Act of Revenge

Chapter 18

Leung sat in the rear of the van, surrounded by the silent White Dragons. In front of him Kenny Vo mumbled to himself and snapped the slide on his MAC-10 machine pistol. He had been acting strangely from the moment he had made the prearranged pickup up near the motel at which the Chinese had been a guest of the federal government, and Leung bitterly regretted ever having made use of him. If he’d had a team of Hong Kong boys, none of this disaster would have happened, but that, of course, was precisely the catch. He was not here as an agent of the Da Qan Zai, but on his own, hence without real triad support. It had been a gigantic, a colossal bluff, and it had nearly come off. For if he had gained control of a Mafia family, their connections, their net of influence, their sources of income, then his triad would have welcomed him warmly, and his superiors would have basked gladly in the credit. He realized that he had badly miscalculated when his ma jai had been so neatly lifted off the street. He had thought it was the Italians, grown suspicious, sending a message. But the Italians were asleep and stupid. No, it had been that girl, and some strange Vietnamese who unaccountably held her in some value.

He cast a sour glance at the boys sitting next to him. If the tong knew his true position, any authority he still had over these dog farts would immediately vanish, and shortly thereafter so would he. Meanwhile the terror of the triad still held sway, and perhaps something could be done to save things even now. The girl, first of all. It was by now perfectly apparent that she had seen him and had at last told the prosecutor. How they penetrated his persona as Lie was still obscure, but this was not of any importance absent the testimony of the Karp girl connecting him with the Sing killings. The Chen girl and the daughter of the illegals, Ma, would remain quite silent for the moment, and could be disposed of in the future.

If there was one. He must make prompt inquiry as to where the Karp family could be found. Apparently, like many Chinese officials, they had decamped to the villages, where, without doubt, they were lording it over their rural relations. The particular village would have to be located, although he had no idea how to do this. Meanwhile they were embarked on this absurd vendetta of Vo’s. Leung had agreed to it in order to secure the cooperation of Vo, which he still needed. Another item for future disposal.

His thoughts kept moving back to the girl Louh-si. A non-Chinese Chinese, a monster that could never have existed in civilized lands. Chinese saw but were silent; the lo faan were not silent but were blind. That was the way things were. And for her to have such a father, another piece of rotten luck. Perhaps it had been a mistake to go to the father, but no, it had been important to find out his character. Would his own greed fool him? Could he be influenced by threatening the daughter? Clearly neither was the case. Well, he had found another greedy fool in Colombo, and all that was necessary now was to eliminate the daughter. Not an impossible task, surely. She was, however talented, only a girl. The van was slowing, turning. It had left a heavily trafficked road and was now on some residential street. Vo turned in his seat and spoke to the White Dragons. He spoke a crude and badly accented Cantonese. “In and out. No problems. Get the boy. Anybody try to stop you, shoot them.” The van stopped.

This is like being pregnant, thought Marlene, like waiting for delivery (and why do they call it “delivery” since nothing less like receiving a package from a postal employee could be imagined?), but in this case it would not be new life in the offing but the end of something. Maybe of her, but not, if she could help it, of her children. She lay torpid as a gecko on her sling chair, under her hat, behind her sunglasses, her vision and her interest restricted to the three bright bands before her, beach, sea, sky, like the flag of some extremely laid-back tropical nation, and on it, the boys playing, Posie toasting foolishly on a blanket, the breeze bringing to Marlene’s nostrils the scent of her Noxema. The older girls had gone walking down the beach, with the dog and the policewoman. She could barely make them out as shimmering stick figures, identifiable among the other bathers only by the dog leaping into the surf after a tossed Frisbee.

Also in her field of vision, a distant rusty freighter, a large sailboat with all sails set, and closer in, a large white motor yacht. From behind her she could occasionally hear, borne on some favorable breeze, the sounds of Sophie and Jake and a couple of beach club friends playing rummy. Marlene tried to read, but the usual concerns of The New Yorker are not enticing when your kids are in danger. She called out to Zak not to venture so far into the surf. Out on the motor yacht they had launched a black Zodiac boat. The whine of the motor came intermittently to her as the two men in it gunned the outboard and raced around the mother ship, bouncing high off the choppy waves. She thought that looked like fun, although requiring more energy than she currently had to bestow. She wondered what had happened to her, to the recently competent, active, heavily armed Marlene, whether it was what the Jungians called regression in service of the ego (from which a more mature, self-realized woman might shortly emerge), or an old-fashioned nervous breakdown, or a leaky blood vessel that the docs had overlooked, which was on its way to reducing her to a persistent vegetative state. Generalissimo Franco, she recalled, used to keep two boxes on his desk, one labeled “problems that time will resolve,” the other, “problems that time has resolved,” and his administration consisted in moving, every six months or so, the entire stack of documents from the former to the latter box. Marlene typically had little in common with the late fascist, but with respect to her current state they were in perfect agreement: only time would resolve it. Out at sea, the Zodiac had stopped its circling. Now it was heading for the beach.

“Marie Helene? I am hoping you will call in and get this message. Phat has just called. There has been a raid on the house in the Queens where Lucy was staying, and the boy they call Cowboy has been taken away by his cousin, Kenny Vo. One of Phat’s people was shot. Marie Helene? I do not wish to worry you unduly, but a man who must be our old friend Mr. Leung was with them. I cannot imagine that Leung will have any more pressing interest than to get his hands on Lucy and her friend. I suppose they do not know exactly where you are, which is a benefit. Please, I urge you, do not attempt to return home until these people are captured. Meanwhile, I have taken the liberty of assembling a small group and will be leaving shortly for Long Beach. Call me as soon as you can. Until later.” Tran listened to the hiss on the line for a moment and then hung up the pay phone. He climbed into the back of Phat’s van and urged the utmost speed.

“How’re we doing, Clay?” Karp asked the telephone.

“Well, Stretch,” replied Fulton in an overly patient voice, “we’re doing about the same as we were doing fifteen minutes ago, when you called me the last time. No, Leung has not turned up. Yes, we have Chinatown in Manhattan crawling with cops. Every cop in the city will have the guy’s picture when the shift changes. We have ESU standing by in Chinatown and Elmhurst and Flushing. Bridges, tunnels, and airports, check. You want to hear the whole thing again?”

“What about that gunshot wound in Elmhurst Hospital?”

“Nothing there yet. The guy was Vietnamese, not Chinese. They’re on the case, waiting for a translator. Butch, I swear to God, anything changes I’m on the line to you next second.”

“What about my family?”

“Butch, aside from me and you and Ed, nobody knows where they are. They’re quote, at the beach. What beach? Can you imagine a Chinese guy walking from Coney Island out to Montauk on a hot holiday weekend looking for Marlene and the kids? We got a unit stationed at your loft.”

“We should send some people out to Long Beach, too.”

Karp heard an irritated sigh on the line. “Butch, that’s not a good idea. We’d have to work through the Long Beach P.D. and the Nassau sheriff and the staties, and you’d have more of a security risk than what you got now. We know this guy has bent cops. . we still don’t know who or how many. Look, you’re eating yourself up here, Butch. Leave this to us and go home. Have a shower, pour yourself a cold one, watch the Yankees game-”

“No, I’m going to drive back out to Long Beach with Ed. I want to be with them.”

“Suit yourself,” said Fulton.

“You got the number out there?”

“Tattooed on my hand, for crying out loud. Would you just relax!”

Mary Ma had been to the beach only once before this. She did not remember it well, for she had been only a baby, the sun had long descended behind Hong Kong Island, and the Ma family had spent as little time as they could on the sands, as they did not wish to encounter the immigration police. So she was happy, as always when discovering some new aspect of America, and she had, in addition, Lucy all to herself. They were, as the Chinese say, breathing through the same nostrils. The only thing that marred the perfection is that Mary wanted very much to have a bathing suit. She did not own one, no one in her family had ever owned one, she had the money to buy a cheap one, but out of sensitivity to her friend, she did not press the issue. Lucy was wearing a baggy shorts and T-shirt combo that obscured her despised body, and Mary wore a similar one, although in her case the round little body showed forth at the correct places. She was no Janice Chen, of course (ah, yes, another reason for delight in Janice’s absence), but was clearly distinguishable from a boy. Thus, Mary was not enthusiastic when Lucy said, without preamble, “I want to call Janice.”

“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 undeniably 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.

“Where 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.

“Wait. We don’t know who is at home. There are no cars in the driveway. Perhaps they have already left.” Leung felt a faint surge of relief. If they had gone back to their residence, if they had picked up their normal routine again, taking the child would be vastly simpler. They waited. In the house nothing stirred, no sounds of occupation came through the open windows.

“They’ve left,” said Leung. “Let’s go.”

Lau said, “That doesn’t make sense. Why would they leave? It’s the Fourth of July weekend. They’re probably just down at the beach.”

“That’s right,” said Vo. “We should wait.”

“But not here, in front of the house,” said Leung. “Drive on, and turn left at the corner.”

As they turned past that junction, another Dodge van approached from the direction of Park Street. It could have been the twin of theirs, except that it had tinted windows and was black, where theirs was gray. The vans passed each other slowly, their speed suited to the narrow, sand-dusted residential street.

Freddie Phat, at the wheel of the black van, made a startled movement and craned his neck to look at the other vehicle as it passed.

“What’s wrong?” asked Tran, who sat beside him in the front seat.

“Strange. It looked like Kenny Vo sitting in the passenger seat of that van.”

“Stop!” cried Tran. “Turn around and follow it!”

Phat hit the gas pedal, shot forward to the next intersection, and spun the van skidding around. The three hard faces in the back rocked, and their automatic rifles clattered on the floor.

“That’s their car,” Leung shouted.

“Where? Where?” Lau saw nothing ahead but empty roadway.

“An orange Volvo,” said Leung excitedly. “It just passed the next intersection, going to the left.”

Lau accelerated, turned, and soon they had the square orange car in view. “Stay back,” Leung ordered. “I don’t want them to see us. That’s good, let a car get between us. They are heading for the shops. Good, they’re slowing, they’re turning into that parking lot. Follow them! No, no, not right next to their car! Idiot! Park over there, right next to the exit. Good.”

They parked. The lot was crowded with shoppers and their cars, as were the narrow sidewalks of the shopping strip, which was anchored by the Beach Bazaar and a large Grand Union super-market. Those in the back crowded forward so they could see out the windshield, from which they had an excellent view of the Volvo. As they watched, its passengers left, the two girls running into the Beach Bazaar, a substantial emporium whose striped steel awnings dripped with beach chairs, inflated animal-shaped swimming toys, large beach balls, air mattresses.

“Who is that black woman?” Vo asked.

“A nursemaid, no doubt,” said Leung. “She is not significant. Our luck has changed, it appears. I am going to examine the situation in the store. All of you, wait here and do nothing!”

He was gone ten minutes. When he returned, he was carrying two yellow smock shirts, embroidered with the logo of the Beach Bazaar and the names of two employees. Back in his seat, he said, “It is perfect. They are scattered throughout the store, and the girls are isolated in the swimming costume area. This is what we will do. Lau and Eng will stay with the car. I and Vo and Cowboy will enter the store. Cowboy and I will wear these shirts. Cai and Yang will take up a position outside the store. The girl knows Cowboy; that will put her off her guard. He will lead her to the back of the store. I will join him there, and together we will take her through the stockroom, to the rear exit. There is an alley there, and a loading dock. When Vo has seen us enter, he will signal to Lau, and he will take the car around to the alley, get us and the girl, and then come around and pick up the three others.”

“What about the other girl?” asked Vo.

“If she sees anything, we will take her, too,” said Leung. “Does everyone understand what he is to do? Cowboy?”

The youth nodded sullenly. Leung asked each of the others and, where there was doubt or confusion, gave crisp instruction. They were nothing like a Hong Kong triad team, he thought, but far better than Red Guards, and it should be a simple operation. In and out.

There was an odd smell in the store, an old-fashioned place with circulating ceiling fans, wooden floor, a high, stamped tin ceiling, long counters, and bins. Cowboy thought it must be some sort of confection; it was sweet and heavy, and to him as exotic as five-spice powder would have been to nearly all of the store’s clientele. It was crowded with these, and getting more crowded as people came in to pick up the various necessities they had forgotten to pack in their rush to leave the heat of the city for the big weekend.

Cowboy walked quickly to the place Leung had indicated, where swimsuits hung on chromed racks and headless, armless models showed them off. He could not see Lucy, and felt a sudden and surprising sense of relief. Perhaps they had suspected something and fled. But no, he now saw a short Asian girl selecting suits with intense concentration, reading the price tags and the labels as if they were oracles. She did not notice Cowboy.

Then the curtain that led to the changing room was thrust briskly aside, and there she was right in front of him, swimsuits draped over her arm. She saw him.

“Cowboy? What are you doing here?” she asked in Vietnamese, looking curiously at his shirt, which bore the name iris embroidered in red thread.

“I have to see, I mean, to talk to you. It’s very important.”

Lucy looked over at Mary, who was utterly absorbed in the mathematics of assessing clothing value, and nodded to Cowboy. She tossed her suits over the top of a rack and followed Cowboy toward the back of the store.

“In here,” said Cowboy, pushing open the swinging door to the stockroom. Lucy went through, and Leung grabbed her, clapping his hand over her mouth and pressing a pistol muzzle into her back. He pulled her into a dark alcove formed by large cardbord crates containing plastic swimming pools. In Cantonese he said, “Is it true that you can speak Cantonese?”

She nodded. He said, “Are you going to scream or do anything foolish?”

She shook her head, and he removed his hand from her mouth. She looked at Cowboy and said, in Vietnamese, “With Heaven rest all matters here below: harm people and they’ll harm you in their turn. Perfidious humans who do fiendish deeds shall suffer, and cry mercy in vain.” Cowboy reacted as if slapped. He looked away from her, his jaw quivering. Every Vietnamese knows the scene where Kieu and her lover, Tu, the rebel chieftain, take revenge on all who have abused her.

“What did she say?” Leung demanded.

“Nothing,” Cowboy mumbled. “Just some poetry.”

Leung snapped, “Go out to the loading dock and see if they are there.” Cowboy trotted off.

Leung turned Lucy around and gave her an appraising look. He shook his head. “Incredible! So you speak Vietnamese, too, even poetry. You know the saying, cai tai, cai tai, and so on?”

“Yes, because of the rhyme. Talent and disaster are twins.”

“Particularly true, it seems, in your case. You have caused me an enormous amount of trouble, little girl.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I suppose I will have to, although it seems a shame. There is a white-girl brothel in Macao that would pay nearly anything for someone like you. Perhaps I will pump you full of heroin and pack you in an air-freight container. How would you like that?”

“I think it would be wisest to kill me. If you did that other thing, I would escape and find you, wherever you were, and eat your heart.”

To Lucy’s vast surprise, Leung replied in English with a decided New York accent, “Oh, don’t be a schmuck!” He looked at his watch and said, in the same voice, “Where the fuck is that goddamn kid? What is he, jerking off out there?”

Lucy’s linguistic curiosity overwhelmed her fear and burst forth. In English, she asked, “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

Leung switched back to Cantonese. “You are impressed. To confess the truth, I have only a few phrases like that. I learned my English from an American, a native of this city, in Macao. I was escaping from the Cultural Revolution, and I had a septic wound in my leg. It was from being beaten with chains and thrown into a vat of pig manure. He took me in and taught me a great deal about your wonderful country before-”

Cowboy came running then, a worried look on his face.

“They are not there,” he blurted.

Kenny Vo was pacing to and fro in the front aisle of the Beach Bazaar, where they kept the shopping carts and the soda machines. He kept looking out of the window, expecting the gray van to pull up with Leung and Cowboy and the girl. But the van did not come. The parking lot was growing more crowded.

It was not hard for Tran and his associates to overpower Lau and Eng. They simply worked their way crouching through the parked cars, appeared at the unlocked side door of the gray van, jumped in, and stuck pistols in the faces of the amazed White Dragons. Nor was it difficult to get the details of Leung’s plan from Eng, who was, in fact, one of the two ma jai Tran had snatched earlier, and he required no additional demonstration of what lengths Tran would go to in order to extract information.

Tran snapped out directions for the counterattack and left Freddie Phat and one of his men in the van, while he walked out into the parking lot with the two others. They spread out, winding through the cars, stepping lightly around the clusters of harried parents and their children, the clumps of teens in bright beach wear, the occasional slow-moving elderly couple. Each of the Vietnamese carried a long beach bag tucked under his right arm.

Vo looked through the plate glass and saw them coming. He let out a curious high-pitched cry. The checkout ladies and their customers looked up. They saw a stocky Asian man in a sports jacket, dark trousers, and black loafers-not dressed for the beach. The man let out another sound, this one a combination groan and hiss, as if from a pressure vessel about to pop its safety valve. The nearest checkout lady raised her hand to attract the attention of a manager.

Vo saw the man who had ruined his life walking toward him; the rage burned away the last of his modest store of rationality. He yanked the machine pistol from his waistband and directed a stream of automatic fire at his enemy. He fired one-handed in his zeal and the weapon flew upward, blowing out the plate-glass window in a hail of shards before directing bullets at the parking lot and the sky. He heard something snap-snap-snap past his head. He dropped to the floor. Someone was shooting a Kalashnikov at him, disciplined fire in three-round bursts, the habit of the thrifty little army he knew so well. On his knees, sheltered by the bulk of a Pepsi machine, he fired the rest of the magazine blindly out the vacant window, and fumbled to replace it with a fresh one.

Sounds of firing came from outside as the two White Dragons blasted away; then that firing ceased. More bullets came flying into the store, in the same precise rhythm. An overhead fixture shattered, raining glass onto customers and staff cowering in the aisles. People were screaming, shouting. Vo couldn’t think in all the noise. He wanted to shoot the screaming people. When the new magazine finally clicked in, he cautiously peeked around the Pepsi machine to find a target.

“Drop the gun! Now!” It was a woman’s voice, and American, behind him. Behind him? Vo spun on his knees. It was the nursemaid, crouching low, pointing a gun at him. The nursemaid? He raised his weapon, and Detective Bryan shot him through the chest four times with her service revolver.

Around this scene, chaos. A hundred or so screaming people were attempting to leave by the two exit doors, parents were crying for their children, children were howling their heads off, several brave souls leaped through the broken window, a couple of men knocked Detective Bryan down as they rushed by. One person, however, brooked the human tide and walked calmly through the one-way entrance door.

Leung heard the automatic fire from the front of the store and realized that something had gone badly wrong. The plan was therefore finished. A shame, but he had already accomplished much. He would have to escape and attempt, somehow, to recoup. But first.

Cowboy saw the Chinese point his pistol at Lucy’s head. Without a thought his arm shot out and struck Leung’s elbow. The gun exploded. Lucy reeled backward, tripped on a low carton, and fell sprawling to the floor. Leung stared for a moment at Cowboy, unbelievingly, and then shot the boy twice in the chest. The youth fell, grasping at Leung, hooking his hand on Leung’s trouser pocket, ripping the fabric and tearing the pocket out as he collapsed. Coins jingled and scraps of paper flew to the floor. Leung cursed, ignored the coins, scrabbled for the small papers.

Leung heard a voice shout in a language he did not understand. It sounded a little like the Portuguese he had picked up in Macao, and he recognized the name, Lucy. He had to kill the girl quickly and get away. But where was the girl? He saw the gap in the pile of cartons. She had wriggled into some crevice. The shout again. Steps, coming closer. Leung fired some shots blindly at the cartons and took off, dodging down the narrow aisles. He saw the daylight of the loading dock and ran toward it. There were pursuing steps. He ignored them and raced on, out onto the loading dock and down into the service alley.

“Fireworks must be starting early,” observed Karp as they rolled down Park Street in Long Beach.

Ed Morris frowned. “That’s not fireworks, Butch. Somebody’s shooting auto.”

Then they heard the sirens. “What should we do?” Morris asked.

It did not take Karp long to decide. The possibility that someone was firing an automatic weapon in a beachside community in which his wife was resident and that the discharge did not in some manner involve his wife was too remote to be credible.

“Follow the sirens,” he said, his heart bouncing yet again into his throat.

“Lucy, are you there? He is gone. You may emerge now.”

Hearing Tran’s voice, Lucy crawled on hands and knees from her hiding place. She crawled backward, for the space in which she had wedged herself was barely eighteen inches wide. She felt wetness on her bare knees, and then on her hands. When she was free of the tunnel, she turned and saw Tran and saw that the wetness was Cowboy’s blood, spreading out from his body, looking black in the dim fluorescent light, like the blood in the Asia Mall stockroom, from the men Leung and. .

“Is he going to die?” she asked. There was a piece of white paper stuck to her knee in blood. She pulled it off and crumpled it in her fist.

“I think so,” said Tran. “He is shot through the lung and blowing bright blood.”

“Did you kill Leung?”

“No, I didn’t see him. I heard someone running away, but I first wanted to see that you were safe.” He paused. “I must go now. Some of the Chinese have been shot, and I do not wish for my friends and I to be imprisoned.” He shook his beach bag, which made a Kalashnikovish noise against the floor.

“I’ll see you,” said Lucy.

“See you later, crocodile,” said Tran in English, and left.

Lucy crouched over the Vietmanese and took his hand. He opened his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am ashamed, but they made. . I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “All this is my fault.”

Then, as if magically, as if in a dream, the alcove was full of people. Her mother, her father (her father?), Detective Bryan, Mary Ma, two paramedics, several policemen.

“Lucy, come away, honey,” her father said. “Let these guys get to him.” He knelt down and placed his arm around her.

Cowboy said, “No!” with such vehemence that he coughed up a froth of blood. He gripped Lucy’s wrist so hard her tanned skin turned white around his bloody fingers. He began to speak rapidly in Vietnamese, interrupted by spells of coughing. Lucy answered softly in the same fluting language. Tears were pouring from her eyes. Karp held his daughter tightly, and in his other hand a Sony soundlessly rotated, recording the best possible exception to the hearsay rule, a dying declaration.