Free The Iceman by Anthony Bruno

especially the crooked cop. Dominick turned his gaze back to DePrima. “I think you’re jerking me around here, Lenny. You 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. DePrima reached 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 Kuklinski on the phone?
    “Well, yeah, he did tell me he could get anything you might want along those lines, Rich.” DePrima was looking Dom in the eye. He looked a little uneasy. “Yeah, sure, I believe him. I know guys who done stuff with him before. He’s solid.”
    If that really was Kuklinski 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, Rich, 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 résumé, 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, Rich. Hesays he can get anything. I don’t know if he can or he can’t.” He looked at Dominick. “He’s here right now, Rich. 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, Rich. Whatever you want … Right … Okay. Take it easy.” DePrima hung up the phone.
    “Who was that? Richie, 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 Shop Rite. 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.”

FIVE
    A warm breeze blew through the Shark’s open window as Dominick Polifrone cruised across the old steel girder bridge and crossed the river. The sun was peeking through gray 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 Richard Kuklinski, focusing on his mark, trying not to outpsych 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 Polifrone wasn’t that different from his cover, “Michael Dominick Provenzano.” He’d told the guys he’d met at “the store” that some of hiswiseguy connections in the city knew him as Sonny, 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
goomata
’s place.
    Michael Dominick Provenzano was a tough kid from a lower-middle-class section of Hackensack, New Jersey. So was Dominick Polifrone.
    Michael Dominick