Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Hell, yeah, in principle. Joey’d be taking a big chance, and Lie would have to be a major player to set up Catalano on the basis of an eye wink from Joe. But then why does he turn around and screw Joey with this testimony bullshit? What’s his game?”

“He wants to squash the Bollano family?” Karp suggested.

Roland let his chair rock down, and he tossed the baseball to Karp. “That may be, Butch, but that’s not what they’re buying today. Today the choices are ‘D.A. convicts mobster’ or ‘D.A. fucks up big-time, U.S. attorney convicts mobster.’ Unless you can come up with something with enough juice to give Jack a third choice, I’m guessing he’s sooner or later going to roll over for Mr. Lie.”

Mr. Leung was at that moment well content. Mobilizing Willie Lie had worked as he had expected. Lie would keep the Italians confused, weakened, and occupied, at little risk to the plan. The Chens and their tong were neutralized for the time being. Karp had proved a disappointment; he should have leaped at the opportunity to bring a murder charge against Pigetti, but he had not. Was it possible that his daughter had been talking to him? But would a man like that heed a child, a girl child, no matter how skillful? It was hard to credit. He sensed from what he understood of the interaction between Lie and the federal prosecutor that there was an intense rivalry between Colombo and Karp. Clearly they were working for different political factions, just as in China. Perhaps money should be offered. Meanwhile, the snipe and the clam were still focused on one another, and Leung himself was perfectly safe, moving silently and steadily up the beach. It was just as the drunken American in Macao had predicted.

It took Marlene an hour on the Long Island Expressway to get to the Nassau County line and nearly another hour on feeder roads roaming the cloned streets of Great Neck Estates to find the colonial split-level house occupied by retired detective John (Black Jack) Doherty. As usual when making a cold call like this, she’d had Sym make a telephone contact to make sure the mark was still alive and not senile. (No, Mr. Doherty did not want to buy any aluminum siding from the young woman.)

The house was large and white and clean-looking, an American-dream kind of dwelling, set back on a broad, closely clipped lawn shaded by well-grown red maples. There was a gray Chrysler Le Baron, three years old and spotless, in the driveway. Over the doorway, fixed in the center of the triangular pediment, screamed a black iron eagle, below which was a small flagpole carrying the stars and stripes.

Marlene stood under the sluggishly moving banner and pushed the bell button, which was set into a brass plaque with another eagle on it. A brass eagle also served as a knocker on the shiny black door. As she waited, she could not help reflecting how much grander this house was than the one her parents lived in, although as far as earnings were concerned, a cop and a plumbing contractor had been about on a par back in the fifties. Maybe his wife worked, or his kids struck it rich and bought it for him, she thought, not really believing it.

The man who answered the door was in his mid sixties, stocky, with a dark, angular face, black hair going speckled gray on the sides, thick black eyebrows over dark eyes, a good example of the physiognomic style called Black Irish, supposedly representing gene lines dumped on the shamrock shore by the wreckage of the Armada. He was dressed for suburban comfort in a green cardigan, tan Lacoste shirt, pale blue Sansabelt trousers, and woven leather slip-ons. The fishing magazine he was holding completed the picture of a prosperous retiree, but his eyes were still cop eyes when he looked Marlene up and down. She was still something to see, with the face covered in yellowy-mauve blotches, but she had made the effort, having donned a blue linen suit, a crisp primrose blouse, heels, and a snappy panama hat to hide the Frankenstein stitches on her bristly skull. The cops still had her gun, and she was in no great hurry to get another one.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“You can if you’re John Doherty. Harry Bello suggested I look you up.”

She could see him thinking. The NYPD has something over two thousand detectives, of whom only two hundred or so are detectives first grade. Bello had been one and Doherty had not, and even if their careers had not been exactly contemporary, Doherty would have heard of Bello as a rising hotshot.

“Harry Bello. In Brooklyn, yeah. I was in the city my whole career. He still with the force?”

“No, he retired and went private. I’m his partner, Marlene Ciampi.” She held out a business card, one of the old Bello amp; Ciampi versions.

He read it, and when he looked up his gaze remained suspicious. They were still standing on the doorstep, and he had not yet made a gesture to invite her over his threshold. “What’s this about, Miss Ciampi?”

“One of your old cases bears on an investigation we’re running for a client. Harry thought you could be helpful, maybe supply some background that never got written into a DD-5.”

“What case would that be?”

“Gerald Fein. You remember it?”

The big eyebrows rose a quarter inch. “Hard to forget that one.” He looked at his watch. “I got an eleven o’clock tee-off at Fresh Meadows, but I could talk for a couple of minutes. Come on in.”

He turned and led the way back into the house, through a small entrance hall past a living room demonstrating that the Dohertys must be among the very best customers of the Ethan Allen Company, down a hallway lined with family photographs (wife, four good-looking kids, an assortment of probable grandchildren), and into a pine-paneled room that was clearly the master’s den. Doherty seated himself in a big maroon leather recliner and indicated a needlepoint-cushioned maple rocker for her to sit in. Marlene took in the unsurprising decor: framed photographs of Doherty in uniform and plainclothes with other smiling men, all Irish-looking, similarly dressed, awards, plaques, two stuffed fish of good size, a bass and a tarpon, an antique wooden eagle, hooked rugs on the floor, and the furniture, desk, chairs (except the man’s recliner) impeccably early American maple and pine. Esthetic consistency was clearly a major value chez Doherty.

Settled, Doherty did not beat about the bush. “You want to know was the suicide legit?”

“Yeah, that’d be a good place to start.”

He made a steeple of his fingers and looked out the window past beige drapes printed with flags and drums to a small stone patio and the yard beyond. “Officially, we found no evidence of foul play. The man went up to the observation deck, bought a ticket, opened a locked maintenance door, went out onto the overhang below the deck windows, and climbed over the parapet.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially. .? Well, I was the junior guy on the case. Arnie Mulhausen was running it, and he couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. But I had some problems, yes.”

“Like?”

“Okay, no note. Not unusual, but you have to figure, a lawyer, a man uses words every day. . it made me itch a little. Arnie’s take was, hey, the guy was nuts, right? Who else takes a header off of the Empire State? So I’m doing interviews, family, friends, associates-”

“Excuse me a second, Mr. Doherty, this kind of investigation for a jumper-it’s not that usual either, is it?”

“Well, it’s sad to say, it depends on the person. A cop eats the gun, hey, it’s pretty cut and dried. Some guy gets out of Creedmore and jumps in front of a bus, same thing. Guy, a Mob lawyer, no history of depression, goes off a building, we look a little harder. So, my other problem, like I was saying, I couldn’t get anyone to tell me Fein was depressed, despondent, whatever. The wife, the daughter, colleagues. He was laughing, he had plans to recover, he wasn’t hurting that bad for money.”