FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1986— EARLY EVENING
In the conference room at the Organized Crime Bureau offices in Fairfield, the guys from the Attorney Generals Office—Deputy AG Robert Carroll, Deputy Chief Bobby Buccino, Investigators Ron Donahue and Paul Smith all sat forward, leaning on their elbows, staring intently at the tape deck as the cassette turned around and around. The reel-to-reel Nagra recording of Dominick's latest meeting with Shifu at one-fifteen that afternoon at the Vince Lombardi Service Area had been transferred to a cassette.
Dominick leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. He was afraid they were going to wear the damn tape out the way they were playing it.
''Listen to this,'' Dominick was saying on the tape. ''The Jewish kid asked me if I can get him three kilos. I said yeah, I got it. Eighty-five thousand, cash. Wednesday morning he's coming. He'll be here around nine, nine-thirty. Now here's the thing. I'll pick up the cyanide that morning from my guy. How long—"
''Doesn't give me enough time'' Shifu interrupted. ''Doesn't give me enough time. I need a couple of days to get it ready...."
Dominick got up, went to the cabinet behind Robert Carroll, and pulled out the new bottle of whiskey that had the picture of Shifu from the old bottle taped over the label. He needed a drink. He'd heard this goddamn tape a hundred times already. He knew the goddamn thing by heart.
"Too bad you can't pick the stuff up earlier, Dom, 'cause I gotta have it done up, see? I don't do it myself. I don't have the, ah, you know, the facilities to do it. I bring it to a guy who does it for me. I pay to have it done. That's something you don't want to fuck around with, ya know. A mistake on that, and you got a problem. If I fuck with it and I do something wrong, it could be my fuckin' problem. I don't want to fuck with something like that. I have a guy that makes it up."
"Let me ask you something. Shifu. Can you just have the components, then I can just bring the stuff and your guy can tell you how much to put in?"
"I don't have the stuff to mix it with. He has it. He mixes the stuff together perfectly. He has to see the strength of the stuff, some stuff isn't as strong as others, ya know? He has to see how strong it is. He tests it. Then he puts in these things, and he's gotta have a seal on it. You gotta make it airtight. You can't fuck around with this stuff. If it's not airtight, it could be a problem for you….and me."
"Bullshit." Robert Carroll was frowning.
They'd found out from the state chemist that cyanide is water-soluble. Mixing the deadly spray should be as simple as making Kool-Aid.
Dominick was talking on the tape. ''What about the other way. Shifu?''
''What's that? Putting it in the guy's food? You sure the guy's gonna eat?''
''Yeah."
"Then we'll need a couple of hamburgers, something like that. But will the kid eat?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Then that's great."
"Guaranteed. It'll be an egg sandwich. Every time I meet this kid, he orders an egg sandwich. We'll get him an egg sandwich."
"We can do that. Do they sell egg sandwiches here? I don't even know if they do."
As Dominick set out five plastic cups, he remembered Shifu blowing into his hands at the Lombardi Service Area and looking back over his shoulder at Roy Rogers. It had been cold and wet that day, and the ground was covered with dirty slush. Dominick's feet were still cold from standing outside by the phone booths with him.
"Don't worry about it," Dominick said on the tape, assuring Shifu that he'd get the sandwiches.
"Anything with eggs this kid'II eat. Is that okay for you?"
"Don't matter to me," Shifu said. "Once we get him in the van, he's ours—"
Robert Carroll reached over and shut off the tape deck. He didn't look happy. None of them did.
''He's suspicious," Paul Smith said. "He's getting ready to give you the runaround. Why does he sound so hesitant to commit himself all of a sudden? Why does he need a couple of days to mix the spray? He's suspicious. He's gonna disappear. You watch."
Dominick poured out the scotch. There was barely enough left in the bottle to give everyone a taste. He emptied the last drops, then set down the bottle next to the small brown glass vial on the table. The vial contained fine white granules of quinine, specially prepared by a state chemist to resemble cyanide. Dominick was going to give it to Shifu and tell him it was the poison.
''Hey, Smith, I forgot to ask you," Dominick said as he passed the plastic cups around, ''you do like eggs, don't you?"
"Too late now if I don't."
An egg sandwich was the first thing that had popped into Dominick's head when Shifu started to give him trouble about needing time to mix the spray. If he was going to meet the rich kid at nine o'clock in the morning, it was more logical that someone would eat an egg sandwich than a hamburger.
But Dominick could tell that the guys from the state weren't exactly thrilled with his im-provisational talents. Well, all he could say was he was out there and they weren't. When Shifu had started to hem and haw, he had to act fast to keep him from making any more excuses.
Dominick hoisted his drink. ''Gentlemen, a toast." He swiveled his chair to face the larger picture of Shifu that was taped to the wall. "This is for you, Shifu. I hope you're enjoying yourself now because your days are numbered, my friend. You are mine, my friend. You are fucking mine." He threw back the scotch and drained the cup.
Paul Smith lifted his cup. ''Bon appetit, Shifu."
They all laughed and downed their drinks. They had to laugh because they knew that if they didn't, they'd be climbing the walls. It wasn't a matter of cockiness or false bravado or machismo. Kidding around was a survival mechanism. If you let the tension get to you, you'd lose your edge and you'd start questioning yourself. And once you started to doubt your abilities, you started making mistakes. And you do not want to make mistakes with a mass murderer. That's why Dominick was laughing the loudest.
The deputy attorney general set down his cup and pressed his lips together. "I'm still thinking we should move the meeting indoors."
"Why?" Ron Donahue asked.
Deputy Chief Bobby Buccino shrugged and showed his palms. "Shifu has never wanted to meet anywhere but Lombardi. If you try to change the place, he may not go for it. Why run the risk of turning him off?"
Robert Carroll tapped his fingers on the table to make his point. "Yes, but if we can get him inside, we can videotape the whole thing."
Buccino looked confused. "We can videotape outside. We've got the equipment."
Carroll shook his head. "No, that's not what I mean. What I'm thinking is we get a three-room apartment somewhere. We set it up so that Dominick and Paul are in the living room doing the coke deal. Shifu will have to go out of the room to put the cyanide in the sandwich and we'll get it all on video. Can you imagine how that would look to a jury if they could see a film of Shifu actually putting poison on a sandwich, getting ready to kill someone?" The deputy attorney general was almost bouncing in his seat. He was so excited by his brainstorm.
Dominick shook his head. "Where'd you get that one? America's Most WantedF'
"No, no, think about it. How can a jury fail to convict? How could the defense say his actions weren't premeditated?"
"Hold on, hold on," Paul Smith said. "What if Shifu changes his mind.? What if he just pulls out a gun and shoots me.?"
"Why would he do that?"
"We know he doesn't just kill with cyanide. If he thinks he's alone in there with Dominick and the rich kid, why mess around with cyanide? May as well just shoot the kid and get it over with, right?"
"I don't think he'd shoot you," Ron Donahue said. "He might use a knife, though."
"Or he might try to strangle you," Bobby Buccino offered. "He's done that before." Buccino was grinning at the young investigator.
"This isn't funny, Bobby. What if he really does shoot me?"
"So you'll wear a vest."
"What if he shoots me in the head?"
Dominick waved him off. "Smith, you worry too much. Look at it this way. If he kills you indoors, we'll just carry you out in a rug. But if we do it at Lombardi, he's gonna stick you in a barrel, and face it, who wants to be stuck in a barrel? Remember what happened with that guy he did in Jersey City."
"You mean Malliband?"
"Yeah, Malliband."
Paul Smith looked disgusted with the bunch of them. "At least I'll fit," he grumbled.
George Malliband Jr, had made a big mistake and at the time he probably didn't even realize it. He showed up at Liu Shifu's house unannounced.
It was a hot summer Sunday afternoon in the late seventies, and the Liu's were having a barbecue in their backyard in Dumont. The kids had some of their friends over, and Victoria's mother was there, presiding over the party at the picnic table, urging everyone to eat. Victoria kept going in and out of the house to fetch things while Shifu tended to the grill, flipping hamburgers and turning the hot dogs.
Liu Shifu was relaxed that day, enjoying himself. He liked it when his family was all together, doing something together as a family. Moving back from the rising smoke, he watched the flames lick the sizzling burgers as fat dripped onto the burning coals. Another couple of minutes and the burgers would be done. He opened up a package of buns to toast on the grill just before he took the meat off.
But just as he started to separate the buns, his mother-in-law came over and grabbed him by the sleeve. She looked upset. There was a big man standing on the grass at the side of the house, staring at them, she said. She'd asked the man what he wanted, but he said he had to talk to "Shifu."
Shifu looked up and squinted against the smoke. George Malliband was at the edge of the yard, waving him over. The three-hundred-pound, six-foot-three man wore metal-rim glasses and a bushy moustache. From the look of horror on Shifu's mother-in-law's face, it was as if the devil himself had suddenly arrived for lunch.
Shifu's mood turned black. He shoved the bag of hamburger buns into his mother-in-law's hands and ordered her to watch the grill while he took care of the intruder. He strode toward Malliband, slow but purposeful. Malliband had a hell of a lot of nerve coming to his house.
But before he said a word to Malliband, he managed to put a clamp on his rage. He was furious that Malliband, a wheeler-dealer from central Pennsylvania whose main source of income was pornography, had shown up without an invitation and barged in on a family cookout. He regretted that he'd ever brought Malliband home that one time. He was just trying to be social, but that was a big mistake. He swore he'd never do that again with anybody.
But Shifu didn't show his anger to Malliband. He could only blame himself, really. Apparently he hadn't made it clear enough that he did not like having his family exposed to his business associates. He didn't say anything at the time, but in the back of his mind this unwelcome visit would be a permanent black mark against Malliband. It was the kind of thing he would never forget.