Act of Revenge

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “They wanted the girl,” said Marlene without hesitation.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. As long as he was alive, neither of them was going to get close to the princess. And there could have been something else. Maybe Fein found out that Panofsky framed him, found out about Panofsky running bribes for the Mob. Maybe it pushed Jerry over a line he didn’t want to cross. There was that missing ledger she talked about . . .”

  “Which it was we’ll never know,” said Karp. “I’d like to nail the bastards, but absent a confession . . .” He made a helpless gesture.

  Marlene picked up the little tape recorder and bounced it in her hand. She looked at Karp and down at the machine and back at Karp.

  “No,” he said in a voice that allowed no argument.

  “He’d confess to JFK and Hoffa both to—”

  “No. We don’t blackmail people into signing confessions, Marlene.”

  “No, we don’t. Or you don’t.” She pulled the microcassette out of the machine and slipped it into her night table drawer. Then she got under the covers and placed her head on his shoulder. “And you have thereby proved once again that you are a finer, better person than I am.”

  “Marlene, if I even suspect that you are using that tape in violation of the laws of New York state, I will throw your ass in jail.”

  “What, this ass?” she said, wriggling same against his groin.

  “Yes, this round, solid, warm, perfectly proportioned, juicy . . .”

  “Then you better enjoy it while you got it, buster,” she said.

  In the morning, slipping into his tropical-weight suit jacket, Karp reflected that he would not be getting any more suits at cost from Chinese tailors, and then rejected the thought as unworthy. His daughter had lost far more from the Chen disaster. On the other hand, she seemed to be getting along with Marlene again. Clearly another chapter in the ever fascinating childhood of Lucy Karp was about to open. He could hardly wait.

  Marlene was still in bed, groggy and warm. He bent over and mushed his face into her neck.

  “No, no, not again,” she murmured.

  “I’m going.”

  “Like the man from Kent, for a change. Mm, you look spiffy. Big day, huh?”

  “Fairly. Have you got any plans?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I’d run up to Brearley and apply for a job teaching French.”

  “Sounds good. You could coach the pistol team, too.”

  She made a face and a nauseated sound. He said, “Let’s have lunch today.”

  “What, you and me? In a restaurant?”

  “Unless you prefer the cancer wagon.”

  “No, but this better not be you want a divorce.”

  “Nope, but it is a surprise. Meet you out front at twelve.”

  Hot day, the air like taffy, white sky, New York at the start of July: not a day for a vigorous walk if you wanted to preserve any crispness. Karp hopped a cab downtown and offered the turbaned driver an absurdly large tip to make up for the mingey fare. At his desk, he called and briefed Roland Hrcany on the Leung affair, called the ADAs in charge of the cases against Little Sal Bollano, Brenda Nero, and Reginald P. Burford, and informed them that the never sleeping eye was upon them and would be upon them until these particular defendants were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and forget any hint of a plea bargain. He called Ray Guma at home and told him that the fix was in, that he should stop worrying and return to work whenever he felt like it. He made two calls to Washington, D.C., one to the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and one to a private home in East Hampton, Long Island. Then he engaged himself in routine until nine-thirty, when he had an hour reserved with the district attorney.

  The D.A. heard the story of Mr. Leung and the Asia Mall murders and the Catalano murder told in the disciplined, precise, logical way that it would be presented to a jury, which is how he liked to hear about a case, which is how he himself had taught Karp to do it fifteen years before. He asked no questions until Karp had finished.

  “So all you have on the Catalano is this dying declaration?”

  “Thus far. Of course, now that we’re looking in the right place, we should find forensic evidence linking Leung and the Vo brothers to the crime scene.”

  “Will the Vo boys roll on each other?”

  “I think so. We have the two of them on the kidnap charge, so they’re not going anywhere. The dead one, Kenny, was the brains of the outfit. I don’t think either of them is going to want to do the full jolt for the kidnap and get deported back to sunny Vietnam afterward. They’ll go for it.”

  “Good. The homicide double, you got the dying declaration and the two girls. What about the third one, the Chen girl? She going to be a defense witness?”

  “Well, I don’t think there’s any question that they’d perjure her if they thought it would do any good. But it won’t. The Chens will do what Mr. Yee tells them to do, and Mr. Yee is not in good shape right now. Detective Wu is singing his head off about Mr. Yee’s various dealings in Chinatown. So I think after I’ve got Mr. Yee to understand the position, he’ll do the right thing.”

  “I presume there’s no need to bring in the Kusher angle, the Macao connection, into the Leung prosecution.”

  “No, that’s a bit rich for a New York jury, and we don’t need it. We’ll establish a basis for the Chinatown murders, because juries like motives. Triad rivalries—end of story. The witnesses and the kid’s declaration are enough to sink him.”

  “Going to take the case yourself?” asked the D.A. sourly.

  “No. Not unless you really want me to,” said Karp, straight-faced.

  Keegan burst into laughter. Karp continued, “I thought Vasquez should do it, but it’s really up to Roland. What I’d really like to do is nail the don. But we don’t have the stuff.”

  “No, we don’t. The bastard skates again. Still, he can’t be very happy. His kid’s gone, and his big capo Pigetti has got to be counting the days until he can take away the whole thing.”

  “My heart bleeds,” said Karp. He had not told the D.A. about the horrors recorded on Marlene’s tape.

  “Yeah, but now we come to the cherry on the top. Mr. Tommy Colombo and how we grind his face in it. Any ideas?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to hold a joint press conference at which I’ll announce these arrests and Colombo will announce the formation of a federal-state Asian crime task force, with federal funding, of course, and—”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Keegan uncertainly.

  “Not at all. And, at which Mr. Colombo will offer a formal public apology for irregularities in his office that besmirched the spotless rep of our own Raymond Guma. Fade to black. Applause.”

  Keegan chortled again. “Jesus, Butch, you’re a piece of work. Remind me never to piss you off. What makes you think Tommy will go for that?”

  “Oh, I think he will. Tommy was vacationing at East Hampton until just a few hours ago. He was going to attend some big-time political clambake out there. I was able to get hold of him and inform him about the parts of this weekend’s events that he might have missed on television, and I told him that if he didn’t want to play nice, then at the press conference at three this afternoon you would announce that while he was chasing nickel-dime garbage-collection rip-offs, there had been a massive infiltration of Asian killers into our glorious city, which he had refused to acknowledge, and had even given immunity to the chief murderer, also that his organization was so incompetent that one of our fine ADAs, Ray Guma, was about to start a civil suit against him personally, for defamation, and that his superiors in D.C. were thinking seriously about an internal investigation of prosecutorial malfeasance. I still have some people in D.C. who owe me favors.”

  “A certain amount of bluff there, am I right?”

  “A certain amount, which he is in no position to assess, but there’s enough pastrami in that sandwich to make a big, embarrassing splash on the slowest new
s day of the summer. Tommy wants to bury this, and get back to sucking ass out on the Island. I expect to hear the blades of his helicopter momentarily, circling the Javits Building.”

  “You made a friend for life there, son.”

  “Oh, Tommy will come around. He’s so paranoid and ambitious that the best approach is enthusiastic and open-handed cooperation. It drives him nuts. If he plays nice, I’ll give him something sweet to chew on.”

  “Like?”

  “Like Judge Herschel Paine.”

  “Hah. You don’t have anything solid on Paine.”

  “No, but something could turn up,” said Karp.

  Marlene was wearing white sandals, a crisp, palest-yellow shirtwaist in which it was impossible to conceal a large handgun, and a round French schoolgirl’s straw hat with a dark band. To Karp’s eyes she looked barely older than Lucy.

  “How about a cooling chopped liver sandwich and a frosty celery tonic?” Karp asked after a discreet kiss.

  “Lead the way, Jewboy,” said his wife.

  They ate in a brightly lit, noisy deli around the corner from the courthouse. During the meal Karp filled her in on the morning’s various coups, with which she was well pleased, but after which she said, “This was the surprise?”

  “Oh, no, the surprise is for last, like the cherry on top of the charlotte russe.”

  “I always ate the cherry first,” said Marlene.

  “Queens goyim, feh!” said Karp. “What do you know?”

  As Karp had expected, and as he had determined from a window high above, the woman and her shopping cart were at their accustomed bench. Karp walked up to her and said, “Shirley Waldorf, I presume,” and was rewared by the astonishment on his wife’s face.

  The old woman was startled, however, and stood up, looking wildly in all directions. Karp put a gently restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “Miss Waldorf, I’m Roger Karp. I’m the chief assistant district attorney. We’re interested in reopening the investigation of the murder of your employer Gerald Fein, and we understand you may have some information relevant to that case.”

  The woman blinked several times, and then she cocked her head and her eyes narrowed. “Are you real?” she asked.

  “I think so,” said Karp. “This is my wife, Marlene Ciampi. Marlene, say hello to Shirley Waldorf.”

  Marlene extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Waldorf.” The woman hesitated and then took her hand and watched the two hands as they shook, as if observing a new phenomenon. Marlene wondered how long it had been since someone had shaken her hand, and then the old woman looked up and into her eye. Shirley’s face was weather-beaten and grimy and had the bemused, slack look of the typical street dweller, but Marlene could see another face, her real face, beneath this, as if it were trying to swim up out of a depth of filthy water.

  Shirley Waldorf said, “I sometimes see things that aren’t there. I was in the hospital for my nerves.”

  “Yes,” said Karp, “you’ve had a hard time. But, we’d really like to take a look at what you have. I understand you have some records that belonged to Mr. Panofsky.”

  “Yes, him,” said Shirley, as if referencing Beelzebub. “He kept it locked up tight in his desk. I knew there was something fishy going on, because I had keys to all the filing cabinets in the office and we had a big Mosler safe, but he wouldn’t put his things in the safe, oh, no. I started looking for evidence against him after Mr. Fein pleaded guilty. And there it was, right in that desk.”

  “But how did you get the records out without Panofsky knowing?” Marlene asked.

  “Oh, it was easy. I’d purchased all the office furniture, and I had the original invoices. I sent a copy of the invoice for Panofsky’s desk to the furniture company and said we’d lost our keys and could they send me another one. He’s a very bad man, you know.”

  “Yes, we know,” said Karp. “Okay, Shirley, why don’t we go up to my office and look at what you have and make copies and all that? And then we’ll talk about finding you a place to stay.”

  So they did, the two of them and the bag lady, into the courthouse through the D.A.’s entrance, and into Karp’s office, prompting a certain amazed interest on the part of the office staff, and Karp ordered a bagel and coffee delivered for his guest, and they sat around his big table and unwrapped Shirley’s treasures from layer upon layer of plastic bags.

  “My God, this is the tag book!” Marlene exclaimed, holding a thick ledger bound in brown leatherette. She thumbed through it, shaking her head, and uttering little whistles of astonishment. It was all there, the record of over a decade’s worth of political corruption, implicating many men who had since become powers in the land, all in Panofsky’s neat handwriting. There was a rusted paper clip on one page, and Marlene turned to it.

  “Why is this marked, Miss Waldorf?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s the payoff for the two jurors in the Gravellotti murder case. It came, as you see there, from Mr. Bollano. I told Mr. Fein about it, and he became very excited because, you see, it cleared him of the bribery charge. He called up Mr. Bollano, and he said Mr. Bollano had set up a meeting to talk about it. And the next morning, that’s when the meeting was, and when they pushed him off.”

  She started leaking slow tears then, and Marlene gave her a pack of tissues. That was the last piece of the puzzle. Poor Shirley had set up the death of her beloved. Fein must have threatened to blow the whistle on the bribed jurors, and that would have involved Panofsky, which would have led to the uncovering of the network of corrupt payoffs. Marlene could imagine Panofsky’s mind racing to find a space to crawl out from under, recalling Nobile had once worked for the building, getting him to obtain a key, selling the idea to Bollano. Take him out, make it look like a suicide. Okay by them, and the delicious little Vivian as an extra on the deal. Jake Gurvitz gets Nobile to procure the key. Selling the meeting to Fein: Jerry, let’s meet, but not in the office. There’s a couple other people involved, major big shots, don’t want to be seen going into a meeting with Sally Bollano. We’ll step up to the observation deck, talk there, keep it private. Yeah, it could’ve worked that way. No way to prove it now, but there was enough in this book to knock Heshy the Armpit clean off the bench.

  “That’s what I was trying to show Detective Mulhausen,” said Shirley, “but he insisted in treating me as if I were crazy. He wanted the book, of course, but I hid it. Nobody else was looking for it, because that . . . man had told his mobsters that it was destroyed.”

  “Of course he’d do that. Where did you hide it?”

  “In Bernie Kusher’s safety deposit box. No one knew he had one except me. Then when Mr. Kusher ran away . . . I can’t quite recall what happened then. You know, if you’re all alone in the world and everyone’s telling you that you’re out of your mind, pretty soon you come to believe it, too. In any case, I took all the things out of the box and carried them from place to place. They kept them for me in the hospital, and when I left I just carried them around. You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”

  “No,” said Marlene, “but I do think you need to get off the street. I have a place attached to my office, just a room with a bath and little kitchen. You could stay there.”

  “I really couldn’t accept charity, Mrs. Karp.”

  “It wouldn’t be charity. I run an investigations agency, and I happen to need a legal secretary—part-time, but you could stay in the room for the time being.”

  “Oh, in that case,” said Shirley Waldorf.

  The next day was the Fourth of July, and in the late afternoon the entire Karp mishpocheh went over to V.T. Newbury’s East Side penthouse apartment, where every year he threw an immense party for his large family and his many friends to feast and drink and watch the fireworks over the river. The tradition at V.T.’s was Moët and pâté rather than beer and burgers, but the Karps did not mind this at all.

  “Hail to the hero,” said V.T., greeting them at the door. He was cradling a magnum of c
hampagne in his arms like a beloved infant and was wearing a tall Uncle Sam hat made of paper. “I saw you and Tommy on the tube the other day. His chin was covered with little black feathers. It was heartwarming. Here’s Marlene. Mmm. God, what lips. You’re wasted on him; for a true sensual treat you can’t beat a tiny little WASP. No? And who’s this? Not little Lucy! You let her walk the streets unprotected? All in black, too. Have you turned intellectual? God, I hope not. Sweetheart, later we’ll find a dark corner and say nasty things to each other in French. And the tiny twins! How do you tell them apart, et cetera. There are about a thousand kids here, Marlene—Martha has kid food in the kitchen. You can get drunk if you like, I am. Or have already.”

  The party absorbed them. V.T. had the rare knack of assembling old-money people with lovely manners and no-money people with interesting lives and ideas into a mixture that bubbled nicely, neither exploding nor falling flat. Marlene observed her daughter among a group of girls her age, all dressed in the best, and inclined to be snooty, but none of them had been kidnapped by Asian gangsters. Lucy was in full Claudine fettle, using her natural wit and talent for mimicry to great effect. She looked from a distance like a regular teenager.

  Marlene drifted away, searching. There was just one person she had to see before relaxing into the limitless champagne, and she saw him in a corner of the terrace, looking out across the darkening East River.

  “Goom.”

  “Marlene, what’s happening, baby? Come here, let me give you a squeeze. Uh, that’s enough, I’ll embarrass myself here.”

  “I hear you’re a solid citizen again.”

  “Yeah, that stronzo. You know, there are Italians and there are Italians. I got no use for a guy won’t come and talk to you, treat you like a human being. Anyway, Butch pulled it off, and what can I say, you married a classy guy. Too bad he’s Jewish.”

  Marlene laughed. “Speaking of stronzi, have we heard much from the Bollanos lately?”

  “I hear they’re laying low. The don’s got some reshuffling to do. You know, it’s like the chimps, they all got to sniff each other’s crotches to see what the new dominance hierarchy is.”