about to execute the change of direction, just dodged between oncoming cars. April inhaled sharply at a near miss.
'Woody, about your driving . . .' she said when her pulse slowed.
'Yes, ma'am.' One arm hooked out the window, the man was now driving with one finger.
'What was your last unit?'
'I was in Anticrime.' He accelerated, racing downtown as if he were in a car chase with a bad guy who'd just shot someone in a mugging gone wrong.
'I guess you did a lot of cowboys-and-Indians in that job,' she mused.
'We had some fun,' Baum admitted, slamming on the brakes at a red light.
April didn't doubt it. The boys (and the few girls) in Anticrime units dressed way down. They had unusual haircuts, tattoos, rings in their ears—whatever accessories they felt they needed to fit in with the scum they surveilled. Anticrime drove around in fast, battered, or flashy cars to appear badder than bad. Some never saw the light of day. Others looked like Con Ed workers. One Anticrime officer in a downtown unit drove a UPS truck. Another dressed like a pimp and drove a T-bird. Getting into trouble was what they lived for.
'I'll bet you liked the action,' she said.
He gave her a sheepish grin. 'It was fun for a while.' Then he got silent.
'Yeah?' she prompted. 'How long is a while?'
'Couple of years.'
'You were on foot patrol before that?'
'Yes, ma'am. One-Nine.'
That was the Upper East Side. Park Avenue. Madison Avenue. Lexington Avenue. Foreign consulates. Fancy restaurants, shops, and deluxe co-op apartment buildings. 'Nice quality-of-life neighborhood,' she commented.
'Yeah.' He rubbed at his short sandy hair. That, apparently, was all he intended to say on the subject. April figured there was an incident in his past he didn't want her to know about. She made a note to check it out when things quieted down.
So the haircut was something new for the new job. Probably so were the button-down shirt, the pricey blazer, and the loafers. The pistol in the ankle holster was no doubt an old habit. Like the driving.
'So you want to be a detective,' she said.
'Yes, ma'am.'
'In that case you've got to do more than cut your hair and change your clothes, know what I mean?'
'Does it show that much?'
She shrugged. Out on the street cops had to process people and their body language in a special way, work on adrenaline and instinct. 'Running on raw nerve and reflex is fine for the streets. Hey, slow down!'
'Sorry.'
'No, I mean it. You've got to put that testosterone on hold. You can't live to scare people in this job.'
'You don't like my driving?'
'In this job a lot of the time you're working with a different class of people.'
'Is this about my driving?'
'I want to live to enjoy my next day off, so that's a yes,' she confirmed.
'I've never had an accident off the job,' he said earnestly.
'Well, how about improving your record and never having an accident
the job? If you hit somebody or scare one of my most important sources to death, it's on my head. Understand?'
'Oh, so the
didn't like my driving. He complain?'
'Nothing more than changing color a few times.' She braced herself against the dashboard as Woody turned east without slowing down. This guy was going to be hard to train.
'Listen, about the case. Whatever you hear while you're on the job with me, you keep to yourself, understand?'
'Fine with me.' Baum sped up through a yellow light.
Apparently he'd decided against the West Side
Drive, preferring to try to break the sound barrier going downtown on Seventh Avenue.
April had kept the snapshot of Paul Popescu with her. Now she took it out of her pocket and stared at it for a while, wondering again who and where he was.
CHAPTER 19
B
y 3:43
P.M
., the temperature had gone up to a warm seventy-four degrees, but April felt cold shivers of apprehension as the car passed through the small area of Little Italy that hadn't yet been swallowed up by Chinatown. It slowed, then halted altogether in the traffic on Canal Street. At this hour the scene in Chinatown was wild, with kids out of school, merchandise blocking the sidewalk, residents shopping for dinner, tourists gawking. Life in Chinatown was a continual tide of humanity washing in, washing out. For many people, the neighborhood was only a port of entry, the hub where connections and arrangements could be made. It was a place crowded with a thousand dreams and schemes for every desperate newcomer. For tourists, simple hunger—delicious food for the belly—was an easier need to meet.
Baum parked the car half up on the curb, blocking a fire hydrant. He was going to get hassled for it, but April decided she wasn't going to play mother. He knew better, and when he got nailed it would be his problem. She got out of the car and was instantly assaulted by the smell of Chinatown and her past. Suddenly she was in her element, a fish in water.
The whole of her life was in her nose as she turned down Elizabeth. The complex mixture of odors brought memories flooding back. She could feel her temples smart from pigtails pulled too tight. Also the misery of loving boys who hadn't loved her back; her cold, cold face and feet from walking the home beat of the O-Five late at night that first year after eighteen scary months in Bed-Stuy.
April hurried down the block, past parked police scooters and three-wheeled vehicles. She felt as if she'd been away for years and years, and at the same time it seemed only a few minutes had passed since the last time she'd rushed down this street to work. Today, she didn't see anybody she knew from the old days passing by or standing in doorways, and that made her sad. At the precinct, several uniforms, wrestling new-issue bicycles through the narrow entryway, stopped to hold the door for her. And then the smell of roasting duck and pork, frying dough, garlic, rotting fish guts, and vegetable matter was replaced by the dusty air of the precinct where she'd spent five good years.
'Hey, look who the cat dragged in. April Woo, as I live and breathe. What's a big shot like you doing down here?' Lieutenant Rott was on the desk. He'd been on the desk April's last day in the house, probably hadn't been home to New Jersey since. His hair was grayer and his pink face was rounder, and he still looked mean and big, and pretty high up at the raised front desk, even though his squirrel eyes were trying hard to be friendly.
'Hello, Lieutenant. How's it going?' April was a sergeant now, so she put some warmth into her own smile.
'Not too bad. You're looking good. Now we have to read about you in the papers. That's how it goes, you move uptown, make sergeant, and forget all your old friends.' He shrugged big shoulders in the blue uniform.
'No, I haven't forgotten
Lieutenant. You're always in my thoughts. This is Detective Baum. He's in the Midtown North squad with me.'
Woody raised a hand. 'How ya doin'?'
Rott fielded a phone call. 'So, how can we help you?' he asked them when he slammed down the
