“Taber no good. Maybe taber bad spilit in your rife.”
All her hope and confidence fled in an instant. April frowned, the dread of bad luck in her exams, her life itself, descending like a pall over a wedding. “I don’t have a bad spirit in my life.”
“Yes.
“Maybe the bad spirit is downstairs. I never heard of the guy,” April protested.
“He no guy. He docta.”
“That’s great, Mom. But I never heard of him.”
“Now heard of him.” Sai picked up the table and moved it to the other side of the room. “There, taber frat. Now spilit happy. You two can meet, mally, have many babies. Some boys, some girrs.”
April nodded. Great, now her mother was a feminist. She must really be desperate, never used to pray for girls.
“Mom, I have a new case. Want to hear about it?”
Sai nodded, padded across the room to April’s kitchen, and started rattling around. Feng Shui over, match made. Now she would make worm daughter’s breakfast and solve the case. April sighed and headed for the bathroom to take her shower.
She arrived at the precinct before seven-thirty. The Desk Sergeant who’d been on night duty was still there. He nodded at her. Upstairs the squad room was empty. It still smelled of old smoke. The evening shift were all smokers. The day shift were all trying to quit. It smelled disgusting. April had never tried smoking. She dusted the piles of cigarette ash off her desk, sat down, and punched out the number of the M.E.’s office to see if the autopsy report was coming in today.
No one answered, so she took out the copy of Maggie’s address book and dialed one of the numbers she’d tried the night before. The phone rang a bunch of times before a grumpy voice answered.
“Yeah.”
“Is this Bill Hadgens?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Detective Woo from the New York Police Department.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what, Mr. Hadgens?”
“I didn’t kill old Maggie. That’s what you’re calling about, isn’t it—hey, is this for real?”
“Yes, this is for real. Where are you located? I’d like to talk to you.”
No reply for quite a while. “How did you get my number?”
“It was in her telephone book.”
“So that doesn’t mean anything. We come from the same town is all.”
“I didn’t say it meant anything. I’m just trying to locate people who knew Maggie. Trying to find out what happened to her.”
Bill Hadgens thought it over for a while, then spoke. “I saw it on the news last night. Eleven o’clock. Really weird.”
“What was weird?”
“I don’t even watch the news. Last night I watch the news, and someone I know got killed. Weird.”
It wouldn’t be so weird to watch the news if he already knew what would be on it. She took Hadgens’s address, then called the M.E.’s office again. This time someone with a friendly voice picked up the phone, listened to April’s identification and questions, said, “Just a minute, please,” and put her on hold for five minutes.
Then a less friendly voice came on that seemed to come from a different department. April repeated the same things about being the detective on the Maggie Wheeler case and needing the autopsy yesterday afternoon. She got put on hold again. Finally someone came on who knew something. The Wheeler autopsy was scheduled for right about now, and they should have the report by early afternoon. April offered to go over and pick it up and was told that wasn’t necessary. She decided not to argue.
April looked at her watch. Eight-fifteen. The place was filling up. Sergeant Joyce, in a black skirt and apple- green blazer, her hair sticking straight up in a style that defied description, stopped by April’s desk and peered at the pile of papers she had laid out.
“Early afternoon for the autopsy report,” April said. She resisted the impulse to cover her notes with her hand.
“Bastards,” Joyce said. “Anything else?”
Sure. “I’m checking out the boyfriends. Where’s Sanchez?”
“Twentieth Street.”
“What’s he doing there?”
Sergeant Joyce shrugged and walked away, either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Maybe Sergeant Joyce was the bad spirit in her life. Muttering under her breath, April picked up her bag and headed out to meet Bill Hadgens on Fiftieth and Second.
18
I never went out with her,” Bill Hadgens insisted for the third time, eyeing April uneasily. “I can’t tell you anything about her.”
He lived in a filthy one-room apartment overlooking Second Avenue above an old-fashioned plumbing supply store. The furnishings consisted of a nasty-looking bed and a wooden chair. Dust balls had collected around piles of dirty clothes on the bare wood floor. Four or five years of grime clung to the windows, long since replacing the need for curtains. One window boasted a rasping fan that didn’t have enough power to stir the dust.
Bill Hadgens sat on the edge of his bed with his hands on his grubby bare knees. He had not bothered to pull himself together in anticipation of a visit from the police. After April’s call he had clearly gone back to bed. He was wearing cut-off jeans and no shirt. The side of his long, horsey face was sheet-creased and didn’t appear to have been troubled by a razor in some time. His shoulder-length brown hair was tangled and dirty. He didn’t look sullen so much as completely unconcerned, as if people he knew got knocked off every day.
“Why bother with me?”
“I told you. She’s a murder victim. We bother with everybody. Maggie had only a few male names in her telephone book. Yours was one.” April took a look around as she spoke. Guy looked like he didn’t eat much and hadn’t been out of bed in days. How many days—since Maggie’s death?
It had taken him a while to get to the door when she rang the bell. Then he looked surprised to see her there. He was grumpy and seemed to have forgotten she was coming. Guy was really whacked. She made a note to herself that she could always come back and take him in for possession if he didn’t want to cooperate.
“Yeah, well, we went to the same school. I knew her years ago is all.”
“What was she like?”
He shrugged, pursing his lips in a show of contempt. “She was kind of a dog, know what I mean?”
April shook her head. “Explain it to me.”
He shrugged again. “A dog. You know what a dog is.”
“If you thought she was such a dog, how come you’re in her phone book?” April crossed the room to the window and looked out. Not much to see. She wondered where the stuff was. His eyes were pretty dilated. Must be around somewhere.
“Who knows.”
“Then how’d she get your number?”
“Fuck if I know. Maybe somebody gave it to her.”
“You have any idea who that might be?”
“No—hey, what’re you doing?”
She took her hand away from the pile of clothes on the chair. “You have a problem with my sitting
