A Killing Gift

Ever since he was old enough to know he was missing a father, he'd blamed only his mother, because she was the one who'd kept him from the knowledge of what had happened between them. Only she knew why his father never called him, never wrote letters, never gave him a birthday present. Many years ago Jack made up a reason for this: His father was a lifer in prison, or maybe even on death row, a man who had committed some huge and heinous crime worse even than abandoning him and his mother. His mother was only protecting him from the immense and irreconcilable shame of being sired by a criminal. It was the only answer that made any sense to him. Certainly his mother had thought of his father as a criminal.

But even with such a big secret at the core of Jack's life-a secret he had to admit he'd never tried very hard to penetrate-he thought he knew who he was. Just a simple, regular guy, raised by a single mom who'd been abandoned long ago, loved him a lot, and hadn't had much to give him in the way of material goods. Not an uncommon story. But it turned out to be not the right story. Jack's father had a plan of his own.

Creighton Blackstone's philosophy was plainly spelled out in his books. He believed that wealth corrupted, that the children of the rich were selfish and spoiled. He'd declared that he didn't want children because he didn't want to raise them with the burden of wealth and a famous name. He'd been so committed to this view that even when he did have a child, he'd covered his tracks so no one knew it. Jack's mother had died with the secret because telling it would have cost Jack his legacy. His father didn't want him to know. A social experiment, as it were. And even after she died he'd kept his silence, letting his son think he was an orphan three years before the fact. He kept the secret to the end. He'd been a hard man, giving his only child a sad lesson in cold calculation. Money had corrupted. It had corrupted him. Jack shivered.

'Honey, I can tell you're uncomfortable. Why don't you take a pill for the pain.' Lisa felt his forehead. 'You're hot. Come on, it would take the edge off,' she urged.

When his segment of the news ended, he shook his head and surfed to another news program to see how far the story was traveling. Would he make national news? The phone rang, and Lisa checked the caller ID.

'Private,' she told him.

'Don't answer it.'

'What if it's the police again?'

'I've already told them everything.'

'It might be my mom.'

'If you want to answer it, answer it.' He often wondered why her mother had to be a private caller.

He watched her pick up and an uneasy look cross her face.

'What is it?' he asked.

She hung up. 'It was that guy again.'

'What guy?'

'The one who says, 'Tell Jack not to forget his promise.' '

'Oh, jeez.'

'What promise, honey?'

'I have no idea.' But the unknown caller was making him uneasy, too. It was about the tenth time now. He shifted painfully so he could see out the window. The detectives this morning had told him a plain-clothes cop was out there watching them. Jack wondered if it was the guy dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt who'd been pretending to read the newspaper for the last two hours at a front table in the espresso bar across the street. He hoped so.

Fourteen

April's cell phone rang while she was in the car on her way to her parents' house in Astoria. Glad to have an excuse to ignore it, she didn't even bother to search for it in her purse. For a second or two she did worry that maybe by now Mike had guessed she wasn't at their place in Forest Hills. But it didn't have to be him; could be a lot of people calling. Woody Baum, the detective who drove for her and served as her gofer at Midtown North, would definitely be trying to reach her to report on the day she'd missed. But there was nothing she could do about it. Being mute had its advantages.

Driving back from Hastings on Hudson, April had time to think. She took the Cross Bronx Expressway, then the Whitestone Bridge to avoid getting caught in Manhattan traffic. She didn't feel guilty about visiting Kathy Bernardino without telling Mike. There were a lot of things Mike could do to influence her, but he couldn't tie her up and keep her at home. He wasn't her boss, she told herself. She still had her own mind and wouldn't give that up for anybody.

Still, she was already justifying herself, working on ways around whatever restrictions were in store for her. Back in the day when Bernardino used to hold forth, he liked to describe the difference between Asian and Western thinking this way: An American told not to cross a line in the sand would cross it anyway. But an Asian told not to cross the line would rub it out to avoid disobeying an order. April was like that. Since she would not willfully disobey an order, she'd been forming a plan ever since Mike sent her home.

Conscientious to a fault, she almost never took sick leave, and never just took a day off for fun. Fun was a foreign concept to her, an idea that flickered from time to time like a faltering lightbulb. It couldn't beam out steadily in a world where disaster too often intruded on good times. Even fun like last night's had a way of turning to tragedy without warning. Life threw its little curves, and April was schooled in an ancient culture in which bad luck was always an expected guest.

Across the Whitestone the traffic on Northern Boulevard was heavy heading west through Queens. She had plenty of time to catalog a collection of aches and pains worthy of a week off. Her head and neck hurt. Her shoulders. Both knees had been skinned on cement and were now weeping through their bandages. She could embroider.

As the temperature dropped steadily, chilly evening air pelted her from the cracked car window. The sky was quickly darkening to the NYPD blue she loved, and she felt the rush of freedom in her wheels. She'd always liked traveling on her own. Her plan was to take some sick leave, to stay out of sight long enough to figure out if Bernardino's killer was someone close to him, someone who might know her, too. A cop. An ex-cop. Not that she believed for a second that Bernardino's killer was a cop, but cops did funny things when their heads got screwed up. Just this year two police officers in separate shooting rampages within a six-month period killed ten people in a small New Jersey town. And cops had weapons. All Bernardino's killer needed, however, was his forearm. For all April knew he was back at work somewhere today. The last thing she wanted to do was scare him.

She figured as long as she couldn't speak, no one would bother her. She could sleep at home with her mother for a few days. With her mother she was impossible to reach. Skinny was the world's best gatekeeper when her daughter wanted to hide. April smiled to herself as she pulled up in front of the brick house that was her official residence, the place she used to call home.

As soon as the engine was off, however, Skinny Dragon Mother wiped the smile right off her face. She must have been sitting by the window turning the red envelope over and over in her hands, watching and waiting for April, because she started screaming in Chinese before April even had her key out of the ignition.

'What took so long? I wait all day.' Skinny was out the front door running down the cement walk in her red-for- luck padded jacket, her red-for-heart look-like-silk blouse, her loose black pants, and soft black canvas peasant shoes. Tightly curled into a fried seaweed frizz, her thinning hair was jet-black and looked freshly dyed today. Oh, and there it was, the ultimate message. The red envelope ready for delivery in her hand was not the kind used for special occasions, an exciting Hong Bao printed with gold designs and stuffed with money. This was something else. For once April could not ignore it and say, 'Hi, Ma. How ya doin'?'

So Skinny kept right on screaming until she was close enough to scream right into April's ear. 'Ni, you sick. You supposed to come home.'

As usual, she reached over as if to give her daughter a hug but instead tugged angrily on April's arm, shoving the red envelope into her hand. April didn't protest. Protesting never helped.

'Still can't talk?' her mother yelled, as if she couldn't hear, either. A common misconception.

April shook her head.

'I fix,' Skinny screamed, thrilled to have something useful to do.