen face. Tozzi made eye contact with Freshy, who knew Gibbons and had spotted him, too. Freshy’s face was long, cheeks sunken, eyes wide. He was so obvious, Tozzi wanted to smack him.
    Bells turned a page. “Hey, Mike, who was that old guy you were talking to before?”
    Tozzi shot a quick glance at Freshy. Had he said something to Bells and Stanley about Gibbons? If he had, what did he say?
    â€œWhich guy you talking about?”
    â€œThat guy right over there. On the corner.”
    â€œYou mean that guy? The one whose face is all swollen up?”
    â€œYeah, that guy. What’d you do, smack him?”
    Stanley started to laugh, but it turned into a raspy cigarette cough. Freshy looked like he was ready to jump out of his skin.
    Tozzi started laughing, too. “Nah, I didn’t touch the guy. What a nut, though. He told me he had a toothache, and it was driving him crazy. He wanted to know if there was a dentist somewhere around here he could go to. I told him I couldn’t help him, I didn’t live around here. But the guy wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept asking me what he should do, he was in agony. I couldn’t get rid of the old bastard. Finally I told him to go look up dentists in the Yellow Pages and leave me the fuck alone.”
    No one said anything, and Tozzi’s heart stopped. He looked at Freshy, convinced that he’d told Bells who Gibbons really was. But as the moment stretched and nothing happened, something else occurred to him. If Bells saw him on the corner with Gibbons, did he also see him out there with Gina? He rememberedthat phone message Bells had left on her answering machine, and the high-octane paranoia that only a guy in deep cover can experience began to creep through his gut and barber-pole up his spine as he considered the possibility that maybe Bells and Gina really did have something going together. And Bells was definitely the jealous kind. Tozzi’s pulse was in overdrive.
    Bells ruffled the newspaper. “You should’ve smacked the guy,” he mumbled.
    Stanley laughed, then coughed into his fist. The light changed, and he made the turn onto Kennedy Boulevard, heading north toward Jersey City. They made the next two lights but caught the third one and had to stop. A butcher shop called Meat City was on the left-hand corner.
    â€œSo where we going?” Tozzi asked, trying to sound curious but not alarmed.
    No one answered. Bells folded the paper over. Freshy’s eyes were so wide, they would’ve fallen out if he looked down.
    â€œWhat is it, a secret?” Tozzi said with an annoyed laugh. “Where we going?”
    Stanley looked at him in the rearview mirror. “You’ll see,” he whispered. He was almost reverent, the way he sounded.
    Bells didn’t lift his head from the paper.

SEVEN
10:33 A.M.
    â€œCoffee break,” Stanley shouted as they filed into the garage through the muffler shop’s waiting room. “Go get some coffee. Hurry up. Go.”
    The two dark-skinned black guys in green coveralls didn’t pay any attention. They continued to work on the cars that were up on the lifts. One was putting new brake pads on a maroon Buick Century; the other was using a pneumatic drill to loosen the bolts on a fire-engine red Celica’s rusted-out muffler. Years’ worth of caked rust and road dirt rained down on his goggled face, but he didn’t flinch.
    Freshy and his buddy Mikey stood off to the side, small mouths and big eyes, waiting to see what they were here for.
    Bells watched them, amused by their uncertain state in an uncertain situation. He turned his head slowly