Bad Guys by Anthony Bruno

with new men the mob wouldn’t know. But as long as they know who the feds are, they can watch out for us, keep us at arm’s length, run us around in circles. It’s the perfect situation for them.”
    Tozzi did it again. He kept saying “us” when he referred to the Bureau. Gibbons rested his elbows on his knees and stared at his shoes. “The perfect situation,” he murmured. “But what good did it do them? The Varga trials crippled the Mafia in New York. Luccarelli and Mistretta have been convicted and sentenced, and Giovinazzo is locked up in a hospital room playing possum and getting bedsores while his lawyers keep prolonging the agony. All their key men are serving time, and the few who got away are in hiding. So what the fuck good did it do them? Some perfect situation.”
    â€œThat’s what I keep asking myself, Gib, and you know what?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œWhat does matter is that there’s a bad agent somewhere in the Bureau, and we’ve got to nail him.”
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘we’?”
    â€œWe can’t turn this over to the Bureau. You don’t know who we can trust there.”
    Gibbons shook his head. “You are one paranoid son-of-a-bitch, you know that?”
    Tozzi’s face contorted in contained fury; his fists were trembling. “Will you fucking listen to me, man? The shit these punks on the street are pulling is getting worse everyday. There are shootouts out in public practically every week. A lot of innocent people are getting hurt. It’s like Dodge City out there. So how do we know the bad guy in the Bureau isn’t selling his info to the freelancers, huh? To guys like Clementi. These fleas out there now aren’t as weird and ritualistic as the families were, but they sure ain’t showing the kind of restraint the families did either.”
    Gibbons stared at the photos again, the faces he knew, men he’d worked with, men who kept framed color pictures of their families on their desks back at the field office. “Specifically what are you suggesting, Tozzi?”
    â€œI have a few hunches, but I need room to move.”
    â€œIn other words you don’t want the Bureau on your tail. You want me to run interference, stay between you and them.”
    Tozzi nodded. “I’ll also need access to Bureau files.”
    Gibbons sighed. “Great. Criminal use of confidential federal files should add what?—at least another ten years to our sentences when they catch us.”
    â€œNot if we catch them first.” Tozzi was flashing that big nervous smile again.
    Gibbons glanced at the pictures one more time. “If I were to help you— if —I don’t want to be kept in the dark about what you’re doing, understand?”
    â€œWe’re partners, Gib. We always were.”
    Gibbons looked past him to the picture on the end table, the little kid on the Shetland, the monkey in a Daniel Boone outfit sitting on a pony. He knew this was wrong, that helping Tozzi would make him a renegade agent too. There was a heavy feeling in his chest. But Tozzi was right, there was no other way.
    Finally Gibbons nodded slowly, and Tozzi laid a grateful hand on his shoulder. Gibbons glared at it. He didn’t like being touched.
    â€œSo tell me, Sherlock. What’s your hunch?”
    â€œOkay. Lando, Blaney, and Novick worked for different families, but were obviously killed in the same hit. Very uncharacteristic for the mob. That kind of cooperation is almost unheard of. The families may have been tipped off about the undercovers at the same time, but why would they get together for the punishment?”
    â€œI give up. Why?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Tozzi said, “but I do think there’s someone who may know, someone who was intimately connected with Luccarelli, Mistretta, and