parents she was trying to manage and the case she had to solve. Two of her countrywomen had been destroyed by men not of their culture, and her own mother would rather poison her than have her end up like one of them. How could she reconcile the love Skinny Dragon must feel for her with the destructiveness of her act?
'You have to take something,' Mike insisted. He pointed to the filthy window display of nasty powders and roots. 'One whiff and he'll know what to give you.'
'I don't want any more nasty stuff. I'm going to get over it myself. I'll meet you on Allen Street.' She gave him a look that dared him to challenge her.
'How are you going to get there if I have the car?' he demanded, wondering if this was the time for their first fight.
'I existed before you came along,' she snapped. 'I know how to get around.'
He shrugged and got in the car, didn't say goodbye. Okay, he was hurt. Try to be nice and thoughtful and kind and what do you get? A smack in the face.
April's mother had tried nagging, tried whining, tried threats and dirty tricks; they didn't get her anywhere. Walking away was the only thing to do. He got in the car and didn't look back.
When he pulled up at the Popescus' building, the CSU van was already there, its back door open. Inside, Saul Bernheim, the skinny criminologist who claimed he never ate, was sitting cross-legged on the floor gnawing on a massive deli sandwich.
Mike pulled up behind the van, got out, and locked the car. 'Hey, Saul.'
'Mike, Mike man. You on this one? I thought you were working the
case. Mean.' He shook his head over the mutilation.
'Nah, we got him.'
'Him? Homo case? I thought as much.'
'No, boyfriend-girlfriend. The wife went back to her husband. The boyfriend sent her his crown jewels.'
'Doesn't ring.' Saul shook his head. 'Wasn't the victim with a he/she before he got wiped?' He took a bite of half-sour pickle and chewed.
'Yeah, but the he/she didn't do it.'
'It wasn't the hooker? You sure?' He ate more sandwich and gave Mike more puzzled looks.
'No, it was the guy's business partner.' Mike was salivating over the sandwich. 'He sent her the guy's nuts. The package had a return address.' Not a hard one to figure.
'Listen to me. Three guys, one a he/she? The other two fighting over a
and the winner gets his jewelry whacked. Come
This is a homo thing.'
'Thanks for your input, Saul. What are you eating?'
'Best pastrami in the world, right here at Katz's. Nothing else like it. Want some?'
Mike shook his head. 'You been inside?'
'No, I'm waiting for Carmine. He went out for cannolis.'
'Jesus, all you guys do is eat.'
'This is an aberration. We never eat. Want to fill me in? I told them I don't like coming back after the body is gone. This is a big fuckup, a contaminated situation from the word go. But do they care? What are we looking for, anyway?'
Before Mike could answer, Carmine Cartuso trotted up, carrying a white bakery box by its string. 'Hey, Sanchez, how ya doin'? You in on this idiocy?'
Saul eyed the box. 'You know how long pastry cream will hold up in weather like this?'
'Ah, stuff it.'
'You don't want to die of food poisoning. Come on, just one. Then you'll thank me for saving your life. How about it?'
'No way. This is for my wife.'
Mike interrupted the banter. 'Last night an employee in the building said she saw the woman jump. The ME's report says the victim had already been dead for several hours before the 911 call. Head injuries suggest her head was banged repeatedly against the wall or floor. She died inside.'
'So we're looking for wall and floor samples. Okay.' That was simple enough. Saul glanced at Carmine.
'Where was the body found?' he asked.
'In the back.'
'Okay, let's take a look.' Bernheim threw a knapsack over one shoulder. Carmine grabbed another, stowed the bakery box, and locked the van. The three men crossed the sidewalk. A chain-link gate, padlocked, barred entry to the narrow walkway between the old building and the high-rise next door. Mike glanced around quickly, then pulled a tool from his pocket and picked the lock.
'Thirty flat. Getting rusty,' Bernheim remarked as they sauntered into the backyard, where there was nothing to see but some old junk and garbage. And the yellow police tapes, indicating where the body had been. It wasn't a nice place to end up. The men looked up. A body tossed from any window in the high rise would fall on the other side of the fence. The ground-floor windows of the Popescus' building had air conditioners in them. The windows on the next two floors were closed and shrouded in black.
Carmine made a face, hunkered down, and crawled around examining the broken surface of the concrete. Bernheim crammed the last quarter of his sandwich into his cavernous mouth, snapped on plastic gloves, then marched to the building, working his jaws. He tried the back door. Locked. Still chewing, he turned around and studied the ground, mentally measuring the distance between the building and where a body would have fallen if it had gone out a window. Finally he opened his knapsack and pulled out long and short metal measuring tapes, a drawing pad, and a pencil. Springtime had greened the saplings and weeds that rose through the cracks. Carmine's fingers probed the sprouts and scraped up samples of cement containing brown stains.
'You're repeating. They did this part already,' Mike said. 'I'm going inside.'
'They sent me here, I'm doing it again. You never know.'
'Sure, go inside, secure the area for us.' Carmine and Saul laughed as Mike headed to the front of the building to see if anyone was home to let them in.
CHAPTER 44
A
pril didn't let herself feel uneasy as Mike drove away. She had work to do. She was stewing over Baum's show of independence and disrespect after she'd singled him out to bring along. He should be driving her around, supporting her actions, not doing whatever he felt like. No one had instructed him to tell the Kwans that the baby's mother had been murdered or to bring them downtown when she wasn't ready to talk to them. Bad form on his part. On the other hand, a little breathing space and a walk weren't so terrible a prospect. Only two waves of nausea hit her as she hurried to Ludlow, then counted building numbers until she found the one where the dead girl had lived.
She hadn't told Mike the reason she didn't want to go into Mr. Wang's apothecary. The truth was she was ashamed of her mother and didn't want all of Chinatown to know what she had done. Besides, Mr. Wang had probably provided her mother with the poison in the first place. If Mr. Wang was responsible for selling her such deadly stuff, he should be charged with reckless endangerment and assault of a police officer. The thought almost made her smile.
The murdered girl had lived in an ancient five-story brick walk-up with no intercom and a primitive buzzer that didn't work. The front door was locked. This was pretty much the same setup as the building where April had grown up. It was meant to discourage visitors, thieves, and officials of all kinds, including the police. After pushing the broken doorbell a number of times with no success, April tried knocking. No one responded to that either, but there was a face in the first-floor window.
'I have an important message for someone here,' April said in Chinese.
The ancient specimen wearing black glasses with thick lenses and a hot pink cardigan over her black peasant
