Act of Revenge

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “And if not, what?” she asked, her voice neutral.

  “Oh, shit! That’s not the right answer, Marlene.”

  She repeated it. He looked at her, closed his eyes, shook his head, sighed, and said, “Okay, if not, then there are a pair of cops down the hall who will take you in and process you just like any other person charged with assault. I’m out of the loop officially in any case; Tim Sullivan will handle the whole thing out of Felony. He’s going to ask Roland what the story is, and Roland is going to say, because it’s the truth, that you’re hiding something, and Tim’s people will bring that to the attention of the judge. Roland could also buy, or pretend to buy, the story that Bollano’s people are putting out, that it was an assassination attempt on him—”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Oh, crap, of course I don’t believe that, Marlene. That’s the point, it doesn’t matter what I believe. I’m supposed to be out of it.”

  “But if I spill my guts here, then you’re in it again, you smooth the way, get me through arraignment and bail, and I’m home all cozy and safe. Is that the deal?”

  She was perfectly right. The thing stunk, a spaghetti tangle of legal and domestic business, an archetypal Karp family katzenjammer. Flat-voiced, he said, “Yeah, that’s the deal.”

  She nodded. “Okay, then here’s my response to that deal. About Vivian Fein Bollano, I will say absolutely nothing. Everything that has passed between us is protected by attorney-client privilege, and I will so maintain to a judge when the time comes. About the other thing: you’ve probably come to the same conclusion I have, that either Lucy witnessed the Asia Mall killings or some of her friends did, or they all did. Lucy was out of circulation for a couple, three hours that afternoon at just the right time. You know about Lucy and Janice getting rousted by a couple of gangsters. Then she gets snatched last week. Tran believes that on both occasions the people involved were mainly interested in finding out what the girls knew and whether they’d told anyone else about it. He’s turned up a name, Leung, a local hard boy, but clearly just a go-between—”

  “Why? Why just a go-between?”

  “Because the Sings were big shots, triad guys. Somebody wanted them hit would have to have some serious muscle to back up the play. Leung’s a small-timer. Tran says.” She summarized Tran’s information about the Yee-Leung connection.

  “But the cops say they sent in people from out of town,” Karp objected. “Why would they care if the girls saw who did it?”

  “They shouldn’t,” said Marlene. “The fact that they do argues against the foreign hit-team story.” She reminded him what Tran had told her earlier about triad politics and the likely results of the killings at the Asia Mall.

  “In any case,” she went on, “neither Lucy nor Janice nor Mary is going to come forward as a witness because Janice and Mary are too vulnerable and Lucy is too loyal. The cops and Tran are looking for the Vietnamese who snatched Lucy, and when they’re caught, we’ll know a little more. Meanwhile, I don’t judge that any of them is in serious danger, as long as none of them come forward as a witness.”

  “You’re encouraging Lucy to keep quiet here? You approve of this?” Karp could not keep the outrage out of his voice.

  “Yeah, not approve exactly,” said Marlene forcefully, “but understand, appreciate where she is, where they all are. Like it or not, they come from a different culture, and our little honey has roots in that culture, at least partially. Given a choice, I’d rather keep her roots intact than tear them up in the interests of a judicial process. I respect your parental interest, believe me, but right now, with Tran watching her, she’s as safe as we can make her, safe as the child she is is going to be. You understand what I mean, Butch? As the child she is, not the child you’d like her to be. I know you think I designed her to be this way and I’m a terrible mother and all—”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do, but believe me when I say I didn’t do anything like that. I wish to God she collected stuffed animals and went to the Girl Scouts, but she’s never going to be that kid. Deadly genes, and not only from me, by the way, darling, plus the usual shake of the dice, thank you, God. I love her to pieces and I know you do, too, and the chance that she’s going to break both our hearts is very high.”

  For a long while he sat there, saying nothing. He was reflecting on how much he had changed since he met this woman, how he would have reacted in former years, with his first wife, for example, had such a situation come up. There would have been broken furniture.

  He said, “You know, it’s funny: it goes against my every instinct, but I think you’re right. But there’s something else . . . I can put myself behind your eyes and see things the way you see them. It took awhile, but I can do it, because I really love you. I wonder if you can do that for me, see what this, this life we all lead, costs me, being who I am.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s what women do, and they do it so unthinking that everybody takes it for granted, they’ll see the man’s point of view. I’ll give you an example. When I waded into that gunfight, what I was thinking, besides that I had to stop it before some innocent schmuck caught one, was you, that I didn’t, I couldn’t kill anyone in New York County because of what it would mean to you, and so, you know they teach you to aim for the center of mass and keep firing until they go down, but I’m a good enough snap shot that I could have popped both assholes in the face and moved on and even taken out Sally and his baby-sitter, and I would have walked on it, too, but what I did was I risked my life to disable those guys instead, and got my brains kicked in. That was very largely for you.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” said Karp after a hard swallow.

  “I do. Let’s get the fuck out of here before we both start sniveling.” She stood up straight, lifted her chin, and said, “Bring on your cops. I’m ready.”

  “Lose the Joan of Arc routine, kid, it’s only calendar court,” said Karp. “And I think I’ll take you in myself.”

  She smiled for the first time and said, “Oh, yeah? Think you can handle me, big boy?”

  “As long as you’re unarmed,” said Karp.

  He turned his wife over to Clay Fulton at the courthouse, the detective having accumulated the necessary paper to bring Marlene back into the system, and then he switched his mind away from her and her fate and directed it to the problem of the Asia Mall killings, because Mimi Vasquez was supposed to be waiting for him at his office with Detective Wu in tow.

  They were there as promised. Karp got them arranged around his small, round conference table and took a moment to examine the cop while the man chatted with Vasquez. A little under forty was his estimate, maybe five-eight and well proportioned, with a square, fleshy face that bore a genial expression. Detective Second Grade Wu was clearly satisfied with himself and with the world.

  They talked casually for a while, making the easy comments about events and mutual acquaintances that must precede every business meeting between strangers. Karp learned that the detective was a first-generation Chinese American, whose father had done some service for the Allied cause in World War II and had thereafter been granted access to America. Wu had been born in Chinatown, educated in public schools, and having discovered no talent in himself for either scholarship or trade, had joined the cops fifteen years ago, to the lamentations of both parents.

  “Why is that?” Karp asked, the thought of Lucy and what Marlene had said about culture popping unbidden into his mind.

  “Old country Chinese and the police . . . the cops there were less than dogs, not just corrupt and brutal, but a matter of status, like caste. They’re down there with the butchers and shit carriers.”

  “Just like here,” said Karp, and they all laughed and, having gotten the man relaxed enough to laugh, Karp slid into the interview with, “So, Phil, when did you decide the Sing murders weren’t worth serious effort?”

  Wu’s laugh turned to a kind of scowling snort. “Hey, wait a second, I
put in as much effort as I could under the circumstances,” he said. “Ask Mimi here. The vics were strangers, it wasn’t a robbery, we traced the whole thing back to Hong Kong. There were absolutely no leads locally.”

  “You talked to Mr. and Mrs. Chen?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Wu warily. “What about them?”

  “What about them? You think two big-time triad tough guys could hold a meeting in their storeroom back there without the Chens or their employees knowing about it? What did you get out of them?”

  Wu shrugged. “The usual. I told you what Chinese people think about the police. Nobody saw nothing.”

  “But somebody unlocked that door back there so the Sings and whoever shot them could get in. So somebody in there must have set it up.”

  Wu looked uncomfortable. He hunched his shoulders and uttered what might have been a laugh if there had been anything amusing going on. “Okay, look. Here’s the situation. You know about tongs? Okay, you know what guanxi is, connections? Okay, I know what went down, the Chens know I know, but it doesn’t do us any good to rub their faces in it, you understand? I got to work that community every day. If I make the Chens lose face over something where I’m never going to get these guys, then when I catch a case where I got a fighting chance to nail the perp, I’m fucked . . . sorry, Mimi, I meant . . .”

  The man was actually blushing. Vasquez said, “I’ve heard the word before, Phil. What you’re telling us is that you think Chen set up the meeting as a favor for his tong, the tong doing a favor for these Hong Kong triad guys, guanxi, right?”

  “Right. Happens all the time. But something went wrong. Instead of a meeting the guys got murdered. I asked Chen did he know that it was going to be a hit, and he said, no. I mean, what the hell else was he going to say?”

  “So, naturally, you asked him who set up the meeting, and he says . . . ?”

  “The head of his business association, Benny Yee.”

  “And Mr. Yee said . . . ?”

  “He got a call from Hong Kong.”

  “And when you checked his phone records, you found what?”

  The detective hesitated, licked his lips. Karp snapped his knuckles once on the table, a loud, startling sound, and spoke angrily. “Oh, come on, Phil, tell me a goddamn story here! Why do I have to drag stuff out of you? What’s going on?”

  Wu’s golden skin darkened as if it were being toasted, except around the nostrils, where little patches turned white as parchment. Oddly his mouth still retained the dead ghost of his original smile. “Well, Butch, I’ll tell you what’s going on,” said Wu in a tight voice. “Mr. Yee is an important guy in Chinatown. He’s extremely helpful to the police. We get any serious violence in Chinatown, we ask Mr. Yee about it, and a couple days later the perp knocks on the door of the precinct and hands over a neatly typed signed confession. So when Mr. Yee tells me something, I take his word for it, unless I got independent evidence he’s lying, which I don’t. You know what face is? If I call Mr. Yee a liar, like if I start to check his phone records, I guarantee you, I will not clear another case out of there as long as I’m alive. That’s what’s going on.”

  “He is a liar,” said Karp. “That meeting was set up by a man named Leung, right here in the city.”

  “Leung?” cried Wu, the name exploding into the air like a firecracker. “Leung? What’re you, running your own investigation without telling me?”

  “No, but it looks like it would’ve been a good idea,” snapped Karp.

  Wu stood up so fast his chair fell over backward. “I don’t have to listen to this shit.”

  “Sit down, Phil,” said Vasquez. “Butch didn’t mean it. Nobody’s telling you how to run your job. He’s pissed because his little girl looks like she’s caught in the cross fire here.”

  Wu picked up his chair and sat down. The conventional smile was gone, replaced by a look of absolute neutrality. Karp realized he had violated some rule involving face, but he did not care in the least. He held his tongue, making Wu ask the obvious question, “What happened to your kid?”

  “She’s the one the Vo boys kidnapped. There’s a bulletin out on it.”

  “She’s your daughter? Jesus!” Wu looked genuinely shaken for the first time in the interview. Karp warmed slightly toward him. Wu asked, “And this . . . kidnapping, you think it’s connected to the Sing double?”

  “I’m practically positive. My daughter and a friend were molested by some Chinese punks a couple days before that, and the punks said this Leung sent them.”

  “Who did they tell?”

  “An informant working for my wife.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “That’s not important just now, but the same informant told us that he overheard Mr. Yee and Mr. Leung in conversation, in which it was made perfectly clear that Leung had asked Mr. Yee to arrange the use of the stockroom. Basically, Leung was apologizing to Yee for the fact that the Hong Kong people were capped and telling him to make sure that nobody talked about any of it. So, tell me about Leung. What’s his story?”

  “If it’s the Leung I know, he’s nothing. A Chinatown skell, does odd jobs for the Háp Tài, runs some rackets. I never heard he was big with the triads. I’d guess he’s some kind of messenger boy.”

  “He have a sheet?” Vasquez asked.

  “I’ll run him,” said Wu, pulling a notebook from his jacket pocket and making a note with a ballpoint. “Look,” he continued, the smile returning, “I’m sorry I blew up like that, but, you know, Chinatown, no offense, but if you don’t know what you’re doing or who you’re dealing with, you could screw up stuff you don’t even know about.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Karp. “No offense taken.” He watched the detective closely as he asked, “What about Willie Lie? Know him?”

  The man seemed genuinely confused. “Lie? It’s a common name.” He frowned. “Oh, yeah, that’s the guy dropped a dime to the feds on Pigetti. What’s he got to do with this case?”

  “Maybe nothing, just a thought. Anyway, do you know him?”

  “I probably do. There’s a shitload of Lies and Lees and Louies in Chinatown, and I guess the usual percent of them is bent.”

  “How about the name Nia Tu Wah? Ring a bell?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s supposed to be Willie Lie’s real name.”

  “Who told you that?” Smiling.

  “We got it from the Hong Kong police.”

  “You got a Cantonese speaker in the D.A.?”

  “No, my guy talked in English. To a Captain Chui.”

  Wu was grinning now. “Then you got bullshit. We hardly even bother talking to Hong Kong anymore. They’re so infiltrated with the triads it’s not even worth it. It’s bad enough if you’re speaking Cantonese, but in English, forget it. They’re shining you on, boss.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, thanks for that information, Detective Wu. I appreciate your help. Sorry again about that little misunderstanding.”

  Wu said, “Oh, no problem,” and he got up and they all shook hands again. Wu said, “Take care, Vasquez, and I’m going to keep you more in the loop on this, whatever turns up, okay?”

  When he was gone, Karp said, “So? What was your take on that?”

  “Nice guy, not that sharp. He’s gotten lazy because the tong guys hand things to him in return for not getting hassled. He was pretty open about it.”

  “Yeah. Nice guy, but I don’t much like getting bullshitted by cops. What’s the lesson here, Vasquez?”

  “Be more suspicious? Isn’t that always the lesson?” She did not look happy about it.

  He smiled. “You got it, Vasquez. Meanwhile, until Leung turns up or we grab the Vo gang, we’re more or less back to square one.”

  “Square two,” said Vasquez. “Square one was before you squeezed the shit out of Phil Wu, like I should’ve done already.”

  After she left, Karp called Ray Guma to see if he had anything yet on Gino Scarpi, and learned from the burea
u secretary that he was still out at Bellevue Hospital. Karp hung up the phone, swiveled around in his chair, gazed out the window, sucked softly on the eraser end of a new pencil, and tried to think whether he had left anything undone. He tapped out the rhythm of the Radetski March on his molars; nothing important came to mind. Guma dispatched to the Mob, V.T. mobilized and looking for the stain of dirty cash, Wu braced and put on notice, Marlene questioned and released. (She might even be home by now. He thought of calling but did not.) Lucy reasonably safe if their theories were correct. Okay, but what was nagging him? Oh, right, Willie Lie. Or Mr. Nia, as he might be. He stared at the phone, willing it to ring and convey to him some new piece of information about the Chinese. But it was silent. Karp slammed down the pencil, got up, and stalked out of the office and down to a courtroom, looking to make someone else’s life hell.

  Ray Guma, like most people, did not like hospitals, but he had necessarily spent a good deal of time in this one, Bellevue Hospital, where Manhattan keeps its morgue and its medical examiner and its prison ward, and he knew his way around.

  He found Gino Scarpi lying in a small, locked, windowless room with three other damaged felons, looking drawn and pale. A good deal of the tough had been blown out of Gino, which is what three 9mm hollow-points will often do, even if they do not hit a vital organ. Both of his arms were in casts, and he had his bed cranked up the better to watch Jeopardy! on the TV when Guma walked in holding a small white cardboard box.