Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

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!”

“He’ll be sleeping. Don’t worry about the dog, I’ll take care of the car and the dog. What happened after lunch?”

“Oh. Right, so then I came here-I mean, I went to the shelter to talk to Vivian, tell her what I’d found out already, and get her take on it. And I was holding the big questions in reserve, hey, Viv, how come a nice Jewish girl marries a psychotic mobster? Also what happened? How come out of nowhere you just have to investigate dad’s death after twenty years? You know, see if I could develop enough report to drop that kind of stuff on her.”

“Rapport, you mean.”

“Huh? Oh, right, rapport. So, anyway. .” She seemed to go blank for a moment. Then she blinked and asked, “Sorry. Where was I?”

“You were going to tell her what you learned already. Marlene, are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Well, so I go in there, she’s looking rocky, antsy, not a stay-at-home, our girl, maybe she misses shopping, getting in the Jag and driving the roads. A little cabin fever. She does pills, too. I tell her I went over the press reports, the background, the trials, disbarment proceedings, transcripts, and all that, and the story is that he was despondent over the loss of his livelihood and that’s why he did it, and did she agree, was he depressed in the days before he did it or not? And she said, in effect, horseshit, my father wasn’t down, he was always up, full of life, he had money stashed, he had plans for moving to California, starting over. Very passionate. She thinks he got whacked.”