Loving Time

“I didn’t do it, you fucker. I didn’t do nothing. God gonna come down and she gonna rip your heart out. She gonna give your babies boils and plagues. That’s what she gonna do.” The invective from the woman in the holding cell came out in a long, bitter tirade. When it was over she began again. The woman was wearing three or four layers of clothes, all torn and reeking. She wouldn’t sit down on the bench against the wall. Occasionally she kicked at it.

“There’s roaches in here,” she screamed.

No one denied it.

“Hey, get me out of here. I didn’t do nothing. You put me in jail for nothing.” She hung on the bars of the holding cell, trying to get her fat head through. Her face was puffy and blotched. Her stringy hair was tied in a few loose knots that hung down on either side of her face.

The four people in the squad room were on the phone, ignoring her.

“Hey! You. Fucker. God’s gonna rip your heart out.”

Detective Aspirante, at the desk closest to Ginesha, the civilian secretary who answered the phones and took messages, crossed his legs. “Pipe down, can’t you see we’re working here?”

“I can see it. I can see you fuckers working.” The woman started her own private spitting contest. How far out from the bars could she land one?

For a few seconds it was almost peaceful—Ginesha, Aspirante, Mike, April, all talking on the phone, looking out the windows at the rain pounding Eighty-second Street.

“Aw, shit, don’t do that. Come on.” Aspirante was on his feet. “That’s disgusting. Jesus.” He looked around for help. “She’s spitting on the fucking floor.”

Sergeant Joyce came out of her office with a file in her hand. “What’s the matter, Aspirante?”

The woman in the holding cell screamed at Joyce. “He hit me. That fucker hit me.”

Joyce made a disgusted face at Aspirante. He shook his head.

“Oh, no. I didn’t even bring her in. Healy brought her in.”

“He knocked me down and raped me, too. That’s the one.” The woman pointed at Aspirante. “He’s a cop. I knew he was a cop. God’s gonna rip his head off. She is.”

“What’s her story?” Joyce demanded.

“Some old guy crossing Broadway stumbled into her grocery cart. She was napping on a bench. Heard the cans rattle in the cart, got up, and knocked him flat with a broom handle. Broke his arm with it.”

“Get her out of here.” Joyce turned back to her office. “We got a raper coming in.” She went into her office, kicking the door closed behind her.

“Hey, Woo …” Aspirante began.

April listened to the voice on the phone, ignoring Aspirante’s approach. “Well, when is he coming in? Uh-uh, I see.”

“Hey, Woo. The Sergeant wants you to get the Broom Lady out of here.”

April swung her chair all the way around to face the wall and the window, ignoring him.

Mike hung up. “What’s your problem, Johnnie?”

“She spit on the floor.” Aspirante directed his attention to three fat gray lugies on the floor.

“I got to pee. I got to pee. Get me outta here. I got to pee. I mean it. I really got to.”

“Hey, Woo. The lady’s got to pee. Take care of it, will you?”

“Yes, you have my number. Give me a call if you think of anything else.” April rang off. She turned to Aspirante and spoke in a quiet, hard voice.

“Don’t do that again.” She enunciated clearly. “Didn’t you see I was on the phone?” She looked up at him. It was a long way to the sneer. Aspirante was about six feet two, weighed about two hundred and thirty, maybe forty, pounds. Of that maybe an ounce or two was intelligence.

“You were on the phone?”

April stood up. Now it was five five to six two. “I’m off the phone now,” she said evenly.

Aspirante thrust one hip out as if to stop her from getting away if that was her intention and looked way down at her, truculent. “Well, while you were on the phone we got ourselves a crisis. The lady here has to ur-in-ate. Then the Sergeant wants her out of here.”

“It’s not my call.”

“When a lady has to pee, Woo, you’re the only one here to take the call.”

April didn’t say any of the things that came to mind. She had a fleeting thought that Aspirante would not be a friend if they met one night in a dark alley. But that was nothing new. In dark places, she didn’t think anybody would be a friend. Behind Aspirante, Mike got to his feet. Shit. Now the cavalry was on the way.

“Mike, I want to talk to you,” April said. “I’ll take care of it, John. You can go back to your cage now.”

Aspirante’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we’ve all got work to do.” Mike came around the side of the desk. “She said she’d take care of it. Now you go ‘Thanks.’ ”

But Aspirante couldn’t say thanks. It was a lot to ask for him to get himself centered in his big body and figure out where he was. He took a moment to do that, tried to figure out if he’d won or lost the battle, couldn’t tell. He stood there watching April call downstairs for a uniform to deal with the Broom Lady, get her to the bathroom and the papers sorted for the next step in the process. Healy was in the interview room talking to the injured man’s son. If the son wanted to file an assault complaint, it would be hours before the woman was back in her spot on the street. By then the rain might have slacked off. Aspirante went back to his desk. Goldie, a uniform with a long history of dealing with the homeless and crazy, came to take the Broom Lady away.

“You get yourself in trouble again, Mamie?” she asked the Broom Lady. “What are we going to do with you?”

Mike leaned against April’s desk. “What’s up?”

“The doorman on duty last night in Cowles’s building was a temp. It was the first time he’d worked there. He didn’t know anybody, so he had no idea who came to see whom last night, what time they came, or what time they left. No idea at all. He said he wasn’t feeling well, anyway. Had a bug and almost didn’t go to work.”

“So we’ll have to check with the other doormen. Maybe they know who Cowles was seeing. Or the shrink. She probably knows.”

“Mike, both shrinks said he wasn’t their patient.”

Mike nodded. “True, but Cowles’s appointment book showed he had an appointment with Treadwell two days before he died. She’s an attractive woman. Maybe they didn’t meet as doctor-patient.”

April chewed her lip, thinking about it. Could be they were lovers. “Maybe. Mike, did anything bother you about all those condoms?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Like what? The guy was into sex.”

“The semen stains on the sheet,” she muttered.

“How do you know they’re semen?” He kept his face straight.

“Supposing they turn out to be semen stains. Then what?”

“Okay. I get it. Why was it on the sheet? Why wasn’t it in the condom, if he was such a believer? Or in the partner, if he was just too hot to bother with one?” Mike scratched his scarred ear. “Maybe he didn’t get anywhere with the dinner date and jacked off into the air after she left.”

“Yeah, could be,” April agreed. Could be either of those things. People were coming in. She checked her watch. It was after four, time to go home. Tomorrow they were on the four P.M. to one A.M. shift. The day after that was their turnaround. Start at eight A.M. again. By then they might have an autopsy report.

Mike stood there, nodding. “It’s something to think about.”

She could tell he was trying to make up his mind whether to ask her to dinner or something. All that talk of semen and ejaculation must have turned him on. It was too early for dinner, though. They’d just had lunch. Finally he said, “Wanna go out for a beer? We could talk about the case.”

Now April kept her face straight. “Sure, Sergeant. We could do that.”

seventeen

All Monday afternoon Harold Dickey was flooded with memories of his affair with Clara Treadwell, begun nearly eighteen years ago when she was just a green resident. Then his job had been to follow