Act of Revenge (23 page)

Upon receiving Karp's call, Vasquez had spent three minutes in front of the glass in the sixth-floor ladies' getting herself into perfect court-appearance order and two minutes after that was sitting in Karp's side chair, legs neatly crossed, ears perked, pad on lap.

“How's the Sing double going?” asked Karp.

“Nothing new since the last time you asked,” replied Vasquez, and seeing his frown added, “I realize that's not the right answer, but it's always like that down there, especially in this case, where it looks like an out-of-town job. You know the story: a couple Ghost Shadows hit a Flying Dragon one night on Canal Street, at least there's talk on the block, some history behind the crime, and we can bring in the snitches, not that Chinatown is full of snitches, but the cops hear stuff. Here . . . it's like it never happened. A couple out-of-towners with heavy triad connections in Hong Kong walk into a stockroom, followed by person or persons unknown, and wind up dead. Nobody the cops talked to will admit to seeing anything unusual.”

“Who caught it in the Five?”

“Phil Wu.”

He waited, but she did not elaborate. “And . . . ?”

“I never worked with him before, but Roland says he's okay. Smart, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. He had the collar on that pool hall shooting in '81, Bayard Street. He seems to be doing the right things, but . . .”

“Uh-huh. He talk to the Chen family, do you know?”

“They own the place? Yeah, in the original canvass at the crime scene.”

“But not afterward?”

“Not that I know of.” She gave him an interested look, scenting something. “Why? You think they're connected?”

“The vics got in through the back door and so did the killer. That back door is always locked. Somebody opened it from the inside. Also, there are always people in and out of that stockroom. If nobody saw anything, then either they're lying or they were pulled away from there.”

She was frankly staring at him now, as if he had just produced a live chicken out of thin air. “Jesus, Butch! How the hell do you know all that?”

Karp glanced away, as if embarrassed. “We've known the Chens for a long time. That door is on Howard Street right down from where we live. I've seen delivery guys ringing the bell back there or pounding on the door a million times. It's never unlocked except when they're taking in merchandise.”

Vasquez waited a moment and then asked, “So . . . what? You want me to bring in the Chens or . . .”

“Yeah, bring them in. Nothing heavy, but you need to find out whether there've been any threats, keep your mouth shut or else. Re-interview the whole staff there too. Explain to everyone that keeping information from the authorities is a serious crime, and so is threatening people who have information about a crime. Get Wu to explain things in Chinese just to make sure they understand.”

She wrote rapidly on her pad and then looked up again. He asked, “You ever hear of a Kenny Vo? Some kind of Vietnamese thug?”

“Doesn't ring a bell. Is he involved in the Sing double?”

“It's possible. Swear out a warrant and have him picked up. He's got an associate with a busted face, so have them check the emergency rooms. The charges are kidnapping one and assault two. Here are the details.” He passed a sheet of yellow bond across the desk. She read it and gaped.

“Your
daughter
?”

“Don't ask, Vasquez,” he said. “Just do it, and when you've got the son of a bitch I want to see him. And make sure Roland's in the loop on this. Go ahead,” he ordered, blocking the questions he could see forming in her eyes. “Do it now!”

After Vasquez left, he stared at the door that closed behind her, his ordinary impulse to action quite overcome by confusion and dull despair. Over the years he had become used to Marlene's quasi-legal and perilous lifestyle and had even accepted that it might involve some danger to their children—Manhattan was in any case a risky place to raise kids. Karp was good at accepting things he couldn't change. But the idea that Lucy was
on her own hook
getting into Marlene-style trouble had struck him like a clout on the ear. It was not to be borne. It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve this.

Karp was several leagues into the sere and unfamilar country of self-pity when the phone rang. Listlessly he raised it to his face and spoke his name.

“Butch? It's me. What's so urgent?”

“Where are you?”

“At Mattie's. What is it?”

“Oh, not much. Your daughter was kidnapped and beat up today while you were out solving everybody else's problems.” He heard a quick gasp over the wires, and then Marlene asked in an over-controlled, even voice, “Is she all right?”

“Yeah, she got out of it with a shiner and a bloody nose. She's home and I got a cop watching the place. Marlene, what the
fuck
is going on? Will you please
tell
me before you get our kid killed?”

“
I
get . . . ? What the hell are you talking about? You think
I
was involved in getting her . . .”

“No,” he shouted, “
I'm
the one who's modeling semi-criminal behavior, and sometimes not so semi either. Jesus, Marlene, she's up to her little ears in a double murder, and those fucking Chinese pals of yours are in on it, too. You better tell me what the hell is going on, because if I don't get some straight answers right away—”

“Oh,
shut up
! How dare you accuse me of endangering my child!”

“No reason, except you've done it about a
dozen
times that I
know
of.”

“I'm not going to talk to you when you're like this. I'm hanging up.”

“Marlene, don't you dare put down that phone! Marlene . . . ?”

He heard a scream over the phone, coming as from far away, and then a loud bang, and then more screams, and a string of pops that sounded like firecrackers, but which Karp doubted very much were firecrackers.

“Marlene, what the hell. . . .”

“Oh, Jesus!” said Marlene, and then, “Butch, I got to go now.”

He yelled her name a couple of times into an instrument unmistakably dead and, slamming it down, cursed fervently to the unsympathetic heavens. Then, being a good, even a model, citizen he dialed 911 and called in the shots fired and gave the address of the East Village Women's Shelter.

Chapter 11

MARLENE DROPPED THE PHONE, LEAPED up, and made for the door of Mattie Duran's tiny office, where she was knocked back against a filing cabinet by the incoming proprietor, who did not interrupt her violent Spanish cursing to make an apology. The woman raced to her desk, leaned over it, jerked open a drawer, and came away with her family heirloom, a Colt Peacemaker .44 caliber revolver, like the ones cowboys shoot in the movies, but this one was real and it worked. More shots sounded; above, a child began to shriek in terror. Marlene got out a feeble “Hey, wha—” but Mattie had already gone off at a run, the sound of her steps echoing in the narrow hallway. Marlene ran after her, unlimbering her own weapon, yelling for Mattie to for chrissake wait up.

A nice little firefight was under way in the shelter's reception room. Marlene could not see anything much because Mattie had halted in the doorway, but she could hear the sound of a heavy pistol firing and the snap and thunk of bullets flying and striking the walls and floors and furniture. A man was yelling obscenities in the entrance hallway, beyond the door with the glass window, now shattered. Mattie raised the big Colt and took aim.

Marlene felt the rage rise in her; these
morons
, and Mattie Duran not the least of them, were going to keep shooting until someone was dead or a stray round traveled up into the building and struck some kid. Unlike most people, Marlene when enraged did not start shaking and doing irrational things. Instead she became preternaturally cool, steady, and calculating. Scholars who study men in combat have discovered that this anomalous condition is present in about two percent of soldiers, who make up the vast majority of both heroes and the perpetrators of atrocity. An odd gift to bestow on a Sacred Heart girl from Queens, but there it was, and Marlene used it now, first throwing a solid body check into Mattie, knocking her against the door frame and, not incidentally, ruining her aim. The Colt boomed in Marlene's ear, deafening her. Then she was past Mattie and into the anteroom. Vonda the guard, she noted in passing, was crouched behind the thin protection of her steel desk, her face a ghastly greenish-tan, trying to clear the round jammed in her shotgun, while confronting her from the doorway were two obvious Mafiosi, one shooting, the other crouched low, changing magazines on a large chromed pistol. Marlene strode directly up to the two amazed men, firing rapidly, every shot finding its mark in a disabling but non-lethal place, the guy on the left going down with two through the shoulder and one through the other bicep (his gun rattling onto the floor) and the second taking a bullet through his raised kneecap; he went over like a ninepin, howling. Marlene kept moving, kicking their guns out of reach, passing the shattered inner door and up to the shouting man in the hallway.

This, as she had expected, was Little Sally Bollano, singing an aria in which the words
cunt
,
fucking
,
stupid
, and
bitch
appeared repeatedly in uninteresting combinations. Little Sally was locked from behind in the embrace of an enormous neckless man who filled the hallway like a cork in a bottle. This was Lorenzo Mona, Larry Moon as he was known, the Bollanos' leg breaker and Little Sally's personal bodyguard. Marlene read confusion and dismay on the vast, lumpy face: he couldn't let the boss proceed farther toward what had become a free-fire zone, nor did he have the gumption to roll the little shit under one arm like a newspaper and carry him out of there. Marlene attempted to resolve his confusion by pointing her smoking nine at Little Sally's low forehead. “Out! Get him out of here!” she shouted. This had the effect of redirecting Little Sally's attention from the absent wife to the woman just in front of him, and he launched his signature
fucking, stupid, cunt,
and
bitch
at Marlene, together with a shower of fine spittle. He seemed not to notice the gun pointed at him, and on closer examination Marlene could see why: his dark pupils were contracted to the size of elementary particles. As per his rep, Little Sally had medicated himself before attempting a complex mission, with the usual result.

While Marlene considered her next move, whatever it would have been was preempted by the sound of thumping feet and shouts of “Freeze! Freeze!” Marlene looked around Lenny Moon's bulk to see the face of a terrified young cop. He was pointing his .38, perhaps for the first time in real life, at her in the approved two-handed grip, and she saw with remarkable clarity that it was cocked and that the hands that held it were trembling. She would have been happy to freeze, but the cop changed his tune to “Drop that fucking gun! Now! Now!” She could see his finger tightening on the trigger, the knuckle turning white. Make up your mind, sonny, was her thought, and also, oh fuck, what a stupid exit, shot by an infant cop, at which moment Lenny Moon, straining to look over his shoulder at this new source of potential danger to his charge, relaxed slightly his grip, whereupon Little Sally got an arm free and sucker-punched Marlene in the jaw.

It was a good solid shot: Marlene saw the familiar blazing lights and fell to the floor, where Little Sally connected with a couple of hard kicks to the side of her skull. After that she saw through pain-fed mists an impossible number of dark blue-clad legs towering above black, thick-soled shoes, and felt herself frisked and rolled, and cuffed. She heard shouts and more rude language. She blacked out momentarily, relaxing into the puddle of warm blood that had gushed from her bitten lip and tongue, and the next thing she was aware of was being hustled out by a couple of cops and tossed into the rear of a blue-and-white (of which there seemed to be unreasonably many on the street in front of the shelter), the driver of same complaining that the bitch was going to bleed all over his vehicle, until an authoritative voice told him to shut the fuck up, Chapman, and he got in and drove off. Marlene lay back in the cool, disinfectant-smelling plastic, and gladly abandoned all responsibility for herself and others, which is one of the very few pleasant features of being arrested.

When his wife got into violent-felony trouble in the County of New York, which she did more frequently than your regular Smith College, Yale Law grad, Karp naturally had to recuse himself from any involvement in the procedural aspects of the case. He interpreted this, however, as not forbidding the conveyance to him of information about her fate from various sources, for it is no fault to keep one's ears open; God, after all, did not provide us with earlids, and the criminal justice system was chock full of people in the know who wanted to do the chief assistant D.A. a favor. Thus he learned in short order what had gone down at the EVWS, that his spouse had shot two Mafia soldiers and had been written up for assault in the first degree, that she had been punched out, that Little Sally's wife, Vivian Fein Bollano, was a shelter resident, that Little Sally and his three fuglemen were in custody on a variety of serious charges, and that the bunch of them, including Mattie Duran, were in the cells at the Ninth Precinct waiting for transport to central booking.

Replacing the phone after the last of several informative phone calls, Karp swiveled around in his big leather chair and stared out the window. He placed a pencil in his mouth and tapped out the rhythm of “Yellow Rose of Texas” between his upper and lower teeth with plenty of grace notes, as his mind drifted like a hang glider through the twisted canyons of the present situation. After four choruses he re-swiveled, stuck the pencil behind his ear, and picked up the phone.

The words “urgent,” “emergency,” and “Marlene,” got Harry Bello out of the meeting he was in and onto the phone. Karp explained what had happened at the shelter, and Harry listened without asking a lot of dumb questions. Karp and Bello were not friends, but Karp thought the guy was a pro, as he himself was, and they both agreed that Marlene was definitely
not
a pro in her chosen field of endeavor and was bound to fuck up big-time, as now, so they had a basis.

“I'll go bail her out,” said Harry. “We're covered for this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, she's got community ties and a job. It shouldn't be through the roof. By the way, Harry—this Bollano woman she was seeing, could you fill me in a little on that?”

“She's a client's about all I can tell you, Butch,” said Harry after a judicious pause.

“You think she might know something about the Catalano hit, that's why she took off from the happy home?”

“I couldn't say, although, considering the husband, she wouldn't need that much of an excuse.”

“You think
Marlene
has any information about that, the Catalano thing?”

“I couldn't say. Marlene knows all kinds of stuff. As you know.”

Karp laughed. “Okay, Harry, go get her. Tell her there'll be a lamp in the window.”

Karp hung up, rose, grabbed a pad and the pencil, and walked over to the D.A.'s office, where he consulted the printed daily schedule O'Malley kept available to staff. Keegan was booked solid all through the afternoon. Karp regarded the three suits waiting for the next appointment, leaned down, and said sotto voce to O'Malley, “I need five minutes before these guys go in.”

“It better be something,” said the secretary. “These are the boys from Albany on the budget bill.”

“He'd want to know,” said Karp. “I guarantee it.”

She nodded assent. Karp waited, and in ten minutes the door to the inner office opened and Keegan came out with a monsignor, a priest, and a nun. He shook their hands warmly, his eyes at the same time darting over the Albany group and then alighting on Karp, who discreetly extended five fingers. Keegan passed the religious party through, shook hands all around with Albany, made a graceful excuse, and motioned Karp to follow him in.

“Christ on a crutch!” he exclaimed when Karp had given him a telegraphic version of the recent events in the East Village. “That woman doesn't have the sense God gave a cat.”

“She has her little ways,” Karp allowed.

“At least she didn't kill them, that's something. All right, I'll get Sullivan to handle it. That all?”

“No. You notice who was conspicuously absent from the business at the shelter?”

Keegan wrinkled his brow. “Joe Pigetti?”

“Uh-huh. Who's supposed to mind Little Sally so he doesn't shoot up speed and pull shit like this? He's not there because the federales picked him up today on the say-so of our Chinese friend. So it appears that in one, as they say, fell swoop, the Bollano main guys have been put out of action. One killed, one arrested for various federal crimes connected with the murder of same, and one led to commit a variety of violent acts—and who tipped him off to where his wife was hiding out, I wonder? If Marlene hadn't stepped in, we could've had a couple killings, maybe more, all on Little Sally.”

“So?”

Here Karp paused, wrinkled his nose, and took a long, noisy breath, as if checking the age of a suspect mackerel.

Keegan nodded a couple of times and said, “You're saying that someone has a hard-on for the Bollanos and they're, what? Using us to take them out?”

“If so, it's a subtle play. At the risk of political incorrectness, you might even say
oriental
subtlety.”

“Our Chinaman.”

“It wouldn't surprise me,” said Karp. “I've already got Fulton on the case, and I'm going to V. T. Newbury from Fraud and put him on it. He's the best paper guy in the business. This Lie has to be connected to something bigger than a Chinatown gang and a mob shooting.”

“Okay, make it happen and keep me posted. Now, scram! I got to talk about money with these apple knockers.”

“I'm gone. I'm taking off the rest of the day, by the way. Besides Marlene, my daughter got mugged this morning.”

“Jesus! Is she okay?”

“A little shaky, maybe,” said Karp, rising to go. “I'm going to complain to the D.A. about crime in the streets.”

“You look like shit, Marlene,” said Harry Bello.

“I
feel
like shit, Harry,” said Marlene glumly, which came out, “I seel ike sit, Ahee,” because of the swelling of her lips and tongue. They were in an interview room at the Ninth, an irregular meeting, but Harry still retained some clout from his years on the cops and, of course, everyone knew who the husband was. Harry wanted to hear the story before the Osborne Group lawyer got there.

“Besides that, how was your day?”

She had to laugh, a high sound that lasted a little too long. “Actually, until Butch called and said Lucy got beat up, I was having a pretty good one.”

His eyes widened. “Lucy got beat up?”

She placed a calming hand on his arm. “It's okay, Harry, she's okay. I'll take care of it.”

“Bullshit, you'll take care of it. You can't take care of yourself. Who did it?”

She took her hand away and her look hardened. “Don't get involved, Harry, all right? It's got nothing to do with you.”

“I'm her godfather, Marlene.”

“Good, so protect her from the flesh and the devil, but don't butt into this. You want to hear the story or should I go back to the cells? It hurts when I talk.”

He relented, nodding. “Okay, go ahead. You had this great day.”

“Yeah, this morning I was at the abortion clinic in Chelsea, to check on the security construction. It's going good, Ms. Reiss-Kessler is very pleased. My views on abortion did not come up, I'm back in the club. Like you said, you never know. The cops got the guys who did it, some sect in Jersey. All but one of them. You heard about this? The actual shooter got away, name of Reginald P. Burford. Blasted his way through a roadblock and escaped to the wilds of New Jersey. I didn't know Jersey had any wilds, but apparently they do, down there in the Pine Barrens, lots of little villages full of skinny blond people with their eyes too close together. Reginald is from there. It's like looking for a Mafioso in Sicily. Anyway, me and Ms. Reiss-Kessler had a nice chat, she wanted to know if we could arrange firearms training for her staff, maybe she could branch out into making non-flushable corpses. I managed to dissuade her from this. Then lunch. I fed the dog . . .” She stiffened. “Jesus, Harry, the dog's still in the back of the car. He'll be frantic!”