บท 40: Bon Appetit
"So, Shifu, you still interested in handling the kid with me?" Dominick said, steering the conversation toward the matter of killing the rich Jewish kid.
"Sure, Dom. You tell me when. I'm ready to do whatever you want to do with him."
"We do him with cyanide. The way you told me, right?"
"Okay."
"So how do we do it."
Shifu frowned and shrugged. "You bring him back here. I'll have a van. You tell the kid to get in the back of the van so you can do the deal, and we'll do it there."
"And you're sure the cyanide won't show up when they find him?"
"If they do a regular zip-zap job and throw him out, it doesn't matter, they won't find it. If they do certain tests on him, it might show up. But like I'm saying, it all depends on how thorough the coroner is. If he's not thorough, he's in a hurry to get the fuck home and he just slaps it together, you got it made."
"How about just making him disappear completely?"
"There's some old abandoned mine shafts in Philadelphia. Drop something down there, you don't even hear the fucking thing bounce."
"All right. That's possible. And how about the car? You think we should leave it or get rid of it?"
"Either way. We could sell it for parts. I know a place— bang, bang, bang—they cut it up and get rid of the parts the same day. They don't keep anything around to get 'em in trouble."
Dominick wrinkled his face and looked doubtful. He wanted Shifu to talk some more about murder. "You sure about all that stuff about fooling the coroner? They got all kinds of ways to find out things, don't they?"
"Hey, you think those people are smart? Listen to me. They found this one guy, and when the autopsy was done, they said he was only dead two and a half weeks. But see, he wasn't. He'd been dead two and a half years. Those guys got their little nuts twisted on that one."
"Oh, yeah." Dominick knew exactly who he was talking about.
A sly grin stretched across the Reapers face. "In a freezer nothing changes, my friend."
"You mean, the freezer maintains—"
"Everything. It's like pulling a steak out of the fridge."
Dominick shook his head in amazement. The Angel of Death had just basically confirmed the freezing of Louis Masgay. Unbelievable.
"Did he die from cyanide." Dominick asked.
"No, his way out was a bullet."
Dominick knew that was true. Masgay had been shot. Dominick almost wanted to thank Shifu for his unusual cooperation. He suddenly became very aware of his Nagra. The goddamn tape recorder better be working, he thought. Shifu was giving him gold here.
The conversation then moved on to how they would administer the cyanide to the rich kid, and Shifu weighed the pros and cons of each method. Putting it in a spray was possible, but as he'd already explained, you always had to be sure you were downwind of the mist or else you could end up spraying yourself.
Putting it in cocaine could work very well, too, but when someone is sampling from a big bag of coke, slipping cyanide into his line without detection could be awkward, if not impossible.
Putting it on food was a much better bet. As long as you could get the guy to eat something thick and wet, like a sauce or a gravy, where the poison could be mixed in and disguised. If it's simply sprinkled on a piece of meat, it would cake and make the food unappealing. ''Don't put just a fucking sprinkle, put enough to spread it over," Shifu advised. "I mean as long as it's something gloppy, spread it over, let it blend in, let him have enough to have a bon appetit.''
Ketchup was a great thing to mix cyanide with, Shifu said. Mix it in with the ketchup on a guy's hamburger and he'll never know it's in there.
Out of the corner of his eye Dominick looked for those two gulls fighting over the ketchup-stained hamburger bun, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Shifu then expressed his desire to "retire into the woodwork" soon. He was ready to get out of all this dirty business, he said, and he confided that he had some money "set aside out of the country."
Dominick nodded and listened. He knew that Shifu had taken several trips to Switzerland in the past.
"I've got it all set up," Shifu said. "I'm ready. I just have some unfinished problems here I'd like to take care of. I'd like to find this one guy, and that's the end of my problems as far as that goes. It's personal, you know. I allowed it to happen, so it's my own mistake. And I hate to leave a mistake undone."
"I agree."
"I mean this guy Zhang Xiaohua, he trapped a guy in his own crew. Wore a wire on the kid, and now the kid's in jail with a life sentence. The kid used to work for him. That's what kind of rat this guy Zhang Xiaohua is."
From the way Shifu spoke of him, Zhang Xiaohua wasn't just a thorn in his side; he was a public menace who had to be obliterated from the face of the earth for everyone's protection.
Before they said good-bye, Shifu asked one more time if Dominick was sure that the rich Jewish kid wasn't connected to the Mafia in some way. Dominick told him not to worry. "I'm the only one who's connected," he said. They agreed to stay in touch about this.
Shifu got back into his Cadillac, as respectable as a banker in his suit and tie, and drove out of the parking lot. Dominick got into the Shark and watched the big white car sail past the gas pumps. His head was spinning with all that he'd just heard. He started his engine and drove out of the parking lot, then got on the turnpike. He was halfway to the next exit when he finally noticed that someone was right on his tail, blowing his horn and blinking his headlights like some kind of nut.
Dominick glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Paul Smith's silver sedan. He pulled into the next rest stop, found a parking space, and shut off his engine.
Smith pulled his car in next to the Shark. His eyes were bugging out of his head as he rolled down his window and motioned for Dominick to do the same.
''Dominick, what the hell happened. You were out there an hour, the two of you yakking like a couple of old ladies. What'd he say."
Dominick just shook his head. His face was drained. "I'm full up. Smith. I'm full. Can't hold no more." The Nagra tape recorder was in his hand. He took the lid off and checked to see if the tape had progressed from one reel to the other. It had. It was all down on tape. Dominick let out a long sigh of relief.
"But, Dominick, what the fuck did he tell you."
Dominick kept shaking his head. "I'm full. Smith." He put the lid back on the tape recorder and handed it to the investigator.
"But, Dom—"
Dominick made him take the tape recorder. "Here. Bon appetit"
He started up the Shark.
"Where the hell are you going, Dom." Paul Smith was having a fit. "They're waiting for us back at the office to go over—"
"Later." Dominick hit the power button and closed the window in Paul Smith's face. He backed the Lincoln out of the space and got back on the turnpike. He had to take a ride and unwind.
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