Judging Time

time. Throughout the interview, he managed to preserve a facade of calm and restraint, but the experience triggered a deep rage. Rick did not sleep at all on Tuesday night. By dawn on Wednesday morning he could no longer bear the inaction of waiting.

Early in the morning Rick decided to test the waters outside his building. He did not know that today would be the day of Tor Petersen's autopsy or how much was at stake in what the medical examiner found. He figured that people from the press would again gather around his building to see if this would be the day for him to come outside and break his silence. He knew that the police already considered him a suspect. He figured they, too, must have their representatives watching-the building. Before making his move, he wanted to talk to Jason again, but he was afraid to call him.

He now had a three-day stubble that was thick and surprisingly gray for a man of only forty. He was glad he'd always been so very particular about his appearance. No one had ever seen him tattered or with a three-day growth. Now he was glad to look as ugly as he felt. There was a doorman, but no elevator man, in Rick's building. He took the elevator to the basement. Before eight o'clock, no one was around. He traveled through the dark halls to the storage bin assigned to his apartment. He dialed the combination, unlocked it, and went in without turning on the light. After only a few minutes of rummaging around, he found what he was looking for: a rusty-colored parka, stained and dusty from years in a cardboard box that had not been properly sealed. Near it was a pair of lace-up snow boots, with their sides flopping over. He put on the snow boots and cut off part of the laces with the knife on his keychain so the tops would continue to flop. Underneath the jacket he wore a sweatshirt. With the hood of the sweatshirt up he looked dangerous. In his neighborhood, people would not make eye contact with dangerous- looking black men. He relocked the storage bin and went out the building on the Fifty-sixth Street block. No one was looking for him there.

At 11 A.M. Rick walked into the Persian Garden on Ninth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, where Wally Jefferson was waiting for him in the empty restaurant. Jefferson was sitting with his back to the wall at a table for two, drinking coffee and reading a racing form. When he saw Rick, he dropped the paper and got up.

'Mr. Liberty, I'm sorry for your loss,' he said. His cap was in his hand. He hung his head to show his respect.

'Sit down, Wally.'

Wally sat down. 'You okay, man?' he asked solicitously. 'You look bad.'

'Let's talk about your well-being, not mine.' Rick sat down in the outside chair, pinning Jefferson in.

When a tiny Asian woman came over to take his order, he waved her away.

'Look, I said I was sorry about your car. It was one of those things. You know how it is.' He looked at Rick strangely. 'You okay, man?' he asked again.

'I don't steal people's cars, Wally. So I don't know how it is.' Rick clenched his fist.

'I didn't steal the car. I told you 1—'

'You stole the car.'

'Now wait, that's a cold way of looking at things. I was a little strapped. I needed it for a day. I'll get it back.'

'Wally, you listen to me. My wife and best friend are dead. I don't give a damn about the car.'

Wally looked scared. 'No sir, I didn't have nothing to do with that. I swear.' He was nervous. His eyes darted toward the door. 'I swear it, man. Nothing to do with that.'

Rick's fist hit the table. His knife jumped off the edge and struck the floor, making a loud clatter in the empty room. 'You're a liar!'

Wally eyed the knife. 'No, man. He sent me home, I swear it. I don't know nothing about it.'

'What do you use the cars for?' Rick's fist hit the table again. The tiny Asian woman came out of the kitchen. 'How about you order,' she said calmly.

'Coffee,' Rick said without looking at her.

'Espresso, cappuccino, latte, Turkish? What kind coffee?'

'Regular coffee.'

She went back into the kitchen.

Wally shook his head. 'You don't look good, man. Maybe you should see a doctor.'

'I want you to understand me, Wally. I need to find out what went wrong here. You understand. You're not going to shit me. I'm going to know.'

'I told you-'

'No, you didn't tell me.'

'I can't tell you nothing about no killing. I don't

know about that. They were fine when I left them.' Wally looked at his hands guiltily.

'Then what do you know about?'

'I got two kids. I don't know nothing about nothing.' He gave Rick the goofy smile of a dumb person catering to a smart one.

Rick studied the grin for a long time, holding Jefferson's gaze until the Asian woman brought the coffee. Then he got up, dropped a five-dollar bill on the table, and left the restaurant.

Through the window, Jefferson watched him head downtown. When Liberty had passed from his view, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called Julio. 'You have to get that car back for me. I'm coming out to Queens to get it now,' he said and hung up before the Dominican could argue.

19

At six-thirty on the morning of Merrill Liberty's funeral, Mike called April at home to offer her a ride into the DA's office in lower Manhattan where they were meeting Dean Kiang at eight.

When she picked up after two rings, she was panting. 'Wei?'

'Wei, yourself. It's me.'

'Oh, Mike. What's up?'

'What are you doing?'

'What do you think?'

'You alone?'

'What do you want, Mike?'

The voice coming at him had started cool and was getting cooler with every exchange. He didn't want to let her know it bothered him. 'I thought we might make a formal date, have dinner tonight.'

'Oh, I don't know. Let's see how the day goes.' She sounded weary now.

'That's pretty evasive.'

'Well, I've got a lot to do. I may be busy.'

'Still evasive. I get the feeling things aren't going too well with us.'

'I don't know where you'd get that idea,' she replied, downright frosty.

'You're not talking to me, querida. We may be working the same case, but you're out there, flying away from me. I can feel it.'

'And that's the right way to go.' April finally exploded- into the phone. 'Mike, you call me querida in front of everybody. I'm not your darling. I've never been your darling. You humiliated me for a whole year at the Two-O, and now you're starting all over again at Midtown North. If you mess me up here, I get dumped out on the street with a big thud. Do you understand what I'm saying here?'

'Hey, what's going on—?'

'This is not a question of face for me. I'm telling you, don't play with me anymore.'

'What are you talking about, I never played with you.'

'Oh, come on, you know you did. You get off on making everybody think I'm your girlfriend.'

'I want you to be my girlfriend. I love you.'

'But I'm not, Mike. You're creating an illusion of something that isn't true. I'm just trying to do my job here. I don't want to take the heat for something I'm not doing.'

'Jesus, April, I love you. Why make everything so complicated?'

'It's only complicated when you don't get it. This game is over.'

'Oy, that was cold. I told you I love you. I don't say that a lot.'