Act of Revenge (12 page)

“More than you know, my dear,” said Lucy, “although Warren could probably both teach us something, eh, Warren? Anyway there is one.”

“There is not. Don't listen to her, Warren.”

“Yes, it's called Thais That Bind,” said Lucy casually, at which Warren, who took an inordinate delight in puns (in English—any fool could pun in Chinese), cracked up and fell in love, in that order. Warren's laughter infected the two girls, and soon they were all three staggering against walls, clinging to each other, convulsed by the hysteria—so irritating to the adult world—that is peculiar to the adolescent psyche.

Lucy was not entirely lost in herself, however, and had been keeping an eye on the two
ma jai.
They were standing a half block away, conversing and glaring at the three kids through their dark glasses. They did not like that there was laughter going on, since there was at least a possibility that some of it was directed against them. As Lucy watched, they seemed to make a decision and started to move rapidly toward the group, pushing through the Mott Street crowds, who were quick to yield the way.

Lucy sobered instantly, grabbed the two other kids by their arms, and tugged them north on Mott Street. The two gangsters now pulled close enough to nearly tread on their heels and started to talk nasty.

“Look at the three girls,” said the thin one. “Which one do you want?”

Pockface said, “Only one girl has an ass worth fucking. One is too big and the other has none at all.”

And much worse as they moved up Mott and across Canal. Warren kept mumbling out of the side of his mouth, asking for an explanation: Why are these guys following you? Why don't you call a cop? What's going on? Where are we going? To all of which Lucy replied with soothing words and urged them all along west on the north side of Canal Street, nearly running, Warren pale and tripping over his feet, the thugs dancing around them, poking them, calling out the colorful obscenities with which Chinese is so plentifully supplied. They collected disapproving glances from the shoppers and merchants along the way, but no one interfered.

Lucy judged her distances and nudged Warren in the ribs.

“Warren, the Pearl River Market is coming up. When we get there, cut and run in. They won't follow you.”

“No, I'll stay with you,” said Warren, surprising both of them as the words came out. His glasses were misted with strenuous perspiration. Lucy frowned. She had never been gazed at with devotion before, and it made her cross.

“Warren, just go! It's a plan. We'll be all right. Now . . . run!” She shoved him away, and he vanished into the large Chinese food store. In the same motion she spun and shouted at the gangsters, “
Gou pi! Cao ni ma bi!”

It took a second for the gangsters to understand that a skinny white girl had yelled at them, in public, “Dog fart! Fuck your mother's pussy!” In that instant Lucy (and a split second later, Janice) were off like deer, the gangsters pursuing. So intent were they on the chase that they failed to notice when they crossed Baxter Street, which marks the border, in gangland, between China and Vietnam.

Halfway to the next street, Lucy slowed; Janice looked in panic over her shoulder to see what was wrong and discovered that the two
ma jai
had disappeared.

Gasping for breath, hands on her knees, Janice demanded, “What happened? Where are they?”

“Someplace they'd probably rather not be,” Lucy replied, gasping. “It's okay, we're cool now.”

At this Janice Chen, who had been holding herself in with great effort since Doyers Street, exploded.

“Cool? What the hell do you mean,
cool
? What are you
doing
to me? What's
happening?
Who were those guys and what did they want? Where did they go? I swear, Lucy, I'll
strangle
you if you ever pull anything like this again.” And more in the same vein, with the waterworks thrown in. Janice finally collapsed into a heap on the pavement, leaning against a wall. Lucy squatted next to her.

“They were trying to send you a message, Janice.”

“What? Who? What message?”

“Whoever shot those guys. They want your family to know they can pick you up whenever they want.”

“Why me? Why not you?”

“Because it's your store, Janice. They might have figured that if somebody saw something, it was a family member. Remember how that guy looked up when Mary panicked? And nobody knows I was there. Which is good, because they won't be keeping an eye on me and maybe I can find out what's going—”

“
Stop it!
” Janice shrieked. “I can't stand this mystery stuff like it was some
game
you're amusing yourself with. It's not TV, Lucy. It's not one of your books.”

She stood up abruptly and brushed herself off. “I don't
want
this to be happening. I just want to be a regular person and let other people worry about murders and shit.”

She looked so miserable standing there, weeping, that Lucy reached out to put an arm around her shoulder, but the other girl shrugged it away.

“No! Just leave us alone, huh? Just leave us alone!”

She ran off in the direction of the Asia Mall. Thus did Lucy learn what her mother well knew about the heroine business: that, unlike in books and movies, the people one saved were not always grateful. Rather the opposite, in fact.

It was part of Karp's management style to appear unannounced at various bureau offices at the end of the day, to pick up the kind of gossip that would not ordinarily reach the ears of the D.A. and to generally spread the sort of terror without which prosecutorial organizations tend to get lazy and sloppy, as he had recently demonstrated in the case of
People
v
. Ragosi.
He stopped by the Felony Bureau, to find the Felony chief, Sullivan, gone for the day, amused himself by poking a few sticks into various anthills, and then went down the hall to Homicide.

Ray Guma was sprawled out on the green couch in the bureau chief's office when Karp walked in, not dissuaded by Roland's growled “Go away!” Guma was drinking from a giant container of coffee, and Karp could smell the bourbon in it from the doorway. It was known that Guma often softened the day with a snort after the Supreme Court judges had gone home, which they all liked to do around four, and the place reverted to its natural proprietors. No one begrudged Guma this frailty. He had not been known to appear drunk and incapable in court (drunk, yes; incapable, never) and besides, he was from another age, which the younger men, reared on the movies of that epoch, suspected was tougher, cleaner, and supported a nobler masculinity than their own deplorable era.

“What can I do for you, Butch?” asked Roland, smiling like a haberdashery salesman.

Karp smiled back and took one of Roland's side chairs. “Nothing, Roland, I just wanted to tell you guys again how much I enjoyed the performance up in Jack's conference room the other day. Did you rehearse that, or was it improvised?”

“He asked for it,” said Roland dismissively. “Guy's full of shit anyway. When was the last time Rackets won a case? I don't mean bookies and that crap. He's just trying to horn in on my murder, like I'm going to deal him in.”

“Meanwhile, you got shit on the case. Guma? What's the good word among the wise guys this week?”

Guma said, “The prairie dog sends signals to the hawk.”

The other two men stared at him. “Goom, put away that coffee, for now,” said Roland.

“The prairie dog sends
signals
to the hawk,” Guma repeated with emphasis. “The hawk's trying to eat him, and he's sending up signals, help the hawk out a little. It's amazing.”

“That's it,” said Roland, “I'm calling 911. It's time for the rubber room.”

“What're you talking about, Guma?” Karp asked.

“Prairie dogs. They live in these burrows, and they come out to feed on the ground. And the hawk flies over them, he's figuring one of the prairie dogs might not spot him up there in the sky, he dives and bang! Lunch. If he figures right, if the little guys don't really see him, he'll nail the dog before it gets into the hole. If not, no payoff. The bird has to fly up there again and start over. The only thing is, the hawk can't make too many mistakes, he'll knock himself out, maybe he'll starve, or his chicks'll starve. So—and here's the funny thing—the prairie dog
knows
this; so if it spots a hawk up there, it'll like make a little nod of its head. The hawk sees this, it doesn't dive on that prairie dog, doesn't waste the effort.”

The two other men exchanged looks. Roland said, “Guma, what the
fuck
are you talking about?”

Guma ignored this and continued, his voice low and gravelly; Karp listened, fascinated. This was a different Guma. “So you have to ask, what's in it for the prairie dog? What the fuck does he care about some hawk, the hawk spends the day whacking his pals? Hey, but it's dog eat dog out there. So to speak. The prairie dogs are competing for turf, I mean real turf, 'cause they eat grass, bushes, whatever. So the dog figures, the hawk's gotta eat somebody, let him eat the guy who's a little slower than me, doesn't look around enough, too busy stuffing his face to check out the sky. I'll help him out, no skin off my ass, and plus, there'll be more leaves and shit for
me
.”

He took a long swig from his cup and was silent.

Roland said, “That was good, Guma. It's always nice to learn something about the world we live in. Now, would you please get the fuck out of here and sleep it off!”

Karp said, “No, Roland, Guma had a point, didn't you, Goom?”

“The point is,” said Guma slowly, “the point is, things are not always like they seem. You gotta have all the connections or it don't make sense, like the prairie dog tipping off the hawk. And we don't.”

“You're talking about Catalano, right?” asked Karp.

Guma gave him a long, bloodshot stare. “Of course, what the fuck else're we talking about? Like I said before, this is a family thing, it's got fuck all to do with the grand jury.”

“So what's going on in the family?” Karp asked.

“Wait a minute,” said Roland. “I want to know where you got all that shit about the prairie dogs. I thought you were a sports and pussy man.”

“I am, Roland,” said Guma with grave dignity. “But man does not live by sports and pussy alone. For your information, I got it off a PBS program.”

“I don't believe this,” said Roland, batting the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “Guma watches PBS? What're you, joining the ACLU, too?”

“I watch nature programs, Roland. I watch every fucking thing they got, David Attenborough,
Nature, National Geographic, Wild Kingdom,
I watch fucking
Nova
, they got an animal program on. What, you're surprised?” He finished the cup and put it down. “It's no big thing. Assuming I don't score with any beautiful young women, and you know they're all out there just looking for fat, ugly fifty-eight-year-old lawyers with no money, I go back to my miserable, shitty apartment and I watch. It's relaxing. There's a whole world out there with no fucking money involved. Eat and be eaten, just like the goddamn city, except they don't take a percentage. And the lion, or the fucking
hyena
, wants to get laid, he doesn't have to make any conversation, he doesn't have to develop his communication skills, he doesn't have to respect her in the fucking
a.m.
, he just does it, and the bitch gets the dinner, too. What can I say, it relaxes me.”

“I knew it,” said Roland, “he gets off on the animal fuck scenes.”

“Get back to the family, Guma,” said Karp. “What kind of family thing?”

“Oh, yeah. The Bollanos.” He paused, as if in thought, or maybe, Karp imagined, the old cells weren't firing quite as fast as they used to.

“You know,” he began musingly, not yet ready to focus, “Phil Garrahy didn't waste five minutes worrying about the Mob. He thought it was grandstanding, like Tom Dewey did. Fucking Dewey got Luciano deported for what? A nickel pimp charge, and that was the only racket Lucky wasn't even in. Had a big impact on prostitution in New York, no more whores in town after that, which is not surprising because practically the only thing Luciano
wasn't
involved in was pimping. Phil had a clear sense of what was important, and the wise guys understood that. They did their thing and Phil did his, because he knew that, whatever the fucking
New York Times
says, it's better for the city to have vice organized, private, out of sight. Which is why in the old days, you didn't have what you got today, with the drugs and the whores in your face all the time, and the punks blasting away out on the street. And this bum, Colombo, he's got a hair up his ass, he wants to make sure nobody confuses him with the Mob family. I ask you one question: Did he play any ball, Colombo? No, he was on the fucking debating club. He was the kind of kid got his face pushed in the mud in the schoolyard, probably ran to the nuns with it. Never trust a D.A. didn't play ball, they're looking to prove something, they got a dick on them—”

“The family, Goom,” said Karp patiently. Ordinarily he could listen to Guma talk about the Mob and the old days for hours, but he had things he had to do. Guma switched neatly into the new track without a bump.

“Yeah, Eddie Cat. What I said up there in Jack's, I was pissed, you know? Fucking Anselmo. What I'm thinking now is, is it reasonable to assume the don was in the dark here, and the more I think about it, the more I'm thinking he
did
know, not that he told Pigetti, whack this guy, but he let it out to Joe that maybe it would be a good idea. I can't see Pigetti just whacking Eddie Cat without any cover at all, is why. If he wanted to move in on the Bollanos, he would've taken out the old man and the kid
and
Eddie. So the don's not clean, is my thinking. You know Little Sally's a nutcase, everybody knows that. But let me tell you something else: he's following in the footsteps there.”