Act of Revenge

Chapter 3

Marlene Ciampi was wearing a red T-shirt with white Chinese calligraphy on it, similar to the one her daughter owned. Unlike her daughter (as far as she knew) she was also wearing a pistol, a slim Italian 9mm semi-auto, in a nylon belt holster, and a blue cotton blazer to conceal it. This T-shirt had been a gift from Lucy on Marlene’s last birthday, back when she and her daughter were still friends. The child had ordered the shirt from a copy shop on Lafayette Street, where they would turn any design you wanted into a shirt, and the calligraphy was in Lucy’s own hand. It supposedly read, “What is the most important duty? The duty to one’s parents. What is the most important thing to guard? One’s own character.” Below this was the colophon (Meng Ke) of the author, Mencius, and that of the calligrapher (Kap Louhsi), the kid herself.

Marlene stared at the pay phone in whose demi-booth she stood and let the events of the previous two days rankle in her mind. The Lucy business. The Chen business, now tangled together. She thought of calling home and talking directly to Lucy. She had two potential conversations in mind: one a cold interrogation, using all her considerable investigatory skills to determine what her daughter was doing between 3:45 p.m., when she had spoken with her at Columbia-Presby, and 6:10 p.m. when, according to her husband’s report, the little wretch had sashayed into the loft, or, alternatively, one that included some magical combination of frankness, wisdom, and empathy that would turn Lucy into the agreeable little girl she once was, and give to that vexed segment of Marlene’s motherhood a fresh start.

She sighed, after a few dithering moments, then cursed, and turned her attention to the corner of 23rd Street and Tenth Avenue. The fire engines had left, and the crime scene unit cops were loading equipment into their van. The yellow tape that surrounded the brick storefront was by now bedraggled, drooping to the ground in places, and a couple of detectives were standing amid broken glass and blackened trash, talking to a uniformed patrolman. Above the entrance a charred sign-Chelsea Women’s Clinic-was still legible. Abortions were among the services provided there, and someone objecting to the practice had, a few hours before, blasted out the storefront window with a shotgun and tossed in a gasoline bomb. The staff had been able to smother the flames with extinguishers, however, and no one, oddly enough, had been badly injured. The director of the clinic had thereafter been informed by the police that, despite the attack, the NYPD could not post a permanent guard at the site henceforward until forever. So she had called Marlene.

She crossed the street and walked up to the group of cops. She knew one of the detectives from the time she had spent some years ago as head of the Rape Bureau at the New York D.A.

“How’s it going, Shanahan?”

“Marlene Ciampi! See, guys, I knew this was gonna get more interesting. I hope you’re not here for an abortion, Marlene, ’cause I think they’re closed for the day. However, if you’re interested in a simple gynecological examination, I think Patrolman Vargas and I can accommodate you.”

The uniformed kid snorted in surprise and looked nervously away. The other detective chuckled and said, “Vargas, watch this-now she’s gonna sue us for sexual harassment. This is good training, Vargas. Get your notebook out.”

“Also, Patrolman Vargas,” Marlene said, “you’ll want to note that aging detectives whose sexual function has been all but destroyed by excess consumption of alcohol often try to compensate by making vulgar remarks to women, including, as in the present case, decent Catholic mothers. It’s something you’ll want to avoid as you rise through the ranks. What happened here, Shanahan?”

The two detectives were grinning broadly. They didn’t get to do this much anymore. “You wouldn’t think it to look at her, Vargas, but this woman has the dirtiest mouth in the five boroughs, not excluding Margo the Transvestite down by Manhattan Bridge. What’s your interest?”

“I’m not sure I have any, Shanahan. The people here called me, asked me to come by. Anything cooking yet on the perp?”

“You see how these cheap P.I.s operate, Vargas? Trying to get confidential information off the Job? They use bribes, threats, even fading sexual allure, like now. . what’s that on your shirt, Marlene, stick out your chest a little. Oh, yeah, Confucius say, man with erection who enter airplane door sideways going to Bangkok.”

“That and, ‘Kiss my ass, I’m Irish,’ but, really. .?”

“Really? Well, it’s a highly skilled master criminal terrorist we got here, if you want my opinion. They didn’t want to use their own vehicle for the job, oh, no, so they rented a van from Penske over in Jersey somewhere. That’s ’cause Penske don’t ask for any personal information or anything, you just give them your watch or your dog and drive away.”

“A grounder.”

“Uh-huh. They’re probably closing in on the desperadoes as we speak. Too bad you won’t get to use your sleuthing powers in this one, Marlene. Officer Vargas, when Marlene uses her sleuthing powers, it usually ends up with hair on the walls. You want to keep your hand on your weapon around Marlene here. So to speak.”

Marlene grinned, waved, and stepped over the crime tape.

Shanahan called after her, “And may I say, Marlene, that your ass is holding up pretty good, considering your age.”

She wiggled that unit parodically in the interest of good police relations and entered the building.

The pattern of shot had come in high, judging from the pits marking the wall above the receptionist’s desk. Either the guy had rushed his shot or he intended to miss; in any case the woman sitting behind the desk had retained her brains in her skull. She was still at her post, carefully sorting through charred files. A couple of other women and a man in rough work clothes were sweeping burnt trash into a barrel. Marlene asked the receptionist where the director’s office was; a weary motion pointed her down the hall, toward where a television crew-camera, sound, and glistening reporter-was recording an interview with Alice Reiss-Kessler, the director herself. The reporter, the same Gloria Eng who had reported on the Asia Mall killings, was wearing a peach-colored suit miraculously free of the fine soot that covered every other surface in the place, and at the moment she was asking the inane and inevitable “How do you feel” question. Ms. Reiss-Kessler, a good-sized brunette with a strong, plain face that tended to go jowly under ten-thousand-candlepower light, was not looking her best, but she was gamely doing her duty as a patriotic American by allowing television to share her pain. Marlene wished fervently for her to say something like, “I feel really great, Gloria. We’ve wanted to redecorate this crummy barn for ages, and since we’re insured up to the nipples, we’ll be able to do it right and also pay for about six hundred late-term abortions.” Instead, she did the usual victim moan, and Marlene could see Eng calculating behind her faux-sympathetic matte face how to get an eight-second sound bite out of this farrago. Marlene backed away, intending to lurk in a corner until the newsies left, but her heel came down on a pile of trash and she stumbled noisily.

At the sound Eng looked up and, without missing a beat, broke in with, “Is it true that you’ve retained a private investigator in this matter?”

Reiss-Kessler hesitated. “Ah, well, we’re looking into increased security, but-”

“Does that mean you approve of counter-violence against the kind of people who might want to bomb abortion clinics?”

“No, I believe that the police should do their job and protect the legally recognized right to choose.”

“Then why have you hired Marlene Ciampi? Isn’t Ms. Ciampi associated with the kind of ‘security’ not very distinguishable from vigilantism?”

“We haven’t hired anyone,” said Reiss-Kessler. “We’re talking to consultants.”

Nice block, girl, thought Marlene, but a moment later she was bathed in the unforgiving light herself, as the reporter directed camera and microphones toward an even more interesting subject.

“One of those consultants is apparently Marlene Ciampi, who has just entered this ruined clinic,” Eng said. “Ms. Ciampi has been involved in several fatal shootings in the last few years, and in other acts of violence against people she claimed were harassing her clients. Marlene! Could you tell us what your response will be to whoever perpetrated this attack?”

“No comment,” said Marlene, and moved to pass the reporter, who counter-moved to remain in her path.

“Give me something, Marlene,” said the reporter. “Have you spoken with the police? How do they feel about your involvement?”

Marlene kept her smile, checked, faked, got by, and in a moment had clutched Ms. Reiss-Kessler by the elbow and steered her into her own office, kicking the door shut in the camera’s face.

“Well,” said the director, “you certainly know how to make an entrance. I’d offer you coffee, but the coffee room was a casualty. Have a seat.”

Marlene brushed plaster dust off a side chair and sat down. Reiss-Kessler settled on the edge of her desk. “You don’t care for the media, I take it.”

“They do their job, I do mine,” Marlene said. “In fact, I had no comment.”

“I’d think that getting your face on television would be good for business.”

“I have enough business, Ms. Reiss-Kessler-”

“Please, Alice.”

“. . Alice, and I don’t particularly want to encourage the kind of business Gloria is interested in promoting for me. I’m here representing the Osborne Group. Security? I assume that’s what you’re interested in.” She indicated the wreckage with a wave.

The woman let out a bitter chuckle. “Yes, locking the barn door. Security, but mainly I want the people who did this caught and punished.”

“Uh-huh. I bet. Fortunately, you don’t need me for that. The cops have a good lead on the perps here, and they should make an arrest fairly soon.”

Reiss-Kessler’s eyes widened. “Really? They didn’t say anything about that to me.”

“I try to cultivate good relations with the police.”

An expression of astonishment tending toward sneer appeared on the woman’s face. “You like those chauvinist bastards?”

Marlene stiffened and smiled falsely to cover. “Not like. They’re hard to like. A great many of them are boorish, violent, corrupt, and stupid. But I do love them. In a manner of speaking. My heart goes out to them. They see stuff and do stuff every day that if you did it, it would make you cry for a week, and they’ve got no real training to deal with it and they get no support for it, except that silly macho cynical business they’re all into, which makes it all worse, and includes the idea that only the penis-equipped can do the job. So they make comments to me, technically sexual harassment, technically clear violations of the Patrol Guide, and what I do is, I mean within limits, I don’t give them the ‘that’s not funny’ line and utter threats, I grin like a bimbo and give them a shot back or two. And when I need some help from them, which I do a lot in my business, I usually get it.”

“It’s nice that you’re one of the boys,” said Reiss-Kessler.

Marlene ignored the icy tone, kept her smile, and replied, “Yes, it is nice. Let’s turn to business, Alice, if you don’t mind. We both have a lot to do.”

Alice gave a stiff nod, and Marlene went into her spiel, laying out what the Osborne Group could and could not do in the way of protection and site hardening. This included building surveys, installation of equipment and architectural mods, security seminars for clinic staff, and the provision of bonded square-badge guards. The woman listened, took some notes, asked the usual questions. Marlene could see she was disappointed, had expected something else, something more ardently feminist, a source of emotional support rather than a security firm functionary, which is why she had called Osborne and asked for Marlene by name. Marlene couldn’t help that (it happened a lot), nor could she help what she felt about the clinic. This emerged, too, in the conversation.

At the end, the director made some noncommittal remarks that they’d be in touch. Marlene doubted this; she was being given the boot. She was not exactly famous, but she’d been in the news enough over the past decade so that there were people who would call for an appointment just to take a look, and others who wanted the cachet of having her guard their bodies, and others who thought she was in the business of shooting unwanted males on order. Marlene figured that Alice Reiss-Kessler’s initial thought in the immediate aftermath of the attack had been punishment and revenge, and since she came from a class and subculture that did not trust the police to have the right attitude toward feminist issues, she had sought a private enforcer.

Which Marlene was not, and had made that clear, and now, leaving the sooty storefront, wondered why it was easier for her to be nice to horrible male-chauvinist cops than to a perfectly decent woman with the right liberal opinions on every subject. To be fair, she was just as impatient with the right-wing verities of most cops. And of her mother.

She walked now, head down and grumpy, to her car, an old Volvo 240 station wagon in the usual faded orange, parked illegally on Tenth. Her personal assistant was sitting in the passenger seat. He grunted a greeting as she entered.

“I don’t know, Sweets,” she said when the car was moving in the south-bound flow. “I screwed that up for no reason. I had to give that dumb speech about the cops, and what she wanted was the us girls against the men business, oh, bite my tongue, not girls, of course, and I had to sound off about abortion, but when she said that about those abortion-is-murder nuts, and said well, it is and they’re not all nuts, and she gave me that you can’t be serious look, and I said well, yeah, legal, safe, and available, sure, I’m for that, but you’re also killing babies, you should stand up for that, and be sad, I’d like to see more tears, more anguish, I mean it’s not a haircut and a rinse, is it? And she got chillier and chillier, and then I cracked wise about me participating in a number of post-natal abortions and I didn’t care for those either, and then we went back to talking about doors and bomb barriers. And of course, she’s big in New York feminist circles, and she’s going to spread the word about what a traitor I am to the cause, which will not help with the celebrity jobs either, and Osborne is going to start having second thoughts about bringing me in. I mean, really, Sweets, what is going on here? How can you be more of a feminist than me? Huh?”

Sweety offered a shrug and a sympathetic look.

“Do I put my fucking body on the line? Do I actually protect women from men? I do. And what do I get for it, huh? I’ll tell you what I don’t get. I don’t get no respect. My husband hates what I do. My daughter just hates me whatever I do, poor Marlene, and after today I doubt I’ll be invited to sit on the dais at the NOW meeting, and I bought the most darling little black dress. . Sweety! Talk to me! I need advice.”

In response to this, Sweety dropped his massive head on her lap and dispensed a half cup of saliva directly onto her crotch. Marlene hooted maniacal laughter and made a dramatic turn across two lanes to catch her left onto 14th.

Marlene was about to meet (speaking of her peculiar problems with feminism) a woman who made Ms. Reiss-Kessler look like Nancy Reagan. This person lived and worked in a five-story tenement-plus-storefront on Avenue B in the neighborhood called the East Village, if you were placing real estate ads, and Alphabet City if you were a resident, or a cop. Unlike other poor and crime-plagued sections of New York, most of which had declined from better days, this one had been designed as a slum in the previous century and was a slum still. Marlene parked her car behind a burned sofa across the street, and walked blithely away with the window open and the doors unlocked. A 200-pound dull black, red-eyed, attack-trained Neapolitan mastiff in the front seat is the sort of car alarm that still works in Alphabet City.

The building had a small sign over the door that said east village women’s shelter, and the door itself was a steel industrial model in a steel frame. In the center of this door was a bell button and a small notice:

ring. we are always open.

If you’re looking for shelter,

you are welcome,

and if you’re looking for trouble

we have that, too.

The former shop windows had been replaced by bolted-on galvanized sheets backed by thick plywood. Marlene rang the bell. A whirring noise from above. She looked up and waved to the camera. Buzz. Ke-chunk. The outer door opened, and Marlene walked through and down a short blank entry corridor faced by a windowed door, behind which was a steel desk, behind which was a fullback-sized brown woman with beaded hair. This person ascertained that Marlene was really Marlene and not the spearhead of an invasion, and clicked her through the glass. The EVWC was hard to get into. Its clientele consisted exclusively of women and children under credible threat of death from that small class of men who will not be deterred from expressing their devotion to their loved ones in this unusual way even by the full pressure of the law. Almost all women’s shelters are at secret locations, to prevent the loved ones from coming by and trying to get in. This one was blatantly public, because its proprietor rather hoped the loved ones would try something, and especially that they would engage in the sort of behavior that entitles the invaded party to use lethal force.

“What’s up, Vonda?”

“Besides the murder rate? Not that much. We got a rare one last night. Buck-ass naked and beat.”

“Really? Anyone I know?”

The woman shrugged and shifted the Remington 870 on her lap. “She’ll tell you about it. I just got on.”

Marlene went through another door into the shelter proper and was hit first by the smell-cooking and disinfectant and too many people-and second by a four-year-old on a Big Wheels. A thin woman chasing the child apologized in heavily accented English and dragged the child away to the play area that took up much of the first floor of the building. The children who lived here did not get out much.

The owner was in the kitchen, dressed in her usual black jumpsuit, supervising the preparation of the evening meal, which, like most meals at the EVWS, was highly spiced, hearty, and well balanced, if plain. Marlene often reflected on the medieval aspects of this establishment: noise, squabbling, gouts of steam, the sound of a slap and a wail, hectic activity under the command of a benevolent tyrant. It must have been so in the castle when the knights were away at war. Mattie Duran was a strong, stocky Mexican woman with a fierce indio ax face set off by two thick black braids tied with red wool. She looked up, saw Marlene, nodded, settled the business she had begun, and walked out of the kitchen, Marlene following.

Duran had a tiny office off the dining room fitted with a steel desk, industrial shelving holding what passed for her record system, a swivel chair for her, and a ratty armchair for guests. She drew a couple of cups of black coffee from an urn, sat behind the desk with a grateful sigh, and gave her guest the once-over, focusing on Marlene’s soaked crotch.

“What happened, you piss yourself or are you just glad to see me?”

“The dog.”

Mattie raised an eyebrow. Then they both guffawed. Mattie had a deep, wet laugh, like an old man. Marlene had worked with the EVWS for a couple of years. Their clientele overlapped to some extent, and they more or less agreed on the principle that guys who persisted in trying to kill women should get their lumps. They were both unindicted felons, but Marlene was guilty about it and Mattie was not. Marlene related her recent experiences at the Chelsea clinic. Mattie was not sympathetic.

“That’s what they get for having glass windows. Uptown assholes!”

“I think they were trying to make the place more inviting. Not everybody likes to work in a fort.”

“Let ’em open a goddamn yarn shop, then. Speaking of uptown assholes, your pal Brenda Nero is back with us.”

“How nice for you.”

“You got to help me out, Marlene. The bitch is driving me crazy.”

“Uh-huh. The solution is simple. Walk up to her and say, ‘Sugar, get your young white ass out of my shelter.’ ”

Mattie frowned, taking on even more of the aspect of a Toltec idol than she normally carried. “Marlene, hell, you know I can’t do that.”

Marlene did know. “What’s she done now?”

“Oh, you know. Nothing you can put your finger on, but I got three women threatening to leave if I don’t get rid of her. That’s a laugh, huh?” She laughed dully to illustrate. “They’re threatened with death and dismemberment, and they’d rather skip than hang with Brenda.”

“That’s Brenda,” said Marlene, and looked long at her pal, and observed that she was genuinely suffering under the hard-girl mask. Blaming the victim was one of the three remaining cardinal sins among the liberati of New York, along with littering and smoking in restaurants, and Marlene struggled daily to resist it. That it was always the Man was not, however, an article of faith for her, as it was for Mattie. In many cases it turned out to be an unconscious conspiracy between a man and a woman to continue mutual torture until they were both dead. Thus she could see Brenda as a mere problem and not as a holy cause.

“You’ve talked with her, naturally.”

“I’ve talked with her, I yelled at her, I made her cry. I came this close”-Mattie held thumb and index finger a pea-diameter apart-“to punching her face out.” She snorted. “That’d be rich, huh? Shelter operator pounds victim.”

“Why’s she here?” asked Marlene with a surreptitious glance at her watch.

“Oh, the usual. Chester’s acting up again.”

“She says.”

“She’s got a big bruise on her jaw, goddammit!”

Marlene adopted the calming tone she used with dangerous fanatics, of which there were some few in her life. “Okay. Well, why don’t I go and have a little talk with Chester this afternoon? Maybe we can work things out.”

“Break his legs.”

“It’s an option. Was that why you wanted to see me today?”

“No, it’s this new one. Won’t talk, won’t say who she is. Looks like she’s been pimp-beat, but don’t look like a hooker.”

“What, with a wire hanger?”

“Some kind of thin whip anyway. Looks like it’s been going on for a while, the scars. She says he put his cigar out on her ass.”

“And she won’t say who she is?”

“No, but-”

“But me no buts, girl. You got rules, I got rules. You know I don’t touch a client unless she goes for the whole legal business. .”

“Marlene, just see her. .”

“. . naming the abuser, prosecuting for assault. .”

“Marlene, five minutes. She asked if she could see you.”

“. . and so on. What is this now, the cute puppy school of bodyguarding? If I like her looks, I’ll waive the rules?”

Mattie turned up her glower a notch and thrust forward her heavy jaw. “Don’t be a bitch, Marlene.”

“Oh, that’s delightful, coming from you.” She rose and gathered up her bag. “I have to go. I will drive out and see Chester, and then I will go home. I have children. And a husband.”

Mattie’s face darkened to mahogany, and her heavy brows almost met in the middle. An interesting moment passed, during which both of them realized that, manlike as were some of their doings, they were not in fact men and didn’t have to carry on so. The big woman sucked in breath and said, “Marlene, please. For me. Just see her and maybe she’ll talk to you. If she don’t, no harm. You can just forget her, okay?”

A request in these terms from Mattie Duran was so unusual as to stun Marlene’s normal prudence, and, of course, she was intrigued.

“Okay, I’ll see her.”

Mattie smiled, brightening the room with a show of gold and bright enamel against her dark skin. “Great! You’re a pal, chica. She’s in 37.”

She would be. Room 37 was the only single room for clients in the EVWS, tiny, in the center of the building, windowless, its doors and walls heavily reinforced. It was the most secure place in the shelter, and was reserved for people that Mattie had determined were under threat from people who knew what they were doing when it came to dispensing lethal violence. Some time back, the shelter had been attacked by a group of actual international terrorists, who had made off with a young girl, and Mattie wanted to make sure it would not happen again.

Marlene climbed the stairs against the flow of women and children descending for the evening meal. She greeted those she knew, a substantial proportion. Marlene’s role at the EVWS was to represent clients in court, to move them to (they hoped) safe apartments, to train them in self-defense, and to provide her brand of counseling to the significant others. Given Marlene’s rep around town, this often sufficed. Marlene had not lost a client in some years, and her clientele was selected from among the most endangered women in the city, or rather those of the most endangered who had the sense and the nerve to get out.

The woman who opened the door of 37 to Marlene’s knock was still lovely in the frozen way that some wealthy women adopt, a look that peaked in the Kennedy years. Not a mark was visible on the face, which didn’t mean much. A lot of guys were careful about the face, wanting to preserve the trophy value of the arm piece. Her eyes, a nice china blue, and big ones, showed more mileage around the edges than one might gather from a first look at the face and body. A well-preserved forty, was Marlene’s thought, three days a week at the gym, a few surgical tucks maybe, strict diet, winters in the Islands. She was dressed in a ratty purple sweatshirt and jeans several sizes too large for her, and a pair of cheap tennis shoes, all clearly out of the shelter slop box.

“You wanted to see me,” said Marlene, and introduced herself, extending a hand. The woman’s grip was soft and hesitant, and her eyes, which Marlene now observed were fuzzy and unfocused, slid away from contact. Oh, pharmaceuticals! thought Marlene. She loved these types.

The woman did not give her own name, but turned away and sat on the narrow bed. Marlene shut the door and sat beside her, there being nowhere else to sit. The room was tiny, a cell eight feet on a side, holding only a steel cot, a varnished deal bureau, a rag rug, and a rickety night table.

“So, what do I call you?”

The woman paused, as if trying to remember. “Vivian,” she said.

“Last name?”

The woman shook her head and looked down at the rag rug.

“Look, I can’t begin to help you unless you talk to me.” Nothing. “I have to have your name at least.” Marlene waited. She observed that the woman had fragments of nail polish still clinging to her nails, which bore the signs of having had the frequent attention of a manicurist. Her hair, too, though lank from a recent washing, showed the mass and shaping of a first-class cut. Marlene felt a pulse of irritation, which she knew she would not have felt had the woman been poor. She stood up and announced, “Okay, sorry, but I’m leaving.”

“Fein,” said the woman.

“Fine? You don’t want help? You want me to leave?”

“No, Fein is the name. My name is Vivian Fein.” The crying started.

Marlene always said that she was one of the few women in New York for whom both Kleenex and bullets were a deductible business expense. She gave over a wad of the former to stem the drench and waited, making soothing sounds.

“I’m sorry,” said Vivian Fein, after some minutes. “It’s hard to explain. I was thinking about my father.” She paused, glanced at Marlene in a way that seemed to demand some recognition, as if this father were so well-known as to require no further explanation, and then she blushed and said, “Ah, shit, you must think I’m crazy”-here she uttered a shrill laughlike sound. “Oh, yeah, why would you think that, just because I ran out of my house dressed in a blanket and a pair of panties? Of course, I assume you know all about my father, just because that’s what’s rattling around in my head all the time. Isn’t there a disease where people think they’re transparent? That everyone can see their thoughts?” A spate of silent shaking laughter, dissolving into liquid weeping.

Marlene adopted a neutral expression and waited. The father thing was interesting. Maybe it wasn’t the S.O. this time, for a change. Or maybe Dad was both-not at all unknown in the business. The Fein woman stopped being semi-hysterical and drew away, and leaned against the wall. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose on Marlene’s wad of tissues. To her surprise, Marlene now found herself subject to an appraising look, with a hint of hardness. A quick recovery. Or the waterworks was an act. Or the woman was deep in tranquilizer psychosis.

“You don’t look like what I thought you would,” she said.

“I never do,” said Marlene coolly. “Let’s cut the horseshit, Ms. Fein. I presume you wanted to see me about whoever beat you up. I’ll need his name and details of the incident, plus any information about past abuses, with documentation.”

“Documentation?” The woman was staring at her as if she were speaking in a foreign tongue.

“Yes. Visits to the emergency room or private doctors. Calls to the police. Any witnesses to the violence. . I’m sorry, you find this amusing?”

The woman brought her giggling under control. Definitely pills, thought Marlene. “No, I’m sorry, really. I realize I must seem crazy to you. But. . no, there’s no witnesses. No documentation. And that’s not why. . whew!” Fein took several deep breaths. “We got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Ciampi. I don’t want you to pursue my husband in any way. I want to hire you for something else altogether.”

Marlene cocked her head, the attitude of disbelief, and also, in her particular case, the way in which she focused attention with her one good eye. “Excuse me. It’s a reasonable assumption. This is a battered women’s shelter you’re in.”

“Yes, and I do need protection, and I’m incredibly grateful for it, but this is something I have to do, and I can’t do it from home. My husband would not approve, and he’s an extremely watchful and suspicious man.”

“Uh-huh. And what is it you want to hire me to do?”

“I want you to investigate the death of my father, Gerald Fein. He was a lawyer. He supposedly committed suicide in 1960.”

“And you think there’s something suspicious about his death, that it wasn’t a suicide? How did he die?”

A bleak smile. “I see you’re not a New Yorker.”

“But I am, born and raised. You mean you think I should recall a suicide twenty-odd years ago, of a-” Marlene clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, shit! You don’t mean Jumping Jerry was. . Oh, Christ, I’m sorry, that was crude of me.”

“Oh, please, we’re used to it. Well, I don’t think you ever get used to it, but you learn to live with it. You must have jumped rope to the, whatever, the rhyme, if you were a city kid.”

“I was a little old. My younger sister did, though. It must have been unbelievably bad for you.”

“Yes. We loved him very much. And we thought he loved us.”

Marlene did not know what to say to this, and she did not particularly want to learn. The story now percolated back up from deep storage from where it had lain alongside Brooklyn Dodgers team rosters and the Ozone Park rules for ring-a-levio. And jump-rope rhymes, of course. Gerald Fein had gone to his office building one day and instead of getting off at the 57th floor, where his firm had its suite, he had traveled up to the observation deck, where he had somehow gotten past the barrier and, achieving the actual parapet, had walked into space, thus becoming the last man to jump successfully from the Empire State Building. After some moments of uncomfortable silence Marlene said, “Ah, Ms. Fein, regarding this investigation-I don’t, that is, in my connection with the shelter, I don’t do investigations, except for things like locating a spouse for child-support payment. But my firm, the Osborne Group, has an investigations division. I could put you in touch with them.”

The woman was shaking her head. “No, I want you to do it.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Fein, but I don’t have the time or the resources to handle a serious investigation into something that happened twenty-three years ago. Osborne does, and I ought to tell you now that if they take the case it’s going to cost you. And, not to be harsh, but you don’t look like you have a whole lot of bucks at your disposal.”

“I can pay!” the woman cried. Moving like a frightened bird, she darted her hand under the pillow of the narrow bed and snatched out a crumpled paper bag, which rattled as she brought it to her lap, and reached in. Light flashed in her hand.

“That’s real, I presume,” said Marlene, who could not help a thick swallow at what she saw.

“Oh, yeah, it’s real. One thing about Sa-my husband, he only buys the best stones. This is a six-and-a-half carat D color VVS2 quality stone in platinum. It’s worth at least a hundred forty grand.”

There was something about the way this statement popped out of Vivian Fein’s lush little mouth that raised for Marlene the notion that perhaps the deserted hubby was not one of society’s ornaments, though filthy rich, that perhaps Ms. Fein (and what was her married name, after all?) had spent some time around the hard boys. Come to that, Marlene thought further, wasn’t old Jumping Jerry mobbed up in some way? Another reason to avoid additional involvement. She stood up again and pulled her eye away from the fabulous glitter of the ring.

“You want to put that in a safe, Ms. Fein. Some of the ladies here are fairly hard types. I’ll have someone from our investigations division give you a ring. A call, I mean.”

“Take it!” said the woman. “You have to, you have to. .” She leaped up and grabbed Marlene’s sleeve, and tried to press the diamond into the pockets of Marlene’s shirt. They shuffled around the floor for a while like a pair of folk dancers from a particularly ungraceful folk, and Marlene thought, absurdly, of her tiny grandmother trying to press packets of leftovers on recalcitrant relatives, both of them doing the same sort of dance. Vivian was again weeping, Marlene saying, “Please. . excuse me. . please,” and wondering whether she would have to get rough to make her escape, when a long, full-throated scream sounded in the hallway outside.

Vivian froze. All the pink drained from her face, and her eyes showed white all around their blue centers. From outside another yell and the sound of cursing and shrill cries. Vivian jumped back from Marlene and, with crazed stupidity, looked around for somewhere to hide in the tiny cell. In a hoarse, high-pitched whisper she said, “Oh, shit, oh God, oh shit. . it’s him, oh, shit, oh, God. .”

“Stay here,” Marlene commanded inanely, pulled her pistol from its holster, and stepped out of the room. At the end of the narrow hallway a small crowd of women and kids had formed a yelling circle around what was obviously a fight. Marlene crouched down and looked between the legs of the spectators. As she had expected, one of the combatants, the one on the bottom, getting creamed by a hefty brown woman, was Brenda Nero. Marlene replaced her pistol. Heavy treads on the stairway and here came Mattie Duran at the trot, darkness on her brow. The spectators scattered before her as she pierced the circle and grabbed a handful of each combatant, heaving them to their feet and holding them apart like a pair of squabbling puppies.

“What the hell is going on here?” she yelled.

Marlene heard a familiar voice wail, “I didn’t do anything!” Brenda’s old refrain. Brenda never did anything, yet where she dwelt chaos reigned. On her last unlamented visit to the shelter she had, among other stunts, spilled a bottle of nail polish (borrowed without asking, of course) and wiped it up with “an old rag” that proved to be her roommate’s baby’s baptismal dress, the last pathetic remnant of the poor woman’s lost respectability. Marlene imagined it was something like that this time, too, or a remark at just the wrong moment, or a secret casually revealed. What her life with Chester Durrell was like, Marlene could barely imagine, yet she was prepared to talk to Chester about keeping his temper and not going with the fists. In fact, she had to admit, she would rather deal with Chester than with Brenda. Let Mattie deal with Brenda.

As for Vivian Fein, Marlene suspected that her case made Brenda and Chester look like Ozzie and Harriet. Not interested, was Marlene’s thought, not even in why Vivian Fein So-and-So had decided to split from an abusive man at just that time and look into her father’s long-ago death, and she took the opportunity to slip-slide away, down the stairs and out of the shelter, into a nice, warm, smelly New York purple evening. But of course, now she couldn’t get the damn skipping rhyme out of her head.

Jumping Jerry jump so high

Really thought that he could fly

Jumping Jerry couldn’t wait

He jumped off the Empire State

Down and down and down he flew

Landed on Fifth Avenue

Hundred-ninety-eighty-seventy-sixty-

fifty-forty-thirty-twenty

SPLAT!

Or alternatively, you could end with the most disgusting possible raspberry noise. She entered her car. The dog made a companionable whine and panted.

“Don’t ask, Sweets. Just don’t ask,” she said as she cranked up the car and pulled away from the curb. In fact, as she now recalled, she had skipped to it, when alone with her sister Pat and her younger cousins, and not standing on the dignity of twelve years. She had been a damn good double-dutch skipper, too. All the Ciampis had skipped, including the boys. Her dad had been a welter-weight club fighter in the forties for a couple of years, and skipping was macho training rather than a girl thing at casa Ciampi, where everyone also learned to box. Marlene had kept up training, too. She had a speed bag and a heavy bag set up at home, and she worked out a couple, three times a week-not a Jazzercise girl, Marlene-still including skipping. And, naturally, Marlene had taught her daughter. Lucy still skipped, and was brilliant at it, but she did it in private, not with Mom anymore. It’s just a phase, Marlene thought, trying to generate a little self-comfort. But really, who knew? Who knew, for example, what Jumping Jerry Fein’s spectacular suicide had done to his daughter? Clearly, she was in a marriage made elsewhere than in heaven, but did that follow necessarily from the big jump? Flash forward twenty years-Lucy sitting all beat up in room 37: “Yeah, well, my mom was this hard-rock feminazi with a gun, so I guess I just became a doormat to get back at her.”

“Is that why I don’t want to do this silly woman’s investigation, Sweety?” she asked. “Because I don’t want to get into it? Some other miserable family. I am a simple person, basically. No, really, don’t laugh! I love my husband, I love my children, even that rotten brat, I don’t try to change the world, I’m not an ideologue, I don’t tear cigarettes out of people’s mouths in restaurants, I don’t throw paint on furs. All I do is I try to keep a tiny fraction of the violent shitheads of the world from hurting their loved ones. This is simple, no? Yell, scream, be depressed, but no hitting, no stabbing, don’t shoot them with guns. It’s kindergarten.”

Marlene waited for the light at Houston and Lafayette and turned to face the mastiff, who turned his contemplative, sag-faced, red-eyed gaze on her, the better to concentrate his canine wisdom on her kvetching.

“But I always seem to get involved. I’m down in it all the time, slopping around with the toxic worms, who did what to who, back when, why-Brenda fucking Nero, this new one. . I don’t know, Sweets, this is not what I bargained for. If I wanted to do social work, I would have a little office with light oak and nubbly tweed furniture, and my MSW diploma and some soothing abstracts on the walls, and a black plastic thingie on my desk with my name engraved, or maybe a wooden one, with the swoopy carved letters. Do you see me doing that? Of course you don’t. It’s not me. I don’t have good listening skills. I have good shooting skills, although God knows I never asked for that either. So? Any sage advice?” She waited. “What’s that? Eat decayed corn dogs and sniff anuses? Okay, it sounds extreme, but if it works for you, I’ll try it. I tried everything else.”