Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“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.”

“The don, you mean?” asked Karp. “I thought he was this icy calculator.”

“Oh, I’ll give you icy calculator; shit, yes. But also the word is maybe the good ten and the three of hearts slipped under the couch while he’s playing, he didn’t notice it. Besides that, he’s-Big Sally, I mean-he’s not a nice guy.”

Roland burst out laughing. “Oh, wait, stop the presses! He’s not a nice guy? Christ, Guma, he’s a fucking Mafia don ! He’s supposed to be a choir boy?”

Guma ignored this and continued talking to Karp. “These guys, they’re, when you get right down to it, real conservative. The family’s over in the corner there; they might whack each other, they might whack a girl gets in the way, but they leave la famiglia alone. You understand this, Butch, Sicilians and the family. They sell whores, they use whores, they sell dope, whatever, but they don’t think of themselves as bad guys. Okay, so there’s rumors about Big Sal, always was, that he’s like bent , from way back. Not short eyes, not a faggot, nothing like that, but there’s a twist there. Big Sally would go to some lengths to see it didn’t get out. With the big guys, there can’t be what they call an infamia , they won’t do business with a guy like that, and no business means. .” He made a thumbs-down gesture, suggesting early retirement under a layer of paving material.

“So, you’re thinking what?” Karp asked. “That Eddie was going to spill this whatever? That’s why he was killed?”

“No, I’m not saying that, necessarily, but it was something like that,” said Guma reflectively. “You hear stories, too. They don’t have much domestic felicity at the Bollanos, which is not that common either, the cugines like peace and quiet they come home from a hard day at the rackets, and the girls ain’t into calling the cops they get rapped in the chops a couple times. So, that could hook up, too, someone’s fucking someone, I mean for real, in a bed. But we don’t know. It’s like I was saying about the prairie dogs and the hawks. There’s a message there for somebody, but we can’t read it yet. We don’t even know who’s eating who. But that kind of stuff, that’s where we should be looking.”

Marlene, driving back to Manhattan on autopilot, thinking about selective amnesia, thinking Jesus fucking Christ I tried to kill my mother, and about her daughter, the ticking bomb. Of course, Marlene hadn’t actually connected with that hot iron, but on the other hand, the kid had access to more sophisticated weaponry. The pistol in the glove compartment was sending out malign rays. Wondering why your kids hate you is a winless game, but one with the addictive qualities of a slot machine. She turned on the stereo, cranked the volume up, punched buttons, rejected rock ’n’ roll, immature mooning after love, music of youthful rebellion, yes, she really needed more of that just now, settled on WQXR, Haydn sweetly blaring, a symphony. She blanked her mind, a necessary technique in many professions, including hers, and let the harmonies massage her. By the time she reached the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the yammering in her head had been reduced to the usual low buzz of demonic voices conveying the usual neurotic messages, familiar as road signs: you’re wasting your life, you’re making your family miserable, you’re going to end up dead in an alley or in prison; your kids will get shot by a maniac, bad mother baaaad mother, worthless, worthless, worthless. .

The traffic gelled at the entrance to the tunnel, and Marlene called the dog into the front seat. “Sweety, come talk to me. I need the wisdom of the deep animal spirits.” He came up from the rear deck of the station wagon and, with a damp sigh, draped himself across the front seat, his hindquarters down on the floor and his immense, hideous head resting on Marlene’s thigh, or rather upon the old towel that she had placed across her legs. She stroked him behind his velvety ears.

“Oh, tell me about memory, Sweety. How can we live with each other if we can’t agree about what happened? Now that I know I’m suppressing stuff, I wonder what I suppressed with Butch, or Lucy. I realize sometimes the family walks on eggs around me, and of course Butch is the world champion of papering over, pretty rich for a professional confronter of crime, but not in the sacred hearth, oh, no, the poor bastard, and Lucy, who knows what’s cooking in there? I could’ve done something horrible and never remembered it. It would have to be pretty bad compared to what I can remember. And they talk about what trauma does to kids, and I think Lucy, a year old, some maniac grabs her out of her stroller and Jim Raney blows the guy’s brains all over her, four years old, her dear Mom has a little nervous breakdown over practically getting raped by her boss, drags her out of town barely functional, at seven she procures a murder weapon for a kid who kills a cop, Mom covers that up, of course, and never mention, at ten she watches Mom blow away a guy who’s after one of her clients, right there on the street, and a little later a friend of hers gets murdered and stuffed in a trunk by a bent cop, and the next year she watches Tran shoot a guy dead and even helps a little, and now what? I’m upset she’s a little tense , a little withdrawn ? Doesn’t want to make fudge with Mommy anymore? I should be thankful she’s still in the church, but God forgive me, that irks me, too , like she is just doing it to piss me off, the famous religious failure, I can do it, Mom, and you can’t, nonny nonny nonny, oh, Jesus, is that an unworthy thought, or what, Sweety? Christ in heaven, how does this crap get into my brain? No, she’s sincere, otherwise she’d probably be a serial killer already. And why can’t I, Sweety? Why doesn’t the grace come to me anymore? It used to. Come on, Sweets, you must have some religious ideas. Is there a secret Church of Dog? Does Dog exist, as the dyslexic agnostics ask? No, you don’t need it, because you don’t know you’re going to die. Or maybe you do. How the hell would we know? We can’t even talk to each other and we can talk .”