That's why Dominick wasn't concerned with his undercover image as he drove across that bridge, heading for the Dunkin' Donuts. He knew he was convincing. What he was concerned about was meeting Liu Shifu by himself without any backups.
The situation had come down too fast to call in for help. Shifu was supposedly waiting for him. It was a five-minute drive to the doughnut shop from "the store." If he took too long getting there, Shifu wouldn't wait, he was sure of that.
The guy was cautious to a fault. If anything made Shifu suspicious about Dominick, he would disappear, and Dominick could forget about ever meeting him again. That's why this first meeting was important. Dominick would know in the first five minutes whether he could pull this off or not. The important thing was control. He was a bad guy, and he wanted something.
No matter how much he wanted to get close to Shifu, he could not kowtow to him. It would destroy his credibility as a player. And if Shifu thought he was bullshit, he'd have nothing to do with him.
Dominick reached into his pocket and felt the butt of his gun, a Walther PPK 380 automatic. Despite the balmy temperature, Dominick wore a leather jacket. It was part of his undercover uniform and served to conceal the bulge of his weapon. Considering Shifu's reputation, he planned to keep his hand in his pocket with his finger on the trigger.
Shifu was reputed to have taken part in dozens of murders, but the police had never been able to come up with enough evidence on any one crime to arrest him. Dominick had a gut feeling that the killings they knew about were only a fraction of Shifu's total body count. From all indications he was just too proficient at killing.
Sometimes Shifu killed alone, and sometimes he brought help. Sometimes he worked as a killer for hire; sometimes the killings were his own doing. Sometimes it was business; sometimes it was just blind rage.
He was known to have used weapons as small as a pencil and as large as a twelve-gauge shotgun. On at least two occasions he'd killed with hand grenades. He'd used baseball bats, tire irons, rope, wire, knives, ice picks, screwdrivers, even his bare hands when necessary.
But according to state police reports, one of Shifu's favorite methods was cyanide poisoning. Dominick knew from sixteen years of working undercover that you never take any criminal lightly, but Liu Shifu was unlike any other bad guy he'd ever encountered. He was not a demented serial killer; killing apparently did not satisfy any kind of psychosexual need for him.
Sometimes he killed weeks apart; sometimes he waited years before taking his next victim. He didn't smoke, drink, gamble, or womanize. He fitted no easy pattern, and there was no other way to describe him apart from calling him an Angel of Death.
Dominick let out a slow breath and took his hand out of his pocket.
A traffic light up ahead turned red, and Dominick quickly pulled the long black Lincoln into the left lane and stopped behind a white police car. He noticed the cop behind the wheel looking at him in his side mirror. Dominick glanced ahead at the Dunkin' Donuts on the other side of the intersection. A paranoid chill crept through his stomach. What if these two cops decided to pull him over. Fuck.
He hadn't signaled when he pulled into the left lane. What if he fitted the description of some other meatball they were looking for. Shifu was supposed to be waiting for him at the Dunkin' Donuts.
If Shifu saw the cops questioning him, he'd probably scram. Worse than that, it would lower Dominick in Shifu's eyes, make him seem like a street hood, some jerk the cops could push around just for the hell of it. Shifu wasn't interested in little guys, and Dominick had gone to great lengths to establish himself as someone with solid connections to the mob families in New York. After seventeen months of hard work, rubbing elbows with some of the worst scum imaginable, he didn't want to blow his one chance to finally meet the Angel of Death, not like this.
The cop behind the wheel kept looking at him in the side mirror, and his partner was turning around now, staring at Dominick through the security grille that separated the unit's front and back seats.
Dominick gritted his teeth. Not now, guys. Please, not now.
The light turned green. The cars in the right lane started to move, but the police car didn't budge. The driver was staring at him.
Christ Almighty, not now, Dominick glanced at the orange, pink, and white Dunkin' Donuts sign across the intersection. He stared at the unit's brake lights.
Please!
Dominick considered going around them, but that could have been what they were waiting for. Maybe they wanted to get a look at his profile as he passed, then they could pull him over. Goddammit. He knew he had to do something. He couldn't just sit here acting suspicious.
But just as he was about to go around the cruiser, its brake lights suddenly blinked off and it started to move forward. Dominick let out a long breath as he pressed the accelerator and went through the intersection. He switched on his left directional. The doughnut shop was just ahead.
There were only three vehicles in the Dunkin' Donuts' small parking lot: a black Toyota pickup truck with hot pink Oakley windshield wipers, a beige VW Rabbit with a bashed-in fender, and a blue Chevy Camaro, at least six or seven years old. Dominick pulled up next to the Camaro. From what he knew about Shifu's size, Dominick had a feeling his target wouldn't be coming in an imported compact.
Dominick cut the engine and looked to his right. A large, heavyset man was sitting behind the wheel of the Camaro, perusing the newspaper propped on the steering wheel. He was bald but wore a full beard and mustache, mostly gray now, though his pitch black coloring was still in evidence. Oversize windowpane sunglasses covered his eyes. The man turned his head slowly and looked at Dominick. Dominick knew the face very well from the dozens of surveillance photographs he'd seen. It was him, the Reaper, the Angel of Death, Liu Shifu.
Dominick had to force himself from putting his hand in his pocket. The Angel of Death was sizing him up, and Dominick knew it, but he met Shifu's gaze with his own unconcerned stare. He had to establish control right off the bat, before they even exchanged a single word. You give a guy like Shifu the upper hand and he'll eat you alive.
Shifu closed his newspaper, folded it in half, and got out of the car. Dominick opened his door and got out of the Lincoln, and it was only then, looking over the roof of his car, that he realized just how big Shifu really was. At six feet even, Dominick had certainly never thought of himself as small or even medium, but compared with Liu Shifu, a thoroughbred would have looked small. The physical descriptions in the reports didn't do the man justice. ''Six-three, 180lbs" didn't convey the whole truth of the matter. The man wasn't just big, he was BUILT.
"Shifu?" Dominick asked.
Shifu nodded, no expression. He put the newspaper under his arm. "You wanna coffee?"
"Sure."
Shifu walked around the back of the Shark and extended his hand to Dominick.
Dominick shook his hand, deliberately keeping his face expressionless so his true feelings didn't show. He was shaking the hand of a killer, a hand that had taken many, many lives.