Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Yes, he’s one of the kidnappers,” she said, and added quickly, “but he didn’t hurt me.”

“Lucky for him.”

“What will you do with him?” she asked.

“I believe Ong Phat will offer him hospitality,” Tran replied, “and then perhaps his cousins, who seem to have stepped out for a while, will try to get him, and then we all sit down and have a talk about Mr. Leung and his various projects. You need not concern yourself.”

He turned away to speak to Phat and Phat’s minions. Lucy leaned over the Vietnamese youth.

“Cowboy, don’t be afraid,” she whispered in Vietnamese.

The youth twisted his head around. Lucy could see the side of his face and the livid bruise along his jaw, and a bit of swollen and bloody mouth, and one eye, white-rimmed and staring like a cow’s.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let them hurt you.”

He replied, “What can you do? You are only a girl.”

“So was Kieu. Listen: Phat is the dog of Tran, and Tran loves me. Be calm and don’t struggle or try to escape. I will see that you come out of this all right.”

She left the van and went to Tran. Motioning him aside, she said, “I want you to promise me something, Uncle Tran.”

“If I can,” he said.

“See that no harm comes to that boy.”

He frowned down at her, but she met his gaze. He said, “But, my dear girl, we require information from him. What if he does not wish to give it? These are dangerous people, and we must eliminate any danger that they pose to us. To you perhaps most of all.”

“I will interrogate him myself.”

Tran suppressed a smile. “Will you? I had not realized that was one of your talents. I look forward to learning much at your feet.”

“You mock me, but I tell you he will speak to me. Now promise!”

The Vietnamese gangsters were staring at this colloquy, which to them had much of the effect of Fay Wray dressing down King Kong.

After a long, tense moment Tran grinned, nodded sharply, and said, “I promise. And I must say that this is a remarkable and romantic gesture. I had not expected such gestures from you, at least not for some time.”

“Then you should not have given me that book,” said Lucy.

Dinner that night at the Karps’ was a subdued affair. Desultory conversation, and the click of utensils, a monastery repast almost, with each member of the family locked in private thoughts. Lucy excused herself early, kissing both her father (with an especially close embrace) and her mother (a more formal yet still tender one), something she had not done for a while. Marlene set the espresso pot on the flame and sat down to finish her wine. Karp, she noted, had poured himself a glass too: rarer that, even than Lucy’s kisses.

“You look a little tattered,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“You look tattered yourself.”

“No, I look destroyed . Ruined. You look tattered. What is it, the agony of command? Trouble being Queen for a Day?”

“Oh, not really. A little spat with the Southern District.” He told her about Guma’s subpoena and its sequelae.

“Jack will shit,” she said with assurance.

“Uh-huh, but he’ll be pissed at Tommy C., not Guma.”

“Mmm. I take your point about not hauling Mr. Lie before your grand jury without some better idea of who the hell he is and what he’s done, but is Jack going to sit with that, with all the political pressure he’s under?”

“Roland thinks he’ll roll on it. I mean, the upside is pretty clear and straightforward. He gets a grand jury witness who’ll implicate Pigetti and maybe the Bollanos, and provide corroboration, give us the people who lifted Eddie, maybe physical evidence-”

“But you’re concerned Lie’ll also say, oh, and by the way, I pulled the trigger on Eddie Cat and I also did some other little jobs for various people, and you won’t be able to touch him on those.”

“You got it, and also there’s the real possibility that Pigetti didn’t do it,” said Karp, and took another drink of wine, toyed with a plastic soldier one of the boys had left at the table, and returned in his thoughts to the idea that had been niggling at him for weeks, the real reason he had not done the expedient thing and gone ahead and cleared Lie for the grand jury.

“Earth to Butch, hello?” said his wife.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been talking for five minutes, and you haven’t heard anything I said. Where were you?”

“I’m sorry, Champ, what were you saying?”

“Never mind that, what were you thinking? Except, if it was an elaborate sexual fantasy not featuring me, I don’t want to hear about it.”

He said, “How can you drink a pint of espresso this late at night?”

“Don’t change the subject. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. It’s just a feeling, a. . an aura. I have the sense of some presence, some controlling force behind all this, the Catalano thing, the business Lucy’s involved in, the Sing killings. Shit! And I can’t figure out how the pieces fit. We have one low-ranking wetback Chinese gangster, who walks into the D.A.’s office, asking for me personally, with a half-wit lawyer, and says he’s willing to act as a witness against Joe Pigetti, and this gangster seems to have a remarkably clear understanding of the immunity procedures available in New York state. Why? Because he’s scared that the Mob is going to get him, he says. Marlene, I looked this guy in the face, and I have never seen anyone less scared in my life. His lawyer was scared shitless, but he wasn’t. You ask me, the little bastard could eat the whole Bollano mob a la marinara. And this guy has no traces, none, no car, no bank account, no drugs, but when we check him out with Hong Kong, we find out he’s really a guy named Nia who’s got big-time triad contacts over in the Far East. That’s one thing we do know for sure, from fingerprints: Lie is definitely the man the Hong Kong cops know as Nia. That’s only mystery number one. Mystery number two: the whole leadership of the Bollano organization is knocked out, except for the don himself: Catalano killed, Pigetti accused, Little Sally in jail, charged with attempted murder, et cetera. Does somebody have a big hard-on for the Bollanos? And are they using us to get them?”

“But there’s no connect between Little Sally and the other two,” Marlene objected. “He got in trouble because his wife cut out on him.”

“Yeah, right, it’s a coincidence. Just like it’s a coincidence that two big triad guys got whacked the same week as Eddie Cat, at which murder our little girl might well have been a witness, and then a Chinese gangster with triad connections comes in and asks to see me personally, and shortly thereafter, another no-name Chinese gangster, Leung, starts hiring people to threaten Lucy and find out what she knows, among other things, to demonstrate to dear old dad how easily his daughter could be snatched. That’s mystery number three. Too many mysteries in a limited area, Champ. I have this sense that somebody is sitting out there pulling the strings, some. . some intelligence , moving around little plastic soldiers.” Angrily he flicked the actual soldier with his index finger. It flew across the room, ricocheted off the refrigerator, and landed, clanging, in a steel mixing bowl awaiting rinsing on the drainboard of the sink.

“Two points,” muttered Karp.

“Yes, and an example of the role of the random in our lives.”

“What, you think all of that is just coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “The killings could be connected. Lie and Leung could be working for the same outfit. But I do know that the joker in your deck is Vivian. Why did she split just then after years of marriage to the scumbag? And in a way guaranteed to send Little Sal off the rails and get him into deep trouble?”