Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“It’s not just that, Marlene. This whole situation, the Chinatown stuff, the genius stuff, it’s, I don’t know, eroding her.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Aside from getting pissed at you, I honestly don’t know what the hell to do.”

“Yeah, well, I realize the agenda here is if only Marlene had been a normal mom, like both of our moms, if only we lived in a regular suburban house, and she went to a regular suburban school-we’ve been over this a million times, Butch. It’s fruitless. If, if. . if your grandmother had wheels, she could haul cement. There’s no way out except through it, playing the cards as dealt. What you need to spend your energy on is lighting a fire under the cops to get these bastards.”

“Good advice, Marlene. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you let me be in charge of legal affairs in this family? You seem to have your hands full with the illegal kind.” Marlene huffed, but Karp had shifted the focus of his attention.

He grabbed for the remote, pushed the mute. A commercial for the news program scheduled for the next slot was on the screen.

“. . startling revelations suggesting Mafia infiltration at the highest levels of the New York district attorney’s office,” said the announcer, and on the screen was Ray Guma, winking slyly and saying, “The fix is in.”

“All this and the latest weather and sports. Stay tuned,” said the announcer.

Karp said, “Ah, shit! The stupid fuckers leaked the film.”

They watched as the news came on and the screen showed the artfully edited tape, thirty seconds of Guma saying those unwise sentences to Gino Scarpi, ending with that wink and “the fix is in.” After that there was an interview with Norton Peabody in the lobby of the Federal Building. Mr. P. was terribly upset that someone had leaked this piece of evidence, and an investigation was under way to find the culprit. Was there a federal investigation under way of the D.A.’s office? He was not at liberty to reveal whether or not there was. Would the federal grand jury take up the issue? The grand jury was authorized to explore all aspects of Mafia penetration of society, and the D.A.’s office was not excluded. Mr. Guma had received a subpoena and would be appearing before the grand jury in short order. The minute being up, the news switched to the doings in Lebanon, leaving Karp shrieking curses at the screen, and then the phone rang. Karp went out of the room to the kitchen and stood over the answering machine, glaring at it and snarling. It was a reporter. He left a message. Another ring. Another reporter.

Reporter. Reporter. TV reporter, could we schedule an interview for seven tomorrow? Another reporter. Then, “Butch! Jack Keegan. Pick up if you’re there.”

Karp picked up. “Are you having fun yet?”

“Goddamn it, I actually was until this goddamn tape got on the TV.”

“Did they show it in West Virginia?”

“No, Mary just called and gave me the good news. Jesus, Butch, I’m here with every D.A. in the country, and it’s out on network TV that I got a Mafia mole in my office. I’m gonna have to play golf tomorrow with a bag on my head. You saw it?”

“Yeah, Peabody showed it to me this afternoon. He’s subpoenaed Guma based on the tape.” He paused, while Keegan said nothing. “You know it’s horseshit, don’t you?”

“Oh, Christ, of course it’s horseshit,” said Keegan, “but that’s not the point. It looks bad politically. I know you don’t think that’s important, but believe me it is. We could put the whole five families in jail and what people would remember is that fucking tape. Did he really wink and say ‘the fix is in’?”

“I’m afraid so. What’re you going to do?”

“Hell, I feel like leaving right now. Four hours by car to D.C. and I could be on the first shuttle tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t do that, Jack. It gives the fuckers more credibility than they deserve. Stay out of town and let me handle it. I’ll do a press conference tomorrow morning and come out snarling. It should take the wind out of their sails a little, and if it doesn’t work you can repudiate me, whatever.”

He was glad to hear Keegan’s laugh over the line. “Oh, I will, my lad, never fear. Meanwhile that sounds like a start. I’ll work the phones tomorrow, I got some pals at Justice, and I’ll call my tame reporters in the city. Counterattack is good. I thought you didn’t do politics.”

“I can do it,” said Karp. “I just hate it.”

He hung up shortly thereafter, and the phone immediately rang again. Karp cursed and listened, but it was not the press again. It was Fulton.

“We got one of them, Stretch,” he said, “and we lost two.” His voice was husky with exhaustion.

“What happened?”

“No problems going in, but two of the three weren’t there. The guy we got is Vo Hoa Dung, they call him Needlenose. The big brother, Kenny Vo, was out. The other one, the cousin, disappeared this afternoon under circumstances yet to be determined. We found a bunch of weapons, too, including a couple of MAC-10 submachine guns. According to one of the girls, Kenny’s packing one.”

“Terrific. Was Phil Wu there?”

“Yeah, and I got to say the man has a pair of balls. He was the first one through after the ESU popped the door. He did the interrogation, too.”

“Anything useful?”

A pause on the line. “Vo won’t talk at all. The girls were saying that the Vo boys were yakking about how they were going to take out your Vietnamese buddy.”

“Tran?”

“Him. And, Butch? Jesus, I hate to have to tell you this, but they said they were going after Lucy, too.”

“Not if their asses are in jail. So out of the four original perps, one’s in the prison ward at King’s County, one’s in custody, one’s on the run, and one we don’t know where he is. Is that right?”

“You got it. We’re going to need Lucy down here tomorrow morning to ID Needlenose Vo in a lineup. You’ll get her down to the Five?”

Karp said that he would. As he hung up, he reflected that, for at least part of the following day, his daughter would be in a police station and he could for a brief time stop worrying about her.

“No makeup,” said Karp.

“It’s only powder,” said the television woman. She had approached him in the chaos behind the set of the Morning Report show. Karp had arranged to be on the show just after speaking with Keegan the previous evening, to answer questions about the Guma-Scarpi tape. By now the tape had been seen at least a hundred times on all the local stations and the networks, too ( The fix is in : wink), and Dudley Bryson, the newsman who was about to interview Karp, had, at their initial meeting earlier that morning, practically to wipe the saliva from his chin, so eager was he to get Karp before his cameras. A dangerous man, according to Bill McHenry, the D.A.’s public affairs chief, who had lectured Karp on how to handle Morning Report , a detailed strategy that had gone in one ear and out the other.

The television woman said, “Everybody uses it. It takes away the shine.” She smiled as for a recalcitrant child and leaned closer, paper bib and puff in hand. Karp gave her a knifing yellow look, of the type he ordinarily reserved for violent pedophiles.

“I. Said. No .”

She paled and scuttled away, muttering.

A young man wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard approached and led Karp out to the set, a matte blue wall dressed with a coffee table and two tan padded chairs. Karp was seated in one and fitted with a tiny microphone that clipped to his tie. Asked for a sound level, Karp said, “I wish for this entire enterprise to be destroyed by fire from the heavens, destroyed utterly, leaving only ashes and horribly disfigured corpses,” which apparently sufficed, and in short order the host came out, pancaked and hairsprayed to a mannikin perfection, and sat in the other seat, and had his mike attached, and attempted some small talk with Karp, not very successfully, and then the makeup person came out again and patted some powder on Bryson’s thick orangey makeup, and he said something to her, indicating the guest with a gesture of his chin, and she shook her head and stalked off stage. Then the kid with the headset crouched in front of them and made three-two-one signs with his fingers and snapped his index finger pistol-like on the last count and the red light on the camera went on and Karp made a concentrated effort to relax the set of his jaw, which felt wired, and then Bryson was talking.