บท 9: Agent Edge
Even though Dominick hadn't gotten the kind of results he'd hoped for at this point, no one else had gotten any closer to Shifu than he had. Besides, Dominick had put too much time into this to let the state pull the plug on him now. He could smell Shifu. He could feel his presence in everyone who'd ever met him. In his gut he knew Shifu. The introduction was only a matter of time.
Walter Kipner had moved over to the poker table to peddle his phony fives. He must have been desperate for a sale because he was handing out freebies now, inviting comparison with the real bills that were scattered on the table. Other bad guys flocked to the table, eager to get a free fiver. Dominick noticed that DePrima was by himself. He decided to take advantage of the distraction.
"Hey, Lenny, what's happening." Dominick put his hand on the wall and corralled DePrima.
"Oh hey, Dom." said DePrima, making like he'd just noticed Dominick.
Dominick gave him a dirty look.
DePrima shrugged. "What can I tell you." he said under his breath. "I'm doing what I can."
"When, Lenny? When?"
"I'm trying, Dom. I'm trying. I've been calling the big guy up, just like I told you. I told him I got this guy here who's looking for guns in quantity. I offered to set up a meet, the whole bit. But he ain't biting."
"Why not?"
"You don't understand, Dom. You don't push the Angel of Death. Not unless you're looking for big trouble."
"Did you tell him I was okay?"
"What do you think? Of course, I said you were okay. I told him we did some deals before. I gave you my Seal of Approval, Dom. I swear."
"Did you tell him I was connected?"
"Yeah."
"Did you tell him I had a customer who wanted to put in a big order? A real big order?"
DePrima nodded.
"Then what the fuck is this guy's problem, Lenny?"
"Like I told you, Dom. You don't push the Reaper. He does what he does when he decides he's gonna do it, and you do not ask why."
Dominick glanced at the poker table. Kipner was throwing his fives around as if they were confetti. Everybody was getting a big kick out of it, especially the crooked cop. Dominick turned his gaze back to DePrima.
"I think you're jerking me around here, Lenny. You've been bullshitting me from day one. You haven't been calling him. You're fulla shit. I'm gonna pull the fucking plug on this whole deal and let you take your chances with the—"
The pay phone rang.
And DePrima lept for the receiver. "One minute, Dom. Just take it easy and calm down. Okay?"
If he weren't undercover, Dominick would have made the little bullshitter eat the goddamn receiver.
"Hey, how ya doin'?" DePrima rolled his eyes to Dominick and nodded toward the phone. "You mean Dominick Provenzano? Yeah, he's still coming around. Why?"
Dominick furrowed his brows. What kind of bullshit was this? Did DePrima really expect him to believe that this was Shifu on the phone?
"Well, yeah, he did tell me he could get anything you might want along those lines, Shifu." DePrima was looking Dom in the eye. He looked a little uneasy. "Yeah, sure, I believe him. I know guys who have done stuff with him before. He's solid."
If that really was Shifu on the phone—and Dominick wasn't convinced that it was—the fish was nipping at the hook. Dominick waited and listened. It was out of his hands now. It was all up to the fish.
''Hey, all I can tell you, Shifu, is that he's always done right by me. We made some good money together, and that's all I give a shit about. You wanna meet him, you meet him. You want the guy's fucking resume, I can't help you out."
Dominick drummed his fingers against the wall, waiting for DePrima to get off the phone.
DePrima was shaking his head. ''That I can't tell you, Shifu. He says he can get anything. I don't know if he can or he can't." He looked at Dominick. "He's here right now, Shifu. Why don't you ask him yourself."
Dominick gave him an evil look. If this was some kind of bullshit stunt, he would make DePrima eat the phone.
"Well, it's up to you. Shifu. Whatever you want...Right...Okay. Take it easy."
DePrima hung up the phone.
"Who was that. Shifu, I suppose."
DePrima lowered his voice. "I swear on my mother's grave, Dom. That was him. He wants to meet you. Right now. The Dunkin' Donuts over by the ShopRite. He says he needs something, and I told him you could get it for him."
Dominick was suspicious, but he wanted to believe it. "So what's he need?"
"Cyanide."
.....
A warm breeze blew through the Shark's open window as Dominick Edge cruised across the old steel girder bridge and crossed the river. The sun was peeking through grey clouds, and the sky was blue on the horizon as the rain tapered off. The hiss of tires on the wet blacktop came in through the open window, but Dominick was oblivious to the sound. He was thinking about Liu Shifu, focusing on his mark, trying not to out psych himself for the meet, just trying to be himself. That was the key to good undercover work: Just be yourself.
Dominick had learned from experience that elaborate cover stories and aliases just get you into trouble on an undercover. You can't hesitate when you're in with bad guys. If it takes you a second to answer to your cover name, they may get suspicious. And bad guys seldom sit on their suspicions. You slip up once, you can get hurt. You slip up with the wrong people, it could mean your life.
That's why Dominick Edge wasn't that different from his cover, "Michael Dominick Provenzano." He'd told the guys he'd met at ''the store" that some of his wise guy connections in the city knew him as Dominick, but he told everyone just to call him Dom.
The address on his driver's license was a huge high rise in Fort Lee, and that, he'd say, was his girlfriend's apartment, his old apartment flat.
Michael Dominick Provenzano was a tough kid from a lower-middle-class section of Hackensack, New Jersey. So was Dominick Edge.
Michael Dominick Provenzano ran numbers when he was a kid. So had Dominick Edge.
Dominick Edge might have ended up being just like Michael Dominick Provenzano if he hadn't gotten a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska. Not that football or the Midwest turned his head around.
Far from it. Dominick blew into Nebraska like a twister. Coming from the East, he was easily the hippest guy on campus. He wore bell-bottoms before the farm kids even knew they were the fashion. Whenever he returned from school vacations, he brought back a suitcase full of the latest albums, stuff that wouldn't be in the stores in Nebraska for weeks.
If Dominick was cocky in Hackensack, he was a wild man in Nebraska. By his sophomore year trashing bars on Friday nights had become his weekly ritual, and spending the night in jail was starting to become part of that ritual. That's when a sergeant on the Omaha police force took a special interest in this young pain in the ass from New Jersey and hauled him back to campus to have a little talk with Dominick's coach. It was that meeting with the coach and the sergeant that turned Dominick's head around. They put it to him straight: Either you calm down and start acting like a civilized human being or go back to Hackensack for good.
The sergeant, however, felt that the warning by itself wasn't enough, so he strongly suggested that Dominick drop his current major, physical education, and take up a new one, law enforcement. The coach concurred. That Saturday afternoon meeting in the coach's office set Dominick's life in a new direction.
He still raised hell now and then, and he continued to play football and box with a vengeance, winning the Southeast District Heavyweight Golden Gloves Championship in 1969. But in his mind he knew who he was now. The bad guy in training was gone. Dominick Edge thought of himself as one of the good guys now.
And that was what made him so outstanding as an undercover agent. He could talk like a bad guy, look like a bad guy, and act like a bad guy because that was all a part of him, but deep down he knew he was one of the good guys.
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