Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“Oh, that’d be super cool! Like tomorrow?”

“Yeah, um, what’s the address you’re staying at?”

“It’s in Long Beach, 210 East Penn. When will you get here?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to call you back. Look, I got to go now. I’ll call you later.”

“Okay, the phone number’s area code-”

Mary Ma said, “What’s wrong?”

Lucy looked at the telephone and jiggled the switch on the box. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think she hung up before I could give her the number.”

“On purpose?”

Lucy shrugged, burying her doubts. “Oh, you know Janice. She’s weird sometimes.”

The black rubber boat cut its motor and coasted in through the low surf, hissing to a stop a few yards from where the twins were playing. Marlene sat up, rigid. “Boys!” she called. It came out a quaver, plucked away by the sea wind. She shouted again. One of the men left the boat, knelt and said something to the boys, and they both dashed up the beach to her, the man following. He did indeed look like a casino bouncer, six-two, maybe two-thirty. He was wearing a thin red nylon Windbreaker, a pair of yellow swim trunks, and a maroon net shirt. Several strands of massy gold adorned his thick neck. His skin was tanned bronze, and as he approached more closely, she could see that he was pelted heavily in black.

Zik put his face against hers and whispered in her ear, “That’s the kidnapper man, Mommy.”

On her other side Zak said, “That man said we could have a boat ride, Mommy. Can we?”

The man squatted by the side of her chair and pushed his sunglasses up on his head, so she could see his psychopath eyes. “Marlene Ciampi, am I right?” He was grinning. He had even, capped teeth, very white against the tan.

“Yes. What do you want?”

“These are your kids, huh? Jeez, they’re really twins. How do you tell them apart?”

“I’m Zak!” said Zak. “I’m the oldest.” Which was his usual response to this familiar conversational gambit.

“Yeah, you are,” the man said, and tousled Zak’s hair. Marlene shuddered.

“I’m Vincent Frasciotti,” the man said. “They call me Vinnie Fresh. You ever heard of me?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t advertise. And I’m not from here. I’m from L.A. I usually work for John Tona. You heard of him , right?”

“Yes.”

“I figured. Yeah, well, I’m what they call a mechanic: something ain’t right, they call me in, I fix it. No muss, no fuss. So, Mr. Bollano. . you heard of him , I guess?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, Mr. Bollano got this little problem, and he asked me to fix it for him. Mr. Bollano thinks it’s a shame that a nice mommy like yourself is spending all her time poking into stuff happened a long time ago, coming between a husband and his wife, shooting people, and so forth, and not watching her kids like she’s supposed to. Mr. B. is a big believer in the family. He’s concerned, you could say, something could happen to these nice kids while you were out doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing in the first place, if you catch my drift.”

“Yes,” said Marlene. “Okay, I’ll stop.”

Vinnie’s smile faded a tiny bit. He was disappointed, Marlene thought. This was too easy, and he hasn’t got all his menacing jollies yet. “You’ll stop,” he said, flat-toned.

“Yes. I won’t work for Vivian Bollano anymore, I’ll stop the investigation.”

“Yeah, well, that’s very reasonable of you, Marlene. I heard you were a hard case, but I guess you’re not so hard, huh?”

“No. I’m a soft case. I don’t want anything to hurt my kids, okay? You made your point. I’m out of it.”

“Yeah, good, but”-now he leaned closer, close enough for Marlene to smell the coconut scent of his suntan oil, and ran his index finger under the leg band of her Speedo suit, near the crotch, drawing the fabric up, exposing a small patch of pubic hair-“. . but maybe we should go out to the boat there, the four of us, and discuss the details, you know, in a relaxed setting, make sure we understand each other.”

Marlene was watching his face, watching him enjoying it. She had kept her own face blank, but now she saw that this had been an error; he would not relent until he had seen her break. And if he got her off this beach, with the boys, she would break, she was under no illusions about that. Vinnie Fresh would smash her in a way that precluded any recovery. That was what he did, and he was good at it, she could see that in his face.

Then his face changed. He frowned. He was looking at something behind Marlene. Sophie’s voice called out cheerfully, “Boys, boys, who wants ice cream sodas? Come with Aunt Sophie!”

The twins shrieked and darted off like young rabbits. Sophie had them each by the hand and was moving with surprising speed toward the beach club.

“Hey. .” said Vinnie.

Then Jake Gurvitz stepped into Marlene’s field of view. He had a white terry-cloth robe on over his swim suit, and his thin white hair was blowing around his head like banners.

“Take a hike, sonny,” he said to Vinnie, his voice grinding.

“This is a private conversation, grandpa. Get lost, and tell that old bat to bring those kids back.”

Jake pulled a pistol out of the pocket of his robe and showed it to Vinnie. He showed it, and then let it fall down by his side, so that it hung by Marlene’s face. She saw that it was a serious gun, a Smith.38 Model 10 with the four-inch barrel, the bluing worn, the handle wrapped with old-fashioned black friction tape, the classic gat of thirties gangster movies.

Vinnie shot to his feet. “What’re you nuts? You pulling a gun on me ? You know who I am, you old fuck? Get the fuck out of here before I shove that piece of shit up your ass!”

Jake said, “Shit for brains: shut up and listen to me! You go back and tell Salvatore that Jake Gurvitz says he should lay off these people, this family. Tell him it’s my family. Tell him Jake saved some paper from the old days. He doesn’t want to see it on the television, he’ll lay off. You got that, or do I have to repeat it?”

“What the fuck ! Who the fuck are you, some maniac?”

“No,” said Jake. “Like I said, Jake Gurvitz. Now, go ahead, get out of here.”

They were separated by about six feet, Marlene estimated, Vinnie on the right side of her chair and Jake on the other. Vinnie now started to move around the foot of the chair.

“Give me that goddamn gun, asshole. .” he started to say and then stopped, because Jake had raised the weapon and was holding in an old-style but undeniably expert two-handed grip, his left elbow dug into his broad belly, his left hand making a platform for the Smith, which Marlene could observe was trembling about as much as the boardwalk.

“Don’t move your head,” Jake said in a conversational tone. “I’m going to shoot your ear off.” He cocked the hammer and leaned his head slightly into his grip, squinting at the front sight.

Vinnie had gone noticeably paler. He said, “You pull that fuckin’ trigger, you’re dead, man. And your fuckin’ wife, and your fuckin’ kids, and your fuckin’-”

The pistol fired, its report flattened and carried away instantly by the wind. A flock of seagulls bounced into the air, yelling and wheeling out over the sea. When Marlene finished her blink, she saw that Vinnie was sitting on the sand, his mouth an O of shock, his left hand held to the side of his face, blood pouring from between his fingers. A long piece of flesh, dripping red, hung down like a dreadful earring below the line of his jaw. His sunglasses had gone flying, and Marlene could see his eyes. They were full of disbelief, and horror, and the knowledge that a man who could shoot your ear off at six feet could remove any other part of your body he chose to, and you couldn’t do anything about it. The other man ran up from the Zodiac and helped Vinnie to his feet, and together they went back to the craft. He manhandled the boat out into waist-high surf, helped Vinnie into it, paddled twenty yards farther out, cranked the outboard, and departed.