Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

“You okay?” said Jake.

“Yeah. Yeah, Jake, I’m fine. Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said. With a movement of his head, he indicated the yacht and the Zodiac approaching it. “You might want to get off the beach,” he added. “They could have a rifle.”

He turned and walked back up the beach, past the wondering stares of the two other rummy players, and into the beach club.

It was not a good day, Karp found, to travel from Manhattan to the Long Island shore.

“You didn’t realize it was July Fourth weekend?” asked Ed Morris incredulously.

“No, because the Fourth falls on a Tuesday this year, and I had other stuff on my mind,” said Karp. “Christ, the summer just started. We just had Memorial Day.”

“Yeah, I hear you. The summer used to last a million years. Now. .” He snapped his fingers. “Speaking of a million years, that’s about what it’s going to take us to get through this tunnel. I assume you want to avoid the Belt?”

“Hell, yeah! Take Flatbush. Use the goddamn siren, too.”

Which they did, and made good time from the egress of the Battery Tunnel to the approaches to the Marine Parkway Bridge. There they found another fuming parking lot. Morris used the police radio to find out what was going on.

“A truck fire on the bridge,” he said. “We’re fucked, unless you want to call for a chopper.”

Karp cursed briefly. “No, just patch into a land line, get in touch with Bryan, and tell her about Leung being on the loose. Tell her to keep them all close, in the house. And tell her to make sure that nobody tells anyone that Marlene and the kids are there. Tell her that we should be in Long Beach in, what. .?”

“Figure three hours,” said Morris glumly, wiping off sweat.

“Shit!” After a few sweaty minutes, Karp leaned over and pulled his tattered cardboard portfolio onto his lap. He pulled from it a stack of case files and a Sony microcassette recorder.

“I might as well get some work done,” he said.

“There’s no one home,” said Morris after a few minutes. “They must all be at the beach.”

Nobody at the house spoke of what had happened at the beach. Marlene tried to thank Sophie, but came up against that lady’s remarkably well-developed ability to place unhappy or violent events outside her consciousness. Jake was a sphinx in general, and when the girls and Bryan returned, Marlene was aware of her reluctance to involve the policewoman. The center of attention that afternoon was, in fact, Posie, and Posie’s sunburn. When she emerged from her room, mottled, blistered, stinking of Noxema, Zik burst into tears, and Sophie, after a brief inspection in the bathroom, decided that she had to be taken over to the emergency room at Long Beach Memorial. Jake volunteered to run the two of them over in his Lincoln.

When they were gone, Marlene slipped into Sophie’s bedroom and used the phone, charging the call to her office number.

“Guma? This is Marlene. Comu stati? ”

“Champ? Jeez, you’re the first call I had in three days. I’m some kind of non-person now, like in Russia.”

“You’re holding up, though.”

“Yeah, yeah. The fucking press is camped outside, so I can’t go out. I’m watching my Jane Goodall tape. Christ, that woman turns me on, those long legs in those little shorts-be honest, Marlene, do you think I got a shot at Jane Goodall?”

“To be honest? I think you don’t look quite enough like a chimpanzee.”

Guma laughed. “God, Marlene, I think that’s the nicest thing you ever said about me. How’s by you? Got sand in all your orifices?”

“So far, so good. Look, Goom, I need to pick your brain. Ever hear of a Jake Gurvitz?”

“Hm, Jake Gurvitz, Jake Gurvitz. . oh, yeah, late thirties, forties, into the fifties, a labor goon, a head breaker, a Brooklyn guy, he came up with all those Murder Incorporated Jewish fellas, Pittsburgh Phil, Kid Twist Reles, and all of them. Worked for, let’s see, he worked for Albert Anastasia, and after Albert got clipped in fifty-two, he worked for the Bollano outfit. As a contractor.”

“He did murders?”

“Not that we could ever prove. A slick guy. They called him Jake the Baker, or Bakin’ Jake. The feds finally got him for some dicky little thing like the feds do, tax evasion or perjury, I forget. He did a jolt in Marion, early sixties or so, and I guess he must’ve kicked off, because he sure hasn’t shown up recently. What’s your interest?”

“Oh, just following up on something. Why did they call him Jake the Baker? Because of the baker’s union connection?”

“That, and he used to put guys in bake ovens and turn on the flames. You piss him off, he turns you into a bagel. A real sweetheart, from what I heard.”

Marlene had scarcely hung up the phone and had not even begun to digest Guma’s story when Lucy popped in.

“Can we go shopping in Long Beach? We need some things.”

“Things? What things?”

“Oh, you know, items. Mary wants to get a bathing suit. I need new sunglasses, and a hat. Could we?”

“I’ll talk to Detective Bryan. And anyway, we have to wait until the twins wake up.”

“Why do we have to take them? Why don’t we just go now, the three of us? It won’t take more than an hour at the most.”

Marlene sighed. She didn’t need this just now, and she was thinking that it would be a good idea to go up to her bedroom and turn on the fan and, after a slow shower, lie naked on the white bedspread and drift off herself. She said, “Lucy, you’re forgetting the situation. We have to stay with Detective Bryan.”

“We could walk over to Beach Bazaar, it’s not that far. Come on, Mom, nothing’s going to happen.”

“Lucy! Are you completely nuts? I said . .” A glare with this hot enough to fry eggs.

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to yell.” Lucy flounced off, muttering, leaving Marlene to reflect that her daughter, despite her gifts and the remarkable resourcefulness and sophistication she often displayed, was not immune to the fits of brainlessness that afflict adolescents. She did not know whether to be annoyed or happy at this. She lay back on Sophie’s bed, still in her bathing suit, and conked out, to be awakened after what seemed like four minutes by the twins, who were cranky and demanding of different and incompatible things, and had to be cozened by the promise of a commercial expedition.

The children ran happily into the Volvo, Marlene drove, Bryan rode shotgun, and everyone else piled into the backseat. Marlene locked the door, and they set out. In the house behind them, the phone rang.

“Where could they be?” Karp asked.

“Gosh, Butch, for crying out loud, I said they’re at the beach ,” replied Morris. “I mean, that’s what you do, you’re at a beach house, you go to the beach.”

“Well, we’re out of that traffic anyway.”

“Yeah, relax, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

What I should really do now, thought Leung, is open the door of this van, get out, and simply walk away. I should walk to the nearest public transport, go back to Manhattan, get the money, and leave. Their route from Queens to Long Beach had taken them on the Cross Bay Boulevard, where the airliners roared overhead on their way to and from JFK Airport. He wanted to be on one of those planes, headed east, instead of in this van, heading to an unplanned operation, with four frightened local ma jai , and the crazy Vietnamese gangster and the resentful boy they’d just snatched. But he had no money, not for a ticket, or to buy a fake passport, or even to bribe his way into a freight container. All his money was in Chinatown, and all the money in the world would do him no good as long as the girl was free and able to talk. If the girl could be taken, without notice, then he could recoup, slip back into federal protection, testify against the Italians, then vanish and change into someone else, after which the rest of the plan would be simple to accomplish.