Hanging Time

breathless and hot. Yes, you like it. Yes, I’ll do it again. Whenever you want.

Yes, yes, comparing the two poodles point by point, Camille noticed Milicia’s was darker around the head and ears, and Puppy’s legs were longer. Puppy was taller. Her head still hurt, but she felt better when she knew which was hers.

“You’re mean to me,” Milicia said in a pouty voice. “I try to take care of you and love you, and whatever I do you hate me. Why do you hate me so much?”

That tone of voice made Camille’s stomach queasy. Milicia’s voice was like a pretty pond with a mud-sucking bottom. All sweet and sad, with an ugly, dangerous edge. What did she want?

“You better go. Bouck’s coming back in a little while. He won’t like finding you here.” Camille pushed away the sick feeling in her stomach that kept warning her Milicia was there to be her boss again. Carefully, she scrubbed a spot on the wall she’d missed. “Can’t you see I’m cleaning for him?”

“Bouck’s not coming back.” Milicia spoke gently. “He’s dead. I’m the one who takes care of you now.”

“No, stupid.” Camille’s eyes twitched. She was furious. “You can’t trick me. He’s not dead. He’s coming back. I’m going to the hospital to pick him up in a few minutes.”

“That’s a lie. You don’t even know which hospital. And you couldn’t find it if you did. You’re the stupid one.”

Camille squeezed her eyes shut. Her head hurt. “Go away.”

Milicia sat on the stairs like a queen and poked at her through the banister bars with her finger. “Unh-unh. You’re stupid, and you’re crazy, too. All your life you caused trouble. And now this. Look at this place. You can’t keep house. You can’t even find food. You’re still little Cammy.”

Camille trembled all over but didn’t say anything. Milicia could do that to her, stop her from talking, stop her from breathing, anytime she wanted. The bad feeling in her stomach wouldn’t go away. Milicia was here to do something to her. What?

Milicia’s voice turned warm again. “You used to love me. Why do you hate me now?”

Camille shook her head. Her arms twitched.

Give me a lesson, Milicia. I promise I’ll be good.

78

What’s going on?”

It seemed to get hotter in the van with every second. April was soaked with perspiration, her hair so wet it stuck to her scalp.

She glanced over at Sanchez, hunkered down on his heels like a cowboy or a Chinese peasant. He looked cool in spite of the temperature, smiled, and raised a shoulder at her. No answer.

April studied him suspiciously. Mike had talked with the Captain before they left the precinct. He might not know what was happening in the apartment, but he knew what was going on at the precinct. In fact, she was beginning to think that all these meetings with Sergeant Joyce and the Captain were getting to him. Sergeant Sanchez had been pretty laid back only a few weeks before. Now April could see that he was walking with a firmer step, his eyes set on the future.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a tissue, considering the situation. She knew these high-profile cases could change things. Lots of people in the department got assigned to one job and stayed in it for twenty years. But other people moved around, did different things. Got ahead. Now she saw how it happened. They called in somebody ahead of you, and that person messed up. You got to move up to their place. Just the way she and Sanchez were sitting in this van instead of Lieutenant Braun and Sergeant Roberts.

She knew what Mike was thinking, because people who worked together had a whole language worked out. Everything meant something. If they were questioning a suspect on the street and Mike said, “I’m hungry. Let’s go for a pizza,” it meant “Cuff the suspect now.”

Braun and Roberts had messed up and now April and Mike were in the van.

Mike smiled at her. “A peso for your thoughts.”

April shook her head. “A whole lot of things. Taking the exam. Passing it and moving out of the Two-O. Failing it …” and staying in the squad. His wife Maria dying in Mexico. His being free and finding another woman to love. There were a whole lot of things to think about.

Mike’s mustache twitched. He knew what they were and passed them right back, knocking her flat with the challenge to do what she wanted, say what she felt, be herself, and not some wet rag from a movie he’d seen.

“What is it with you Oriental women?” he had once demanded, swiveling around in his chair in the squad room one day when they were alone for a few minutes. “Don’t you ever want to break out? Go crazy with love? Be wild, smash a wall? Tell your mother off? Get yourself off the hook?” He just had to let her know he’d gone to the damn movie.

“I’m out. What you see is all there is,” April had replied mildly. She never told him she’d seen that cooking movie about Mexicans who went up in smoke when they fell in love. Or that she had thought it was dumb because nobody was that hot.

“Washrags,” he had muttered. “I really wanted to slap them all.”

“You want to slap me? Go ahead, try it. See how much of a washrag I am.” She drew herself up and glared at him. “Go ahead. See how close you get.”

“Damn you! You know what I’m talking about. You can tear apart a class-A felon with your bare hands. You just won’t … I don’t know … grab what you want, go for it.” His hand slapped his desk the way he said he wanted to slap the women in The Joy Luck Club.

But he only shot her a piercing look. “When are you going to go for it, querida? You got to go for it yourself. It won’t just come to you.”

She shivered, not knowing what to say. “I’ll go for it when I find it,” she told him finally. “It’s just old Chinese wisdom to look very close at the quality of everything before you decide what to take. You Latins just jump at anything that strikes your eye. You don’t even know if it’s first quality. Later, when you get what you think you want, half the time you’re sorry.”

That shut him up for a while. But now she could see the question coming back at her in the overheated sound van. She detoured around it. “There’s nothing coming in here. Some great idea, bugging the dog.”

Ben played with the knobs a few more minutes. “I think she took the collar off. I don’t hear nothing. No breathing, no crying. Nothing. Did you tell her to leave the collar on?”

“She’s supposed to keep the dog and the collar with her,” Sanchez said.

“Maybe she disobeyed you.” Ben sounded sarcastic. “Maybe the dog is no longer with us in this world.”

“She wouldn’t kill the dog,” April said quickly.

“Maybe the other one would.” He tried something different with the buttons. Nothing.

“Doesn’t matter. They already took a mold of the dog’s jaw. The dentist said it was an easy one. Sometimes they have to destroy the animal to get it.”

“Nice.”

April glanced at Mike. “One of those women is a killer. I don’t want to sit here waiting to see which one walks out alive.”

“Detective, are you saying in your considered judgment, the time has come to go for it?” Mike asked.

April wrinkled her nose at the smell of Ben’s feet and nodded gravely. “Yes, Sergeant, I am.”

“Okay.” In one smooth motion, Mike stood, then slid the door open. “Let’s go.”

79

Milicia’s voice was soft again, pleading. “You won’t let me near you. You won’t let me love you.” She talked through the wooden bars, her voice trembling with emotion. “Why?”

Camille pressed her hands over her ears. The pounding in her head felt like Niagara Falls. She was rigid all over. Her body told her why.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Milicia asked sadly.