“What’s the occasion?”
“Difficult to explain to a layperson such as yourself, Butch, but it involves naked puts and several bent officials of the New York Stock Exchange, plus one of our fine congresspersons. It’s political as hell, and we’re going in there to brief Jack.”
“Mazeltov. Can I sneak in there for five before you get going?”
“We’ve been waiting eighteen months,” said V.T. “Be my guest.”
“Thanks,” said Karp, and paused. “Oh, by the way, any progress on the Chinese puzzle?”
“Not really, I’m sad to say. But I did have one thought. The Chinese approach to banking, as to fire drills and handball, is sometimes strange. It’s similar to what European banking was like in the fourteenth century. For example, suppose the Medici bank wished to tranfer ten thousand gold florins to Frankfurt-”
“V.T., could we bring it right up to present? I’m on a tight schedule.”
V.T. pouted but complied. “The Sesame Street version, okay: it seems Chinese merchants often have a sideline in money holding and transfer. You give them cash, they give you a ticket. Show that ticket in Hong Kong or Canton, say the magic words, and you get your money back, without any pesky questions from governments about currency transfer.”
“So that could be how our boy Leung got operating funds into New York?”
“I’d say it was the only way, unless he portered in cash.”
“Thanks, V.T., we’ll check it out.”
“Wait a minute, who’s Leung? I was talking about Lie, alias Nia.”
“They’re all the same guy,” said Karp, and went through the door.
Keegan was riffling papers when Karp entered. He looked up and said, “You got some color in your face. I thought you were taking a week.”
“I am, but this couldn’t wait,” he said, and gave Keegan the Sesame Street version of the truth about Willie Lie.
“Interesting,” said Keegan, and twirled his Bering. “What’re you going to do?”
“Mimi Vasquez is getting a warrant signed for Lie’s, or Leung’s, arrest as we speak. But before we grab him, I’m going across the street and give Colombo a heads-up on it. Give him a shot at doing the right thing and save him some embarrassment.”
“You’re hoping he’ll be so grateful he’ll lay off Guma?”
“That too, but the main thing is to reestablish some fucking civility between us and the feds. If we don’t get our acts together on this Chinese mob business, this city’s going to look like Macao in a couple of years. I think clear evidence that a triad is moving in on a Mafia family should catch Tommy’s eye, don’t you?”
“Maybe. But I think you should remember that when the words ‘gratitude’ and ‘civility’ are spoken, Tommy has to look them up in a dictionary. What’s your plan if he laughs in your face?”
“Oh, in that case I intend to drive the little fuck into the ground like a tent peg. He’ll have to wear a Reagan mask on his face for a year.”
Keegan laughed, a big, slow, hearty sound. “Ah, Butch, you’re the last true gentleman in the business, you know that? It’s your glory and your shame. Now, go and conquer, and send those damned pencil necks in here.”
The first thing the U.S. attorney said when Karp entered his office ten minutes later, even before asking him to take a chair, was “I hope to hell you’re here to apologize.”
“No,” said Karp, “actually, I-”
“Goddamn it! Do you think I’m going to let you get away with that kind of irresponsible calumny on a national news show?” Colombo went on like this for some minutes, his face red with a mist of forceful saliva forming in front of it as he ranted. Karp imagined it must have been an alarming display were you one of the man’s subordinates. Karp waited calmly for Colombo to pause for breath, and interjected, “I’m here to save you from making a serious mistake. If you don’t want to hear it. .”
“What mistake?”
Again Karp told the Lie-Leung-Nia story, with the theory about a triad taking over the Bollanos. At the end, Colombo did actually laugh in his face. It was a whinnying, unpleasant sound, quite unlike Keegan’s.
“You have to be joking. You expect me to abandon my key witness against the Bollanos because of this. . farrago of supposition and bartered testimony?”
“He’s not a witness, Tom, he’s a participant. No, he’s the mastermind behind the whole thing. He did Catalano on his own, and he’s trying to frame Pigetti for it. He did the Sings, too, which is why he tried to kidnap my daughter. He’s playing us. I was hoping you’d want to cooperate, but in any case, I’m having an arrest warrant prepared and I intend to charge him at least with the kidnap and assault. I have no doubt that once we’re focused on this, we’ll be able to generate a good case for the three murders as well.”
Colombo laughed again. “Oh, great, the evil oriental genius strikes. Hey, I appreciate you’re worrying about your daughter, maybe you ought to talk to her about who she’s hanging out with, but this is a pile of horseshit. A Chinese gangster uses a couple of aliases and then a little girl picks out a picture, and some lowlife Viet picks out a picture, and that’s your case? What I should do here is start asking some serious questions about why the D.A.’s office is so concerned about shying away from pounding the Bollanos that you’d concoct this fairy tale.”
Karp waited until his temper subsided and then asked, “Are you being deliberately obtuse, or do you really not grasp this? I’ll say it again: a Chinese triad is taking over a New York crime family, and you’re helping them do it.”
Colombo’s smile vanished into his face like a bit of toilet paper sucked down a drain.
“If that’s it, Butch, I got a meeting,” he said.
“Go ahead, get him,” said Karp into the phone. More waiting after that, a half hour, an hour. The phone rang, the private direct line. Karp snatched it up.
“Well?”
“Sorry, Stretch, we came up empty,” said Fulton.
“Oh, shit! Colombo, that son of a bitch, moved
him? Jesus, I’ll fucking arrest him for obstruction of-”
“Hold on there, son. The marshals watching him were as surprised as we were. He wasn’t moved. He took off, out a bathroom window. He got a call, maybe a half hour before. They listened in, of course, but it was in Chinese, and real brief. Then he goes in to the can, and that’s the last they saw him.”
“I can’t believe this!”
“Believe it, son. Wily Willie has flown the coop. Not hard, when you think about it. He’s supposed to be scared of what’s out there. They’re protecting him, not particularly guarding him from escaping.”
“You got him out on the air, right?”
“Yeah,” said Fulton, “and I got cars cruising the district and people covering the subways. Nothing yet. The little bastard’s gonna be a tough one to nail if he gets into Chinatown.”
Chapter 18
Leung sat in the rear of the van, surrounded by the silent White Dragons. In front of him Kenny Vo mumbled to himself and snapped the slide on his MAC-10 machine pistol. He had been acting strangely from the moment he had made the prearranged pickup up near the motel at which the Chinese had been a guest of the federal government, and Leung bitterly regretted ever having made use of him. If he’d had a team of Hong Kong boys, none of this disaster would have happened, but that, of course, was precisely the catch. He was not here as an agent of the Da Qan Zai, but on his own, hence without real triad support. It had been a gigantic, a colossal bluff, and it had nearly come off. For if he had gained control of a Mafia family, their connections, their net of influence, their sources of income, then his triad would have welcomed him warmly, and his superiors would have basked gladly in the credit. He realized that he had badly miscalculated when his ma jai had been so neatly lifted off the street. He had thought it was the Italians, grown suspicious, sending a message. But the Italians were asleep and stupid. No, it had been that girl, and some strange Vietnamese who unaccountably held h
er in some value.
He cast a sour glance at the boys sitting next to him. If the tong knew his true position, any authority he still had over these dog farts would immediately vanish, and shortly thereafter so would he. Meanwhile the terror of the triad still held sway, and perhaps something could be done to save things even now. The girl, first of all. It was by now perfectly apparent that she had seen him and had at last told the prosecutor. How they penetrated his persona as Lie was still obscure, but this was not of any importance absent the testimony of the Karp girl connecting him with the Sing killings. The Chen girl and the daughter of the illegals, Ma, would remain quite silent for the moment, and could be disposed of in the future.
If there was one. He must make prompt inquiry as to where the Karp family could be found. Apparently, like many Chinese officials, they had decamped to the villages, where, without doubt, they were lording it over their rural relations. The particular village would have to be located, although he had no idea how to do this. Meanwhile they were embarked on this absurd vendetta of Vo’s. Leung had agreed to it in order to secure the cooperation of Vo, which he still needed. Another item for future disposal.
His thoughts kept moving back to the girl Louh-si. A non-Chinese Chinese, a monster that could never have existed in civilized lands. Chinese saw but were silent; the lo faan were not silent but were blind. That was the way things were. And for her to have such a father, another piece of rotten luck. Perhaps it had been a mistake to go to the father, but no, it had been important to find out his character. Would his own greed fool him? Could he be influenced by threatening the daughter? Clearly neither was the case. Well, he had found another greedy fool in Colombo, and all that was necessary now was to eliminate the daughter. Not an impossible task, surely. She was, however talented, only a girl. The van was slowing, turning. It had left a heavily trafficked road and was now on some residential street. Vo turned in his seat and spoke to the White Dragons. He spoke a crude and badly accented Cantonese. “In and out. No problems. Get the boy. Anybody try to stop you, shoot them.” The van stopped.
This is like being pregnant, thought Marlene, like waiting for delivery (and why do they call it “delivery” since nothing less like receiving a package from a postal employee could be imagined?), but in this case it would not be new life in the offing but the end of something. Maybe of her, but not, if she could help it, of her children. She lay torpid as a gecko on her sling chair, under her hat, behind her sunglasses, her vision and her interest restricted to the three bright bands before her, beach, sea, sky, like the flag of some extremely laid-back tropical nation, and on it, the boys playing, Posie toasting foolishly on a blanket, the breeze bringing to Marlene’s nostrils the scent of her Noxema. The older girls had gone walking down the beach, with the dog and the policewoman. She could barely make them out as shimmering stick figures, identifiable among the other bathers only by the dog leaping into the surf after a tossed Frisbee.
Also in her field of vision, a distant rusty freighter, a large sailboat with all sails set, and closer in, a large white motor yacht. From behind her she could occasionally hear, borne on some favorable breeze, the sounds of Sophie and Jake and a couple of beach club friends playing rummy. Marlene tried to read, but the usual concerns of The New Yorker are not enticing when your kids are in danger. She called out to Zak not to venture so far into the surf. Out on the motor yacht they had launched a black Zodiac boat. The whine of the motor came intermittently to her as the two men in it gunned the outboard and raced around the mother ship, bouncing high off the choppy waves. She thought that looked like fun, although requiring more energy than she currently had to bestow. She wondered what had happened to her, to the recently competent, active, heavily armed Marlene, whether it was what the Jungians called regression in service of the ego (from which a more mature, self-realized woman might shortly emerge), or an old-fashioned nervous breakdown, or a leaky blood vessel that the docs had overlooked, which was on its way to reducing her to a persistent vegetative state. Generalissimo Franco, she recalled, used to keep two boxes on his desk, one labeled “problems that time will resolve,” the other, “problems that time has resolved,” and his administration consisted in moving, every six months or so, the entire stack of documents from the former to the latter box. Marlene typically had little in common with the late fascist, but with respect to her current state they were in perfect agreement: only time would resolve it. Out at sea, the Zodiac had stopped its circling. Now it was heading for the beach.
“Marie Helene? I am hoping you will call in and get this message. Phat has just called. There has been a raid on the house in the Queens where Lucy was staying, and the boy they call Cowboy has been taken away by his cousin, Kenny Vo. One of Phat’s people was shot. Marie Helene? I do not wish to worry you unduly, but a man who must be our old friend Mr. Leung was with them. I cannot imagine that Leung will have any more pressing interest than to get his hands on Lucy and her friend. I suppose they do not know exactly where you are, which is a benefit. Please, I urge you, do not attempt to return home until these people are captured. Meanwhile, I have taken the liberty of assembling a small group and will be leaving shortly for Long Beach. Call me as soon as you can. Until later.” Tran listened to the hiss on the line for a moment and then hung up the pay phone. He climbed into the back of Phat’s van and urged the utmost speed.
“How’re we doing, Clay?” Karp asked the telephone.
“Well, Stretch,” replied Fulton in an overly patient voice, “we’re doing about the same as we were doing fifteen minutes ago, when you called me the last time. No, Leung has not turned up. Yes, we have Chinatown in Manhattan crawling with cops. Every cop in the city will have the guy’s picture when the shift changes. We have ESU standing by in Chinatown and Elmhurst and Flushing. Bridges, tunnels, and airports, check. You want to hear the whole thing again?”
“What about that gunshot wound in Elmhurst Hospital?”
“Nothing there yet. The guy was Vietnamese, not Chinese. They’re on the case, waiting for a translator. Butch, I swear to God, anything changes I’m on the line to you next second.”
“What about my family?”
“Butch, aside from me and you and Ed, nobody knows where they are. They’re quote, at the beach. What beach? Can you imagine a Chinese guy walking from Coney Island out to Montauk on a hot holiday weekend looking for Marlene and the kids? We got a unit stationed at your loft.”
“We should send some people out to Long Beach, too.”
Karp heard an irritated sigh on the line. “Butch, that’s not a good idea. We’d have to work through the Long Beach P.D. and the Nassau sheriff and the staties, and you’d have more of a security risk than what you got now. We know this guy has bent cops. . we still don’t know who or how many. Look, you’re eating yourself up here, Butch. Leave this to us and go home. Have a shower, pour yourself a cold one, watch the Yankees game-”
“No, I’m going to drive back out to Long Beach with Ed. I want to be with them.”
“Suit yourself,” said Fulton.
“You got the number out there?”
“Tattooed on my hand, for crying out loud. Would you just relax!”
Mary Ma had been to the beach only once before this. She did not remember it well, for she had been only a baby, the sun had long descended behind Hong Kong Island, and the Ma family had spent as little time as they could on the sands, as they did not wish to encounter the immigration police. So she was happy, as always when discovering some new aspect of America, and she had, in addition, Lucy all to herself. They were, as the Chinese say, breathing through the same nostrils. The only thing that marred the perfection is that Mary wanted very much to have a bathing suit. She did not own one, no one in her family had ever owned one, she had the money to buy a cheap one, but out of sensitivity to her friend, she did not press the issue. Lucy was wearing a baggy shorts and T-shirt combo that obscured her despised body, and Mary wore a similar one, although in her case the round little
body showed forth at the correct places. She was no Janice Chen, of course (ah, yes, another reason for delight in Janice’s absence), but was clearly distinguishable from a boy. Thus, Mary was not enthusiastic when Lucy said, without preamble, “I want to call Janice.”
“Why?” Mary blurted, without thinking.
Lucy gave her a startled look. “Because she’s our friend. Wen jing zhi jiao, remember? I miss her.” She pointed to where a blue pay phone sign rose above the boardwalk. “Give me a couple of quarters.” Which Mary did, and they yelled to Debbie Bryan, who stopped, watching, and then they trudged up through the hot sands.
Lucy called the Asia Mall, and was told that Janice was at home, which she found very strange, and then they had to find someone to change a dollar and then Lucy called the Chen home and found Janice there. Lucy greeted her and began an excited recitation of their recent doings, but soon noticed a curious flatness in Janice’s responses.
“Jan, what’s wrong? You sound weird.”
“No, I’m okay. A little tired is all.”
“What’ve you been doing?”
“Nothing much. I went to see E.T. with Susan Lu and Amanda.”
“Amanda Shaw? Janice, we hate Amanda Shaw. She’s a complete dweeb.”
“Oh, and Mary Ma isn’t? At least Amanda speaks English.”
Lucy sensed this was not a profitable line of discussion and asked about the movie instead, and she got a synopsis, and things seemed to be settling down when Janice put her hand over the receiver. She seemed to be talking to someone else. When she came back on, she said, “Um, Lucy? Maybe I could get my brother to drive me out there for a day.”
“Oh, that’d be super cool! Like tomorrow?”
“Yeah, um, what’s the address you’re staying at?”
“It’s in Long Beach, 210 East Penn. When will you get here?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to call you back. Look, I got to go now. I’ll call you later.”
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