Loving Time

For two and a half hours, they had hung around in the halls of the Centre organizing their case. April collected the names and fingerprint sources of people known to have been in Dickey’s office for matches in the event others turned up. In addition, her list of people to interview had grown from twenty-five students, secretaries, colleagues, and patients to fifty—with the inclusion of the Centre’s two security guards who had initially responded to the call and the paramedics, doctors, and nurses on call in the emergency room at the time.

The two Crime Scene Unit partners photographed and sketched the exact locations of all files and papers and furniture; took samples of the dried vomit and other material on the carpet; listed, labeled, and categorized every single feature in the room including the nearly empty glass on Dickey’s desk. Among dozens of other items, they found traces of blood and some white hairs on the corner of the desk; two shirt buttons under the green vinyl couch; several shiny brunette hairs about four inches long; a soiled woman’s handkerchief, as well as the imprint on the carpet by the door of some black substance from the front wheels of the gurney used to take the victim away. The CSU partners had a few witty things to say about working on a site without a corpse but were able to piece together where Dickey had been standing when he fell, how he had fallen, and some of what may have happened after that.

Still at issue was the hour and a half Mike had spent in the hall negotiating with Ben Hartley and a person to whom April had taken an immediate and violent dislike when first she careened into view teetering on black patent- leather spike heels with her boss striding ahead of her—Hartley’s snotty, fat-assed associate, Maria Elena Carta Blanca.

“Like the beer,” she’d said, letting the words “Carta Blanca” roll off her fat red lips, as if she personally owned the company and reaped its profits.

Maria Elena was at the other end of the spectrum from the tall, thin, gray-suited, white-shirted, blue-and- red-striped-tied, uptight, upper-class, white-bread Hospital General Counsel Benjamin Hartley. Whether she had been hired for her legal skills or her ability to communicate with the largest portion of the local community the hospital served was not immediately clear. What was clear was that Maria Elena was the generic rival of April’s high school and police academy days, one of those cliquey, showy, flashy, cheesy girls whose walk was a male reveille—those girls who bounced their bodies around like Ping-Pong balls, talking dirty, acting dirty, eating men for breakfast. Getting all the attention. They were the kind of girls who made a Sergeant Margret Mary Joyce look like a debutante and April Woo like a flat-faced, flat-chested prude.

Maria Elena was a woman with lots of very curly black hair and an extremely pink suit several sizes too small for her that emphasized her large round butt. Under her suit jacket she wore a white crocheted blouselike thing with holes in it that allowed her flesh to bulge through, and a huge cross on the unavoidable bosom. And, unlike the self-effacing, modest, attentive, perfect person of Taoist teaching, she did not remain silent for a single second. She glommed onto Mike with an avidity that churned the acid in April’s flat and empty belly.

“I’ll be your contact,” she told him, licking her plump, moist lips in anticipation. “I’m Mr. Hartley’s associate.”

April took that to mean Maria Elena was a lawyer and not his secretary. Then, before any discussions were even begun, Maria Elena whipped out two—count ’em, two—of her personal business cards and wrote her home number on the back in case Mike needed to reach her at night. Mike pocketed one of the cards and ceremoniously offered the other to April, who did not want to take it.

Then the negotiations began. Hartley told them as spokesman for the hospital, he would have to ask them to limit their investigation to personal interviews, as that would be the least disruptive to the organization and its staff, and to get these personal interviews over as soon as possible. Mike said that was not possible because of the nature of the material found in the deceased’s office and the bearing such materials might have on the case.

The ensuing bickering centered around whether the police would box the files and the laptop and take them away or whether they would remain exactly where they were with the office sealed. Sergeant Joyce had indicated that impounding the files and laptop was her first choice. Hartley was insistent that Maria Elena be present to document and initial every single document. Further, Hartley’s stance was that while the personnel charts could be reviewed by the police investigators, the patient files were privileged information and therefore could not be examined for any reason by any outsider, death or no death. Beyond that the lawyer was fundamentally and unconditionally opposed to having a single document leave the building. That meant the detectives would be forced to return there many times to examine them.

After two telephone consultations with some unidentified person at the Two-O and the D.A.’s office, Mike was finally able to strike a deal that made him look extremely reasonable and magnanimous. The files would be impounded where they were, completely confidential for the time being. April knew all it meant was that they were starting at the other end of the string. It was when Mike gave his card to the big-chested Spanish beer bottle with the cross on her chest that April became seriously annoyed.

She put the squashed coffee cup into the brown bag that had contained their lunch—two plain bagels with cream cheese and two cups of coffee they’d stopped for at H&H Bagels on Broadway. April had taken some time to sip the coffee, chew and swallow the warm, fragrant bagel. Throughout the drive she had remained silent, her window open and the fresh wind blowing on her face, ruffling her hair.

They passed the site of a terrible crack-up on the Henry Hudson Parkway two weeks before and crossed the bridge out of Manhattan. It wasn’t until they were in the Riverdale section of the Bronx that Mike made a stab at conversation.

“I live around here,” he said abruptly.

Just where they were on the Henry Hudson Parkway the apartment buildings looked like luxury towers and the private houses like mansions.

“No kidding.” April knew next to nothing about the Bronx except that the Cross Bronx Expressway passed through a splashy, noisy, heavily populated street world of sights and sounds that were more like Puerto Rico than New York. She’d interviewed suspects in Coop City, Hunts Point, and knew the places where nobody would want to get a flat tire.

“Yeah, over that way, though, in Knightsbridge.”

“Looks nice. Close to work.”

“About fifteen, twenty minutes,” Mike admitted.

“Better stay there,” she said pointedly. “It takes me a lot longer.”

“I have a reason for moving. I could show you on the way back.” Without looking at her, he smiled his sexy smile.

“You mean you want me to go to your place?” April shook her head. No thanks. Last weekend she’d taken a big risk for him, spent half a day visiting three moldy, run-down, four-room ruins with exaggerated descriptions: “Delightful four-room townhouse”; “Charming, garden apartment”; “Sundrenched and quiet”; “Townhouse with garden.” All were way farther out in Queens than Astoria, where she lived, and none had even a low rent to recommend it. And she’d had hell to pay for it.

The truth was, she was still a little conflicted about his showing up at her house over the weekend, trying to make friends with her parents, showing off, tempting her with spending more and more time with him so she’d miss him when they were apart. She didn’t enjoy having to take his side against Skinny Dragon Mother, worrying all the time about how long he was going to keep his hands off her and what she’d do when his hands started taking independent action.

The very last thing she needed was to go to his place.

“Not my place. My mother lives there.” Mike laughed easily. “You should meet Mami.”

Yeah, right. April leaned out the window and made a noise.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. A cough.” April scrunched up his napkin and empty cup, stuffed them in the H&H bag.

They’d passed through Riverdale and were heading toward Yonkers up the Saw Mill River Parkway.

“You have a problem with meeting my mother?” Mike demanded.

“Jesus,” April muttered softly. Where was he going with this?

“Now you’re swearing. A nice girl like you.” He slapped his Camaro’s custom-leather steering wheel with one hand. “Very nice. Insulting my mother and my religion at the same time.”

The man wasn’t a cop for nothing. He knew exactly which buttons to push. April made another noise. Then, “What’s your problem, Mike? What’s with you? I’m not insulting anybody.”