Act of Revenge (16 page)

“Forget it. She locked herself in a closet and swallowed the key. I've been trying to talk to her for a week.”

“You have? I didn't know you were a friend of hers.”

He laughed ruefully. “Neither did I.” Upon which he related the strange incident involving Janice and the two
ma jai
. “I called her up as soon as I got home,” he continued, “but it was like nothing ever happened. ‘Forget it, Warren.' Okay, I'll forget it, and then I ask her if she wants to go hang out or something, hit the arcade or the movies, but nothing.” He sighed. “I guess it was like a scam, them being, you know, nice and all.”

Mary was silent for so long that the boy stopped and looked into her face.

“What's wrong?” No answer. “Earth to Mary . . .”

Mary's face had gone the color of old parchment. She forgot to breathe for a long time, and when she did it came in a strangled whoop. When her mind unfroze, she found that she was running up Broadway. At Grand she looked around wildly, but all she saw was the normal street traffic and poor Warren Wang standing there, his shopping bags drooping from his hands, his mouth open in surprise. The terror she had felt in the storeroom was back again, redoubled. There was only one reason for Janice and Lucy to be followed, which was that somebody knew they all had seen the murders. This thought, once comprehended, blasted through Mary Ma's considerable intellect like a gas explosion, leaving behind it a single bare instinct, similar to the one that drives the whooping crane two thousand miles to a tiny patch of Texas. In five minutes she was at Crosby off Grand, her finger jammed into the button for Lucy Karp's loft, imploring Guan Yin, goddess of compassion, that Lucy might answer. Which she did, but coolly.

“Um, Mary, I'm kind of involved—”

“
Wah! Lòuhsì!
” Mary sobbed, and then started babbling in Cantonese, at which point Lucy, without another word, pressed the button that would send the elevator down to the street.

What Lucy had been involved in was prayer, actually on her hard little knees in her bedroom, clicking through her rosary, concentrating, hoping for an end to the fog of pain and confusion she had endured these past days, the isolation from her friends, the gnawing sense that she was letting her family down, and, barely acknowledged, the roiling pit where her feelings about her mother lurked, generating fumes of acid. Lucy prayed often. The preacher's kid as rakehell is folkloric, but that train runs in the other direction, too. Being the child of an agnostic Jew and a heterodox semi-lapsed Catholic, raised in a society growing more secular every year, it was perhaps natural that she should couch her juvenile rebellion in such terms. She was the most religious person she knew not in holy orders, and this gave her no little pride, which rather defeated the devotion, although she was only on the outer edges of understanding that.

When Mary rang, Lucy found herself annoyed at the interruption, and then, as she waited foot-tappingly for the elevator to rise, it struck her, in a wonderful wave of understanding. She had been praying, as everyone should, not for a solution to her problems, but for moral strength and the clear light, expecting something mental, some heavenly voice perhaps, such as was vouchsafed by St. Teresa, but no, here it was in the person of poor Mary Ma, the opportunity to extend loving kindness to an unhappy friend, which she immediately saw as the perfect answer to her present spiritual need, better than any amount of angelic advice, and presenting as well the opportunity to ask forgiveness for being such a complete jerk.

Mary Ma was not used to being a sign from God, and was unprepared for the enthusiasm with which she was greeted, the kisses, the embraces, the rushing, heartfelt apologies. The two repaired to Lucy's bedroom, locked the door, and exchanged tearful vows that they would not let anything tear them apart again. Besides being quite sincere, the whole business was very Colette, which gave Lucy considerable satisfaction. She was at the age when behaving spontaneously like someone in a book is particularly fine.

“So . . . what about Jan?” said Mary Ma after all this had been going on for a good while. She was quite over her fear, which had, after all, been ninety percent loneliness.

“Did you talk to her? I mean after.”

“Yeah, but she was still freaked. I couldn't get ten words in a row out of her.”

“Uh-huh. She's freaked out about her family. Janice wants everything to be a certain way, and if it doesn't go that way she thinks if she doesn't think about it, it'll sort of disappear.”

“What should we do?” asked Mary.

“We should find the killer ourselves and bring him in!” said Lucy in a dramatic voice.

Mary Ma gave her a look. “That's ridiculous. We're a couple of kids. No, the first thing is to get Janice back together with us and find out what's going on with her family and this thing, is she getting threatened or anything. The next thing is to make sure that none of us are on the street alone in case they try anything again. We should really hang out together like we used to. Also . . .” She paused and looked closely at Lucy, her eyes glinting behind her spectacles. “How did you get rid of those gangsters?”

“A friend of mine helped us. Why?”

“Just thinking. Have you got any money?”

“What? Why?”

“We could hire our own gangsters,” said Mary Ma.

“
Mary!
” cried Lucy, looking at the other girl rather as Dr. Frankenstein had at his monster when the thing first stirred.

“It's the logical thing. But first we have to grab Janice and get her back to the real world.”

Lucy sprang from the bed. “Let's go now!”

Mary's face fell. “Now?” she said hesitantly, which gave Lucy some satisfaction, as signaling the retention of her leadership in action, and this was augmented when they arrived at the Asia Mall and Mary got the willies at the entrance to the storeroom.

Lucy grabbed an arm and yanked, and would not let go, presenting Mary with the choice between entering what Lucy persisted in calling the Cavern of Death and causing a face-destroying scene. Lucy kept a protective-coercive arm around the other girl as they went down the narrow aisles between the bins.

They found Janice alone in the little stock office, where she had been put to filing invoices. She yelped and tried to flee, and Lucy had to get physical with her, which was not that unusual in their long relationship. Lucy told her (into her ear, lying atop her, Mary Ma assisting with the legs) in their usual mixture of English and Cantonese that she loved her, that she was her sister forever, that her heart was breaking, and that if Janice didn't relent, she would kill herself. Thereupon she leaped up, plucked a stapler from the desk, held it to her temple, and grimaced, her eyes shut. At which point Janice, whose own life had been as much a misery since she had walked away on Canal Street, laughed (and had missed that, too—who else made her giggle like Lucy Karp? No one), and then they were all laughing and crying, and tickling one another, until Mrs. Chen came back and threatened to beat them all with a broom, and (secretly transported with relief ) gave them all something useful to do.

Marlene got the call from Raney in her car as she was traveling back to her office from the East Village Women's Shelter.

“It's about time,” she said testily. She had not had a good morning.

“Do you want to hear this, or do you want to nag? You know, we're not married yet, so I don't have to take shit from you when I'm doing you a favor.”

She covered the mouthpiece, let out a maniacal shriek, so that pedestrians looked over at her in alarm, and then spoke softly into it. “I'm sorry, Jim, my Irish dreamboat, but I had a hell of a morning.”

“On the rag again, huh?”

“I might as well be. Men suck, Jim, you know that? You know something else? So do women. Meanwhile, what've you got?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot. Phil Wu caught it out of the Five. What he figures is a Hong Kong job. Gang wars type thing. He says he called the Hong Kong cops, and that's their take on it, too. Some gang over there, they couldn't get to these two on their own turf, they figure they wouldn't be that well guarded in New York, so they set up the hit for here. Wu figures the shooter was on the first plane back home a couple, three hours after he did it.”

“So this is on the back burner?”

“Yeah, more like it fell off the back of the stove, it's down there with the roach traps and the crumbs. Plus, there is absolutely no heat on this.”

“You mean from the community?”

“Right. Not like it was a couple of Germans got whacked in the Macy's stockroom. Or some tourist got hit on Mott Street. I believe this case will be transferred from Detective Wu to Detective Can, forthwith and henceforward. Like the man said—”

“Yeah, I know,
it's Chinatown
, and I'm getting so fucking tired of hearing that. Tell me something: Does anyone have any hint that there's some
local
connection here? With the community, with gang activity in the city?”

“Not that I heard, Marlene.” A significant pause. She could almost hear her pal switching into detection mode. “Why do you ask? Did you hear something?”

Marlene tapped at random a couple of buttons on the handset. “Gosh, Raney, we're breaking up. Thanks—I'll get back to you later.”

Stopped at a light at Houston and Lafayette, she addressed her companion. “Something doesn't jibe here, Sweets. If it was an in-and-out with some torpedo from Asia, what are they doing following Janice Chen? Why the hell is this Leung interested in her? Maybe I should go talk with Detective Can. Meanwhile, I thought my performance this morning was flawless. Flawless, but futile. So often this is the story of my life, don't you find? I lay the facts before the wretched woman. Brenda, darling, I say, it's your life, but based on my very considerable experience with relationships fucked up beyond all hope of repair, it is my strong advice to you that you kiss off Chester D. And get some help for yourself while you're at it. No licensed MSW could have put it better, don't you agree?”

The dog, catching the tone, made a sound between a growl and a whine.

“Of course you do. You are an intelligent creature. But not Brenda Nero. Not at all, especially when I told her that I had given the very same advice to her darling. What language! Well, really, I wash my hands of her. I intend to testify at Chester's trial, and I will advise him to plead justifiable homicide. Which reminds me, I have to shop around for a psychiatrist for my daughter, and while I'm at it one for the delightful gun moll Ms. Vivian Fein Bollano, my client. Can you do some research, Sweets? Hop on down to the various papers and pull clippings about Jumping Jerry? No, I better do it myself. In fact, I could get up to the
News
right now . . . oh, shit, that better not be Raney, trying his sly tricks on . . .” She picked up the buzzing phone. “Hello, Marlene Ciampi.”

The voice on the phone was, however, not Raney's but that of an official-sounding woman.

“Hello, excuse me, but I'm trying to reach a Mr. Roger Karp. The answering machine gave me—”

“Right, this is his wife. Can I help you?”

“Yes, maybe. Do you know a Sophie Leontoff? This is Beth Israel Hospital calling. Mr. Karp's number was listed as next of—”

“Oh, God! What happened to her? I mean, yes, she's our great-aunt.”

“Oh, good. Sophie took a fall this morning, and I'm afraid she fractured her hip. She's in surgery now.”

Marlene got the rest of the information, hung a right on Broadway, and sped uptown to the hospital, at First and 16th. She called Karp; he was out—of course, the hospital would have called him first. Sophie was Karp's maternal grandmother's younger sister and in Marlene's opinion the only one of her husband's relatives worth knowing, an assessment with which her mate concurred. A real character, Sophie—as a young woman she had been a major player in
schmatehs
, traveling to Paris to steal fashions from the couturiers, and then setting up as a dressmaker there. Caught by the war, she had spent some time in a concentration camp, which had not noticeably depressed her spirits, and had returned to America to become the driving force behind her late husband's Seventh Avenue empire. She smoked Gitanes, drank cognac, played gin with a group of louche West Side crocks, made an annual trip to Monte Carlo, and would have sewn all Marlene's and Lucy's clothes had she been allowed. It was hard to think of her as being sick, but, of course, she
was
closing in on eighty.

Reporting at the ward desk, Marlene was directed to a waiting room. There were two people there, an elderly couple. The woman was tiny, carefully made up, with huge, bright eyes, fine, sharp features like a mynah bird's and a thin cap of auburn-dyed hair that fell as a fringe across her forehead. She was dressed in a black silk T, a fawn skirt with stockings, and beautiful tan pumps. She also wore a string of pearls, a Cartier watch, a diamond tennis bracelet, and a good-sized diamond ring. Her husband—and it
had
to be her husband—was bald on top with a fringe of pepper and salt hair that descended somewhat below the collar of his knit navy sport shirt. He wore a well-cut linen jacket, also in navy, tan whipcord trousers, and alligator loafers with gold fittings. When Marlene entered, the woman was reading a paperback, which she had set into a needlepoint cover, matching her large needlepoint canvas bag, while the man was reading one of the tattered waiting room magazines—a
New York
.

They both looked up. The woman smiled. “Oh! You're . . . Oh, God, I'm so embarrassed, don't tell me . . . for Sophie Leontoff, am I right?”

“Right,” said Marlene. “I think we met at her seventy-fifth birthday party.” She held out her hand. “I'm Marlene Ciampi.” The woman's hand in hers felt like good-quality kid leather, cool and buttery.