Judging Time

7

Well, querida, ready to do battle?' Mike pushed his chair back from their window table at the Anytime Diner on Eighth Avenue and tried a smile.

'Not yet.' April glanced at her watch, then resumed turning the pages of her Rosario. 'We have a few minutes,' she murmured.

'Mad at me?'

His question made her look up. Her eyes felt puffy and dry, as if the part of her that was supposed to make tears had been claimed by the night's victims. She could hardly see a thing, and now she'd be on duty until 4 P.M. These all-nighters on turnaround days really stank, especially when one was a boss and had to follow up on everybody's ongoing cases, as well as organizing new ones. Now she had some sympathy for her former supervisor, the once-despised Margaret Mary Joyce, who had two children, nine detectives, hundreds of cases to oversee, and a former husband who divorced her for getting ahead.

She yawned behind her hand and tried to focus. 'How could I be mad at you? I can't even see you.' She squinted at him. 'What's your name again, Sergeant?'

'That's good. I didn't know you could tell jokes, querida.'

'I can't.' She soured her face so he wouldn't laugh too hard.

'Yeah, you're mad. I can tell. Look, I got the call. I didn't know it was your case, okay?'

'I'm not mad. I'm tired. I accept the lie that your presence here is a big accident. So forget it.'

Mike eyed the potential leftovers on her plate. 'You going to eat those potatoes?'

She pushed the crisp hash browns in his direction, shaking her head.

'You should eat more, querida. You're always sorry when you don't. I'm glad you're not mad.' He reached across the turquoise linoleum tabletop for the ketchup bottle, then dumped a lake of crimson in the middle of her plate.

'God, if I were a lady, I'd swoon,' she muttered.

'My table manners a problem, or does this trigger something important?'

April blew air out of her nose, thinking of some of the delicate habits of her people. Before she'd left Chinatown, she'd assumed that rotting garbage on the street and a dozen people speed-eating from the same plate were normal. Her family and friends dug into the communal serving platters with their chopsticks. They hoisted succulent morsels across great expanses of table to their own rice bowls, then lifted the bowls to their faces and shoveled food into their mouths, making great slurp, slurp, slurping noises with an urgency that might lead an outsider to think this was the last meal anyone would ever get.

This, however, was not the case at Mike's mother's table. At Sunday lunch six weeks ago, the one time April had eaten there, Mike's mother, who was as well fleshed and smiling as Sai Yuan Woo was skinny and scowling, had worn a purple dress that looked like taffeta and was cut low enough to show off her ample bosom. Maria Sanchez served fastidiously. She filled al the plates with the different foods from the platters in the center of the table, using a separate serving spoon for each platter. When everybody's plate was piled high with food, the four people at the table ate slowly. They put their forks and knives down frequently to savor the tastes and talk in the manner of people who had eaten not long ago and would soon eat again.

No, the ketchup had given her a flash to the body of Merrill Liberty lying in the bloodied slush. When April had seen her, not even a half hour had passed since the woman had died. Her body was still so warm to the touch, it made April think her soul might not yet have departed, might still be hanging around there trying to tell them something. April figured Merrill Liberty had been standing when it happened. Her blood had pulsed out of the hole in her throat with the last of her heartbeats, soaking the front of her dress before she fell. April felt a pricking sensation behind her eyes.

Patrice had said it must have happened almost the minute they left the restaurant. He told April he usually went to the door with them. Sometimes he walked with them out to Mr. Petersen's car. Yes, he knew the car well. He knew the driver. Sometimes they gave coffee or food to Mr. Petersen's driver. The driver's name was Wally Jefferson. Patrice said he didn't know why Wally Jefferson hadn't been outside the restaurant waiting for them last night.

'Didn't you wonder where the driver was?' April asked.

The question renewed Patrice's weeping.

'I didn't know he wasn't there so I didn't have any reason to think about it,' Patrice replied. And no, he hadn't known how bad the weather was. How could he know? He was busy taking care of customers. That's why he wasn't at the door with them. He'd been very busy. It must have been a mugger crazed for dope money, he insisted to April.

A few things the maitre d' said didn't play for her. Restaurant people always knew the weather. The weather accounted for the number of customers. Not only that, rain soaked people's shoes and made tracks on the floor. People wore raincoats when it rained, carried umbrellas. They dripped all over the place. Coats were wet or dry. No way Patrice could not have known. When a person lied about one thing, it was hard to believe anything else he said.

And as for his crying, you couldn't tell anything by tears. Sometimes people screamed, really shrieked. In Chinatown, relatives of victims sometimes went nuts, made enough noise to bring the house down. But one woman she'd informed of the suicide of her last living child, a son of twenty-six, had gone to the gym that very afternoon because she didn't want to change her schedule and disappoint her trainer. And of course the big-breasted widow of Tor Petersen might now be sobbing brokenheartedly over her loss. You never knew.

'You didn't answer my question,' she said.

'What question? I forgot.' Mike was working on the ketchup-laden hash browns.

'Are you keeping me company for the food, or are you in on this? I have to go back and get organized.'

'What makes you think I know?'

'Back at Liberty's you went to the men's room more times than you had to go. The phone is back there. I figured you were making some calls.'

He dabbed at his lips with his paper napkin, crumpled it, and dropped it on the table. 'Very good. Watching me like a cat. I like that.'

April shook her head. Her hair had grown out into a bob that framed her face and sometimes got in the way of serious conversation. 'Uh-uh, it's my job.'

'Gee, and I thought you loved me.'

'I don't do work-and-play combinations, Mike, you know that.' In their last case Mike had almost killed a suspect who'd insulted her. Later he told her that was when he realized he loved her. It was also when she realized he could be dangerous. But he was still more powerful in the department than she was, and if he wanted in on a case in her house, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

She smiled, had to be smart about this. 'You drove through a blizzard to help me out. Thanks, chico.'

'Ab, it's my job.' He smiled back.

'Uh-huh. I get the feeling you don't like the ADA on the case. What's the problem there?' She reached for the shoulder bag by her feet. Time to go. The lieutenant would be in. She didn't want to anger Iriarte by not reporting everything right away. She put the bag on the table and reached for her coat.

Mike caught one of her hands and held it with both of his, squeezing her fingers just enough lo give her the shivers. 'You like him?'

'He seemed to know what he was doing.' She did a quick suvey of the diner, looking for a spy from the precinct who could make something of this. No one she knew was around. She suddenly wished Mike's hand would travel down her neck and into her sweater. Weird. She figured she was overtired.

'Uh-huh, and your lieutenant, he know what he's doing, too?' Mike was asking.

'Iriarte? He dresses well, wants women to be women. Has a short mustache like your mother's boyfriend.' April was distracted.

'Is this a professional assessment of his competence?' Mike brought the tips of her fingers to his lips, tickling them with his mustache.

The gesture got her in the stomach. No, no, and no. Flushing, she grabbed her coat and scarf from the back