Loving Time

On the way out Mike stopped to pick up the keys to the unmarked puke-green Chevy he’d been using for the last week. Outside the precinct door he offered them to April. “You might as well enjoy it while you can, querida.”

He nodded at two uniforms on their way in, then paused for a second to raise his arms as if in a great embrace of West Eighty-second Street, Columbus Avenue, the whole plum of the Upper West Side where the two detectives from Queens and the Bronx were lucky to have been assigned and which April might soon leave.

April’s eyes were on the solid block of three-story, mud-colored town houses across the street from the precinct. Somewhere in one of them was a flooding toilet she’d refused to deal with. It was far from the worst thing she’d ever done as a cop, but she felt kind of bad about it. Maybe the woman was old and didn’t know what to do.

For a few seconds, she stood on the sidewalk jingling the car keys. It was only the first of November, but already the air was cold and damp, just slightly on the pungent side. Maybe they’d have another bad winter.

Walking the Chinatown beat for four years, April used to gauge the changing seasons by the intensity of the garbage smell as it sat on the sidewalks waiting for pickup. Last winter there had been no less than eighteen snowstorms in New York. The city had been paralyzed again and again as mountains of snow and garbage cut off access from the sidewalks to the frozen streets. Yet the air had smelled sweet and fresh.

Most of the year that April had been in the Two-O, she had traveled around in an unmarked car working cases with Sergeant Sanchez even though there was no such thing as partners in detective squads. He called their relationship “close supervision.”

Close supervision of one cop over another could have several meanings, April knew. It could mean her work wasn’t up to standard and needed watching. Which it didn’t. It could mean Mike was her rabbi, showing her the ropes. Which he thought he was. Or it could mean he was just constantly hitting on her. Which he also was.

April hadn’t liked the arrangement. She didn’t like being second-guessed or watched, didn’t like being close to anyone or involved. Cops who were too involved made mistakes in the field. They got hurt. Mike had jumped in front of her gun once to save her life. She could have accidentally shot him. It still upset her to think about it. He knew as well as she did that involvement could mess up judgment, could be lethal. And still he worked pretty hard at involving her.

“I’m nostalgic already,” she muttered, buttoning her jacket.

Mike shot her a glance. “You mean that?”

“Well, it’s not so bad here. Bad would be Brooklyn. Staten Island. Lots of things worse than being here.”

They found the car in the police lot in a tight spot, squeezed inside carefully, and banged the doors shut at the same time.

“Why didn’t you just get the pay, then?” he demanded.

“You know why.” April slammed the car into reverse and made a number of tight maneuvers that almost resulted in disaster for two blue-and-whites and the Commander’s navy Ford Taurus.

“Hey, chill out. It’s not the end of the world.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, then why wreck the Captain’s car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I made a mistake.” It was the first time April had said it, maybe even the first time she had thought it. But now that the truth was out, it hit her hard. “I liked being a detective. I mean I really liked it.”

She pulled out into the street and jerked to a halt, narrowly missing a speeding bicycle messenger. “Sorry,” she muttered as Mike’s lowered head hit the dashboard.

“Get out. I’m driving,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry.” April leaned over solicitously. “Are you all right?”

“No, you nearly killed that kid. Get out.” Mike’s Zapata mustache quivered with outrage as he smoothed back his fine head of hair with both hands, checking his profile in the mirror.

“I didn’t even get close to him,” April protested. “Get off my case.”

She’d said it a thousand times. Back off. Leave me alone. What did she want with a vain, sweet-smelling, overheated, hairy, smiling non-Chinese person who would not stop calling her “darling” in Spanish no matter who was around to hear him? She wasn’t his darling.

“Fine.” Now he probed a nonexistent bruise on his forehead. “Fine. You fucked up, and you want me to stay off the case. Fine, I’ll stay off the case.”

“I fucked up? I made the list, didn’t I? You know how many good people didn’t make the list?”

April pulled out into the street carefully and stopped on Columbus at the red light.

“Fine,” Mike said a fourth time. “You wanted the rank more than the pay. You wanted a command of your own some day. Huh? Was that it? Maybe you like me so much you wanted to get away before you did something your mother wouldn’t approve of. How about that?”

“Okay, you win. You can drive.” April unfastened her seat belt and flung open the door.

“Get back in here. I don’t want to drive. It’s only two fucking blocks.”

“Damn,” April muttered, slapping her seat belt back on. Yes, yes, and yes. She’d wanted the rank. A lot of cops didn’t give a damn. They got promoted to detective and made it to first grade. They got a lieutenant’s pay and were happy without the rank. But she wanted the rank. The catch-22 was this: To get the rank you had to take the test. If you were a detective and scored high enough to make sergeant, you lost your job as detective because each advancement in rank meant going back into uniform and out on the streets again as a supervisor.

So, by forcing herself to study for and finally take the sergeant’s test, she’d put herself in the position of possibly losing her status as a detective, her accrued days off, and a lot of other things. There was no telling where she’d end up and how long it would take her to get back into the detective bureau. If ever.

So why had she done it, when she already had sergeant’s pay? She did it because only after you got to the rank of captain could you be promoted further without taking any more tests. Since the sergeant and lieutenant and captain tests were given only when the ranks got thin, you could hit them right or not. Five years ago, when the last sergeant’s test had been given, she had been too green to score well. Mike had taken his sergeant’s test when he was twenty-nine. He was already a sergeant when he went into the detective squad. Last time he had the chance, Mike passed on taking the lieutenant’s test because he already had the pay and liked his job. If he had another opportunity now, he’d probably take it. They were silent for two blocks. April double-parked on Columbus. She tossed the car keys at Mike before getting out.

Raymond Cowles occupied an apartment on the fifth floor of the building located on the corner of Seventy- ninth Street and Columbus Avenue. On the ground floor was Mirella’s, one of the many popular, pricey restaurants in the neighborhood that the officers from the Two-O never patronized.

The first thing April did was look up toward the fifth floor. The building faced the park at the back of the Museum of Natural History. The park looked gloomy now in the gray autumn light, with the few remaining leaves on the trees shriveled and brown.

The doorman was a small, skinny man with a uniform that bagged out all around him. He held a handkerchief up to his runny nose and began protesting as soon as Mike and April were in the lobby.

“Well, I couldn’t go up and open the door just because she asked me to. I don’t have the key, now, do I? What did she want me to do, break down the door?”

April produced her badge.

“Yeah, yeah. I know who you are. You were in that other case. A couple of months ago. The salesgirl, right …?”

April made a vague movement with her head.

“I thought I remembered your face. You came around asking—”

“Does the super have a key to the Cowles apartment?” Mike interrupted impatiently.

The doorman turned to him with a frown. “No, not everybody wants to give you their keys. Can’t make ‘em if they don’t want to, can you?” He pushed the button to summon the elevator. The door slid open. “Five E, end of the hall on the right. Probably just sleeping off a drunk.”

“Let’s hope so,” April murmured.