Act of Revenge

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Why?” Mary blurted, without thinking.

  Lucy gave her a startled look. “Because she’s our friend. Wen jing zhi jiao, remember? I miss her.” She pointed to where a blue pay phone sign rose above the boardwalk. “Give me a couple of quarters.” Which Mary did, and they yelled to Debbie Bryan, who stopped, watching, and then they trudged up through the hot sands.

  Lucy called the Asia Mall, and was told that Janice was at home, which she found very strange, and then they had to find someone to change a dollar and then Lucy called the Chen home and found Janice there. Lucy greeted her and began an excited recitation of their recent doings, but soon noticed a curious flatness in Janice’s responses.

  “Jan, what’s wrong? You sound weird.”

  “No, I’m okay. A little tired is all.”

  “What’ve you been doing?”

  “Nothing much. I went to see E.T. with Susan Lu and Amanda.”

  “Amanda Shaw? Janice, we hate Amanda Shaw. She’s a complete dweeb.”

  “Oh, and Mary Ma isn’t? At least Amanda speaks English.”

  Lucy sensed this was not a profitable line of discussion and asked about the movie instead, and she got a synopsis, and things seemed to be settling down when Janice put her hand over the receiver. She seemed to be talking to someone else. When she came back on, she said, “Um, Lucy? Maybe I could get my brother to drive me out there for a day.”

  “Oh, that’d be super cool! Like tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, um, what’s the address you’re staying at?”

  “It’s in Long Beach, 210 East Penn. When will you get here?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to call you back. Look, I got to go now. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay, the phone number’s area code—”

  Mary Ma said, “What’s wrong?”

  Lucy looked at the telephone and jiggled the switch on the box. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think she hung up before I could give her the number.”

  “On purpose?”

  Lucy shrugged, burying her doubts. “Oh, you know Janice. She’s weird sometimes.”

  The black rubber boat cut its motor and coasted in through the low surf, hissing to a stop a few yards from where the twins were playing. Marlene sat up, rigid. “Boys!” she called. It came out a quaver, plucked away by the sea wind. She shouted again. One of the men left the boat, knelt and said something to the boys, and they both dashed up the beach to her, the man following. He did indeed look like a casino bouncer, six-two, maybe two-thirty. He was wearing a thin red nylon Windbreaker, a pair of yellow swim trunks, and a maroon net shirt. Several strands of massy gold adorned his thick neck. His skin was tanned bronze, and as he approached more closely, she could see that he was pelted heavily in black.

  Zik put his face against hers and whispered in her ear, “That’s the kidnapper man, Mommy.”

  On her other side Zak said, “That man said we could have a boat ride, Mommy. Can we?”

  The man squatted by the side of her chair and pushed his sunglasses up on his head, so she could see his psychopath eyes. “Marlene Ciampi, am I right?” He was grinning. He had even, capped teeth, very white against the tan.

  “Yes. What do you want?”

  “These are your kids, huh? Jeez, they’re really twins. How do you tell them apart?”

  “I’m Zak!” said Zak. “I’m the oldest.” Which was his usual response to this familiar conversational gambit.

  “Yeah, you are,” the man said, and tousled Zak’s hair. Marlene shuddered.

  “I’m Vincent Frasciotti,” the man said. “They call me Vinnie Fresh. You ever heard of me?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t advertise. And I’m not from here. I’m from L.A. I usually work for John Tona. You heard of him, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured. Yeah, well, I’m what they call a mechanic: something ain’t right, they call me in, I fix it. No muss, no fuss. So, Mr. Bollano . . . you heard of him, I guess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Bollano got this little problem, and he asked me to fix it for him. Mr. Bollano thinks it’s a shame that a nice mommy like yourself is spending all her time poking into stuff happened a long time ago, coming between a husband and his wife, shooting people, and so forth, and not watching her kids like she’s supposed to. Mr. B. is a big believer in the family. He’s concerned, you could say, something could happen to these nice kids while you were out doing stuff you shouldn’t be doing in the first place, if you catch my drift.”

  “Yes,” said Marlene. “Okay, I’ll stop.”

  Vinnie’s smile faded a tiny bit. He was disappointed, Marlene thought. This was too easy, and he hasn’t got all his menacing jollies yet. “You’ll stop,” he said, flat-toned.

  “Yes. I won’t work for Vivian Bollano anymore, I’ll stop the investigation.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s very reasonable of you, Marlene. I heard you were a hard case, but I guess you’re not so hard, huh?”

  “No. I’m a soft case. I don’t want anything to hurt my kids, okay? You made your point. I’m out of it.”

  “Yeah, good, but”—now he leaned closer, close enough for Marlene to smell the coconut scent of his suntan oil, and ran his index finger under the leg band of her Speedo suit, near the crotch, drawing the fabric up, exposing a small patch of pubic hair—“. . . but maybe we should go out to the boat there, the four of us, and discuss the details, you know, in a relaxed setting, make sure we understand each other.”

  Marlene was watching his face, watching him enjoying it. She had kept her own face blank, but now she saw that this had been an error; he would not relent until he had seen her break. And if he got her off this beach, with the boys, she would break, she was under no illusions about that. Vinnie Fresh would smash her in a way that precluded any recovery. That was what he did, and he was good at it, she could see that in his face.

  Then his face changed. He frowned. He was looking at something behind Marlene. Sophie’s voice called out cheerfully, “Boys, boys, who wants ice cream sodas? Come with Aunt Sophie!”

  The twins shrieked and darted off like young rabbits. Sophie had them each by the hand and was moving with surprising speed toward the beach club.

  “Hey . . .” said Vinnie.

  Then Jake Gurvitz stepped into Marlene’s field of view. He had a white terry-cloth robe on over his swim suit, and his thin white hair was blowing around his head like banners.

  “Take a hike, sonny,” he said to Vinnie, his voice grinding.

  “This is a private conversation, grandpa. Get lost, and tell that old bat to bring those kids back.”

  Jake pulled a pistol out of the pocket of his robe and showed it to Vinnie. He showed it, and then let it fall down by his side, so that it hung by Marlene’s face. She saw that it was a serious gun, a Smith .38 Model 10 with the four-inch barrel, the bluing worn, the handle wrapped with old-fashioned black friction tape, the classic gat of thirties gangster movies.

  Vinnie shot to his feet. “What’re you nuts? You pulling a gun on me? You know who I am, you old fuck? Get the fuck out of here before I shove that piece of shit up your ass!”

  Jake said, “Shit for brains: shut up and listen to me! You go back and tell Salvatore that Jake Gurvitz says he should lay off these people, this family. Tell him it’s my family. Tell him Jake saved some paper from the old days. He doesn’t want to see it on the television, he’ll lay off. You got that, or do I have to repeat it?”

  “What the fuck! Who the fuck are you, some maniac?”

  “No,” said Jake. “Like I said, Jake Gurvitz. Now, go ahead, get out of here.”

  They were separated by about six feet, Marlene estimated, Vinnie on the right side of her chair and Jake on the other. Vinnie now started to move around the foot of the chair.

  “Give me that goddamn gun, asshole . . .” he started to say and then stopped, because Jake had raised the weapon and was holding in an old-style but undenia
bly expert two-handed grip, his left elbow dug into his broad belly, his left hand making a platform for the Smith, which Marlene could observe was trembling about as much as the boardwalk.

  “Don’t move your head,” Jake said in a conversational tone. “I’m going to shoot your ear off.” He cocked the hammer and leaned his head slightly into his grip, squinting at the front sight.

  Vinnie had gone noticeably paler. He said, “You pull that fuckin’ trigger, you’re dead, man. And your fuckin’ wife, and your fuckin’ kids, and your fuckin’—”

  The pistol fired, its report flattened and carried away instantly by the wind. A flock of seagulls bounced into the air, yelling and wheeling out over the sea. When Marlene finished her blink, she saw that Vinnie was sitting on the sand, his mouth an O of shock, his left hand held to the side of his face, blood pouring from between his fingers. A long piece of flesh, dripping red, hung down like a dreadful earring below the line of his jaw. His sunglasses had gone flying, and Marlene could see his eyes. They were full of disbelief, and horror, and the knowledge that a man who could shoot your ear off at six feet could remove any other part of your body he chose to, and you couldn’t do anything about it. The other man ran up from the Zodiac and helped Vinnie to his feet, and together they went back to the craft. He manhandled the boat out into waist-high surf, helped Vinnie into it, paddled twenty yards farther out, cranked the outboard, and departed.

  “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.

  “Wh
ere 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.

  He leaned back and lit another cigarette, although the air in the van held so much smoke that it was hardly necessary. He looked out the window. The van had turned left after leaving the Cross Bay Bridge and was now heading down a wide road, moving slowly in the heavy traffic. It was some sort of holiday, it seemed, which might be helpful in the event an escape became necessary. Another bridge and a smaller road, this one leading through a beach community, low houses and one-story shops. Park Street, Leung read on a sign. Vo had a map spread out, and he was barking directions in bad Cantonese at the boy driving, a White Dragon named Lau, the sole American-born Chinese in the group. Presently, after several wrong turns, they came to a large white house with a pillared porch. Vo was about to jump from the van as soon as it stopped, but Leung placed a restraining hand on his shoulder from behind.