Bad Apple by Anthony Bruno Page B

teeth, staring at Mr. Blake, mocking the old guy with his eyes.
    â€œYou know my situation, Bells.” Mr. Blake wasn’t cowering. Tozzi was impressed, but under the circumstances he didn’t think it was very smart. A little cowering might not be so bad right about now.
    Bells shook his head as he pulled the floss through his molars. “You’re wasting your money, Mr. Blake. She’s gonna die anyway.”
    The old man didn’t answer.
    â€œWhatta’ya want? Two sets of hospital bills? What’s that gonna prove?”
    Tozzi didn’t know what Bells was talking about.
    Stanley looked at Tozzi and Freshy and explained. “Mr. Blake’s daughter’s got the AIDS. Skin and bones, the poor thing, just barely hanging in there. He’s spending everything he’s got on her.” Stanley turned to the old man. “But he thinks just ’cause his daughter is dying, that gives him some kind of moral right to forget about his obligation to us.”
    Blake was glaring at Stanley. He was furious, but he wasn’t going to say anything. He had too much dignity to discuss his daughter with a bunch of hoods. Tozzi felt for the guy.
    Bells opened his mouth wide and did the molars way in the back. When he was finished, he unwound the floss from his fingers, leaned over the counter looking for the wastepaper basket, and got rid of it. Tozzi wondered if the labs in Washington could do a DNA analysis from the saliva on the floss. If they worked over Mr. Blake, the saliva on the floss could put Bells at the scene of the crime, and—
    But Tozzi wouldn’t let it come down to that. He couldn’t stand by and watch while Stanley beat the shit out of Mr. Blake. The guy was old; they might end up killing him. But if Tozzi got in the middle of this, Bells would definitely get suspicious. If Bells got real hinky, he might flee and escape the manhunt. But he’d probably want some payback from “Mikey-boy” the rat before he left.
    Tozzi tried to imagine what would happen if Bells and Stanley went after him as a tag team. He had a feeling his aikido skills might not be enough. No martial art that he knew of taught you how to defend yourself against a hail of bullets coming from across the room.
    Bells shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and lowered his chin. He nodded toward the glass case between him and Mr. Blake. “I could save myself a lot of trouble by just taking what you owe me in jewelry. Looks like you got enough to bring you up to date. But . . .” He gave the word some hang time. “But I don’t wanna do that.”
    Mr. Blake just stared at him, his chin sticking out like Burt Lancaster.
    â€œYou know why I don’t wanna do that? Because I don’t like you. Plain as that. You got a shitty attitude, my friend. You think you’re special, just because your daughter slept with some fag who had AIDS. Well, that’s not my problem. This is business. Your personal life, I don’t give a shit. Business is business.”
    Tozzi had a feeling Bells had given this speech before. It flowed too easily. He noticed that while Bells was talking, Stanley had put on a pair of black leather driving gloves. Tight ones. To keep from splitting a knuckle when he started throwing punches.
    Stanley started to move around the counter, stalking Mr. Blake. The old guy still didn’t say anything, but the wet gleam of fear suddenly showed in his eyes.
    Tozzi wet his lips. He had to do something.
    Except he wasn’t carrying a weapon, he couldn’t depend on Freshy to help him out, and Bells just might go ballistic if he tried to interfere with “business.” He touched the beeper clipped to his belt. Gibbons hadn’t seen him getting into Bells’s car back in Bayonne. If he had, he and Dougherty would’ve followed them in the surveillance van, and they’d be hearing all this right now. They’d have plenty of backups with