Act of Revenge

Chapter 20

They had repaired the door at the East Village Women’s Shelter. It was now a steel-sheathed monster with a small glass porthole in it, suitable for a nuclear submarine. Marlene pressed her face against it, and Vonda buzzed her in.

“Nice door, Vonda,” said Marlene.

“About time you showed,” said the guard, with her usual glower. “She’s in the kitchen.”

Marlene sought the woman out and found her on her back, surrounded by tools, replacing a fitting behind the shelter’s ancient gas stove. She lifted her head an inch when Marlene came and stood at her feet. The work light shining on her grease-smeared face gave it a theatrical Phantom of the Opera look. She frowned when she saw who it was.

“Where the hell have you been, girl? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for a week. Have you heard from Brenda?”

“In a manner of speaking. She tried to kill me with your gun.”

“Chingada! What happened?”

Marlene told her. Mattie was not pleased. “You had her arrested? Jesus, who the fuck’s side are you on? What about the goddamn boyfriend? He’s the one should be in jail.”

At that, Marlene felt she had two possible options: smash the woman’s skull with the fourteen-inch pipe wrench that lay conveniently to hand, or laugh. She laughed, ever the correct response to fanatics, and walked away.

“Hey, when am I gonna get my gun back?” Mattie called after her.

Up in room 37, Marlene found that Vivian F. Bollano had settled in for a long stay. The small room now held a color TV, with VCR, both set up on a new chest of drawers, a larger bed with a thicker mattress, a thick rust-colored area rug, and a teak and leather sling chair. A tape of The Sound of Music was playing on the VCR. Vivian switched it off after letting Marlene in, and sat on the bed. Marlene sat opposite in the sling chair and examined her client. Vivian had had her hair done, by whom Marlene could not imagine, and looked rather more doll-like than she had before. But there was a fuzziness about her expression that indicated the presence of dope, probably prescription downers, since Mattie had a ferocious rule about the nonprescription sort. Aside from that, Marlene imagined, Mattie was perfectly happy to indulge this resident in every legal way. There was a sliding scale of payment at the EVWS: most women owned only the clothes they fled in and paid nothing, but Vivian was clearly at the top of the scale. She could probably have had a suite in the Plaza for what she was paying here, for the day or so before the Bollanos found her and dragged her through the gilded lobby by her hair.

“Well, Vivian, since our last interview, I’m happy to report I’ve made some progress.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mild interest only: she was tranqued out.

“Yeah. Your father did not commit suicide, as you suspected. He was murdered.”

“Uh-huh. Do you know who killed him?” No excitement, no shock, Marlene noted, and put that down to the meds.

“Yes, your husband did it, assisted by a man named Carlo Tonnati. I’m reasonably sure of my informant, and there are some other suggestive pieces of evidence. But I don’t know why it was done, and I don’t have enough at present to go to the cops with.”

Vivian nodded, and her face seemed to deflate a fraction.

“You don’t seem all that surprised,” said Marlene.

The woman shook her head and turned her face away. “I guess that’s it,” she said in a ghost’s voice. “Thank you for your help.”

“Well, actually, Vivian, it’s not quite it yet. Because when you enter into a contract like we did, there are mutual obligations. My obligation is to give you honest service and keep your secrets. Your obligation is to tell me everything relevant to the case. You fail to do that and I could poke into a hole that I think’s got no bear in it, and the bear is waiting and I get my head bitten off.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Vivian to the blank television. “I just had some suspicions and-”

“No, Vivian, you had much more than suspicions, and ordinarily I would let it slide because it comes with the territory-clients lie, or they conceal. What else is new? But this time I got blindsided, because when you mess with the Mob, you might put yourself at risk, but not your family, because by and large, the Mob doesn’t go after family. It’s not like Sicily here. But because you didn’t tell me what was really going on, my children were put at risk. Your father-in-law sent a thug after my babies. And I thought to myself, What would make a don send a thug after my babies? It would have to be something outside the normal run of Mob business, wouldn’t it? What was it, Vivian? What’s got Big Sally so scared?”

Her mouth was slightly open, like a hungry little bird unsure of whether that large shadow was really its mother. She shook her head again, reached for a beaded purse on the nightstand, took from it an amber plastic vial. Marlene jumped from her chair, snatched it away, and moved back to the chair. She tossed the pills into her own purse.

“Excuse me, I have to take my medication. What do you think-”

“No, Vivian, no pills. We’ll save them for after, okay? Don’t want to talk, huh? Vivian, I will have the truth out of you, if it takes all day and all night.” Dumb silence. The woman now had the glazed and stupid look of a shot antelope. “Okay, Vivian, let’s see if we can prime the pump. We start with the peculiar case of the Chinese gentleman Mr. Leung. Or Mr. Lie. This person has some interesting characteristics. He is a gangster, a triad member, in fact. He is in business with your husband’s organization. He seems to have an uncanny understanding of American law. He went through a lot of trouble to kill one of your father-in-law’s two chief subordinates and hang the murder on the other one. It seems that Mr. Leung doesn’t like the Bollano family at all. No reaction? Well, you might say he’s a gangster trying to take over the Bollano family. True enough, but that’s not all that’s true. This particular Chinese had a relationship with an American in Macao. My daughter found this out, by the way. Mr. Leung can speak English with a New York accent. So, now remember, Vivian, Mr. Leung knows something about New York law, can speak phrases with a New York accent, has it in for the Bollanos, and was in close contact with an American in Macao. Can you make a guess as to whom that American might be? Excuse me, I didn’t hear you.”

“Bernie Kusher,” said Vivian, just above the limits of audibility.

“Yes, it would explain a lot that is otherwise very strange indeed. It would explain one of the two big questions I’ve been wanting to ask you ever since I started on this, and which I would’ve asked you if your husband hadn’t kicked me in the head that night. Why you suddenly, after twenty years, bailed out on Little Sally. Bernie’s dead now, apparently, but he was obviously working on this a long, long time. He didn’t want to contact you until he had his little guided missile in place and ready to fire. Leung saw you, didn’t he?” Nod. “And he brought word from Bernie about who really killed your father, didn’t he?” Nod.

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 real 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.”

“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 news 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 Moet and pate 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 champagne 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.”

“You think the don is losing his grip?”

“Well, it could go either way. Pigetti gets impatient, he could try something, but the don’s built up a lot of respect over the years. The older capos. . you know how they are.”

“I do. Which is why I’m going to slip this little tape into your pocket.”

“What is it?”

“It’s Vivian Bollano describing the Bollano version of ‘Happy Days.’ Truly heartwarming. Listen to it, and I think you’ll want to share it with some of your pals in the Bollano organization.”

“Uh, Marlene. .” said Guma nervously.

“Or, I could just mail it to half a dozen capi regimes. But I figure you’d want the credit. These guys like to think they’re like Al Pacino with la famiglia. They wouldn’t want this to get into general circulation. I think they’ll buy you a box of cannoli.”

Guma stared at her for a moment, took the tape from his pocket, tossed it once, and put it away. “You really are something. Butch know about this?”

“No, and you know he doesn’t want to know. Will you?”

Guma nodded slowly. A grin broke out across his face, horrible to see. She grinned back. It was a Sicilian moment. “Yeah,” said Guma. “Yeah, I think I will. As a public service to the Mob. Besides, I never cared for the old cafone. What if they want to know who gave me the tape?”

“What tape is that?” said Marlene sweetly, and skipped away back to the champagne.