'To get along with you I have to do what you want me to do, is that the deal?'
'What are you talking about?'
'You have an aggressive way of getting your points across.'
'What do you want from my miserable life? I didn't hurt my son. I didn't hit my wife. I could kill the bastard who did this to us.'
Jason shifted in his chair. 'Who
the bastard who did this to you?'
Anton looked uncertain for a moment, then shook himself. 'How would I know?'
'Okay, let's go backward a little bit. Let's talk about you and Heather in happier times.'
Anton relaxed a little. 'What do you want to know?'
'What attracted you to your wife in the first place?'
'What kind of question is that?'
'It's a background kind of question, exploring your feelings about each other, your issues.'
'She adores me,' Anton said, playing with the pants crease along one thigh.
'How did you two get together? What did you like about her? You went to Yale, right? There must have been a lot of girls to choose from. What made her special to you?'
'Well, that's a good one, isn't it?' Anton looked out the window. 'Oh, God.' He shook his head. 'She was there, wasn't she? That meant she had to be different.'
'Different from—?'
He jerked his head as if anybody should know. 'The JOBs.'
Jason frowned. 'The what?'
'Just off the Boats. Everybody calls them that.'
'She was an educated Chinese girl, born here, is that what you mean?'
'Yeah, she talked like us. I thought . . . you know, she was like us.'
'How did you meet her?'
'I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah, I do. She was a freshman. She had a class and she was wandering around lost. I gave her directions.'
'You liked her looks.'
'Well, she had that blunt dykey haircut a lot of them have, but, yeah, I thought she was kind of cute.'
'Was she your first Chinese girlfriend?'
Anton balled the fist that wasn't holding his drink. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'The choice of a mate has meaning, that's all. I just wondered what the meaning was to you.'
'My family. They're all bigots, you know. I was the smart one, had to get out of the family business. There wasn't room for three of us in the business, and, like I said, I was the smart one. So I went to law school. Hell, I wouldn't want to do what they do, anyway. They work with shit; everything they touch turns to shit.'
'What do you mean?'
'They're my relatives, but let's face it, they're fucking morons. Look at this mess.'
'Tell me about the mess.'
'The police took my fucking fingerprints! Even you know about it.'
'So why are you upset about it?' Jason asked.
'I don't like being accused. It makes me angry. I'm not like them. I don't use people. I always liked the Chinese girls; they weren't nasty like the girls in school. You never had to do anything to impress them. They just liked you, know what I mean? It didn't matter to them if a guy wasn't perfect. I never used them.' He pulled on his fingers, wringing his hands. 'I'm a good person. That's why this whole thing burns me so much. Did you see my wife's face? She's a mess. This is too much.' He dropped his hands to his lap and let his chin fall to his chest as if depleted of all his energy.
'Do you think Heather will tell her mother the whole story?'
Anton raised his head slowly, as if considering it. 'I don't know her anymore. I don't know what she'll do. Do you think she's crazy, I mean really crazy?' He asked it with his eyes wide, innocently.
'You suggested it yourself the first time we met. And again tonight.'
'I know, but there are other factors,' he said vaguely.
'You mean somebody hit her on the head with a broomstick.'
'Not me,' Anton insisted.
'Who?'
Anton pushed air through closed lips making a farting noise.
'How could I know? I wasn't there.'
Jason didn't like the guy, but oddly enough he believed him. Half an hour later, when Anton nodded off in the middle of a sentence, Jason went home for dinner.
CHAPTER 31
B
y evening Mike was beginning to worry about April. It had been a big day. He'd received a call from the Tel Aviv police in the morning with some information that broke his homicide case. He tried to reach April with the good news, but she didn't respond to his page. This prompted him to stop in Forest Hills on his way home to buy two cell phones. April still wasn't responding to her beeper when he got home at half past seven. Mike paced around his apartment for nearly an hour, then was astounded when she arrived with two shopping bags at quarter past nine.
where have you been all my life?' He took the shopping bags from her, drew her arms around his neck, and gave her a lingering kiss that threatened to go on for a long time.
She let her arms slide down his sides and around his back. Her fingers felt around in the waistband of his trousers. Still kissing him, she raised her knee up the inside of first one leg and then the other, like a spy on assignment, looking for a weapon.
He realized what she was doing and laughter bubbled up from deep inside. April was feeling him up and patting him down, arousing and teasing him at the same time. His pants were suddenly unbearably tight. Then, with sleight of hand worthy of a magician making tigers appear and disappear, April had his trousers unzipped and around his knees. He stopped trying to kiss her because he was laughing too hard.
'Ha ha ha ha.'
She sure knew how to disarm a guy. 'Ha, ha-ha, ha!' He was laughing, and then she had him nailed.
'Look at what I found,' she murmured. 'Sir, did you know you're carrying a concealed weapon?'
'No, ma'am. Nothing concealed about that.'
'Oh, yes, it was concealed until I revealed it. You have a license for this?' she asked, giving him a friendly squeeze.
'Ahhhh uhaaaa.'
'You wouldn't want me to take you in for this. This is big. What is it, a semiautomatic you've got here?'
'No, it's completely automatic. Ahhhaaah—' He made some more noises, not laughing anymore. 'Oh, my God. Okay, okay, you win,
What do you want?'
April stepped away, appraising him with a raised eyebrow and a smile the way men did so often with women. Then she patted him on his bare bottom and let him go. 'I need a few minutes,
I have to call my mother.'
Then she turned to look for the phone. And his heart, pumping away at his lifeblood, wouldn't let him calm down. She'd turned the tables on him. Once again he was on fire and didn't know whether to take his pants off or put them back on. Whew. The woman knew how to even the playing field, and she had a mind of her own. It was going to take some getting used to.
