She was suffering, he could see it, and he wanted to enfold her in protective arms and make all this go away, and he thought about what Marlene had said in the hospital room that day, about who Lucy really was. A hug from daddy would not, in fact, make it all better.
“Lucy,” he said, “let’s keep it real simple. You just tell me what you want to tell me, and I won’t bug you for any more. But I will take the actions I think are necessary, both as a member of the D.A.’s office and as a father, for your safety. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”
“We found the Vo brothers,” said Lucy in a rush, as if the phrase were a bolus of poison she had to heave out or die.
“Where?”
“Two-oh-three Hester Street, off Lafayette, second floor in the front.”
“Okay, good girl! You wait here, I’ll be right back.” Karp went to the hall phone and dialed a familiar number. Experienced in such instant mobilizations of force, Clay Fulton asked few questions as Karp filled him in.
“You want me to bring the Five in on this?” was one of them.
Karp thought of Phil Wu. He had been hard on Wu, and he figured it would be a decent gesture to let the guy in on a good collar. Clay Fulton was way past needing credit for big arrests. He said, “Yeah, Phil Wu’s the man there. And make sure they have a Vietnamese interpreter along. I don’t want these guys getting shot because of a mistake. Call me when you get it done, whenever. I’ll be here.”
After discussing a few more details, they hung up, and Karp went back to Lucy’s room. This time he sat next to her on the bed and pulled her close. He noticed that she had washed her hair, a good sign, and, putting his face close to the herbal-scented dark curls, he said, “All right, that was the D.A. part. This is the Daddy part. Is there anything else you want to talk about?” No answer; he felt her head shake against his chest.
“I’m worried about you, Luce,” he said. “We’re a family. There shouldn’t be any secrets in a family.”
“Hah!”
“What, you think there are secrets?”
She pulled away and looked up at him, meeting his eyes, which he thought was a good sign. She said, “Are you kidding? You’re running the D.A. and my mother is a part-time felon, so what do you think? And I’m probably a felon, too.”
“You’re not a felon, honey,” said Karp, startled as this sentence left his mouth, for it was not one that he had ever imagined saying to a child of his.
“How would you know?” she snapped, and then sagged against him again, cuddling into his arms. In a weary voice, too weary, Karp thought, for the voice of a child, she said, “I don’t want to be a freak anymore. And don’t say ‘you’re not a freak,’ because I am. It’s a scientific fact. And I’m tired of all this . . . shooting and kidnapping and hospitals. I want things to be regular, like a regular family. And I love Tran, but he thinks he’s still in the war, and we have to play soldiers all the time, and I used to like it, it was fun and exciting, but now . . . what’s that called when soldiers go crazy from fighting too long?”
“You mean combat fatigue?”
“Yeah. I don’t want this anymore. Sometimes, you know, like when you daydream? I dream that I have this room, with just my things in it, and attached to it is a big library with all the dictionaries and grammars in the world, and language tapes, and that’s all, just a big white room, and it’s on an island, with nobody else on it. And people could come by boat, or something, but they couldn’t get on except if I wanted them to. And I could stay there and not be bothered by all this stuff. Crazy, huh?”
“Not really,” said Karp. “Could we have cable? And bagels?”
She giggled. “Oh, right, we need one of those machines they have on Star Trek, a replicator, that gets you anything you need.”
“Good idea, and we would need some hoops, full-court on parquet, like the Boston Garden . . .” He stopped because the girl’s face had fallen. “What? No parquet? Okay, a half court, on planks. We’re only going to play horse and one-on-one, anyway. Lucy, what is it?”
She shrugged. “I’m sleepy,” she said. “I need to say my prayers now.”
“Okay, Luce. But . . . I don’t know how, but I’m going to fix this for you. This is wrong. You’re a kid, you shouldn’t be going through this now.” He kissed her forehead.
She gave him a bleak, heartbreaking little smile, and he went out the door. Before he shut it, he looked back and saw her cross herself and kneel by the bed, her head down on her clenched hands, resting on the bed, her body stiff with concentration. He could see the knobs of her spine through the thin cloth of her T-shirt, but he could not hear her murmurings, which, after the usual preliminaries, were, “Dear Lord, bless and keep my family and friends, and bless Tran, and take the violence and hate from his heart, he is really a good man, and help me to love my mother, and to be nice to her, and help her to love me, not just worry about me, which isn’t the same, make her understand that, please, and don’t let my father worry too much about me, it drives me crazy, and let Janice like me again the way she used to, and protect her and the Chens from the triad, and let them catch the guys who did it, and no more killing, please, and let them not hurt Cowboy, because I think he’s really not a bad gangster, and give me spiritual strength, dear Jesus, and help me control my temper, and also, if it be Your will, please, please, could I have some breasts? Amen.”
Always an uncomfortable moment for Karp, watching his child worship a God he didn’t believe existed and in so alien a fashion. He sent into the agnostic void a hopeless quasi-prayer of his own that whatever she was praying for might be delivered, after which he gently closed the door and walked down the hall to the living room, where he found his wife sprawled on the red velvet couch, sipping coffee and watching television. She lifted her legs, he sat down, and she dropped her calves across his lap, having converted Karp over the years into a pretty good foot massager. But only a desultory rub did she get tonight.
Marlene muted the volume of the show, a sitcom of no particular distinction except as an evening anodyne, and asked, “How is she?”
“Depressed. Exhausted. Marlene, we have to do something about this kid. I don’t care what you say about her special qualities, she needs to be moved out from under this load she’s carrying.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Get her out of town, for starters, until this thing blows over. Hey, it’s the summer. She could visit John or Anna or Patsy, hang out with the cousins. We could send her to camp, or . . . I don’t know, a summer program, anything to get her out of here, and get her mind off what went down in that goddamn stockroom.”
Marlene considered this for some moments. “You’re concerned she could be in danger?”
“Jesus, Marlene! Of course I’m concerned. Aren’t you?”
“To an extent,” she replied with unnatural calm. “So, what is it, you have visions of Chinese hit squads bursting in and spraying bullets at her?”
“Yeah, that’s a possibility,” he admitted, “and that’s why—”
“And so you think the best place to put her is on my brother’s or my sisters’ suburban lawn with a gang of cousins? What, to absorb some of the bullets?”
“Don’t be stupid, Marlene! I only meant that—”
“And you think that if someone wanted to get her, they wouldn’t know how to find out where my relatives lived?”
“We could make arrangements to have her watched.”
“By who? Rent-a-cops? Butch, I’m in the business! Please do me the courtesy of acknowledging that I know what I’m doing here.”
“So what do we have now? The great and powerful Tran? That’s it?”
She shook her head, irritated. “Butch, where do you think Tran is, right now, this minute?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, I’m not sure either, but”—here she lifted her eyes upward—“I would guess that he’s slung in a hammock on our roof with a Kalashnikov across his chest. Anybody tried to come t
hrough that door, assuming they got through the cordon of tough little Viets he’s had posted around this block since the kidnapping, he’d be down through that skylight in about three seconds and turn whoever it was into shreds. You think the Valley Stream P.D. out by my sister’s would mount an operation like that for Lucy?”
Karp raised his own eyes to the ceiling. “He does this every night? When does he sleep?”
“I’m not sure that Tran does sleep. In any case, does that make you feel any better?” Karp stared blankly at the screen, letting the silent images bounce meaninglessly off his eyeballs. The sitcom was over, the commercials were selling bright goods.
“It’s not just that, Marlene. This whole situation, the Chinatown stuff, the genius stuff, it’s, I don’t know, eroding her.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Aside from getting pissed at you, I honestly don’t know what the hell to do.”
“Yeah, well, I realize the agenda here is if only Marlene had been a normal mom, like both of our moms, if only we lived in a regular suburban house, and she went to a regular suburban school—we’ve been over this a million times, Butch. It’s fruitless. If, if . . . if your grandmother had wheels, she could haul cement. There’s no way out except through it, playing the cards as dealt. What you need to spend your energy on is lighting a fire under the cops to get these bastards.”
“Good advice, Marlene. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you let me be in charge of legal affairs in this family? You seem to have your hands full with the illegal kind.” Marlene huffed, but Karp had shifted the focus of his attention.
He grabbed for the remote, pushed the mute. A commercial for the news program scheduled for the next slot was on the screen.
“. . . startling revelations suggesting Mafia infiltration at the highest levels of the New York district attorney’s office,” said the announcer, and on the screen was Ray Guma, winking slyly and saying, “The fix is in.”
“All this and the latest weather and sports. Stay tuned,” said the announcer.
Karp said, “Ah, shit! The stupid fuckers leaked the film.”
They watched as the news came on and the screen showed the artfully edited tape, thirty seconds of Guma saying those unwise sentences to Gino Scarpi, ending with that wink and “the fix is in.” After that there was an interview with Norton Peabody in the lobby of the Federal Building. Mr. P. was terribly upset that someone had leaked this piece of evidence, and an investigation was under way to find the culprit. Was there a federal investigation under way of the D.A.’s office? He was not at liberty to reveal whether or not there was. Would the federal grand jury take up the issue? The grand jury was authorized to explore all aspects of Mafia penetration of society, and the D.A.’s office was not excluded. Mr. Guma had received a subpoena and would be appearing before the grand jury in short order. The minute being up, the news switched to the doings in Lebanon, leaving Karp shrieking curses at the screen, and then the phone rang. Karp went out of the room to the kitchen and stood over the answering machine, glaring at it and snarling. It was a reporter. He left a message. Another ring. Another reporter.
Reporter. Reporter. TV reporter, could we schedule an interview for seven tomorrow? Another reporter. Then, “Butch! Jack Keegan. Pick up if you’re there.”
Karp picked up. “Are you having fun yet?”
“Goddamn it, I actually was until this goddamn tape got on the TV.”
“Did they show it in West Virginia?”
“No, Mary just called and gave me the good news. Jesus, Butch, I’m here with every D.A. in the country, and it’s out on network TV that I got a Mafia mole in my office. I’m gonna have to play golf tomorrow with a bag on my head. You saw it?”
“Yeah, Peabody showed it to me this afternoon. He’s subpoenaed Guma based on the tape.” He paused, while Keegan said nothing. “You know it’s horseshit, don’t you?”
“Oh, Christ, of course it’s horseshit,” said Keegan, “but that’s not the point. It looks bad politically. I know you don’t think that’s important, but believe me it is. We could put the whole five families in jail and what people would remember is that fucking tape. Did he really wink and say ‘the fix is in’?”
“I’m afraid so. What’re you going to do?”
“Hell, I feel like leaving right now. Four hours by car to D.C. and I could be on the first shuttle tomorrow morning.”
“Don’t do that, Jack. It gives the fuckers more credibility than they deserve. Stay out of town and let me handle it. I’ll do a press conference tomorrow morning and come out snarling. It should take the wind out of their sails a little, and if it doesn’t work you can repudiate me, whatever.”
He was glad to hear Keegan’s laugh over the line. “Oh, I will, my lad, never fear. Meanwhile that sounds like a start. I’ll work the phones tomorrow, I got some pals at Justice, and I’ll call my tame reporters in the city. Counterattack is good. I thought you didn’t do politics.”
“I can do it,” said Karp. “I just hate it.”
He hung up shortly thereafter, and the phone immediately rang again. Karp cursed and listened, but it was not the press again. It was Fulton.
“We got one of them, Stretch,” he said, “and we lost two.” His voice was husky with exhaustion.
“What happened?”
“No problems going in, but two of the three weren’t there. The guy we got is Vo Hoa Dung, they call him Needlenose. The big brother, Kenny Vo, was out. The other one, the cousin, disappeared this afternoon under circumstances yet to be determined. We found a bunch of weapons, too, including a couple of MAC–10 submachine guns. According to one of the girls, Kenny’s packing one.”
“Terrific. Was Phil Wu there?”
“Yeah, and I got to say the man has a pair of balls. He was the first one through after the ESU popped the door. He did the interrogation, too.”
“Anything useful?”
A pause on the line. “Vo won’t talk at all. The girls were saying that the Vo boys were yakking about how they were going to take out your Vietnamese buddy.”
“Tran?”
“Him. And, Butch? Jesus, I hate to have to tell you this, but they said they were going after Lucy, too.”
“Not if their asses are in jail. So out of the four original perps, one’s in the prison ward at King’s County, one’s in custody, one’s on the run, and one we don’t know where he is. Is that right?”
“You got it. We’re going to need Lucy down here tomorrow morning to ID Needlenose Vo in a lineup. You’ll get her down to the Five?”
Karp said that he would. As he hung up, he reflected that, for at least part of the following day, his daughter would be in a police station and he could for a brief time stop worrying about her.
Chapter 16
“NO MAKEUP,” SAID KARP.
“It’s only powder,” said the television woman. She had approached him in the chaos behind the set of the Morning Report show. Karp had arranged to be on the show just after speaking with Keegan the previous evening, to answer questions about the Guma-Scarpi tape. By now the tape had been seen at least a hundred times on all the local stations and the networks, too (The fix is in: wink), and Dudley Bryson, the newsman who was about to interview Karp, had, at their initial meeting earlier that morning, practically to wipe the saliva from his chin, so eager was he to get Karp before his cameras. A dangerous man, according to Bill McHenry, the D.A.’s public affairs chief, who had lectured Karp on how to handle Morning Report, a detailed strategy that had gone in one ear and out the other.
The television woman said, “Everybody uses it. It takes away the shine.” She smiled as for a recalcitrant child and leaned closer, paper bib and puff in hand. Karp gave her a knifing yellow look, of the type he ordinarily reserved for violent pedophiles.
“I. Said. No.”
She paled and scuttled away, muttering.
A young man wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard approached and led Karp out to the set, a matte blue wall dressed with a coffee table and
two tan padded chairs. Karp was seated in one and fitted with a tiny microphone that clipped to his tie. Asked for a sound level, Karp said, “I wish for this entire enterprise to be destroyed by fire from the heavens, destroyed utterly, leaving only ashes and horribly disfigured corpses,” which apparently sufficed, and in short order the host came out, pancaked and hairsprayed to a mannikin perfection, and sat in the other seat, and had his mike attached, and attempted some small talk with Karp, not very successfully, and then the makeup person came out again and patted some powder on Bryson’s thick orangey makeup, and he said something to her, indicating the guest with a gesture of his chin, and she shook her head and stalked off stage. Then the kid with the headset crouched in front of them and made three-two-one signs with his fingers and snapped his index finger pistol-like on the last count and the red light on the camera went on and Karp made a concentrated effort to relax the set of his jaw, which felt wired, and then Bryson was talking.
Karp tried to tell himself that this was just like a jury trial, that he was about to make a presentation to a jury of millions rather than just twelve, but he knew at some level that this was not so. Juries were grave affairs; whatever their origins, jurors were almost always ennobled by their function, which was seeking truth, that tender thing, and while Karp, if pressed, might agree that at its best journalism reached for something similar, what he was doing now had little to do with journalism at even its second best. What this jabbering little pimp next to him was doing was entertaining slobs in hopes that they would buy Miller rather than Bud, and Pontiac rather than Ford.
The scant intros over, Bryson called for the tape, and once again they all watched Ray Guma at work. Bryson’s false smile spoke: “Mr. Karp, many people believe that what we’ve just seen suggests criminal activity and the possible corruption of the district attorney’s office by organized crime. What’s your response to that?”
Act of Revenge Page 32