Vasquez waited a moment and then asked, “So. . what? You want me to bring in the Chens or. .”
“Yeah, bring them in. Nothing heavy, but you need to find out whether there’ve been any threats, keep your mouth shut or else. Re-interview the whole staff there too. Explain to everyone that keeping information from the authorities is a serious crime, and so is threatening people who have information about a crime. Get Wu to explain things in Chinese just to make sure they understand.”
She wrote rapidly on her pad and then looked up again. He asked, “You ever hear of a Kenny Vo? Some kind of Vietnamese thug?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Is he involved in the Sing double?”
“It’s possible. Swear out a warrant and have him picked up. He’s got an associate with a busted face, so have them check the emergency rooms. The charges are kidnapping one and assault two. Here are the details.” He passed a sheet of yellow bond across the desk. She read it and gaped.
“Your daughter?”
“Don’t ask, Vasquez,” he said. “Just do it, and when you’ve got the son of a bitch I want to see him. And make sure Roland’s in the loop on this. Go ahead,” he ordered, blocking the questions he could see forming in her eyes. “Do it now!”
After Vasquez left, he stared at the door that closed behind her, his ordinary impulse to action quite overcome by confusion and dull despair. Over the years he had become used to Marlene’s quasi-legal and perilous lifestyle and had even accepted that it might involve some danger to their children-Manhattan was in any case a risky place to raise kids. Karp was good at accepting things he couldn’t change. But the idea that Lucy was on her own hook getting into Marlene-style trouble had struck him like a clout on the ear. It was not to be borne. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this.
Karp was several leagues into the sere and unfamilar country of self-pity when the phone rang. Listlessly he raised it to his face and spoke his name.
“Butch? It’s me. What’s so urgent?”
“Where are you?”
“At Mattie’s. What is it?”
“Oh, not much. Your daughter was kidnapped and beat up today while you were out solving everybody else’s problems.” He heard a quick gasp over the wires, and then Marlene asked in an over-controlled, even voice, “Is she all right?”
“Yeah, she got out of it with a shiner and a bloody nose. She’s home and I got a cop watching the place. Marlene, what the fuck is going on? Will you please tell me before you get our kid killed?”
“I get. .? What the hell are you talking about? You think I was involved in getting her. .”
“No,” he shouted, “I’m the one who’s modeling semi-criminal behavior, and sometimes not so semi either. Jesus, Marlene, she’s up to her little ears in a double murder, and those fucking Chinese pals of yours are in on it, too. You better tell me what the hell is going on, because if I don’t get some straight answers right away-”
“Oh, shut up! How dare you accuse me of endangering my child!”
“No reason, except you’ve done it about a dozen times that I know of.”
“I’m not going to talk to you when you’re like this. I’m hanging up.”
“Marlene, don’t you dare put down that phone! Marlene. .?”
He heard a scream over the phone, coming as from far away, and then a loud bang, and then more screams, and a string of pops that sounded like firecrackers, but which Karp doubted very much were firecrackers.
“Marlene, what the hell. . ”
“Oh, Jesus!” said Marlene, and then, “Butch, I got to go now.”
He yelled her name a couple of times into an instrument unmistakably dead and, slamming it down, cursed fervently to the unsympathetic heavens. Then, being a good, even a model, citizen he dialed 911 and called in the shots fired and gave the address of the East Village Women’s Shelter.
Chapter 11
Marlene dropped the phone, leaped up, and made for the door of Mattie Duran’s tiny office, where she was knocked back against a filing cabinet by the incoming proprietor, who did not interrupt her violent Spanish cursing to make an apology. The woman raced to her desk, leaned over it, jerked open a drawer, and came away with her family heirloom, a Colt Peacemaker.44 caliber revolver, like the ones cowboys shoot in the movies, but this one was real and it worked. More shots sounded; above, a child began to shriek in terror. Marlene got out a feeble “Hey, wha-” but Mattie had already gone off at a run, the sound of her steps echoing in the narrow hallway. Marlene ran after her, unlimbering her own weapon, yelling for Mattie to for chrissake wait up.
A nice little firefight was under way in the shelter’s reception room. Marlene could not see anything much because Mattie had halted in the doorway, but she could hear the sound of a heavy pistol firing and the snap and thunk of bullets flying and striking the walls and floors and furniture. A man was yelling obscenities in the entrance hallway, beyond the door with the glass window, now shattered. Mattie raised the big Colt and took aim.
Marlene felt the rage rise in her; these morons, and Mattie Duran not the least of them, were going to keep shooting until someone was dead or a stray round traveled up into the building and struck some kid. Unlike most people, Marlene when enraged did not start shaking and doing irrational things. Instead she became preternaturally cool, steady, and calculating. Scholars who study men in combat have discovered that this anomalous condition is present in about two percent of soldiers, who make up the vast majority of both heroes and the perpetrators of atrocity. An odd gift to bestow on a Sacred Heart girl from Queens, but there it was, and Marlene used it now, first throwing a solid body check into Mattie, knocking her against the door frame and, not incidentally, ruining her aim. The Colt boomed in Marlene’s ear, deafening her. Then she was past Mattie and into the anteroom. Vonda the guard, she noted in passing, was crouched behind the thin protection of her steel desk, her face a ghastly greenish-tan, trying to clear the round jammed in her shotgun, while confronting her from the doorway were two obvious Mafiosi, one shooting, the other crouched low, changing magazines on a large chromed pistol. Marlene strode directly up to the two amazed men, firing rapidly, every shot finding its mark in a disabling but non-lethal place, the guy on the left going down with two through the shoulder and one through the other bicep (his gun rattling onto the floor) and the second taking a bullet through his raised kneecap; he went over like a ninepin, howling. Marlene kept moving, kicking their guns out of reach, passing the shattered inner door and up to the shouting man in the hallway.
This, as she had expected, was Little Sally Bollano, singing an aria in which the words cunt, fucking, stupid, and bitch appeared repeatedly in uninteresting combinations. Little Sally was locked from behind in the embrace of an enormous neckless man who filled the hallway like a cork in a bottle. This was Lorenzo Mona, Larry Moon as he was known, the Bollanos’ leg breaker and Little Sally’s personal bodyguard. Marlene read confusion and dismay on the vast, lumpy face: he couldn’t let the boss proceed farther toward what had become a free-fire zone, nor did he have the gumption to roll the little shit under one arm like a newspaper and carry him out of there. Marlene attempted to resolve his confusion by pointing her smoking nine at Little Sally’s low forehead. “Out! Get him out of here!” she shouted. This had the effect of redirecting Little Sally’s attention from the absent wife to the woman just in front of him, and he launched his signature fucking, stupid, cunt, and bitch at Marlene, together with a shower of fine spittle. He seemed not to notice the gun pointed at him, and on closer examination Marlene could see why: his dark pupils were contracted to the size of elementary particles. As per his rep, Little Sally had medicated himself before attempting a complex mission, with the usual result.