Act of Revenge (24 page)

“He'll be sleeping. Don't worry about the dog, I'll take care of the car and the dog. What happened after lunch?”

“Oh. Right, so then I came here—I mean, I went to the shelter to talk to Vivian, tell her what I'd found out already, and get her take on it. And I was holding the big questions in reserve, hey, Viv, how come a nice Jewish girl marries a psychotic mobster? Also what happened? How come out of nowhere you just
have
to investigate dad's death after twenty years? You know, see if I could develop enough report to drop that kind of stuff on her.”

“Rapport, you mean.”

“Huh? Oh, right, rapport. So, anyway . . .” She seemed to go blank for a moment. Then she blinked and asked, “Sorry. Where was I?”

“You were going to tell her what you learned already. Marlene, are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Well, so I go in there, she's looking rocky, antsy, not a stay-at-home, our girl, maybe she misses shopping, getting in the Jag and driving the roads. A little cabin fever. She does pills, too. I tell her I went over the press reports, the background, the trials, disbarment proceedings, transcripts, and all that, and the story is that he was despondent over the loss of his livelihood and that's why he did it, and did she agree, was he depressed in the days before he did it or not? And she said, in effect, horseshit, my father wasn't down, he was always up, full of life, he had money stashed, he had plans for moving to California, starting over. Very passionate. She thinks he got whacked.”

“What do you think?”

“No evidence for it. No other parties seen in the area. On the other hand, no suicide note either. The police instigation, from the press reports, looks serious, no editorial suggestion it was anything more than a regular whatchamacallit, a . . . I mean, that he killed himself. I need to talk to your pal Black Jack, though.”

“Uh-huh, and what about your big questions? I mean, does she even know you know she's Bollano's wife?” Harry was watching Marlene very carefully, his stomach fluttering, his hands damp.

“No, we didn't get to that yet. I was trying to get her to list all the people involved in the cast then, who were still around and who might know something, and I mentioned her mother and she got upset, no, my mother doesn't know anything I don't, and we fenced around about that for a while, and then my paginator rang and I went down to call Butch, and while I was on the phone the bastards broke in. They must have jimmied the front door, and they used a . . . you know, a thing, a wrecking bar to break through the glass, and she, Vonda, shot at them but missed, and they started shooting at her and then . . . and then I . . .”

She looked up at him, her brows knotted, her thick eyebrows nearly touching. “I can't remember. First they broke the door down with the iron, and then I threw it at my mother.”

Harry's reflexes were not what they had been, not after the years of boozing, but he started moving when he saw her good eye roll up in her head, and so he was able to catch her before she fell off her chair.

Karp had himself driven home in a police car, a privilege he rarely exercised, except in direct line of duty, which, he now observed sourly to himself, home had very nearly become, with his daughter a possible witness to murder and his wife behind bars.

The little boys, at least, remained uninvolved in any crime more serious than Deliberate Spill of Apple Juice, two counts (Zik), and Assault With Plastic Brontosaurus (Zak). Karp held court on his lap in the living room, and let both of them off with a warning. Where's Mommy? they wanted to know. Mommy's still at work, he lied. He asked Posie to go ahead and feed the monsters, and asked, “How's Lucy?”

Posie rolled her eyes and pointed her chin in the direction of the girl's bedroom.

“She got home, went in there, locked the door, and hasn't been out once. She's grounded, huh?”

“In a way,” said Karp. He went to the bedroom and got out of his suit and into chinos and a faded sleeveless sweatshirt and, sighing, went down the hall to knock at the prison door.

“Lucy, it's me, open up.”

Steps, the click of the lock, more steps. He went in. A cassette recorder was playing some sort of odd music, a throbbing, low electronic droning, with a voice over it, husky, insistent, seductive, not singing but speaking in precise short sentences. Lucy had returned to her bed and picked up a small blue book. Karp sat on Lucy's wooden swivel chair and took in his surroundings, as always, with some wonder at the mysteries of how kids turned out. Unlike most children her age, Lucy was neat, almost compulsively so. Her room resembled the habitation of a scholarly nun: a simple narrow bed, with a duvet in the form of the flag of Italy, above it a colorful, rough, gory Haitian crucifix, low bookcases along one wall, the books lined up and arranged by subject and author, on the other wall a desk, excruciatingly neat, sporting a little row of dictionaries between plaster gargoyle bookends, above which a large cork board displayed calligraphy samples, a chart of the 209 common radicals used in Chinese characters, a print of a portrait of an elderly gentleman in ecclesiastic garb (Cardinal Mezzofanti, 1774–1849, once the Vatican librarian and, Karp had been informed, a linguist quite in Lucy's class), a school picture of her eighth-grade class, matted in cardboard, a poster of Bob Marley singing, a glossy photograph of a woman with short blond hair wearing sunglasses and a man's suit and tie all in white, and a colored map of the world, showing in color-coded boxes the languages spoken thereupon, with a scatter of red map pins indicating those Lucy Karp had already mastered.

“Who's the singer?” Karp asked.

“Laurie Anderson,” said Lucy shortly, not looking up.

“She's not exactly singing, is she? Not the kind of thing you can dance to.”

“I like it. I like the words.” Silence afterward.

“Put the book down, Lucy,” said Karp after a minute of waiting. “We need to talk.”

She huffed and snapped it down on the bed, and sat up against the wall, looking at him with that angry, bored expression every parent of an adolescent dreads to see. She had scrubbed her face and pulled her hair back severely and had changed into baggy black shorts and a white T-shirt printed with the photograph of a professorial-looking man with bushy hair, underneath which was the text
colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

“Your mom's in jail again,” he said, thinking once more that this was not a sentence he had ever imagined speaking in former years.

“What did she do?”

“Allegedly shot a couple of gangsters trying to bust into the shelter and grab some woman.”

“She kill them?”

“No, as a matter of fact, she did not. As I understand it, she waded into a hail of bullets, disabled the two bad guys with four shots, and got punched out in the scuffle when the cops got there. A pretty heroic deed, it seems. Uncle Harry's down with her to help get her through and bail her out. She should be home later tonight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thank you for your concern,” said Karp, and was immediately ashamed of the sarcasm. Sarcasm had been a major tool in his own upbringing, and he had resolved never to use it with his own children. It was worry, and tension, and suppressed anger, he supposed. He went and sat down next to her on the bed and placed an arm over her thin shoulders. She was stiff as a tailor's dummy. The Laurie Anderson tape came to an end. Off in the loft they could hear the sound of the TV and the ringing of the phone.

“Lucy, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Dad.”

“You're not fine. You were kidnapped and beat up today. It's okay to feel a little stunned. Maybe a couple of days at home will do you some good. It shouldn't take longer than that to pick up those guys.” No response. He said, “Have you thought of anything else you'd like to tell me?”

“No,” said Lucy, and then the door to her room burst open and there was Posie, looking distraught. “Butch! Harry Bello's on the phone, he says it's an emergency.”

So it had been. Harry was calling from Beth Israel Hospital. Something was wrong with Marlene's brain, which Karp already knew, but this was different, she was in surgery. This announced, shrieks and wails from Posie, sympathetic crying from the two boys, from Lucy, to Karp's surprise and bemused relief, a cool efficiency. The girl got Posie on an even keel again, comforted the babes, organized cocoa and cookies, dialed the TV to an anodyne program involving space creatures. Karp grabbed his wallet and a jacket, made a call, and headed for the door. Lucy had her sneakers on and joined him.

“I'm coming,” she announced.

“You're sure you're up for this, Luce?”

“She's my mother.” Looking down at her, Karp saw this fact reflected in the set of her pale little face and the look in her yellow-brown eyes. He grasped her hand, and they walked out together.

They went uptown in an unmarked, siren and lights. Harry met them at the neuro ward. Still in, no news.

“How long has he been here?” asked Karp.

Harry looked over at the corner of the waiting room, where Tran sat, motionless in a green plastic chair.

“About ten minutes after we got in. How did he find out? You got me. He hasn't moved, hasn't gone out for a smoke, and I know the little fucker smokes like a chimney.” Harry shook his head and did a sort of shuddering shrug, expressing a desire that such things not be: Italian mommies shooting and getting kicked in the head by Mafiosi and being friends with weird Asian bad guys. As he did this, his goddaughter (and that was
another
incomprehensible thing!) sat down in a plastic chair as far as the room allowed from Tran. Harry and Karp exchanged a glance and afterward looked elsewhere.

Something over an hour later, a small sandy man in green surgical scrubs came into the waiting room and asked for Mr. Ciampi and was surprised when three men and a girl leaped up. When he had got everyone sorted out, the surgeon, a Dr. Nagel, informed them all that Ms. Ciampi was in recovery, that the procedure had gone routinely well, and they could visit with her in about a half hour. He was under the impression that this was a sufficient interaction with the family and was about to toddle off when Karp and Bello both apprised him forcefully of the need to render more information, after which both of them shot questions at him as only a pair of consummately skilled questioners could. So they chatted about transient ischemic episodes and subdural hematomas for some time, the two men standing uncomfortably close, and when they got to the part about possible linguistic impairment, Dr. Nagel was startled to find that the skinny little girl was very nearly as well informed about the neurological basis of speech as he himself was, and he was extremely grateful that the surgery had been a fast drill and drain job and that the woman seemed to be perfectly healthy, because he would not have wanted to explain away any of neurosurgery's innumerable possible fuck-ups to this gang, no, not at all.

Lucy was shocked at how her mother looked when they rolled her into the room. They had cut off her hair and wrapped a turban of bandages around her head, and the big, nasty bruises around her mouth added nothing to her allure. Lucy had in her darkest, most secret, never-to-be-confessed thoughts occasionally wished for her mother not to be so damned gorgeous, and now here it was (if only temporarily), and the eruption of guilt and shame it occasioned overwhelmed the child and she gave a piteous wail and ran from the room. Tran hesitated a moment and then followed in her wake.

Karp cursed softly and pulled a chair up next to Marlene's bedside.

“How are you?”

She gave the inevitable reply, a slurred “Honey, I forgot to duck,” and then asked, “What's with the kid?”

“She had a rough day. She'll be okay.”

“I look like hell, huh?”

“Heaven,” he said. Behind him Harry Bello murmured, “Take care, Marlene. I just wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

“You're covered on this; the firm will take care of everything,” he said, and left.

“That's a relief,” she said. She grasped her husband's hand, hard. “I can't remember anything after I talked to you, about Lucy, except a little at the cells there, with Harry. I knew something was wrong with my brain, but I didn't know how to say it. I couldn't find the words. Would you still love me if I couldn't talk?”

“Somewhat more, maybe,” he said, and got a smile. “We have to stop meeting in hospital rooms, Marlene. Marlene?” She had drifted off, the smile still in place. He stayed there, holding her hand, also unable to find the words.

Lucy, meanwhile, had run through a teary blur to an exit door, gone down a flight, and collapsed on a stair, sobbing, her face against the unyielding cold steel of the railing.

“I want to die,” she cried, in French, as soon as Tran was seated next to her.

“Yes, I know the feeling,” he said, “and yet remarkably, at the times I most wanted death—I was presented with the opportunity to die in a very large number of convenient and glorious ways—I never took them. Also, I observed that death came to people who very much wished to live. So after that I was impressed with the idea that my life might have an interesting purpose, after all, not one I might ever have thought of either. This seemed enough reason to go on, until death should make up its mind to take me.”

Lucy snuffled, received one of Tran's infinite supply of clean hankies, blew, asked croakingly, “What was the purpose?”

“I don't know yet. Maybe it is you. Perhaps I am to teach you how to manage your gifts. Perhaps the fates that gave them to you, in a moment of hilarity, decided that a horrible old Asiatic person would be just the one to make sure you became the sort of woman who could put them to good use.”

“I detest my gifts!”

“Allow me to doubt that,” Tran said dryly. “In fact, not only do you treasure your gifts but, greedy little thing that you are, you desire those that belong to others. Those of your beautiful mother, for example. How many times have I seen you look at your reflection and recoil, appalled. The envy is, I assure you, quite palpable.”