Act of Revenge

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  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?”

  “So, you’re saying Little Sal commits several major felonies breaking in here, and the don hires a high-priced mechanic to scare the shit out of me, because . . . why? Because he thinks you might have learned about who killed your father? Bernie and Leung brought you speculation, stories. That’s pretty much all I brought you. It’s like who killed Kennedy; there’s no danger to the Bollanos in it, because only they and Charlie Tuna know the r
eal story and they’re not talking. So, Vivian, tell me, why is Big Sally nervous? Why is the coolest, most cautious don in the city taking these chances?”

  Marlene took the pill vial out of her bag and shook it like a maraca. Thirty seconds went by, with the only sound in the room the hiss of traffic outside, and the communal noises of the shelter, and the rush of Vivian’s rapid breathing.

  Then she sprang across the bed at Marlene, snarling and whining, inarticulated phrases of desire spurting from her mouth, grasping for her pills. Marlene flung the vial against the far wall of the room, where it cracked open, spilling its contents. Vivian squealed and tried to escape, but Marlene backhanded her across the throat with her left forearm, throwing her body behind it. She pinned Vivian prone across her bed, with her head against the corner of the wall, and lay atop her, her fingers gripping the woman’s hair. Vivian’s eyes were bulging in their sockets. Marlene relaxed the pressure of her forearm and hissed into Vivian’s ear. “What was it? Tell me! Goddamn you, he threatened my children! Tell me!”

  “He . . . he . . . he made me . . . he made me have sex with him. After . . . after . . . Crespi. In the car, after Crespi.”

  Marlene was dumbfounded. “What? Jesus, Vivian, you were sixteen, that’s not even statutory rape. Little Sal wouldn’t even think twice about something like that. And he married you later. It doesn’t make any—”

  “No! Not Little Sal. Big Sal.”

  “Oh,” said Marlene. “And his son knew about this?”

  Vivian Bollano’s face changed now into something that needed snakes on top of it instead of a rinse and set, and from deep in her throat issued a burbling sound that rose through the register and increased in volume until Marlene’s ears rang with it, the hopeless cry of a ruined soul. It would have been unbearable were it mere noise, but there were words in it, which made it worse.

  “Know about it? Did he know about it? Oh, yeah, he knew about it. They took turns, except where it was both at once. And each other. And they brought girls in, too. And boys.” Once started, Vivian did not seem capable of stopping. There followed in a rush a litany of details that might have fit, without editing, into Justine, by the Marquis de Sade. After a good half hour of this, Marlene asked, “Vivian, how long did this go on?”

  “How long? Until three days before I left. Now, for the love of God, please, please, please, please . . .”

  For twenty years? Twenty years? Speechless, Marlene rolled away from her, and watched as Vivian Fein Bollano scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees, snatching up the scattered yellow pills and popping them into her mouth.

  Twenty minutes later, Marlene was back at the loft, having stopped for a quick vomit on the corner of First and St. Marks, attracting little notice, it being quite the custom in that quarter. She went immediately to the bathroom and brushed her teeth and washed her face. Karp was not in bed, or (when she looked) in the living room. She heard a noise from the kitchen and went there. Lucy, dressed in one of the gigantic T-shirts that were her favored sleep apparel, was sitting at the kitchen table with a book, a glass of milk, and a pile of chocolate chip cookies.

  “Hi. Where’s Dad?”

  “He had to go out. They caught Leung.”

  “Oh, thank God! Where?”

  “At Mr. Kuen’s place. They tapped his phone, and Leung called up and said he was going to come by that night and for Mr. Kuen to have a lot of cash ready. They had the place staked out and they caught him.”

  “Anybody hurt?” asked Marlene, and sat opposite her daughter.

  “Dad didn’t say. I don’t think so. Do you want a cookie?”

  “No, thanks, dear. How are you feeling? You still look tired.”

  “I’m okay, I guess. Sad, is all. Hollow. I keep wanting to call Janice, or thinking about going by their apartment or the Mall. It’s like somebody died. Mom, why did she do it? I mean, it’s one thing to like have a fight, or an argument, like kids do, but she must’ve known Leung wanted to kill me, and she got Aunt Sophie’s address out of me and gave it to him. I can’t understand it.”

  “Probably she was scared. People do a lot of nasty, irrational things when they’re frightened. And, you know, her parents were involved. Janice . . . well, she does what her parents tell her to do. Plus, maybe there was some jealousy involved.”

  A cookie halted halfway to her mouth, Lucy goggled at this. “Jealous? Janice is gorgeous. How could she be jealous of me?”

  “There’s more to a person than tits and ass, darling, though it may not seem so,” said Marlene, and was rewarded with the sight of a blush springing to her daughter’s cheeks.

  “Easy for you to say,” snarled Lucy.

  Marlene rose. “Wait here,” she said, and left, and was back in three minutes holding a fat brown envelope. She sat again and dumped a stack of photographs out on the table, old-fashioned snapshots, with pinked edges. After riffling through them she selected two and handed one to her daughter. Lucy examined it. Four girls she didn’t recognize, in one-piece bathing suits, squinting into a summertime glare with the sea behind them.

  “That’s me, second from the right,” said Marlene.

  “This is you?”

  “Yep, age thirteen. I was a pool table that summer, dead flat. This,” handing over the other snap, “is the next summer.”

  Here was a recognizable Marlene, grinning glorious in a nicely filled two-piece bathing suit, supported on the shoulders of a pair of adoring lifeguards.

  “You never showed me this stuff before,” said Lucy sulkily.

  “I would have, but we haven’t had a civilized interaction in at least a year.”

  “You were too busy.”

  “And you were too ratty. Why don’t we call it even?”

  “Snarl,” said Lucy around a tentative smile.

  “Snarl yourself. How much money have you got in the bank of Kuen?”

  “About a thousand fifty.”

  Marlene whistled. “What are you going to spend it on?”

  “Oh, you know, drugs, maybe a tattoo. Condoms. How much does Sacred Heart cost?”

  “Why? You said suicide was preferable. Change your mind?”

  “Sort of. I guess . . . I guess I need a break from”—she waved her hand around—“Asia. I don’t mean . . . the Chens and Tran and all, the street, Chinatown, it’s in my heart, it’s always going to be part of me, but . . . it’s not all of me. I’m not Kieu. I don’t have to haul that weight, do I?”

  “No, you don’t,” said Marlene, thinking of Vivian Fein, of what she must have been like before her father died and what she was now. Tears ate at her eyelids, but she turned them back.

  “Also, if I go to Sacred Heart, Mary will be there . . .”

  “What? Mary’s going to Sacred Heart?”

  “Yeah, it’s all arranged, I sold her on it. I told her parents it was like a cadre school, and I was going there and they think we’re like the lords of creation. She’ll apply for a scholarship and get it—I mean, they’d have to be crazy not to—and she likes the idea, and if I’m uptown, I can run across to P and S, and keep up at the lab. Dr. Shadkin’s got a lot of new stuff he wants to try out on me when the regular term starts.”

  “Um, Lucy, Sacred Heart is a lot rougher than anything you’ve done in public school. Do you think you’ll have the time?”

  Lucy frowned. “It’s my life, Mom.”

  “Oh? Actually, it isn’t. It’s my life. When you have a daughter, then it’ll be your life. Meanwhile, you’ll fill the emptiness caused by me trampling on your spirit by an orgy of neurotic consumption, thus spinning the wheels of capitalism ever faster. It’s the American way, kid. Better get used to it.”

  When Karp came in a few minutes later, they were still at the table, still laughing and poking one another and cracking jokes. Karp thought, this makes a nice change.

  “Did he spill his guts, Daddy? Did you hit him with a phone book, please please?”

  “Ooh, I knew I forgot the phone book. That�
��s probably why he stood on his constitutional right to remain silent and requested an attorney. Not that it’ll do him any good, the evil little bas—bad person.” Karp poured himself a glass of milk, sat, and took a cookie.

  “He didn’t happen to mention Bernie Kusher, did he?” asked Marlene.

  “Bernie Kusher?”

  “Yeah, Fein’s and Panofsky’s old law partner.”

  “Excuse me, but why . . . ?”

  “Later,” said Marlene.

  And later, in the bedroom, Karp under covers, Marlene placed the Sony machine on his lap and said, “I swiped your Sony. You should listen to this tape. It’s Vivian Fein Bollano.”

  Karp pushed the play-back button and listened in silence.

  “Oy vey,” he said when it was done.

  “Yes. Infamia. Big-time. That’s why the don didn’t want me talking to Vivian, and why Little Sal practically committed murder to get the woman back into his hands. They didn’t much care about the Fein murder, but this”—she tapped the Sony—“this is the end for them.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Karp asked.

  “I’m not sure. Any chance of nailing the Bollanos in court?”

  “I doubt it,” said Karp after a moment’s thought. “It’s supposition and stories. Nobile provided a key. So what? Jake might know something, but I doubt he’d say anything in court and we got no way to make him. Bernie’s dead, having first manipulated and unleashed Leung. Of course, as you say, Bernie always was something of a joker. Panofsky? Lots of luck! I agree with you that if it went down the way we think, only the Bollanos and Charlie Tuna know the whole story, and I doubt that they’re going to come forward out of remorse. Also, we still got no idea why they killed him.”