said just before he hung up.
The dial tone droned in Gibbonsâs ear, but he ignored it. He studied the Oreo heâd been holding and then ate it whole.
NINE
The next day Gibbons lucked out. It was Friday and Ivers wasnât going to be in that day. The New York SAC was taking a long weekend to pick up his son at summer camp in Maine. Gibbons had discovered that Ivers had an annoying habit of popping in unexpectedly when he was working with the computer and reading through files. He may have given Gibbons free access to the files, but he never said heâd keep his nose out of the investigation. Ivers wanted Tozziâs ass on a hook, and Gibbons was sick of giving him evasive answers, quoting him procedural chapter and verse on just what he was doing, how he was doing it, and what his goals were. Today, thank God, heâd be able to work in peace, and he planned to take advantage of the situation and get a lot done.
By one oâclock his eyes were burning. His cubicle in the File Room was stacked with the transcripts of Richie Vargaâs testimony at the federal grand jury hearings. The CRT screen tilted up from the desktop and glowed green at him. His head was throbbing, but he couldnât stop now. He was beginning to get a feel for what Tozzi suspected. Varga was intimately linked to three mob families in New York, a unique position for anyone. The three bosses of these families obviously had to have agreed on killing Lando, Blaney, and Novick, so if anyone was privy to such a pact, Varga certainly could have been. And if Varga had known about the plans for the hit, it was possible that he also knew who fingered the three agents.
Gibbons had put together a list of agents from the New York officewho had worked undercover in the three families during the last ten years. Besides Lando, Blaney, and Novick, there were sixteen othersâfour in Mistrettaâs family, five in Giovinazzoâs family, and seven in Luccarelliâs. Gibbons studied the names. He knew some of them pretty well, the younger guys he didnât know at all. But that meant nothing. The rat could be your best friend, the most inconspicuous guy in the world, the one no one would ever suspect. It could be any one of these guys. Gibbons stared blankly at the yellow legal pad where heâd written the names down in a column with the Italian cover name each man had used in parentheses.
Before tackling the volumes of courtroom testimony, Gibbons had decided to read through the FBI standard file on Varga. Richie was born in Havana, Cuba, on September 3, 1949. Gibbons counted the years; Varga would turn thirty-seven in two weeks. His father had been some kind of gofer for the American mobsters who controlled the Havana casinos. Emanuel âMannyâ Vargas, Richieâs father, adored gangsters because they were macho and they were American. When Batista fled Cuba in 1959 and Castroâs revolution drove the mob off the island, Vargas moved his wife and son to Philadelphia, where he found work with the mob, specifically running an after-hours gambling club in the basement of a bar called the Peppermint Lounge across the river in Camden, New Jersey. Like most of the Cubans who fled their homeland, Manny Vargas became a superpatriot in his adopted country, openly and frequently praising the United States, the great enemy of world Communism. He was very proud of the fact that his only son had the same first name as the great anti-Communist champion, then Vice President Nixon.
In the Philly organization, Richieâs father answered to Jules Collesano, a loyal lieutenant who was generally known as a âgood Joeâ and a soft touch. Manny apparently encouraged his son to suck up to Collesano, who took to the boy, presumably because he had three daughters despite his wifeâs best efforts to produce a son. (Mrs. Collesano had suffered two miscarriages trying, in 1955 and again in 1956.) Richie grew up in an atmosphere
The dial tone droned in Gibbonsâs ear, but he ignored it. He studied the Oreo heâd been holding and then ate it whole.
NINE
The next day Gibbons lucked out. It was Friday and Ivers wasnât going to be in that day. The New York SAC was taking a long weekend to pick up his son at summer camp in Maine. Gibbons had discovered that Ivers had an annoying habit of popping in unexpectedly when he was working with the computer and reading through files. He may have given Gibbons free access to the files, but he never said heâd keep his nose out of the investigation. Ivers wanted Tozziâs ass on a hook, and Gibbons was sick of giving him evasive answers, quoting him procedural chapter and verse on just what he was doing, how he was doing it, and what his goals were. Today, thank God, heâd be able to work in peace, and he planned to take advantage of the situation and get a lot done.
By one oâclock his eyes were burning. His cubicle in the File Room was stacked with the transcripts of Richie Vargaâs testimony at the federal grand jury hearings. The CRT screen tilted up from the desktop and glowed green at him. His head was throbbing, but he couldnât stop now. He was beginning to get a feel for what Tozzi suspected. Varga was intimately linked to three mob families in New York, a unique position for anyone. The three bosses of these families obviously had to have agreed on killing Lando, Blaney, and Novick, so if anyone was privy to such a pact, Varga certainly could have been. And if Varga had known about the plans for the hit, it was possible that he also knew who fingered the three agents.
Gibbons had put together a list of agents from the New York officewho had worked undercover in the three families during the last ten years. Besides Lando, Blaney, and Novick, there were sixteen othersâfour in Mistrettaâs family, five in Giovinazzoâs family, and seven in Luccarelliâs. Gibbons studied the names. He knew some of them pretty well, the younger guys he didnât know at all. But that meant nothing. The rat could be your best friend, the most inconspicuous guy in the world, the one no one would ever suspect. It could be any one of these guys. Gibbons stared blankly at the yellow legal pad where heâd written the names down in a column with the Italian cover name each man had used in parentheses.
Before tackling the volumes of courtroom testimony, Gibbons had decided to read through the FBI standard file on Varga. Richie was born in Havana, Cuba, on September 3, 1949. Gibbons counted the years; Varga would turn thirty-seven in two weeks. His father had been some kind of gofer for the American mobsters who controlled the Havana casinos. Emanuel âMannyâ Vargas, Richieâs father, adored gangsters because they were macho and they were American. When Batista fled Cuba in 1959 and Castroâs revolution drove the mob off the island, Vargas moved his wife and son to Philadelphia, where he found work with the mob, specifically running an after-hours gambling club in the basement of a bar called the Peppermint Lounge across the river in Camden, New Jersey. Like most of the Cubans who fled their homeland, Manny Vargas became a superpatriot in his adopted country, openly and frequently praising the United States, the great enemy of world Communism. He was very proud of the fact that his only son had the same first name as the great anti-Communist champion, then Vice President Nixon.
In the Philly organization, Richieâs father answered to Jules Collesano, a loyal lieutenant who was generally known as a âgood Joeâ and a soft touch. Manny apparently encouraged his son to suck up to Collesano, who took to the boy, presumably because he had three daughters despite his wifeâs best efforts to produce a son. (Mrs. Collesano had suffered two miscarriages trying, in 1955 and again in 1956.) Richie grew up in an atmosphere
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