A
t eight-thirty April was on the road, heading back to Queens. At this hour the ground was in total darkness, the sky was her favorite deep blue, still backlit just a little by the dying sun, and the traffic wasn't too bad going south. Her mood was queasy, queasy. Mike was attending the autopsy without her. She didn't want to admit that she was glad. She had these groceries to take home. Then she was meeting Mike at his place. She felt unsettled. With Ching's wedding coming up, her family would be upset about the murder. Every bride in New York would be.
Her cell phone rang. With one hand on the wheel she fumbled around in her annoying purse that just couldn't stay organized with its numerous pairs of rubber gloves, her private notebooks and the Department-issue notebooks called Rosarios, her all-important address book, powder, lipstick, blush, hand cream, tissues, pens, .38 Chief's Special. Ah, right at the bottom she found the precious StarTAC. She flipped it open on the fourth ring.
'Sergeant Woo,' she said, hoping it was Mike even though they'd parted only a few minutes ago.
'Hi, it's Ching. What's up?'
'Ching, how are you?' April said cautiously.
'You sound weird. Where are you?' Ching demanded.
'Oh, on the road.'
'Working?'
'Yeah. What's going on?'
'Just wondering how it went with Gao. Am I a brilliant genius or what?'
April didn't answer. She knew Ching was a brilliant genius, but not why in this instance. She sighed as her lane suddenly slowed nearly to a stop.
'April, you
have lunch with Gao Wan, didn't you?' came the perky, happy voice of the one person in the world she didn't want to alarm right now.
'Oh, yeah. Sorry, it's been a long day.' Seemed like a month.
'Nice guy, huh?' Ching prompted.
'Very nice,' April said. Neutral.
'You don't have to do anything for him. I was just thinking he might be useful to you.'
April sighed again. How could the off-the-boat be useful to her? People had such funny ideas. 'I'm sorry, Ching. It's been one of those days.'
'Oh, God. Don't make me feel guilty. I thought you were on your day off.'
'I was, but something came up.'
'A murder like the Wendy's?' Ching said, a little breathless now because the cop stuff always scared her to death. 'The Wendy's' was a seven-person homicide and the worst case April had ever seen.
'No! No, no, nothing like that,' she said hastily.
'What, then?'
'Nothing to worry about. Just a police matter.' The lane opened up, and she hit the gas.
'You all right?' Ching sounded worried.
'Yes, of course. Talk to me. I'm sorry about Gao.'
April hit a dead zone and the connection broke. Nothing came out of her phone but a reminder of a phantom ear print. She tossed the phone back in her bag, vowing to call Ching back when she got home.
Then she was back on ears, reviewing what she knew about prints. Not a whole lot. Skin on the hands and soles of the feet had their distinctive swirls and ridges but no oil glands, which meant the telltale marks often invisible to the naked eye that were left behind on certain, but not all, surfaces by 'sweaty' palms and fingers were in fact 98.5 to 99.5 percent secreted water. The thing was, not everybody secreted equally. Some people didn't secrete enough moisture to leave prints, and cold hands didn't secrete either. April pondered the issue of secreting ears. Ken had fumed the moisture from this ear almost from the air itself. Impressive, but hardly conclusive.
The ear in question turned out to be located at such a low height, less than five feet, that Ken had to admit in the end that it might have come from a child, hiding out from the service. Or alternatively, the shooter was a young boy, or a girl. This was another idea that reason resisted. Yet April knew well enough that kids could kill. Or the shooter could have been hunched down, crouched, even kneeling. He said it was a very attractive ear, pretty as a sea-shell.
At ten to nine she pulled up in front of her personal albatross, the Woo family house in Astoria, Queens. Two stories high and red brick, it was a cookie-cutter copy of the five best, but all distinctly modest, houses on the block. Her rooms were on the second floor. The living room faced a small backyard where the tiny French poodle called Dim Sum ran around and did her business. April's small bedroom, large enough for a chair, a bureau, and a single bed, faced the street. Separating the two rooms was a tiny kitchen where she never cooked. Her full bathroom was well stocked with flowery bath-and-body products.
From the outside the only notable feature of the house was a bit of decoration over the windows that had been installed by the previous owners. Shaped like the NBC logo, the 'awnings' were useless. They provided no shade against the southern exposure of the morning sun and caught rain with all the noise of a tin roof in the tropics. The fans were purely for show, as was April's signature on the mortgage, since she had debt but no title to the property.
Every time she looked at it, she was reminded that at the time of purchase she had not been included in the selection or the location of the house. She hadn't even known the transaction was in the works until she was pressured into the double bondage of using her savings for the down payment and assuming the mortgage so that her parents would be secure in their old age. At just twenty-one and new in the cops, she'd assumed a thirty-year debt. Nearly ten years later, she'd learned a lot. She'd discovered that many grown children could say no to their parents in bigger ways than choosing a career they didn't like. But somehow she wasn't turning out to be one of them. She'd fallen in love with Mike, but was afraid to tell him about the debt hanging over her head. Even worse, she was afraid of her mother's curse should she marry him. Her fears and her family loyalty made her ten thousand times a jerk, for no one was happy with her lack of decisive action. Her least of all
With these thoughts in her head again, she slowed the car. The pathway of small red-for-luck azalea bushes that her father had planted on each side of the walk two years ago hadn't bloomed the year of their planting. Four days ago when April had last seen them, they'd still been covered with buds. Now they were finally, spectacularly in flower and every bit as delightful as he had predicted. Sighing, she parked in her usual space in front of the house and killed the engine.
Skinny Dragon Mother, who must have been waiting for her by the window, came running out before she'd opened the car door.
'Ayeeai, ayeeai! You so late,' she screamed. 'Nothing for dinner.' Skinny was wearing one of her mismatched outfits. Plaid pants, flowered shirt, knitted vest, all of different colors, as if she'd picked them up willy-nilly from a Goodwill pile at a disaster site.
Chinese people could be very noisy, or very quiet. Either way could be trouble. Tonight was noisy. 'Where you been?' the dragon screamed.
'Hi, Ma,' April said, trying to think of a story that would not spook her.
'You said five o'clock. Now nine o'clock.' Sai Yuan Woo ran toward the car, sniffing at her daughter as if she were a dog that had gotten into the garbage.
'I'm really sorry, Ma. Something came up.'
'Today day off,' Skinny grumbled.
'I know.' April opened the back doors and started gathering the plastic bags of staples she'd been careful to purchase before her meeting with Gao, just in case she didn't feel like it later. Lucky it hadn't been too hot a day and she hadn't bought a squirming fish that her mother would definitely reject now. Everything else looked okay.
'I know, Ma.' How many times could she say she was sorry? One time for every leaf in all the trees in the neighborhood. One time for every star in the sky. Ten billion times, more than the national debt, would not be enough.
