บท 13: Hit List

''Shifu, it's 'Tim,' I gotta talk to you. Today.'' The hang-up was a curt bang. It had an attitude. "Tim" had an attitude, a bad attitude. "Tim" was the name John Sposato used on the phone just in case anyone was listening in. Sposato thought a lot of himself. He was under the mistaken impression that he was a somebody, that he mattered, that he could tell people what to do. He was wrong.

Shifu sat down at his desk. By rights John Sposato should have been dead by now, he thought as he reached over and picked up his attaché case from the floor, setting it on top of the desk. He opened it and took out his knife, a heavy-duty hunting knife with a curved six-inch blade. There were ten notches in the wooden handle, eight on one side, two on the other.

He left the knife in its leather sheath, held it in one hand, and slowly ran his thumbnail down the eight notches, one after the other. When he got to the bottom notch, he started again at the top.

Nobody got away with the kind of shit Sposato tried to pull. Not with Liu Shifu. That fat-ass slob had, had the nerve to come to his house last month. His house. Came with two goddamn Puerto Ricans to collect money. Came to his home.

He had watched them from the upstairs window. Sposato sitting in his car like he was some kind of king while the spies came to the door and hassled Neo. They asked Neo where his father was, said they didn't believe him when Neo said his father wasn't home, said they wanted to come in and look for themselves. Shifu stood at the top of the stairs and listened to all this shit. He had a gun in his hand, and he was ready to shoot the two of them if they showed their faces inside the door. His home and his family were sacred, and anyone who messed with them was asking for trouble. Big trouble.

But Sposato didn't know how lucky he'd been that day. The spies didn't press their luck with Neo. They weren't stupid. They were probably afraid "The Reaper" was in there waiting for them.

Standing there, listening, he'd heard the two greaseballs telling Neo they'd be back later. He went to the window and saw them going back to their car. Shifu was ready to rush down and follow them in his car, run them off the road, shoot that bastard Sposato right through his fucking thick head.

But a police car happened to pass by, and the cops stopped to see what these scumbags were doing in a neighborhood like this. Shifu stayed upstairs. If the cops hadn't shown up, Sposato and his two Puerto Ricans would be rotting together someplace right now. Sposato didn't know how lucky he'd been.

Later that day he had gotten Sposato on the phone and told him point-blank, "You don't come to my house. You don't talk to my family. You don't look at my family. Ever!" He threatened to go down to Sposato's place in South Jersey that very night to show Sposato he wasn't kidding.

That put the fear of God into Sposato for a little while because the fat slob knew Shifu would do it. But Sposato remained a problem. Sure, they'd been making money together, but Sposato seemed to feel that he was the senior partner from the way he'd been acting lately. He thought he could talk any way he wanted to Liu Shifu. He must have figured he had enough on the Angel of Death that he could throw his weight around. He was very wrong about that.

Sposato was going to die. There was no question about it. But not right away.

Once again Sposato had gotten lucky.

As he ran his thumbnail down the notches in the wooden knife handle, it all started to jell in his mind.

He was going to be needing Sposato a little while longer because there was still money to be made with him, gun money. Dominick Provenzano had just given Sposato a new lease on life. Shifu's fingernail clicked down the notches as he thought this all out, considering all the angles.

Dominick wanted heavy steel, military weapons. Sposato had access to all kinds of weapons. If Dominick was on the up-and-up, he could make a nice profit brokering Sposato's merchandise to him.

But there was one thing Shifu had to take care of first, something that had been bothering him for a long time, clouding his thinking, making him crazy: Zhang Xiaohua and his woman, Cao Feifei. Zhang Xiaohua, the pointer. They had to be the ones who talked to those two cops, Kane and Volkman.

Zhang Xiaohua had been the "foreman" of a gang Shifu used to run. They mainly did burglaries and car thefts. But there were a few killings, too. Shifu ended up having to kill the two workers in the gang, Cao Feifei's ex-husband, Sean Xiao, and her cousin Li Xian. They had become weak and scared, and that made them liabilities. Zhang Xiaohua was stuck in jail at the time, so he couldn't keep them in line, and Shifu could not risk having Sean Xiao and Li Xian out of his control—they knew too much.

Cao Feifei hadn't exactly been an active member of the gang, but she always seemed to be around when things were going down and she had big ears. She and Zhang Xiaohua had shacked up together with her eight kids when she was still married to Sean Xiao, and the word going around now was that the state had gotten to them.

Shifu knew that the state police were very interested in him. And he was willing to bet that Zhang Xiaohua and Victoria had spilled their guts to those two detectives—not completely, but just enough to keep their asses covered. Zhang Xiaohua knew enough not to play all his aces. From what Shifu had heard, the state had even relocated the couple and given them new identities in exchange for their cooperation. But nobody hid from Liu Shifu. He had sources, he'd find them. And when he did, he'd have to get rid of them fast and quiet—no guns, no blood. That was why he needed cyanide. To take care of a couple of rats.

Shifu pressed his lips together and shook his head. Too bad he had gotten rid of "Mister Softee." At the time he didn't realize that you had to sign papers to buy pure cyanide and that it was sold only to companies that had a legitimate use for it. He couldn't risk trying to get it for himself, not now, not that way. The state cops would love to catch him buying cyanide. Somehow "Mister Softee" had never seemed to have any problem getting it. Shifu sucked his teeth and shook his head. If he'd only known.

He stared at the late-afternoon light coming through the blinds as he sorted it all out in his mind. The way he saw it he would first have to do the coke deal with Dominick Provenzano just to gain his trust; actually he didn't even need the stuff, but he wouldn't have any problem getting rid of it. Then once Dominick got him the cyanide, he'd do in Zhang Xiaohua and Cao Feifei, get those two rats out of his life.

Then he'd arrange a nice arms deal with Dominick, something big. He'd string Dominick along for a while, put the guy off a couple of times just to make him hungrier, then he would tell him he was having problems, that he was sorry but he was going to have to up the price a little. Maybe tell him he could get him something better to make the guy good and crazy. Finally he would tell Dominick to meet him someplace, Sposato's warehouse maybe. He'd tell him to bring cash. When Dominick showed up with the money, boom! One right in the back of the head. Stick his body in a steel drum, fill it with cement, then make it disappear. Nice and neat.

Shifu grinned at the thought of telling Sposato they'd be splitting a million in cash, maybe more, on the arms deal with Dominick. The grin grew into a toothy smile as he imagined Sposato's face as he held a gun in the fat bastard's face later on, after they'd gotten rid of Dominick's body, and he told Sposato he was taking all the money. It would almost be worth taking a picture just before he pulled the trigger.

Yes, yes. Sposato was going to die. No question about it. But not until Shifu took care of some business and made some money. Because that's what it was all about, really. Making money. It was only the green that counted.

Shifu clicked his thumbnail down the notches.

Zhang Xiaohua.

Cao Feifei

Dominick Provenzano.

John Sposato.

That would be 4 bodies and 4 points for the system and a clean slate for him.

He let out a long sigh of satisfaction. He felt better now. He didn't think he was going to get that headache after all.

A short knock came from the other side of the door. "Daddy? Dinner's ready." It was Tiffany.

"I'll be right there, honey."

He tossed the knife back into the attaché case, shut the lid, closed the latches, and set it on the floor beside the desk. He switched off the desk lamp and left his office.

The aroma of the baking lasagne filled the hallway. "Smells good," he called out as he headed for the kitchen.

He was hungry.