Hard as Nails

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Dodger was frustrated by his morning's failure to take care of the teacher out in Orchard Park, so he was pleased in the early afternoon when a wireless PDA/cell phone connection to the Boss gave him a new and more interesting task.

He knew the target from earlier briefings. In one sense, it didn't make any difference to the Dodger who the targets were or why they had become his targets—they were all means to the ends of the Resurrection to him. But in another sense, it made everything more interesting when the targets were more difficult. And this one should be more difficult.

He knew the address. It was raining off and on when he drove the extermination van out to the Marina Towers address near the Harbor marina. There was a large public parking lot near the high rise and, as the Boss had promised, a new Mazda sedan was parked there, keys in the tailpipe. A bug van wasn't the best vehicle in which to tail someone.

The Dodger settled in the front seat of the Mazda, tuned some jazz on the radio, and watched the front of Marina Tower through small binoculars. He'd been well briefed on the current struggle over the heroin trade in Buffalo and knew that this apartment building was the headquarters for the Farino daughter; she owned the top two floors and kept the penthouse as her personal address while accountants and others worked and sometimes lived on the floor below. Her personal vehicles were kept in the basement garage and that could only be accessed by internal elevators, locked staircases, or through the underground ramp closed by a steel-mesh gate controlled by the residents' magnetic-strip cards.

The Dodger waited. The cold drizzle fell harder, which was good; passersby in the parking lot or on the nearby Marina Park Road couldn't see him through the rain-mottled windshield. The Dodger turned off the radio to conserve the Mazda's battery and he waited.

Around four P.M., the garage mesh door went up and a black Lincoln slowly emerged. The Dodger watched as the Lincoln came around to the semicircular entrance drive of Marina Towers. The Lincoln's driver got out and walked around the car and a second bodyguard stood watching the street as Angelina Farino Ferrara came out the front door, said something to the liveried doorman, and walked over to the Lincoln.

She didn't get in. She spoke briefly to the two men and then began jogging along the pedestrian path that led out along the shore where Lake Erie narrowed into the Niagara River. The Lincoln pulled around the entrance drive and followed slowly, heading north. The Dodger turned on his wipers and followed several hundred meters behind.

He knew from his briefings that the Farino woman liked to jog early in the morning and again in the afternoon, although usually later than this. Maybe it was the coming storm or increasing drizzle that had brought her out early.

The Dodger also recognized the two men in the Lincoln. The driver was Corso "the Hammer" Figini, serious muscle the female don had brought in from New Jersey the previous spring. The thinner, infinitely more handsome and Waspy-looking man riding shotgun today was Colin Sheffield, a well-dressed, thirties-something London criminal who'd specialized in high-class extortion, drug deals and security. Sheffield had worked for the second-most-powerful mob boss in England until the day he'd gotten a little too ambitious for his own good—not trying to whack his employer, the story went, just trying to corner some of the action for himself—and ended up leaving the country a few hours ahead of the hit team his own boss had sent.

The Dodger's earlier briefing hadn't included how the Farino woman had ended up hiring Colin Sheffield, but that wasn't all that important.

The Lincoln was moving slowly, essentially keeping pace with the Farino woman's jogging, and the Dodger had to pass it or look suspicious. Drivers were turning on their headlights now, and the view to the west and north was all dark gray clouds coming in with the October twilight. The Dodger didn't turn his head as he passed the Lincoln and the running woman.

He made a large loop, and returned to the parking lot where he'd started, parking next to the exterminator's van. He didn't think that a mob guy's daughter was very smart keeping to a routine like that, and running along the river path every morning and evening. There were several places along the path where the bodyguards couldn't see her if they stayed in their car—which they did—and the Dodger thought the jogging would be a good time and place to take her out.

The briefing had said that Farino ran for forty-five minutes in her river path circuit, and sure enough, she and the Lincoln were back in front of Marina Towers forty-six minutes after they'd left The Dodger watched through his small binoculars as she spoke to Sheffield and Figini, leaning against the car and lifting her legs as she cooled down, and then went in the front door. The Lincoln idled at the curb. Figini, the driver, was reading a racing form.

Fifteen minutes later, she came out and got in the back seat and the Lincoln pulled away.

It was dark enough and raining hard enough now that the Dodger didn't worry about being spotted as he followed the big, black car over to Elmwood and then north to Chippewa Street. He'd be just another pair of headlights to them in Saturday traffic headed for the one lively spot in Buffalo.

The Lincoln parked on Chippewa and the Dodger paused in a loading zone until he saw the Farino woman cross the street and go in a door. It wasn't a club or a restaurant, so he took note of the address on the PDA, uplinked it through his cell phone, and waited. When a police car trolled by and paused near the loading zone, the Dodger drove around the block, returned, and found a space only three cars behind the idling Lincoln. The patrol car had gone.

He was lucky. In another hour, there wouldn't be public parking within five blocks.

The two bodyguards were watching a lighted third-story window. Sure that he was still unnoticed by the bodyguards in the dark and rain behind them, the Dodger used his binoculars to watch the same window for a second. Angelina Farino Ferrara stepped in front of the window for a second, looking down toward her bodyguards. Then she turned and spoke to someone in the room. The Dodger had learned how to read lips when he was away, but the woman's head was turned just enough that he couldn't make out what she was saying. Then she stepped away, out of sight, and the lights went out in the office up there.

His cell phone chimed softly and the Dodger put away the binoculars. The two men in the Lincoln Town car were just silhouettes now, the big driver reading and the other staring straight ahead, and the Dodger guessed that the woman's coming to the window was a prearranged sign telling Figini and Sheffield to relax.

Text appeared on the PDA screen—address confirmed, execute.

The Dodger wiped the message, removed his 9mm Beretta, and carefully attached the thin suppressor. Then, after pulling on a cheap raincoat that was two sizes too large for him, he switched off the Mazda sedan's overhead light, scooted past the shifter to the passenger side, and stepped out into the rain.