Robert Tanenbaum - Act of Revenge

Marlene made an exasperated sound and crossed over to sit on the bed beside Vivian. She put her arm around her, and found that she was trembling like a caught mouse.

“Look, Vivian. This has to come out. It has to all come out, right now, so your life can start up again and the people who murdered your father can get what they deserve. It’s like vomiting, Vivian: if you try to hold it back it gets worse and worse. Just heave it up, and brush your teeth and it’s over.”

“Please, could I have a. .” Her hand twitched toward Marlene’s purse.

“No. First talk. Leung came to see you, didn’t he?”

The woman uttered a small sigh, and Marlene knew that it was the sound of the cork going on a magnum of poisoned mental champagne; it would all come out now. “He called first. He said, ‘Hiya, princess,’ which is what my dad used to say, and then Bernie picked it up, too. I almost fainted, because the accent was so right on. He said he came from Bernie, that Bernie had died in Macao and had told this guy to come see me. He wanted to know could we meet, and I said, yes. I would’ve crawled over broken glass. So we met the next day in some hole-in-the-wall place in Chinatown. He said Bernie had saved his life after some war they had there, I didn’t follow that part. He said Bernie had landed in Macao, which is kind of a wide-open town. If you have money, they don’t care what you did anyplace else. And Bernie had plenty of money. He bought some real estate, had some businesses. He got into opium, too. And when he was high, he would talk, about what happened to my father, about what Panofsky had done, to my dad and him. He couldn’t go to the cops with what he knew, or guessed, because the cops were all bought by the Bollanos. So he just stayed in Macao, talking to this kid. The kid got into the triads-they practically run Macao anyway, and Bernie was connected with them too. And they figured out this plan. The first step was to come to me and tell me that Sal had killed my father.”

“You never suspected this? Before, I mean.”

Vivian seemed surprised at the question. “No. Why should I? Big Sally came to me right after it happened. He told me. . oh, God, it’s so screwed up. I can’t remember which lie came first. Look, I’m sixteen. My father’s dead. My mother. . well, she’s not much help. She’s a little vague, Mom. There were two people I could count on. One was Bernie, and the other was my dad’s secretary, Shirley Waldorf. Both of them thought he’d been murdered, and they were going to try to prove it. Then, all of a sudden, Bernie runs away and Shirley gets fired instead of Panofsky.”

“Panofsky was going to get fired?”

“Yeah. He was. . he was always hanging around me, coming on to me. Christ, I was sixteen! My dad saw him grab me once, and he blew his top. He said if he ever did anything like that again, he was finished. But he wouldn’t stop. No. Then, after Shirley disappeared with the ledger, Big Sal came to our house one night and. .”

“Wait a second, Vivian, what ledger?”

“Oh, that was part of Shirley’s craziness. She started acting weird after Bernie went away, after the scandal. She just couldn’t handle the changes. Hah! Like I could, right? She kept every birthday card my dad ever gave her, and she came over here one night, with all of them and a whole bunch of office papers and laid them out on the coffee table. .”

“You don’t mean here , Vivian, you mean your home, in Brooklyn.”

“Oh, yeah. Anyway, she had the cards, and some diaries of my dad’s, and she gave us this, I don’t know, some kind of lecture about how my dad couldn’t have killed himself, and there were papers all around our living room, and my mom, who’s not too tightly wrapped to begin with and the doctor had been giving her prescriptions, she fell asleep in the middle of it and there I was, sixteen, trying to follow this crazy woman. She was paranoid, too, she thought people were following her, they were going to kill her if anybody ever found out she had these papers, and that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. And I didn’t. She got fired after that. I guess she must be dead, because I never heard from her again.”

“Okay, go back to when Big Sally came over.”

“Uh-huh. That was a couple of days after Shirley was by. He was really serious and calm, and it was a relief after Shirley, you know, to think someone was in charge. I didn’t know who he was or what he did. He was just a businessman, a client of my father’s, and he was with Panofsky, so he was all right. And Sal was there, too. My future husband. And they told me that my father had been murdered, and they were going to find out who did it and get him. And a few weeks after that they sent a car to get me, after dinner, Little Sal and some of his men. We got the guy, is what they said. And we drove out to south Brooklyn, by the bay. You could smell the ocean, and you could smell the garbage dump, I remember, a sweet, horrible smell, and we went to a big building where they made cement, you could see lines of cement trucks parked outside, and inside the building it was dark except for the one bright light they had on and Big Sal was there and Charlie Tonnati, and they had this guy tied to a chair. They must have burned him. You could smell that burned-feather smell, and gasoline. This was the guy, they said. And Big Sal said, tell her, and the guy started talking, in this soft, tired voice, like he’d just walked a thousand miles, and he said he was from another gang and they wanted to kill Big Sal, and they were trying to get my father to sell him out, because they knew Big Sal trusted my father more than anyone, but my father wouldn’t do it. This was up on the deck of the Empire State, where they met, where my dad had his office, and when he wouldn’t they dragged him outside and held him over, to frighten him, but he still wouldn’t and then they dropped him off.”

She fell silent. Marlene asked, “What was the guy’s name?”

“Frank Crespi.”

“Who was he working for?”

“I never found out; they never told me and I didn’t ask.”

“And what happened after that?”

“Nothing. They took me home. Nobody ever mentioned Frank Crespi to me again. I guess they killed him. I was glad. Then I had my life, and then this Chinese guy walks in and tells me it was all a lie, that Sal killed my father. I guess the joke’s on me. Ha-ha.”

“Did he give you any proof, Vivian?”

She shook her head. “No, but I knew that it was true, and. . that scared me. I thought I was going crazy, maybe. Maybe I invented this weird Chinese guy. I don’t have a happy life, Marlene. Sal found out I’d been out to see somebody, and he asked me who it was and I wouldn’t tell him, so he whipped me and put out a cigar on my. . skin, and. . did other stuff to me, but I still wouldn’t tell him, so he locked me up and took away all my clothes. But I got out a window and called a cab, and came here. Naked came I. Heh. Not a happy life. That’s why I take a couple of pills once in a while, when I’m a little down. That’s why I hired you, to see if there was anything in it. And there is, so. . now I know. Okay, I told you everything, could I please have my pills back?”

Marlene ignored her. “Actually, Vivian, you’ve only answered one of the two questions. The other one is, why did you marry a nasty little psychopath like Sal Bollano Jr.”

“I don’t see why that’s any of your business,” said Vivian stiffly.

“Humor me.”

Vivian looked longingly at the television screen, as if it had the answer to the question asked. Her breathing was rapid and there was a glint of sweat on her upper lip. “He was around. It’s not like I had a lot of dates. Sal tended to discourage interest in me by other guys. I had to take care of my mother, and the Bollanos were very generous to us. Now, could you kindly return my medication ?”