Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“You mean gangsters?” Marlene inquired in a weak voice.

“No, there’s another word. . oh, yeah, like a bouncer. He looked like a bouncer. He had a bunch of gold chains, I saw that, and black shoes. Marlene, are you okay? You look green.”

Marlene was lying in the darkened bedroom with a cold compress across her eyes and two Tylenol plus codeine caps dissolving not quickly enough in her stomach, when her husband walked in. He said, “What’s all this about somebody trying to grab Zik in the park?”

“Later,” she whispered.

Later, about ten that night, she emerged, wearing her flamingo kimono, and plopped down next to him on the couch. She picked up the remote and switched off the television. Karp immediately forgot what he had been watching and watched his wife, who slumped against his shoulder like a sandbag. “Take care of me,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Take care of me. I can’t think anymore. My brain doesn’t work right. They’re going to kill my kids, and I can’t think of how to get out of it.”

A thrill of fear. Karp shifted himself to face her. He gripped Marlene’s shoulders and stared into her face. Her head flopped, as if she were drunk, but she was not. She was crying, slowly, fat tears like glycerine flowing down her flawless cheek from the one duct that still worked, the other eye gleaming brightly, falsely, undisguised by the usual veil of hair.

“Marlene, are you okay? I mean, should I call the doc?”

“Does he pack a gun? Call the Army, call out the Marines. Call out the Monsignor Ryan High School marching band. I can’t do it anymore .” This last came out as a high-pitched whispery noise that would have been a shriek had it any energy behind it.

Karp took a couple of deep ones against the rising panic, and when he thought he had his voice under control, he said, “Marlene, okay, I’ll take care of it, but you have to tell me what ‘it’ is. What happened in the park today? I got the story from Posie, but there’s more, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. A guy’s been following me in a red Dodge pickup with a green fender. All day. And he must have gone after Zik, but the dog scared him off. A wise guy. Not from Buttzville. They killed Jumping Jerry. They probably got Shirley, too. I checked out Nobile. Building maintenance. Osborne called. You know what building? Guess!”

“Marlene, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, I’m going to call the doctor-”

She grasped his wrist hard, her nails digging painfully into the soft flesh of the underside. “No! Listen to me!” In a crazy voice she said, “I’m not crazy.”

Karp removed her hand and held it tenderly. “Okay, you’re not crazy, but you’re not making much sense either. Slow down, take a deep breath, and tell me the whole thing, from the start.”

There must have been few people in town more suited to elicit a complex story from a distraught witness than Karp, and he fell back on his professional skill to extract the entire tale of the Fein investigation up to and including the intelligence that before being hired at Fein’s law firm, Nobile had been a superintendent at the Empire State Building.

“That’s where they got the key,” Marlene concluded. “Panofsky must have set things up for his Mob friends. The fixer. He took care of Nobile, and Nobile got the key to the outside deck, and kept his mouth shut after, and Panofsky gave the key to whoever, and they lured Fein up there to the observation deck and then they hustled him through the door and put the key on him and tossed him over.”

“Whoever,” said Karp. “You think it’s connected, what happened in the park today?”

“Why else? A guy looks like a Vegas mobster tries to take Zik. It’s a subtle message. We don’t like what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, but, Marlene, the Mob doesn’t usually go after family. You know that. And they usually drive around in Town Cars and Crown Vics, not old pickups from Buttzville.” And saying the word “family” triggered an uncomfortable thought in Karp’s mind. “Where’s Lucy?” he asked.

Marlene uttered a series of whooping sounds that could have been laughter or weeping. “Oh, yeah, Lucy. How could I forget? Lucy is with Tran. A cop came to pick up Lucy this morning, and Tran spotted him as someone in deep with our old pal Mr. Leung; hence he decided not to let her go with him, and also decided that if one cop was bent, another might be, too, so she is in protective custody among a bunch of Vietnamese gangsters he hangs out with.” And some noises indicating incipient hysteria. The mastiff clumped in from the kitchen, drawn by dog emotional radar signals, and placed his great head on her knee. She crumpled one of his hot velvet ears and began cooing doggy talk.

Karp snapped, “Stop it! Goddamn, Marlene, what the hell is this! What cop?”

“Detective Wu. Who else?”

“Jesus! Wu’s dirty?”

“Yeah, Tran checked it out after. I guess that explains why they haven’t been making stellar progress on the Asia Mall killings and why the Chens are so freaked out. Everybody in Chinatown must know Wu is bent except all of us lo faan round-eye assholes.”

“You knew about it this morning, obviously,” said Karp a little testily. “Didn’t you think to call me up? I could’ve had Tran downtown talking to IAD. Christ, we’ll tear that whole precinct apart-”

“Not with Tran you won’t, and that’s all you have right now.”

“What, you’re saying Tran won’t talk? Why the hell not?”

Marlene sighed. She thought briefly of trying a couple of fancy lies, but no longer possessed the energy necessary for fabrication at a level that would pass; nor did she feel any longer like the Marlene who thought that sort of thing was cool.

“Because he’s not Tran. Because he’s a Viet Cong. Because he’s some kind of war criminal besides. Because he was also a hit man for the triads in the Philippines. He won’t cooperate with the police; he can’t. That’s why.”

There was a longish silence as Karp came to a boil. She stroked the dog’s head.

“You knew this?” he cried. “You let our daughter hang out with someone like that?”

She started crying again. “Oh, Butch, he’s just a big, fierce dog. He won’t hurt her any more than Sweety would. Don’t beat on me, Butch. Not now. Just fix it. He’s on a beeper; his number’s in my Rolodex.”

“Marlene. .”

“Honestly, Butch, I’m so tired,” she said, and drew her legs up and cradled her head in her hands. The dog caught the tone of the argument and gave Karp a baleful look, growled briefly, and sank to the floor below her, breathing noisily, on guard.

Karp, not having had brain surgery a few scant weeks ago, was better able than his wife to deal with a number of complex issues at once. He was angry and satisfied at the same time; his Pleistocene male instincts did not get much feeding around Marlene, and now there was warm defense-of-wife-and-family red meat. He pounded out the beeper number he found, made a couple of brief calls while he waited, and then the phone rang.

Karp heard something in French, which he didn’t get, and he said, “Do you speak enough English to understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to bring my daughter home. Now.”

A pause, then, “If you wish.”

“I wish,” Karp said, and hung up.

He made another call and then came back to the living room. Marlene had not moved, nor did she budge as he sat next to her.

“Okay, I fixed it,” he said.

She shifted to bring her real eye around to look at him. A pang of sympathy plucked at his heart, and he tried to keep it from his face. She had the bristling, fierce, helpless, desperate look of an unfledged eaglet. Her glassie had rolled out of position and now seemed to be looking at the dark TV; the staples holding her scalp together glinted horribly against the black fuzz on her scalp.