Act of Revenge

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Mr. Lie has testified before the federal grand jury, and on the basis of that testimony we issued indictments and have arrested Mr. Joseph Pigetti on charges of conspiracy, interference with a federal prosecution, witness intimidation, and kidnapping in connection with the abduction and murder of Edward Catalano. That concludes my presentation, and I am open for questions at this time.”

  “Oh, shit, it’s going to be a feeding frenzy,” said Roland as a forest of hands shot up from the ranks of the press.

  No one asked about the various indictments, the ostensible purpose of the press conference. What they wanted to know about was the murder and the mysterious witness. Where was this witness? In protective custody. Why wasn’t Pigetti being charged with murder? Colombo was happy to explain that murder was not a federal crime. Murder was, of course, a crime under state law, and the witness, Mr. Lie, had approached the district attorney’s office with his information, but the district attorney had refused to act on it. Pandemonium, shouts, urgent wavings. Colombo picked one and got the obvious: why did the district attorney not act?

  “I have no idea,” said Colombo, his expression indicating that he had a very good idea. “In general, federal investigations enjoy excellent cooperation with local law enforcement, using both state and federal statutes against defendants of this type. After all, we’re all on the same side. There are exceptions, of course, in cases where organized crime has compromised local law enforcement organizations.”

  “Son of a bitch!” said Roland, loud enough to draw curious stares from several journalists.

  The follow-up question was a no-brainer. Are you implying that this is the case with the New York D.A.? Through a half smirk Mr. Colombo declined to imply anything, asserting that he was interested only in evidence, but that the D.A.’s investigation of the Catalano murder seemed to be in some disarray. The police had come up with a good suspect for the trigger man, but the D.A. had declined to arrest this person. Was there an active federal investigation of the New York D.A.? Mr. Colombo reminded the assembly that grand jury procedures, especially as regards investigations in progress, were closely sealed, but that he intended to vigorously pursue any and all lines of inquiry, no matter where they led, and that was all the time he had for questions, thank you.

  “I guess we saw how the pros do it,” was Karp’s comment as they weaved through mobs of rushing journalists.

  “Yeah, a truly brilliant job, the little fuck. He just about accused us of sleeping with the Mob. Jack’s going to have twins. And he knew about the Marky Moron business, too. Shit!”

  “Hey, we did the right thing there. Cops talk, and Tommy’s always got his ears open for bitching about his colleagues,” said Karp as they passed through the lobby of the Federal Building. “The story is the putatively mobbed-up D.A. won’t get tough with the Bollanos, so the feds have to step in.”

  “Yeah, and he’s going to pressure us to give state grand jury immunity on the Eddie Cat hit. And not just for the Chinaman. He’s going to want us to walk Joe P. on it, too. He’ll be glad to forget a murder or two or three provided someone drops a dime on the Sallys.”

  They paused outside the building, before the long, rusted steel Serra sculpture, another federal creation that no one liked but everyone had to live with.

  “Don’t worry, Roland,” said Karp soothingly.

  “Easy for you to say. Frank Anselmo is flashing his famous I-told-you-so smile and telling everyone you fucked us up.”

  “Time is on our side,” said Karp.

  “Is it? You mean, if we find this Lie is dirty in a previous life. I wish I was as sure as you.”

  “I met him.”

  “You did. What are you going on, your famous instinct?”

  “That, and the fact that the guy asked for me. Why me?”

  “You’re in the papers, on TV.”

  “Yeah, but so are you, so’s Jack, for that matter. No, the connection has to be Chinatown, the Chens, Marlene, Lucy . . . something. I live around there, so I’ll be more . . . what? More sensitive to the plight of a poor illegal immigrant gangster? Easy to get to if I don’t do what they say? Anyway, the guy’s not what he seems, and it’s just too damn convenient him turning up to pin it all on Joe P.”

  “I’d like to get my hands on the shooter. By the way, Lie has got a solid alibi. On the night of he was gambling. A couple dozen great and near great of Chinatown saw him.”

  “So we’re looking for two other guys. I assume the cops are on it?”

  “Balls to the wall, or what passes for it nowadays, but no real leads,” said Roland glumly. “How’s V.T. coming on the paper?”

  “I was just going to go see him,” said Karp as the two men entered the courthouse via the special D.A.’s entrance on Leonard Street. “Come on along.”

  Roland checked his watch. “I’d love to, but I got to see Judge Paine on something. Be nice to have him up there if we ever get a defendant on Catalano.”

  Karp made a sour face.

  “What, you don’t like Paine? Heshy Paine? He’s got the world’s biggest hard-on for the Mob.”

  “I know that. The problem with prosecutor’s judges, as you well know, Roland, is that they’re so eager to please that they leave a trail of reversible errors the size of the Thomas E. Dewey Thruway. Give me fair any day.”

  Roland ignored this last, waved, and went off to his date, leaving Karp feeling like a tendentious jerk. Having someone like Paine in there meant that you’d win your case, and two or three years later the guy would walk on appeal, which did not, if you were Roland and his many epigones, count on your scorecard. When Karp put them away, he wanted them to stay put for a decent interval, just as they had back in the golden age under Garrahy, but he understood that this was a minority opinion in the current age of brass.

  Karp went back to his office, checked his messages, found one from his daughter and one from V. T. Newbury. Feeling only somewhat guilty, he called Newbury back first, had a brief conversation arranging for an immediate meeting, and then called Lucy.

  “I have to go to the lab,” the girl said. “You still have that cop outside.”

  “Lucy, we haven’t got those guys yet. I don’t want to take a chance on them trying anything again.”

  “Tran will be with me. He’ll stay with me the whole time. Please, Daddy dear?”

  She hadn’t called him “daddy dear” in a while, so he adopted a milder tone. What he wanted to say was, okay, Lucy, I know you think Tran is some kind of superhero, but we can’t take the chance, et cetera, et cetera, and more paternal bumf as needed, but all he managed to get out was, “Okay, Lucy—”

  At which point she shrilled, “Oh, great! Bye,” and the phone went dead.

  Karp yelled out a curse and redialed. Four rings and the machine picked up. He slammed down the receiver and dialed the first four digits of Marlene’s car phone before he recalled that his wife was still in the hospital. Uttering foul language, he then called Columbia information, got Shadkin’s lab number, called it. A woman answered and informed him that Lucy Karp had not yet arrived but they were expecting her. And who was she speaking to?

  “Oh, never mind . . . her father, tell her her father called and have her call . . . oh, hell, just forget it!”

  Who to call? He sat there for a minute, fuming. Call the cops? For what? They were doing what they should, looking for Kenny Vo and company. That damn kid! And what was he going to do when he caught up with her? Give her a spanking?

  “Should I come back?” V. T. Newbury asked from the doorway.

  “Huh? Oh, no, I was just thinking of something.” Embarrassed, Karp put the phone down in its cradle.

  “I’ll say. You were sitting there like a waxwork. I was thinking alien abduction.”

  Vernon Talcott Newbury came in and sat down in Karp’s side chair, crossed his elegantly flanneled legs, and plunked a thick folder on the desk. Newbury was a short, slight, beautifully sculptured man, somewhat younger than Karp, the scion of
a family that had helped give Peter Stuyvesant the boot back in 1667, and had been prominent in the financial life of the city ever since. That such a refined creature should have chosen to labor in the deep slime pits of the criminal courts was unusual; that he had stayed made him unique. Karp thought V.T. was the smartest person currently thus employed and considered him his best friend. He was an ornament at the Fraud Bureau, where it was agreed that when it came to tracking dirty money and bad paper, the perfect little gentleman (as he called himself ) had no peer.

  V.T. looked at Karp closely, a smile hesitating on his face. “You okay, Butch?”

  “Yeah. No, my life is collapsing, but never mind. What’ve you got?”

  “Marlene all right?”

  “Yeah, recovering is what they say. Head trauma, they like to keep them in there for a while. So, you find out our guy’s secrets?”

  “A few. Given the guy, I’d have to say I’m just penetrating the dew on the apple.” He opened his folder. “Okay, some background. This was explained to me by the nice Mr. Yat over at Citicorp. The first thing you start with when you want to trace someone’s movements or money is, naturally, his name. With Chinese persons this is not straightforward. The Chinese character that represents the name is unchanging, but the way we barbarians transliterate it into something we can read varies wildly, and not just because of the different systems we use, but because the way a character is pronounced varies depending on the speaker. When I say ‘varies,’ think, oh, English and Portuguese.”

  “You mean the Mandarin and Cantonese business?”

  “For starters. There are lots of dialects in China, really they’re independent languages, and so in the nineteenth century when they brought the telegraph in, they concocted a standard code for every character, and that’s the only way you can figure out someone’s real name, by getting him to write down the character and using a code book to look up the STC number, the standard telegraphic code. That’s what the Hong Kong cops use to keep track of people. Anyway, we obtained from Mr. Lie’s landlord a signature in characters—he says he’s Lie Tan Wo—and we faxed it to Hong Kong. His surname came up 2621, fine, but not much help. It’s like Smith, only worse, because that particular name is the third most common name in China. It means ‘plum.’ There are probably sixty million people named Li, or Loei, or Looey. Now, besides those, there are regional variations of any particular name that might not sound anything like Li. For example . . .”

  One thing about V.T., Karp now recalled, was that when he got his teeth into something, he went on about it, telling you more than you wanted to know. Besides, the conversation was reminding him uncomfortably of his daughter, sinking perhaps even now into some new oriental miasma.

  “Cut to the chase, V.T.,” Karp interrupted. “Did you find the guy or not?”

  “But this stuff is interesting. Jeez, what a grouch! Okay, we also faxed fingerprints and a snap one of Fulton’s guys took on the street. I spoke to a Captain Chui over there, and his people ID’d him as Nia Tu Wah. They were very surprised to learn Mr. Nia, that’s the surname first here, had shown up in New York. They thought he’d gone to the Yellow Springs.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The land of the dead. He was, or maybe we should say is, a hot prospect in a triad called . . . let’s see here, Da Qan Zi. It means ‘big circle gang’ or ‘big circle boys.’ ”

  “And who are they?”

  “Mainlanders. Big Circle was a Red Guard camp back during the Cultural Revolution. These people are all former Red Guards who got to like kicking in teeth back then and kept up the practice, except now they do it for money instead of for the Great Helmsman. Recently they’ve been expanding outside of the People’s Republic—Taiwan, Macao, Indonesia, and Hong Kong itself—leaning on the local triads. They do drugs, immigrant smuggling, prostitution, plus extortion. Very upsetting to the old-line triads is what I hear. Mr. Nia worked out of Macao.”

  “Upsetting as in tong war?”

  “Triads aren’t tongs, but yeah, there’s been violence. For example, in Jakarta last month . . .” He stopped and looked at Karp, on whose face he recognized the lineaments of deep thought. Karp was off line, and V.T. waited while the processor hummed. “Yes?” he said when Karp’s eyes had unglazed.

  “Oh, just something else. You know, we had a double murder in Chinatown the other week. Apparently a couple of big triad honchos from Hong Kong, father and son. Isn’t Macao near Hong Kong?”

  “Like the Bronx and Brooklyn. You think there’s a connection with Lie? Or Nia?”

  “I don’t know. I’m worried about Lucy. She’s involved in some way in it. Some heavy guys went after her the other day. No, she’s okay, but my mind keeps going back to it. She won’t tell me anything about it, apparently because she doesn’t want to get her pals in trouble, which leads me to believe some of the pals’ parents are embroiled in it. It’s just one more damn thing.”

  “Interesting, though. How many triad guys from Hong Kong are in New York at any one time?”

  “Fourteen hundred and two, for all we know,” said Karp sourly. “There’s not a lot of intelligence coming from that sector.”

  “True, but it strikes me as funny anyway that two of them get whacked and another claims he arranged a murder for the Mob. Maybe that’s his regular line of work.”

  Karp shrugged. This was speculation, and V.T. knew that speculation in advance of any evidence was to Karp the next thing to an indictable offense. It always amazed V.T., who loved speculation himself, that his friend had no interest at all in whodunit, but only cared about how-you-got-’em.

  After a vaguely embarrassing pause Karp said, “So what else do you have besides this ID?”

  “Not a lot,” V.T. admitted. “The guy’s illegal, so he has no decent paper and we have no record of entry. He lives in a two-room, third-floor walk-up on Bayard Street, pays cash, no phone, no car, no bank account that anyone can find. The feds, of course, tossed the place pretty thoroughly by the time we got our warrant, so no great finds there. He hangs out in little restaurants, uses pay phones. He’s connected with a Chinatown gang called the White Dragons, runs the usual extortion business, supplies guards for illegal gambling games, provides girls for Chinatown big shots. A typical small-time gangster, just like he says he is. Or so it seems.”

  “Why ‘or so it seems’?”

  “Because why would a major Hong Kong triad hood come to New York with just the clothes he’s walking around in to shake down Chinese restaurants for lucky money?”

  “He was a major drug trafficker.”

  “So he says, but still, it doesn’t answer the question why, of all the hoods in Chinatown, he gets picked to whack a heavy wise guy. Then, instead of splitting to Hong Kong or some other Chinese neighborhood where there isn’t a chance in hell the Mob would ever find him, he walks in out of nowhere and asks for Butch Karp and spills his guts in return for immunity and protection. Which, when he doesn’t get it, he waltzes over to the feds and slips into a federal witness-protection program. This is a guy from a criminal subculture that never deals with the authorities. These guys make the Mob look like a flock of canaries. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Karp made once again the deep sniffing noise he had used with Keegan earlier. V.T. grinned and nodded. Karp related the same suspicions to him.

  V.T. said, “So you think somebody is knocking off the Bollano family in a very subtle way, so as not to engage the attention of the other families. The Bollanos are having a little trouble, we’ll wait and see what happens. The Gambinos, the Lucheses et al. are watching each other, nobody’s making a grab for the territory like they would if it was a full-scale intra-family struggle. And you think the Chinese might be involved?”

  “It wouldn’t exactly surprise me. I wish to hell, though, I could figure out his game. The guy’s on ice. When he gets out, he’s not going to be a gangster anymore, he’s going to be a protected witness. Where’s his win, except staying alive, and you already
pointed out the flaw there. All he needs is a ticket to some other Chinatown. Can you see some low-hairline Italians trying to find this guy in, say, Panama City? Or Manila?”

  “It’d be nice if we had the actual trigger man in Catalano,” said V.T.

  “Yeah, it would, but my suspicion is he is never going to give them up unless and until he gets full transactional immunity from all state prosecution on the evidence he presents. Which I am not going to offer. We have to come up with physical evidence, or another witness, or the trigger man or men, so we can put the squeeze on him. I might cut a deal to get the guys who ordered the hit, but I’m not giving this mutt a free ride with as little solid information as we have now. Colombo can play that game, not me. Frankly, I was hoping you’d find a stash of money with Joe’s prints all over it or a pocket diary with an entry ‘three a.m., commit murder, pick up milk and corn flakes.’ You let me down again, V.T.”

  “What can I say, I’m a sack of shit. Talking about games, we don’t know what game Hong Kong is playing. We don’t know this Captain Chui from a hole in the wall. He could be bent. The real Nia wants to disappear, the cops there get this call from New York, who is this guy? Captain Chui, who’s been on the triad payroll for years, says to himself, oh, great, we’ll say it’s Mr. Nia. That way there’s a record of the guy in custody in New York, case closed in Hong Kong.”

  “Yes, and they all lived happily ever after. It could be anything, V.T. This whole thing reeks of fanciness, from the bullet through the clock to Little Sally’s old lady in that goddamn shelter. Shit!” Karp rubbed his face, a characteristic gesture of terminal frustration. “I hate this crap. It’s wrong. There’s a mind behind this, fucking with us, and I think Mr. Lie knows who it is.”

  “Maybe, but in any case, the fucking is succeeding. We are fucked. So what’s next, boss?”

  “The usual. Keep poking. I don’t believe in criminal masterminds. Fu Manchu has left the building. There’s always something they miss. For example, where’s the money?”