'Huh?' 'Doctor said.'
April shook her head. 'No real doctor could have said my boyfriend is bad for my liver.' She backed out of the kitchen. 'If I had a boyfriend.'
she didn't add. Both parents followed her into the other room. She felt on safer ground in the living room, turned on the light. Ah, normalcy.
Her father moved toward her suddenly, in slippered feet, and clamped his hand on her forehead as her mother had done. 'Hot,' he announced, as she had.
'That's because your hand is like ice. Sit down. I want to talk to you.'
Sai sniffed at the air around her daughter. 'Smell like monkey business.'
'I'm thirty years old.'
'Old maid,' Sai muttered. 'Double-stupid. Boyfriend no good.'
'He's good.'
'Why not captain?'
'He's almost the same as a captain.'
'No-good Spanish,' Sai spat at her.
'I won't hear that.' April was ready to spit fire herself. Her mother was not even five feet tall. Her father was not more than five two. She suddenly realized they were not the giants she'd thought. She let her voice show her anger. 'I will not hear that. I will not let you say that. Mike is a good man. He is a better man than anyone I've ever met. I love him.'
'You marry?' Sai screamed.
April flushed, unsure. 'Maybe.'
'No marry you, not good man,' her father said.
'He wants to marry me. I'm the one who's not sure,' April clarified.
'Ayiee!' Sai screamed. Worse and worse.
April threw up her hands. What did they want? There was no pleasing them. 'I'm going to bed now,' she announced.
'You eat something.' Sai tried a new tack.
'I ate.'
'You take medicine for your heart.' Skinny followed her to the stairs.
'I thought it was my liver.'
'Heart,' Sai insisted. 'Heart fever.'
Whatever. April had reached the first step when a high-pitched wail rose from outside. Sai charged out into the kitchen. 'Sollie, sollie, sollie,' she cried.
'What's that?'
Ja Fa Woo shook his head as Dim Sum charged into the living room barking excitedly, jumped on April, and hugged her leg with her front paws. Sai must have let her out and forgotten her. She continued to apologize to the dog in the dog's native language. 'So sollie, so sollie.'
April squatted down to let the beautiful apricot puppy cover her face with kisses. Her own heart beat as frantically as the dog's. There was no question that her parents' house was an insane asylum. And now she had to admit she
feeling a little hot, a little overwrought herself. Her parents were crazy; that point was not in doubt. But now it seemed, so was she. She'd actually thought Sai would kill her own beloved pet and make her eat it just to spite her. That proved she was as nuts as they were. 'I love you,' she murmured to the dog.
'Who love?' Skinny screamed.
'I love you, Ma,' April said dutifully. Then she gave Skinny a smile that contained the hardest silence for a mother to bear, silence number 101, a brand-new silence and more powerful than all the others put together:
Skinny made a wise decision and backed off.
Half an hour later April's pulse was beginning to slow and her eyes were closing, when the phone by her bed began to ring.
Sleepily, she fumbled for it. 'Sergeant Woo.'
'Hey April, sorry to get you up.'
'Alfie?' April's eyes popped open.
'Yeah.'
'Jesus. What's up?'
'We got a suicide you might be interested in. Young woman. Chinese. Looks like she might be your little mother.'
'Oh, God, where are you? I'm on my way.'
'Too late for that. The body's already been removed. I'd like to see you tomorrow, first thing.'
'You have a COD?'
'Looks like she went out of a window. Guess where.'
'I'll bite. Where?'
'The Popescu building. Eight o'clock in my office, okay?'
'Oh, Jesus. I'll get there as soon as I can.'
'You brought me this one, April, you better help me clear it.'
'See you, Alfie.'
April was sure she didn't close her eyes or sleep at all. She had bad dreams and was up before six, bothered by the horrid rotting smell, which had moved upstairs during the night. But she had slept and when she opened her eyes, she was stunned to see the electric kettle from the kitchen plugged in by her bed, steaming her mother's evil brew directly into her brain.
CHAPTER 35
W
hen they met just before eight o'clock Friday morning, Lieutenant Iriarte was in high spirits. 'Well, this is good news. Very good.' He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
'How's that?' April didn't get the reason for her boss's pleasure at the news of a young woman's death in Chinatown. But then she wasn't feeling up to par herself, and therefore was maybe a little slow on the uptake.
'We're out of it now.' Iriarte waved his hand for her to sit down. 'And that's good, because you messed this one up. Woo.'
April's eyes burned, her throat hurt, her head was reeling, and she seemed to be having some trouble breathing. One young woman had a concussion and was covered with bruises and burn marks, a baby was still missing, and another young woman was dead, and Iriarte was congratulating himself because he thought they were out of it. 'Can I go now, sir?' she asked, not wanting to hear how she'd messed up.
'Go? Go where?' The lieutenant's face registered annoyance again.
Green spots jumped in front of April's eyes. She'd just explained that Lieutenant Bernardino, her boss for five years down in the 5th, had asked her to come down there to question Annie Lee, the old woman from the Popescu factory who claimed she'd seen the dead woman jump from a window. 'Downtown, sir.'
'No way. You let a lot of things slip here. You gotta get back on track. Right here. I want you all over Popescu. Shake him up. I want to know where that baby came from.' He picked up a complaint from the pile that had collected since last night.
'The baby came from down there,' April told him. 'We haven't found him yet. I thought finding the baby was our highest priority—'
'And what's the matter with you? Why haven't you found it yet? You getting soft or something?'
April flushed.
'What does your shrink friend say?' Iriarte went on to another tack.
