their highly competitive mothers to make them feel in equal measures the love and wrath of siblings.
Ching was very smart, had a business degree, and a great job at a stable Internet company. She was a rising star. If that wasn't enough to cause April's mother, Sai Yuan Woo, a serious loss of face in light of April's low-class work in law enforcement, Ching was getting married in two weeks to Matthew Tan, against whom April's own Latino lover, Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, stood as a poisonous threat to the purity of all the Han peoples. Ching was getting married and April was doing her a favor. She'd agreed to talk to Matthew's friend, Gao Wan, in the heart of Queens on a Sunday because it was also a good place to go food shopping for her mother.
April hadn't guessed that this favor would involve listening to an endless, shaggy, Chinese dragon-riding tale (illegal entry into the United States) that was completely unbelievable not only because of the manner of the telling, but also the telling itself. Usually illegal aliens did not inform authorities of their plight.
'My mother was the daughter of a fisherman,' he'd begun over an hour ago. 'My father a river god.' Then the sly, appraising smile to see how she'd take such a tall story.
Right then April had known this would take a while. She appraised Gao right back. Could be he was trying to make himself interesting. Could be he didn't know who his father was. In any case, she was no stranger to the most elaborate of superstitions. Along with her ancestors, April herself half believed that the skies were filled with ghosts and immortals flying around making mischief in far greater measure than good fortune. And she often thought her own mother was the most powerful Chinese mythical creature of all, a dragon capable of changing shape as well as anything else that got in her way. Secretly, she believed her Skinny Dragon Mother had invisible armor on her body made up of far more aggressive yang scales than kind and gentle yin ones. Further, April had no doubt that her mother carried the precious pearl of long (possibly everlasting) life in her mouth. The idea was terrifying to her.
'My mother drowned when her seducer took her to his river god home in the weeds. I was orphaned before birth,' Gao went on cheerfully. 'My uncle had a small cafe in a tourist town. I learned to cook there.'
She watched his eyes as he described his teen years working in small restaurants and inris, then his horrific boat journey to the food mecca of the world, Hong Kong. He glossed over his years there, barely mentioning the sponsor who'd brought him here. And finally he hinted at a grave danger he faced from the gangsters who claimed they now owned his culinary gifts for life. April's classic oval face, almond eyes, and rosebud red lips remained neutral as she suppressed her irritation at this elaborate waste of her time.
She'd bet a month's salary that Gao's story was made up from beginning to end and that he had arrived not in the filthy hold of some Taiwanese tanker, but in the comfort of an American airliner, and no gangsters of any kind were after him.
April Woo might be an ABC—American-born Chinese—but she'd grown up in Chinatown and worked there in the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street as a beat cop, then a detective for five years. She knew what was what. She listened to Gao's tall tale— as she did to all the others she heard in the course of her work—without letting any intelligence leak out of her eyes. She'd learned young to hide all emotion, to do her thinking behind the blank wall of a quiet, stupid-looking face. She let the man talk and talk, making the wheel go around. As they said in the Department, what goes around comes around. The way of Tao in the new world also happened to be the way of the NYPD. Eventually she'd learn why Ching had insisted on the meeting.
At nearly four-thirty she dropped her wrist under the table and glanced at her watch. Her
Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, commander of the Homicide Task Force, was working today, supervising a double homicide and suicide. This morning he'd told her he might not be free until late tonight, so she eyed the food on the table to give him later.
Gao Wan had cooked an impossibly big spread for her. It was late in the afternoon, and the feast was way too much even for a regularly scheduled meal. As her host, Gao wasn't eating a thing and, as honored guest, April could hardly pig out, either. Therefore, the fragrant steamed pork buns; wok-fried garlic tops; crisp scallion cakes; translucent Shanghai noodles, wide as a man's hand and swimming in spicy peanut sauce; clams with oyster sauce; mussels with fermented black beans; eggplant with garlic; shrimp balls;
and sweet/sour fish sat there cooling on their plates as April waited for Gao to say what he wanted from her.
Gao caught April's sidelong glance at the potential leftovers.
'Eat, eat, please,' he urged for the fourteenth time. 'You don't like?'
'Oh, I ate so much,' April said politely. 'I'm stuffed.' She changed the subject. 'How did you meet Matthew, by the way?' They were speaking in Cantonese.
She'd wondered about this because Matthew Tan, Gao's supposed 'friend,' was an ABC computer expert from California who'd met Ching Ma Dong at a convention in Tucson. Matthew's Chinese did not extend much beyond
and
and
She'd be truly surprised if they'd ever met. April was spared having to wonder about it further by the ringing cell phone in her pocket. Caller ID said
so she said, 'Sergeant Woo.'
where are you?' Mike's voice sounded tense.
'Flushing, what's up?'
'We've got a synagogue shooting up in Riverdale; looks bad....' His voice broke up.
'Mike?' April turned her body slightly away from Gao. 'Riverdale where?'
'Burk ... aou.'
'Give me an address.'
'Independence Ave. Exit Nineteen on the HH Parkway. Copy?'
'Yeah, I copy.'
She wanted to know how many people were hit. Was anybody dead? But his siren was wailing, the radio in his car was squawking, and he'd hung up anyway.
The cop's life. April looked regretfully at Gao and the leftovers she wasn't going to get. 'Sorry,' she murmured. 'Something's come up. I have to go.'
Three
B
y the time April reached the restaurant door less than five feet away, she'd already forgotten Gao Wan. Crime always suspended real life. Didn't matter if it was her day off, or if she was in the middle of some important family occasion, a funeral or a wedding. When a call came, she hit the road.
Outside the restaurant, a riot of Asia greeted her on the busy Sunday afternoon. Colorful dual-alphabet and language signs for everything from acupuncture and ice cream to hair cutting and gourmet tea all screamed for attention on storefronts and in upstairs windows. Dresses, East and West style, hung outside store windows and in doorways. Merchandise— gewgaws of every kind imported from dozens of countries—jammed small storefronts. On the sidewalk, street vendors hawked a kaleidoscope of familiar products for homesick arrivals: plastic sandals, embroidered silk shoes, toys from China, incense, paper money, herbal cures.
Almost dizzying was the abundance of stalls featuring seductive, dewy-looking vegetables, long beans, cabbage, bok choy, radish, bean sprouts, bitter melon, oranges, Asian apples and pears. Nestled in their ice beds were cockles and clams, whole fish, shrimps, squid, baskets of clawing crabs still very much alive.
The sidewalk was jammed with mothers and children and whole families taking the day to eat and buy food. Everything Asian. Asian faces and products everywhere mixed with the overriding aroma of sizzling garlic and ginger. It all created the impression of a metropolis anywhere but Main Street, USA.
It was only a short block to the parking garage, but one that was clogged by hordes of people who were not in a hurry. April broke into sweat, dampening the armholes of the lime green shell under her lemon suit jacket. She
