“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.