Bad Apple Read Online Free PDF

the murky gloom of Joey’s Starlight Lounge in Hoboken. Shit.
    â€œHey, Mike. What the hell you doing, sleepin’?”
    Tozzi opened his eyes again and gazed blankly at the goofball moon face on the other side of the booth. He closed his eyes again and sighed. Friggin’ Freshy.
    â€œWake up, man. Jesus Christ! You can’t fall asleep now. What if Buddha wants to talk to you?”
    â€œBuddha doesn’t talk to anyone who isn’t made.” Tozzi cleared his throat. “You know that.”
    â€œYeah, that’s true, that’s true. But he might make an exception. You never know, Mike. You never know.”
    Freshy DeFresco rattled the ice in his favorite drink, a Rusty Nail, scotch and Galliano. He was a skinny kid with a concave chest that even a sweater and sport coat couldn’t hide. He had a round face with watery basset hound eyes and a perpetual three days’ growth of beard. A small-time hood, Freshy was barely thirty, if that, and he was already half-bald to the crown of his head, but he kept the mousy brown hair long in back and tied it in a shitty little two-inch ponytail. Even with the diamond stud in his ear, he was still the uncoolest asshole Tozzi had ever met. He was jittery and fidgety, always playing with something in his hand or bouncing his knee or doing something to drive you crazy, and he wasted so much time figuring out all the “angles,” he didn’t know if he was coming or going anymore. Freshy made Barney Fife look suave.
    Freshy took a quick sip of his Rusty Nail, then went back to rattling the ice. “Something wrong, Mike? What’re you looking at me like that for? Huh?”
    Tozzi stared at him through half-closed lids. He didn’t trust Freshy as far as he could spit. Despite all Freshy’s testimonials that he was a changed man and that he was ready to work for the good guys from now on, Tozzi didn’t believe a word of it. He’d heard this rap a hundred times before from other guys who’d been flipped by the law. They get themselves in a jam, go to trial, and end up facing serious time for the first time in their lives, and all of a sudden they get religion. They call every cop and fed they can think of, begging to make a deal, promising to do anything—rat on their old associates, testify in court against a bigger fish, make introductions for an undercover cop—anything to get a reduced sentence. Guys like Freshy think they can go to heaven on brownie points. Of course, when you’re facingthree to seven for fencing stolen property, the thought of getting credit for time served plus parole and a promise of witness relocation when it’s all over probably does sound like heaven.
    Still, Tozzi had been burned before by mutts like Freshy. Crooks don’t get religion; they just get scared. And when they get scared, they’ll do anything and say anything to save their sorry little asses. Put a guy like this back on the street so that he can help you, and nine times out of ten the guy will play both ends to the middle, telling the cops what they want to hear, then turning around and telling the bad guys what they want to hear. It was a matter of survival and paranoia. Bad guys who flip never really believe in their heart of hearts that the good guys can protect them, and Freshy was probably no different. Tozzi was willing to bet that in that fucked-up head of his, Freshy thought he was just looking out for his own best interests. Just in case the Bureau decided to cut him loose, he wanted to make sure he had something to fall back on. And that was to be expected, up to a point. Just as long as he didn’t try to make big brownie points with Buddha Stanzione and Tony Bells by telling them who Mike Santoro really was.
    â€œMikey, whatta’ya keep looking at me like that for? I didn’t do nothin’.”
    â€œWhere you been?”
    Freshy jerked his thumb at the front door. “I just