Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Not on the terms he was offering. Next time I grab him, he won’t be doing the bargaining.”

“You’re mighty sure of that, considering you got jack shit solid on the man.”

Karp resumed his lunch, leaning forward, saying between bites, “Clay, the guy’s dirty. All you got to do is find the dirt.”

“Oh, we’ll look, all right, but it’s Chinatown. And I thought I taught you to avoid betting on the come.”

“I have perfect faith in your talents,” said Karp, balling up his waxed paper and napkin and tossing it ten feet into a trash basket.

A shadow fell on them, and they both looked up to see a ragged, ashy black man pushing a shopping cart full of stuffed plastic bags. “Spare some change, brother,” the man said to Clay.

Fulton pulled a money clip out of his pocket, peeled a single off, and gave it to the man. “Take care, pop,” he said.

“Pop yourself,” said the man. “You old enough to be my daddy.” He rolled his establishment away, grumbling.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” said Karp.

“You said it, man, and to think that at one time that guy was an assistant district attorney. The man just wouldn’t stop betting on the come.”

Karp laughed and pointed with his chin across the park. “No, there’s the lawyer. See her legal pad?” It was the old woman Karp had met previously, sitting in the shade of a tree, scratching away with her pencil. She raised her head, peered across the dusty lawn, made getting-under-way motions, and waved to Karp. Who rose hastily and said, “Clay, I got to go before she comes over here and starts bending my ear. She’s got me confused with the court of appeals. Keep in touch.”

The call from Freddie Phat’s watcher came in at a little past three, and about five minutes later Tran got the word that the Vo gang had dragged a blanket-wrapped bundle into their Brooklyn house. It took him forty minutes to drive his motorcycle from Manhattan to Avenue J in Brooklyn, via the Battery Tunnel and Ocean Parkway. He parked across the broad boulevard, crossed it, and walked up to the door of the modest two-story semidetached house. He rang. He saw part of a face looking out through the slats of a venetian blind in the front window. The door opened, and the large Vietnamese who opened it scowled and said in halting Cantonese, “Fuck! Where you been, man? They went looking for you.”

“The girl is here?” asked Tran.

“Yes. I must go page my brother now. Wait here.”

He turned to go, but Tran did not wait. Instead Tran slid his great big Colt.45 Commander out of his waistband and slugged Sharkmeat over the head with it. The man grunted and dropped to his hands and knees. Tran kicked him hard in the short ribs, and he fell over onto his side.

Tran quickly knelt and jammed the muzzle of his pistol into Sharkmeat’s ear.

“Where is she?” he asked in Vietnamese. Blood seeped up around the grinding muzzle, covered the front sight blade, and filled the little channels of Sharkmeat’s ear.

In a while, Sharkmeat told him where, and also that he was alone, even volunteering that the door was locked with a padlock, the key for which was hanging on a nail by the basement door. Tran whipped out a pair of heavy-duty plastic cable ties and trussed the man up hand and foot.

“What took you so long?” asked Lucy, who was waiting at the door when Tran burst through, she having heard and interpreted the unpleasant noises that had lately come from above.

He looked at her face a moment and said, “Who did this to you?”

“It’s nothing, Uncle Tran, really. Let’s just go.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her roughly behind him, up the stairs and to where the Vietnamese lay bound.

“Him?”

“They all did, come on , Uncle. . no, don’t do that, please, please! ” Struggling, she managed to get between Tran and the bleeding man, so that Tran had to stop hitting him with his pistol, and knelt, breathing hard, like a blown horse.

Tran wiped blood and bits of broken tooth from his pistol barrel on Sharkmeat’s shirt front, and then he stood up, grabbed Lucy’s wrist again, and pulled her out of the house and across Ocean Parkway, Lucy protesting and demanding to be released all the way. Tran lifted her onto the pillion seat, cranked the motorcycle, and sped northwest to the Battery Tunnel. After reaching the Manhattan side, Tran turned into a narrow side street and stopped. He reversed himself on the seat and faced Lucy, his eyes terrible.

“How?” he demanded in Vietnamese. “How were you captured, and by the Vo brothers, too, who are turtle heads, crude thugs-how?”

“I found the book, Uncle Tran. And I was reading it, translating it, on the subway, and I got too caught up in it, I guess. . ”

“On the subway? You were reading on the subway ? You are supposed to watch on the subway. You read behind locked doors. How did they take you on the subway?”

“They didn’t. I mean, I spotted them after I missed my stop, and then I ran but they grabbed my bag and I followed them out. .”

“You followed them? Did I understand that you followed them?”

“Yes, see, they took my bag. With your Tale of Kieu in it. .”

Tran grimaced and stuck all his fingers in his mouth and chewed them, growling.

When this fit concluded, he shouted at her, “Imbecile child! For a book? You put your life in danger for a book ? Are you insane !”

And then, of course, Lucy did what she hadn’t done yet, which was break down and blubber like a three-year-old, the deadly fear boiling up now that she was safe, but also because of the unfairness of Tran, to be angry with her when she had saved his relic, and so he had to comfort her, dragging her down the seat and pressing her against his small, iron-hard chest, and stroking her dirty, damp curls until she was calm again. He gave her a clean handkerchief to mop herself up, and he said, in gentler tones, “My very dear idiot child, we must decide what we are to do now. The Vo will be angry about this, and they are as relentless as hungry dogs. I cannot guard you every minute of every day. Therefore, we must remove the Vo.”

“You intend to kill them?” she asked, a mixture of awe and disgust in her tone.

Tran rolled his eyes. “Of course I don’t intend any such thing. Where do you get these ideas? No, we must go to the police and they will arrest them. They committed very serious crimes, and it will be better for us if they are in prison.”

Lucy gaped, astounded. It was like hearing that the president of Pepsi was thinking about putting Coke machines in the corporate headquarters snack bar. “The police ! We never go to the police.”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact we do. Your mother has made it a principle never to engage in any activity that the police and the courts can do better-”

“My mother !” cried Lucy in an unpleasant sneering voice.

“Yes, your mother, who will, of course, have to be told of this. And your father also.”

“You would tell them!” she cried, tears welling once more. “Traitor! I will never speak to you again as long as I live.” She jumped off the pillion seat and flounced away, in the direction of Broadway. Tran cursed and called after her, but she didn’t stop. He kicked his motor into life and followed her down the street.

She walked on, ignoring him, her back stiff and straight as a mast. Tran found himself quite baffled; his long career as a terrorist and guerrilla leader had not prepared him for combat with an American teenager in a snit. In time they reached Broadway, at which point Lucy stopped, turned, and came up to him.

“Go away!” she commanded.