Act of Revenge Read Online Free

from their heads joining into one round, ghastly pool, black as tar under the harsh fluorescent lights.
    Janice Chen was the first to move, sliding backward through the sticky, clinging vinyl and the whispering fake fur. Back in the hideout, Mary Ma burst into blubbering tears, and the two other girls threw themselves on her to get her to stop, Lucy going so far as to grab a handful of Day-Glo pink fur and hold it over her mouth. In a minute or so, Mary had regained control and they got off her.
    â€œOh, God, what are we going to do?” she whimpered.
    â€œI know that guy,” said Janice, ignoring this. The other two stared at her.
    â€œWhat guy?” Lucy asked.
    â€œThe guy in the blue suit, the guy who walked away. I don’t know his name, but he’s always hanging around with my father.”
    â€œA tong guy?”
    Janice nodded, eyes dropping. Lucy understood Chinatown well enough to understand this. No important Chinatown businessman, especially not a first-generation Chinese immigrant like Louie Chen, was unconnected to the tongs. The Chens’ tong was the Hap Tai Association, but Lucy had never heard a breath that they might be involved in murder, at least not recently. The tongs worked their wills far more subtly nowadays. On the other hand, there were certainly gangs in Chinatown, and gangs killed people, and nearly every gang had some affiliation with a tong.
    â€œWhat are we going to do , Lòuhsì?”
    Lucy became aware that both of her friends were watching her expectantly. She expected this. The word for “teacher” in Cantonese is lòuhsì , and Lucy had been called that, as a joke, by the Chens and by every other Cantonese speaker she had met from an early age. At first it had been amusing to give a little mite (and a female at that) such a name. Later, as Lucy’s personality developed, it seemed more appropriate, sometimes disturbingly so. Lucy was, in fact, the leader of the little band, both of the inner circle here assembled and of a satellite clique of a half dozen girls at school. There was nothing racial in this; Lucy would have been a leader anywhere, and added to that there was the thing with the languages, and also (although no one mentioned this to her) she was the daughter of the legendary Shenpei Meilin, the one-eyed, who shot people, and crushed evildoers without mercy, like a warrior woman from the old tales. So they looked at her to see what she would do.
    â€œWell, so first of all, we’re not going to tell anyone about this,” Lucy said firmly, and she detected tiny sighs of relief from her companions. No explanation of this was necessary, but she gave one anyway, to make sure the reasons were fixed in both their minds. “Mr. Chen didn’t know what was going down here” (this to save Janice’s face), “but if the cops know about Janice seeing this guy with him, he’s going to be in big trouble. Big trouble.” She meant with the tong, not the police. There was no question in any of their minds about this.
    â€œAnd, of course, Mary can’t say anything either,” said Lucy, and they all knew what that meant, too, because they knew that Mary and her family were ren she , smuggled illegals, with phony papers that would not survive any official inspection.
    There was a long pause after this, a silence broken only by Mary’s snuffling. Lucy felt the eyes. “Oh, right!” she said indignantly to the silence. “ I’m really going to rat you out. Cào dàn! Fàng gou pì! . . .” and more of the same, for although in English Lucy was as clean-mouthed as could be wished, in either Cantonese or Mandarin she could strip the chrome off a trailer hitch. “If you think that,” she continued, switching from Mandarin to Cantonese and moderating her tone, “the pair of you are dumb as wooden chickens. Do you think I would get my foster father in trouble? Or get