Act of Revenge

Chapter 9

After Chinese school Lucy usually went to get something to eat with Janice and a group of friends, but today she had promised to go up to the lab and have lunch with Ronnie Chau before going to the lab. Chau had invited her several times in the past weeks, when Lucy had been too depressed to go, but the new Lucy had made a cheery call from a pagoda-tipped phone booth after class and set it up.

She boarded an uptown Broadway train at Canal, found a corner seat in the first car, and reached into her bag for a copy of Sing Tao Jih Pao, the Chinese newspaper. It amused her to observe the reactions of the passengers to a white girl reading it. But as she reached into the bag, her hand touched an unfamiliar object, and she drew out, wonderingly, Tran’s copy of The Tale of Kieu.

Her eyes stung and she had to take several deep breaths of ozone-rich subway air before her emotions were back under control. She inspected the book closely. It was stained on the edges and endpapers with water and earth, and on the leather of the back cover there was a large dark brown blot of what was surely blood. She stared at it, jogging on her lap in the train’s motion, a holy thing, she thought, a relic of romance, of war, of horror, of courage, of desperate flight, and she felt honored beyond endurance that Tran had slipped it (she could not imagine how) in with her possessions.

She turned past the title page, her fingers caressing the blurred memento of the dead wife, and began to read. It was slow going, for the orthography of Vietnamese is complex and the language was poetic and refined and, in the fashion of classical Asian poetry, the poet made use of compressed references that would be familiar to any Vietnamese, whose meaning she had to guess at. The train was rushing out of 72nd Street before she had the first verse clear.

A century. In a span that long of life on earth

Talent and destiny will often war,

Sea becomes mulberry field and returns to sea

And you must watch things that sicken the heart.

Yet, is it so strange that loss and gain balance, although

Blue Heaven, in spite, strikes down the rosy-cheeked girl?

She shuddered with pleasure as the meaning revealed itself, and attacked the next verse at once. She was so absorbed in this difficult work that she forgot where she was. She did not notice the gradual emptying of the car as the train moved farther north on its route, nor did she notice the three young oriental men in black clothes and sunglasses sitting together at the car’s other end, did not even notice when the train stopped at and departed from 168th Street. Three minutes too late, in the irrational spasm well known to subway riders, she yelped and leaped to her feet, hurriedly stuffing the book back into her shoulder bag, and went and stood swinging from a strap in front of the door, cursing silently to herself and watching the columns whiz by in the dark.

Lucy exited at 181st Street and made for the crossover to get back on the southbound line, and that was when she noticed the three oriental youths for the first time. They had followed her off the train. A pulse of fear, a flush of embarrassment: How could she have been so stupid. .!

She kept walking, searching for people, but the crossover and the adjoining stairways were deserted. One of the youths moved past her, to the stairs that led to the southbound platform, and turned, grinning up at her. The other two closed in from behind. Lucy bolted down the stairs, faked past the guy below, and dashed toward the stairs to the platform. With relief she saw that there were a half dozen people waiting for the southbound Broadway express.

Then she was falling, jerked off her feet by a hand gripping her shoulder bag. She landed painfully on her hands and knees, rolled down three steps, and staggered to her feet. She saw the backs of the three men retreating, heard their running footsteps echoing off the tile walls. Her heart jerked as she realized they had taken the bag with Tran’s book inside it. Without further thought she raced after them.

On the street, out in the sunlight, she looked around wildly, spotted the three of them crossing Broadway, and headed toward them. She had no idea how she was going to get the bag away from three men. If there was anything at all rational lurking under the stew of fear and rage that occupied her mind, it was the belief that, having taken the few dollars she had in there, they would toss the bag in the gutter and she would get the book back. She was not going to leave without Tran’s Tale of Kieu.

The youths were about twenty yards ahead of her, laughing and tossing the bag back and forth. Every so often one of them would glance over his shoulder to see if she was still following. This should have tipped her off that something was up, but her usual instincts were in suspension. All she could think about was the book, and losing it, and what it would mean.

They went east on 182nd Street, Lucy following. They hadn’t looked in the bag yet. Vaguely she wondered why. They should rifle the bag, take the cash, and dump it. She prayed for a cop car to come along. It was not the sort of neighborhood where a little white girl could ask a stranger to go up against three Asian toughs over a grungy-looking canvas bag.

They stopped and conferred, the three dark heads close together, and then they headed for an abandoned building, a sooty former tenement with weathered plywood over its doors and windows. One of them found a way in, clearly much used from the evidence of the trash and crack vials scattered around it, and the three of them disappeared inside. Hopelessly, Lucy followed them in, as if drawn by an unbreakable wire. Her sneakers crunched thin glass, she ducked under a plank, entered darkness, and immediately, as she had half expected, was grabbed in a bear hug from behind, with the hand of her captor jammed across her mouth. The man holding her said nothing as he hustled her along the ruined corridor. She didn’t bother to struggle, but went dead in his arms, making him carry her weight. He was a slightly built but muscular man, smelling of acrid sweat, a lilac hair oil, and, strongest of all, a smell she knew very well. It was nuoc mam, a pungent sauce made from fermented fish, and it told her that she had been captured by Vietnamese.

“Why does this make me want to grumble?” said the district attorney. It was the morning after Karp’s interview with Fogel, and Karp was in the D.A.’s office, filling him in on the abortive negotiation.

“Because you want it to have been a break for us, and it may be a break, but not in the form it was offered. Lie thinks he’s being smart. Okay, he is smart, the little fucker. You know what they say, Jack, we only think criminals are stupid because we never meet the smart ones. Here’s a mutt who’s been selling dope and doing all kinds of evil for four or so years, and he’s got no sheet at all. If I took his bait, we could’ve found ourselves committing to look the other way on God knows what kind of mass destruction.”

“Somehow I doubt Tommy Colombo is going to have those kind of scruples,” said Keegan sourly. His immaculate cigar drooped below a lower lip petulantly protruding.

“I agree, and that’s the difference between a cheap grandstander like Tommy Colombo and us. What’s the matter, Jack? You don’t look happy.”

“I’m struggling to keep my joy under control. You know we’re going to get raped in the press on this. Colombo’s going to have a field day.”

“True, but meanwhile it’s over three years to the next election. Let him have his thrill. Meanwhile, we still have our ace in the hole.”

“Which is what?”

“Murder,” said Karp. “The feds can’t offer immunity against a crime that’s not on their books. So sooner or later we’ll have our crack at Mr. Lie and whoever really did Eddie Cat. Even assuming that’s not saying the same thing.”

“You think Lie was more involved than he’s letting on?”

“It wouldn’t knock me off my chair. Priority one is finding out more about this guy. Especially where he was on the night of, although I’d lay money he’s alibied to the hairline.”

Keegan considered for a moment, then nodded, and placed his cigar on his desk. “Okay, go do it, and keep me informed. And fill in Roland, too. He’s going to be even more delighted than I am.”

“He’ll get over it,” said Karp.

“Oh, yeah. Especially since he’s going to have to field the press questions, him or you, buddy, because this is one I’m happy to delegate to my loyal staff. What about the Colombo front?”

“Oh, I think he’ll give Mr. Lie a big, sloppy kiss. He’ll buy whatever he has to say and put him in front of the federal grand jury and use his testimony to indict Pigetti under any number of federal statutes. Conspiracy, interfering with a federal prosecution, witness intimidation, depriving Mr. Catalano of his civil rights. There’s a grab bag for him there.”

“And what does Lie get out of all this?”

“Oh, he’ll get federal immunity, of course, but what he mainly wants out of the feds is the witness-protection program. Mr. Lie is what they used to call a shadowy figure, Jack. He tried to set it up with us so that he’d start with a clean slate regarding any state crimes he’s committed. I wouldn’t roll on that, so he’s dropped back to his second choice. I have the feeling that he wants to fade away entirely about now, and Colombo is going to help him.”

“And we’re going to stop him, I hope you’re going to say.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Karp. “If we can.”

[NYT 12 JUN 60]

Gangland Lawyer in Suicide Leap from Empire State

By Joseph P. Huntington

Police sources revealed today that the man who threw himself from the observation deck of the Empire State Building at 9:30 yesterday morning was Gerald S. Fein, of Brooklyn, a disbarred criminal lawyer well known for his defense of reputed organized-crime figures. According to police, Mr. Fein left his home at 1320 Avenue M in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn at the usual time, about eight o’clock, and arrived at his parking garage at 8:45. He then walked to the Empire State Building, where his law firm, Kusher, Fein and Panofsky, had offices on the fifty-seventh floor. Witnesses, including Dennis Horgan, 32, a ticket taker at the Empire State’s observation deck, stated that Mr. Fein entered the deck at about nine, purchased a ticket, and strolled around the deck for a few minutes. The deck was relatively empty at that time of day, Mr. Horgan recalled, and Mr. Fein did not seem to be particularly distraught. Some minutes later, in a manner still under investigation by police, Mr. Fein made his way past a normally locked door to a service area, and then through another door to the parapet above the observation windows, where he threw himself off. He landed in the roadway of Fifth Avenue, ten yards from its intersection with 34th Street, causing several minor traffic accidents. No injuries were reported.

Because of Mr. Fein’s ties to reputed organized-crime figures, a police investigation has been authorized under the command of Detective Lieutenant Arnold D. Mulhausen of the 14th Precinct, but at present the police have no evidence of any foul play. Mr. Fein’s family remains in seclusion and was unavailable for comment, but Mr. Herschel Panofsky, Mr. Fein’s law partner, was reported as saying that Mr. Fein had been despondent in recent weeks after losing his appeal against the New York Bar Association’s decision on April 18, 1959, revoking his license to practice law. Mr. Fein was convicted of jury tampering in the trial of alleged racketeer Salvatore Bollano for the murder of an associate, John Gravellotti. Mr. Fein had won an acquittal for Mr. Bollano in that case, but his victory was immediately marred by accusations that several jurors had received bribes. In the jury-tampering case against him, Mr. Fein had accepted a plea bargain, resulting in a fine and a suspended sentence. Mr. Panofsky said, “Jerry expected a censure from the Bar Association, but not the loss of his livelihood. He just couldn’t handle it. The law was his whole life.”

See obituary on Page A30

Marlene declined to read another obituary just now, although she thought the one in the Times would be the most complete. There had been seven daily newspapers in New York when Jumping Jerry had gone off that parapet, and each had given the suicide a big play. Marlene’s secretary and factotum, Sym McCabe, had been set to gathering Xeroxes of these reports for the past week or so, and doing other research tasks. The young woman sat across the cluttered table from her, poring over phone books, trying to locate various people who might be useful to the investigation. Sym was a small tan woman of twenty-odd, with large, suspicious eyes and an intense, hungry look, like an osprey nestling. She was another of Marlene’s brands from the burning: taken in at seventeen, illiterate, addicted, and carrying an unspeakable family and sexual history, taught, encouraged, nurtured, and converted into a useful citizen with a GED and twenty credits already at Manhattan Community College. This was the first time Marlene had sent her out to do research. Sym had found that while scoring facts was not as easy as scoring dope, many of the same skills were required.

“I got six John J. Dohertys in the five boroughs,” she said. “You want me to look on the Island, too?”

“No, call those first, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Sym went into the front room to call, and Marlene shoveled through the piles of folders and clipped copies on the table, looking for a place to start spending Vivian Fein’s money in a useful way. There was plenty of it. Two days before, Marlene had walked out of a cubbyhole in the diamond center on 47th Street, minus Vivian’s gaudy ring, and holding a certified check for $108,750, after which, armed with a power of attorney from Ms. Fein (or Mrs. Bollano, as she would have been called in certain circles), she had opened a checking account for the woman, plus an escrow account upon which Osborne Group Security, Inc., was entitled to draw for the purposes of conducting an investigation into the death of Gerald Fein.

Her hand fell on a thick folder containing a stack of glossy photos. Sym had found a photo essay in Life and then tracked down the photographer’s agency and paid them to generate prints, not only of the shots Life had used, but all the relevant shots in their negative files. She’d been sent to do the same at most of the other prominent photo agencies, because Marlene believed that almost everything you wanted to know about had been photographed by somebody, somewhere, and this was especially important in a situation where she didn’t really understand what she was searching for. Again, the two big questions: First, why now? The man had been dead twenty-three years, the daughter had let it lie all that time, and then it had become desperately important. Marlene had asked, and been given the answer, not very satisfactory, that Ms. Fein had decided it was time. Clearly something to do with leaving the hubbie, divorcing in a sense from the Mob. That made some sense, but Marlene thirsted after details. The second was, why had a supreme courtroom master copped a plea to something he hadn’t done? Or maybe he had done it. Something to explore with the old-timers.

She thumbed through the stack of glossies. A set of Gerald Fein in happier days: here was one of him entering a nightclub (El Morocco) with a blond woman on his arm, a beefy guy on the other side, smiling. The woman was Celia Fein, the wife, a looker, circa 1955; the guy was Charlie Tuna. Fein hung out with very bad people, and he also took his wife to nightclubs. The lady on Charlie Tuna’s arm was not his wife. Other nightclub shots, Fein at a long banquette table, laughing with the scum of the earth, dancing with the wife, talking earnestly with Sal Bollano. Where was Panofsky? Not a night-clubber? Maybe he didn’t like to get his picture taken. Next, some domestic shots, Fein and Celia, with little Vivian, not so little in this one, pretty like her mother, blond and delicate. It was a series of shots taken at some civic affair, all of them dressed in late-fifties high style, Fein himself in a double-breasted suit and topcoat, Celia in a fur coat, Vivian in a white fur jacket and matching hat. About fourteen, Marlene estimated, smiling shyly at the lens, while her daddy radiated love and bonhomie around him. Marlene studied the man’s smiling face. Energy, was the first impression, boiling spirit, barely contained behind the smile, the glinting eyes, the jutting jaw. One of the generation impressed by the fabled insouciance of FDR, Fein had adopted the lifted chin, the upward-pointing smoking apparatus, in Fein’s case a panatela rather than a cigarette holder, and he was able to bring it off too, because he was smoothly handsome in that tailored, buffed, 1940s way: wavy dark hair, large pale eyes, a noble nose, terrific even white teeth, a solid chin with a Clark Gable dimple in the center of it. Good-sized man, too, athletic, broad-shouldered. Must have been a terror with the ladies, Marlene thought, but it turns out he takes his wife to El Morocco with the bad boys. Flip to the next one. Same civic event: Dad and Vivian watching something, a theatrical act maybe, part of a well-dressed audience, but Dad isn’t watching the act, he’s watching Vivian, with oceans of love in his eyes. Marlene didn’t think that could be faked, not in a candid shot like this. The guy loved his family, no question. So why did he do it? He killed himself for the insurance? Make a note, check the policy value.

Another set, this one of the funeral, a big one, a mob affair, all the big guys sent flowers, both Bollanos, Big and Little Sallies carrying the coffin, and was that Abe Lapidus standing there, a stricken expression making his sad face sadder? Yes, it was, and who was that short, pear-shaped man, struggling to hold up the end of the casket? Marlene rooted around and found a hand lens. Yeah, unmistakable, although she had only ever seen the man garbed in black, on the bench: Herschel Panofsky, now H. R. Paine, His Honor. The ugly little fucker, as he was often called down at the courthouse, often by the current crop of Mob lawyers, and he was, his head too large for his ass-heavy soft body, a bulging forehead fringed by sparse, crisp curls, armpit-style hair (another nickname, The Armpit), a little parakeet beak of a nose, a sloppy mouth, not much chin. No Gableoid dimple there. Another shot: the ugly little fucker comforting the grieving widow and the daughter graveside, the daughter not being all that comforted, Marlene thought, a look of actual repugnance there through the tears, which just went to show, a picture worth a thousand words-she would have to ask Vivian about that when next they saw one another, maybe this very evening.

Then a thinner sheaf, these in color, the worst ones, and who knows how Sym had wormed them out of the official files, probably the same way she had procured drugs, whining and money, but here they were, what happened when a body fell nearly a thousand feet and reached terminal velocity before striking asphalt. He’d landed facedown, although it was hard to tell from the photograph; no, there was a black patch that had been the back of a well-tailored lawyer’s pinstripe, relatively untouched by the wide pool of horrors that surrounded it. Marlene made herself look, even wielded the hand lens, identifying the bits. Fein had gone out without any identification that morning-that could be a significant detail-which was why it had taken the cops some twenty-four hours to discover who the jumper had been. He’d left no note. Marlene put the lens down and gasped in some air. She’d spotted the dimpled chin, curiously blood-free, attached to a long, twisted piece of disassembled face. Well, enough of that! She put all the photographs away in their folders. She could make no connection between the robust, dashing man in the earlier photographs and the offal on Fifth Avenue. Sure, in literature they had them, Gatsby and Richard Cory, the shiny front with nothing behind it, but she doubted that Gerald Fein had been such a man. On what evidence? That look at the daughter, maybe? Panofsky was wrong; the law hadn’t been his whole life. Gerald Fein had a family.

Sym stuck her head in. “Phone for you. Some woman named Chau. Wants to know where Lucy’s at.”

“I’ll take it in back.” Marlene got up, stretched, yawned, and went back to her desk, located behind a bookcase full of potted plants in the rear of the big room.

Dr. Chau introduced herself and informed Marlene that Lucy had not shown for their noon lunch date; nor had she arrived at one-thirty for her regular lab session. She had never missed one before.

“Maybe she just forgot,” said Marlene, not believing this at all. “I mean, she’s a genius, but she’s twelve.”

Chau seemed satisfied with this, and Marlene got rid of her as soon as she could, pressed the disconnect, and immediately dialed Tran’s pager. She waited. The torment lasted ten minutes, and then Tran was on the phone.

“Is Lucy with you?”

A rather long pause. “I presume she is not at the laboratory, then.”

“No, they just called. Tran, you don’t think. .? I mean, those men who bothered them before. .”

“I very much doubt it, Marie-Helene. However, I will find her.”

“Where? Where is she?”

“Do not become upset, my friend. There is no one who wishes to hurt Lucy at present. She is an impulsive child and may have gone off somewhere. I will inspect her usual haunts.” In English he added, “No sweat it.”

“Don’t sweat it, you mean. ‘No sweat’ means a trivial problem.”

“This is also apt,” said Tran in French. “I will call. Until later.”

It had to be Leung, Tran thought, one of those phone calls from Li’s Restaurant had set up a lift, and they would have had to be good to have netted Lucy in daylight, in the city. The other day Leung had used his own boys, Chinese, and they had been foiled easily. He would not do that again. He would use. . who? Local people, certainly-you wouldn’t import a group from Hong Kong to lift a little girl; they might get lost or make some stupid error out of mere. . what was the word? Disorientation? Disoccidentation? There was no such word in any language, attesting to the cultural hegemony of the West. They would be Asian, probably; Tran couldn’t see a tong man hiring long-noses for such a job. That narrowed the field. Kidnap-capable gangs were not exactly common, even in Chinatown. Tran knew several, and he decided to start with the one he used himself, when he had need of such services.

The business offices of the Hoi Do an-truong were located above a Vietnamese grocery on Lafayette, just off Canal, in the heart of the area that Vietnamese gangs had recently claimed for their own. Vietnamese gangs are not squeamish in their choice of names, unlike the Chinese, who prefer flowery vagueness with a “harmonious” or “benevolent” tossed in. One Viet gang of the period was called Born to Kill; Hoi Do an-truong means “the society of those with severed entrails,” aka “The Sorrow League.” In Vietnamese folklore that name refers to an association of men and women of talent doomed to a life of woe by cruel fate.

When Tran approached the building, its doorway was decorated with the usual gaggle of black-shirted, sunglassed young thugs. Others leaned against late-model Lexus or Maxima cars, also black, parked and double-parked in the street outside. These young men had all been children during the war; most were orphans and the Hoi Do an-truong was the closest thing they had ever known to a family. Tran did not exactly approve of them, but he understood the wounds they had experienced and did not condemn their predation on the Vietnamese refugee community, many of whom had spent a good deal of energy trying to kill him back in their native land.

Tran passed through these youths without challenge and entered the building. They looked at one another through their sunglasses and laughed nervously. There was some debate among them as to who the old guy really was. Some thought their dai lo called the man Major Pham as a nickname, as an American gangster might call an associate King Kong or Terminator. Others thought he actually was Major Pham, the unkillable terror of the Iron Triangle, whose name was used to frighten children at a time and in a place where children were not easy to frighten. In any case, they treated him, as their leader did, with vast and wary respect.

The dai lo, or big brother, of the Hoi Do an-truong, called himself Freddie Phat. He was thirty-five, tall for a Vietnamese, and had a handsome, intelligent face. He wore fashionable tinted aviator glasses, a gray silk suit, and a dark blue shirt with a pale blue tie, open at the collar. His office was the kitchen of a tenement apartment in which many of his associates dwelt. When Tran barged in, he immediately dismissed the two men with whom he was talking and offered Tran a chair at the chrome and formica kitchen table that served as his desk. Tran remained standing. He said, “Tell me you didn’t take her.”

Freddie Phat swallowed the insult represented by Tran’s tone of voice, and his refusal of a seat, and the implied refusal of tea and snacks and a civilized conversation before getting to business. Phat was one of four people in the United States who knew who Tran really was (the others being Lucy Karp, Marlene Ciampi, and a woman who worked in a fish-packing plant in Texas) and so he did this out of respect, rather than because he was afraid of him (although he was afraid of him, too), respect for what Tran had been through in the service of his ungrateful country.

It did not occur to him, although he was an excellent liar, to lie in this instance. He said, “No, naturally not, although I was approached with the contract.”

“Leung?”

“One of his people came, a little before noon. I said no, and I suggested it was not a good idea to annoy that particular girl.”

“Who?”

“The word I have is that they went to the Vo brothers. The Vo would do it. The Vo will do anything, as you know.”

Tran paused and waited for his heart to slow to its normal rhythm. It was somewhat of an effort to control his voice as he asked, “It was not a. . water contract, was it?”

Phat shook his head. “Not that they said, only a simple lift and hold. I believe they wished to frighten rather than harm and also to find out what she knows about certain events.”

“I see.” Tran pulled out a chair and sat down. Phat thought he looked older than he had a few minutes ago. Tran looked across the table at the dai lo. “I will need your help to find her, all of your people, and immediately.” When he saw Phat hesitate, he added, “The usual rates, of course.”

Phat made a dismissive gesture. “No, it is not that. We would be happy to be of service. But this is, as I understand it, a tong matter. The Da Qan Zi has been mentioned.”

“And so you are afraid.”

“I am prudent. We are very small here, and the Chinese are very large. We do business with our own people and so they allow it, but if we intruded in a tong matter. .”

“You already have, the other day. Have you forgotten?”

“No, but at that time I didn’t know what I know now.” Phat was conscious of Tran’s gaze, that famous gun-barrel stare. He felt the first prickles of sweat start on his forehead. He said, “Let me do this. I will set my boys to watch their house in Brooklyn and that place they use on Hester Street and other places where they are known. If we see the Vo boys or the cousin, we will follow. I will call you as soon as the girl turns up.”

After a pause, Tran nodded sharply and stood up. At the door he turned and said, “If she is found safely in this way, I will owe you a debt.”

And what if not? wondered Freddie Phat, and shuddered, as a miasma of the old war seemed to drift through the room, and he recalled some of the stories about Major Pham and the fate of those he disliked.

Lucy surprised herself by not being more frightened. The worst thing really about the abandoned building was when she had to go to the bathroom, and they took her to what used to be one, but there were no fixtures in it and she had to go in a smelly hole in the floor where the toilet had been.

Being kidnapped by Vietnamese gangsters was no joke, of course, but it was also the most interesting thing that had happened to her recently, and she was fascinated with her captors. They did not know that she could understand Vietnamese and therefore spoke freely among themselves in her presence, there in the ruined room. Early on she had learned that they were not going to harm her, but had been hired to hold her for a man they called “the Chinese.” Lucy knew whom they meant, and the knowledge buoyed her, for she also knew that Tran was watching Leung and that he would very shortly learn what had happened to her and take appropriate measures. Lucy’s faith in Tran’s powers was in the same ballpark as her faith in the Deity; in Heaven, God disposed, in New York, Tran. With respect to the former power, she had a fine sense of what sort of prayers would be most effective, and so she did not pray for release from her captivity but for courage and endurance and also that when Tran found her, he would not be too awful to her captors.

These were two brothers, surnamed Vo and a cousin, surnamed Nguyen, and they all had adopted, in the usual way, gang nicknames. The smaller of the two brothers, a rat-face with brown teeth, was called Needlenose. The larger, beefy for a Vietnamese, and with coarse long hair and dark skin, was Sharkmeat. The cousin was Cowboy, hardly more than a boy, delicate-boned, wiry and nervous. Lucy gathered that he had been in the country for less time than the others had, and they bossed him around roughly.

“Hey, Cowboy, we’re going to call Kenny again,” said Sharkmeat. “You watch her.”

“Yeah,” said Needlenose, “watch, but don’t touch. We know you go for hairless pussy.”

“He is a hairless pussy,” said Sharkmeat, and laughing, they stomped out.

Some minutes passed. Nguyen spent the waiting time ripping a hole in the plaster wall with a large, heavy butterfly knife, but Lucy felt his eyes on her and when she turned her head, he was staring at her. She returned his gaze. Nguyen stopped his hacking at the wall and picked up Lucy’s bag. He examined her wallet, her notebook, the various odds and ends she had accumulated. He riffled through a French-English and a Vietnamese-English dictionary, and a paperback of Kim. He picked up The Tale of Kieu, studied it briefly, and then stared again at Lucy. He walked over to her, holding the book.

“You read this book?” he asked in English.

“No,” she answered, “I only look at the pictures.”

“But the book has no pictures,” he replied in Vietnamese, and then did a double-take when he realized that the girl had also spoken in that language.

“You speak Vietnamese!” he exclaimed.

“All Americans speak a little Vietnamese.”

He gaped at her. She said, “That was a joke.”

“But where did you learn it?”

“From a friend.” She indicated the book. “Have you read this?”

He looked down, flushing. “No, I had to leave school. To work, and then. . but I know this. .” and here he declaimed in a singsong voice, “ ‘The breeze blows cool, the moon shines clear, but in my heart still burns a thirst unquenched.’ ”

“Yes, that’s from where Kieu and Kim are on their first date and she plays her lute for him. It’s so beautiful. I wish I could read it better, it’s still hard for me. How old are you?”

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” she lied. “How long have you been in America?”

“Oh, six months, something like that.”

“And do you like this kind of work? Kidnapping people?”

He shrugged. “I have no choice. My family brought me over here, and I have to do what they say.”

They heard footsteps approaching. Lucy put her hand on his arm, which was warm and smooth. “Brother,” she said urgently, “please don’t tell them I speak your language. I think they would get angry if they knew.”

Cowboy stared at the little white hand on his arm. He nodded sharply and moved away as the other two men came back into the room. Kenny Vo, their leader, had apparently been contacted and was on his way. They sat back against the wall, chain-smoking, and talking about women and gambling and teasing Cowboy. Lucy shut her ears to that and returned to her translating, turning, as the poem recommends, the “scented leaves by lamplight to read the tale of love recorded upon green chronicles.” She had progressed to where the sisters Van and Kieu (both beauties, but Lucy decided to forgive them that, and besides, Kieu was possessed of a deeper charm and talented as well) were lamenting over the grave of a famous beauty of the past who had been betrayed and died of it, when Kenny Vo walked in and started barking orders. Vo had a family resemblance to his brothers, bearing a version both of Needlenose’s sharp features and Sharkmeat’s muscular bulk. He moved and spoke with casual brutality, and when he looked at Lucy it was as if he were looking at some inanimate and unappealing package, a sack of elderly chicken parts in need of rapid disposal, for example.

“Get her in the trunk,” he ordered. “Cowboy, watch the street.”

This was frightening. Lucy had always disliked enclosed places, and the dark, and being constrained, and so her control gave way, and she fought, and having been trained in boxing from an early age, she got a few good shots in before she was slapped silly by Sharkmeat and stuffed in the trunk of a Lincoln. Her bag was gone, but she had Tran’s book shoved down her waistband. An interminable, painful ride over New York’s infamously ragged paving, and then they popped the lid and threw a stinking blanket over her and hauled her indoors. She ended up on a mattress in what looked like the finished basement of a suburban house, a windowless room, panelled in cheap pine-look sheeting, with red and black linoleum on the floors. There were two doors, one locked, the other leading, delightfully, to a tiny bathroom. She used the toilet and then checked herself out in the medicine-cabinet mirror. Bruises on cheek and jawline, and a big smear of blood down her chin and spattered on her T-shirt from where her nose had bled: a mess. She washed her face gingerly and dried off with wads of toilet paper.

She went back into the other room, sat on the mattress, and listened. She heard the sounds of several men walking and speaking some tonal language, but could not make out what was being said. The Vo boys, she presumed, and maybe the Chinese guy. The talking became louder, turned into an argument. She heard stomping, slammed doors. From outside came the sound of car doors. A car started up and pulled away. Could they have left her here alone? No, she heard steps above. Sighing, she drew out the book and rolled over onto her belly. She translated:

Since time out of mind, cried Kieu,

harsh fate has cursed all rosy faces, sparing none.

As I see her lie there, it hurts to think

Of what will come to me hereafter

An unpleasant thought; she wished Tran would hurry the hell up.