Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“About ten minutes after we got in. How did he find out? You got me. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t gone out for a smoke, and I know the little fucker smokes like a chimney.” Harry shook his head and did a sort of shuddering shrug, expressing a desire that such things not be: Italian mommies shooting and getting kicked in the head by Mafiosi and being friends with weird Asian bad guys. As he did this, his goddaughter (and that was another incomprehensible thing!) sat down in a plastic chair as far as the room allowed from Tran. Harry and Karp exchanged a glance and afterward looked elsewhere.

Something over an hour later, a small sandy man in green surgical scrubs came into the waiting room and asked for Mr. Ciampi and was surprised when three men and a girl leaped up. When he had got everyone sorted out, the surgeon, a Dr. Nagel, informed them all that Ms. Ciampi was in recovery, that the procedure had gone routinely well, and they could visit with her in about a half hour. He was under the impression that this was a sufficient interaction with the family and was about to toddle off when Karp and Bello both apprised him forcefully of the need to render more information, after which both of them shot questions at him as only a pair of consummately skilled questioners could. So they chatted about transient ischemic episodes and subdural hematomas for some time, the two men standing uncomfortably close, and when they got to the part about possible linguistic impairment, Dr. Nagel was startled to find that the skinny little girl was very nearly as well informed about the neurological basis of speech as he himself was, and he was extremely grateful that the surgery had been a fast drill and drain job and that the woman seemed to be perfectly healthy, because he would not have wanted to explain away any of neurosurgery’s innumerable possible fuck-ups to this gang, no, not at all.

Lucy was shocked at how her mother looked when they rolled her into the room. They had cut off her hair and wrapped a turban of bandages around her head, and the big, nasty bruises around her mouth added nothing to her allure. Lucy had in her darkest, most secret, never-to-be-confessed thoughts occasionally wished for her mother not to be so damned gorgeous, and now here it was (if only temporarily), and the eruption of guilt and shame it occasioned overwhelmed the child and she gave a piteous wail and ran from the room. Tran hesitated a moment and then followed in her wake.

Karp cursed softly and pulled a chair up next to Marlene’s bedside.

“How are you?”

She gave the inevitable reply, a slurred “Honey, I forgot to duck,” and then asked, “What’s with the kid?”

“She had a rough day. She’ll be okay.”

“I look like hell, huh?”

“Heaven,” he said. Behind him Harry Bello murmured, “Take care, Marlene. I just wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

“You’re covered on this; the firm will take care of everything,” he said, and left.

“That’s a relief,” she said. She grasped her husband’s hand, hard. “I can’t remember anything after I talked to you, about Lucy, except a little at the cells there, with Harry. I knew something was wrong with my brain, but I didn’t know how to say it. I couldn’t find the words. Would you still love me if I couldn’t talk?”

“Somewhat more, maybe,” he said, and got a smile. “We have to stop meeting in hospital rooms, Marlene. Marlene?” She had drifted off, the smile still in place. He stayed there, holding her hand, also unable to find the words.

Lucy, meanwhile, had run through a teary blur to an exit door, gone down a flight, and collapsed on a stair, sobbing, her face against the unyielding cold steel of the railing.

“I want to die,” she cried, in French, as soon as Tran was seated next to her.

“Yes, I know the feeling,” he said, “and yet remarkably, at the times I most wanted death-I was presented with the opportunity to die in a very large number of convenient and glorious ways-I never took them. Also, I observed that death came to people who very much wished to live. So after that I was impressed with the idea that my life might have an interesting purpose, after all, not one I might ever have thought of either. This seemed enough reason to go on, until death should make up its mind to take me.”

Lucy snuffled, received one of Tran’s infinite supply of clean hankies, blew, asked croakingly, “What was the purpose?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe it is you. Perhaps I am to teach you how to manage your gifts. Perhaps the fates that gave them to you, in a moment of hilarity, decided that a horrible old Asiatic person would be just the one to make sure you became the sort of woman who could put them to good use.”

“I detest my gifts!”

“Allow me to doubt that,” Tran said dryly. “In fact, not only do you treasure your gifts but, greedy little thing that you are, you desire those that belong to others. Those of your beautiful mother, for example. How many times have I seen you look at your reflection and recoil, appalled. The envy is, I assure you, quite palpable.”

Lucy felt hot bars spring onto her cheeks. “You are disgusting,” she snarled, and burst again into tears.

After an interval of silence he said, more gently, “My dear, in the end you are still only a little girl, and greatly loved. Much may be forgiven you.”

She fell against his hard chest, sobbing. “It’s the guilt , Uncle. I can’t stand it!”

“Ah, as to that: I know very little of guilt. It strikes me as a useless emotion, since it does the bearer no good and yet does nothing for the person about whom one feels guilty. Shame, on the other hand, is of some value. It can be easily discharged by humble apology and by sincere rededication to one’s duty.”

This hung in the air for a long moment, during which Lucy stopped weeping, uttered a long, shuddering sigh, wiped her face, blew her nose, drew away, and straightened her back. She said, “I am sorry, Uncle Tran, that I was stupid, and threatened you with the police. I never would have done such a thing. I ask you to forgive me.”

“You are forgiven,” said Tran. “Now, perhaps we may go and visit your mother.”

Karp sat and watched Marlene breathe for a few minutes, assuring himself that she was merely resting, and then he slipped out and went to a pay phone, where he made several calls, one to a court clerk, one to Roland Hrcany, one to the captain of the Ninth Precinct, and one to Clay Fulton. For Marlene was still officially a prisoner in custody, who, when stricken, should have by rights been placed in the prison ward at Bellevue, a concern not noted for its expertise in brain surgery, but those who have deep connections in the criminal justice system often receive special treatment, and Karp, who ordinarily did not approve of special treatment, felt only the faintest blush of shame as he called in chips and arranged it for his wife. Records were jiggered, papers were misplaced. Marlene Ciampi was made to vanish for a time from the cognizance of the law.

Karp walked out of the hospital and hung around in the balmy evening on the corner of 16th and First Avenue for a quarter of an hour until a dark Chevrolet Caprice rolled up to the curb and he got in.

“How is she?” asked Clay Fulton, switching off the engine and the lights.

“Pretty good, considering,” answered Karp. “Thanks for coming.”

“You had a rough one, Stretch,” Fulton said. “What can I do?”

“For starters, listen,” Karp replied, and he related the theory about the recent troubles of the Bollano family he had outlined earlier to Keegan.

“And. .?” was Fulton’s comments when Karp finished.

“What, you don’t think that’s suspicious, the whole top of the order getting knocked out that way?”