A Killing Gift

the Skinny Dragon, reminded her that the heavens were the territory of angry ghosts and dragons. If she died right now, she would not be so lucky as to fly away with the harps and angels.

Did you get him? She formed the words, but no sound came out. The dragon that stole her breath had kept her voice.

Mike whispered in her ear. 'The ambulance is here. We're moving you. You did good, querida; he didn't break your neck. You're going to be fine.'

That line they always used finally opened April's eyes, and she came back to the horror of being a vic, lying on the ground. Somebody's jacket under her head. Probably Mike's. Poppy Bellaqua was holding her hand. She may not have a broken neck like her boss, but she knew she hadn't done good, not at all. Chief Avise was standing above them, arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head at her. She'd messed up.

Six

Aieeyyee.' Sai Yuan Woo hit the ceiling when Mike came to tell her that her only child was in the hospital again. The shriek said it all. Last time shot in head. What now?

The skinny dragon that was April's mother could wake the dead with that scream. She wouldn't stop long enough to listen when Mike tried to explain what happened or why he'd come at the early hour of five a.m. He'd come at that time for multiple reasons. He'd wanted April to benefit from a few hours of sleep before the assault of her parents. But he had to come before anyone in the sizable Chinese extended family claimed by the Woos was up watching TV. They didn't have any actual blood relatives left, but the large circle of friends and acquaintances from the villages of another world called each other sisters and uncles and cousins and thought of themselves as such. This prodigious fake family watched the local news twenty-four/ seven, always on the lookout for trouble.

Skinny Dragon Mother would never have forgiven Mike if she'd heard that April was in the hospital from someone who'd seen the story on the morning news. It was his job to tell her before anyone else. He'd let them sleep as long as possible, but he himself had pretty much worked all night.

Mike had a reason for staying up all night. Alfredo Bernardino had been overweight and in poor condition. The attack on him was bad enough. But a second nearly fatal attack only a few minutes later on a black-belt champion in the middle of Washington Square added a few lethal details to the story. The killer was not just lucky. He was highly skilled and fearless. The man was a trained killer who could break a man's neck in the blink of an eye. Damn right he'd been up all night talking to Bernardino's children and getting organized.

Now he wasn't in the mood to listen to Skinny Dragon Mother yell bloody murder at him in Chinese. Never mind that he was telling her April was fine. Skinny screamed so loud she woke her husband, Ja Fa Woo, a chef in a fancy Manhattan restaurant who'd just gone to sleep a few hours ago.

Muttering in Chinese, he stumbled out of the bedroom wearing shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of Midtown North on it, April's precinct.

Skinny, who was dressed in black pants and a thin padded jacket, spun around to her husband and screamed at him for a while. He screamed back. At least he could understand her. Mike didn't interrupt what sounded to him like a dogfight. Finally Ja Fa Woo acknowledged him.

' 'Lo, Mike. What happen?' he asked.

In the early days of their courting, whenever Mike came by to see April, her father used to lean over and spit on the ground. But now he bobbed his head in respect. Mike was an important man. Almost son, so he gave him an almost bow in the middle of his wife's tirade.

Mike bowed back and went through the story again, because Skinny always got her facts mixed up.

'Somebody dead?' Ja Fa asked.

'Yes, somebody is dead. But not April.' Some other cop. Her old boss. Mike left that out. 'April is fine. Just a little shaken up.'

'Then why in hospital?' Ja Fa demanded.

'Aieeeyee!' At the word hospital Skinny's wail went up again.

'Something wrong?' Gao Wan, the Woo's upstairs tenant, padded into the kitchen. He, too, was wearing a T- shirt and shorts.

Mike repeated his sanitized version of the story. The three of them conferred in Chinese while Mike stood there trying to reassure them. As expected, his worst fears were realized when they insisted that he drive them to St. Vincent's immediately because they had no other way of getting to the hospital fast enough to suit them, then drive them back to Queens when they were ready to come home.

Mike nodded. 'I'll get you there and back,' he promised. Of course he would. And April would kill him for bringing them. With the Woos he couldn't win. Either the parents would be furious because he didn't do enough, or April would be furious because he did too much. Today, because he'd almost lost her, he would err on the doing too much.

Mother, father, and tenant ended their discussion and disappeared to get dressed and collect important items for April. Immediate action for them took a long time. The minutes spun out into a very long wait. It was an hour and a half before they squeezed into his wheezing Camaro for the trip into Manhattan.

Seven

By two a.m. Thursday, April had been examined, X-rayed, and admitted for the night. But once she'd returned to life she was too wide-awake to calm down. She'd dozed and thought about Bernardino, how he'd promoted her. She'd thought about the search for the poor little girl who'd been held for ransom by a neighbor, then murdered. Her first kidnaping and homicide. April had been the one to see the little sneakered foot peeking out of a half-zipped sleeping bag in a pile of garbage behind a Chinatown building, years ago. Now Bernardino was gone, efficiently executed by what appeared to be a professional. But why Bernie?

April had been in a lot of fights over the years, but only practice fights. Competition. Nobody had ever tried to kill her. Last night a man had tried to kill her. Now she knew what it felt like, and it didn't feel good. She wouldn't forget that iron forearm pressing into her neck. Her defensive moves kept playing in her head. Pathetic. She'd resisted, but not well enough. A little more pressure and he would have crushed her voice box-and maybe ended her life as well. He could have snapped her neck like a twig, as he'd done to Bernardino, but he hadn't. She was lucky. But she didn't feel lucky; she felt shamed.

All through the night her privacy curtain was pulled all the way around her bed, and the faint glow of the night- light beamed ten thousand questions at her. People didn't usually kill cops on purpose. Sometimes they got in the way when something bad was happening, like a cop walking into a particularly violent domestic dispute and getting knifed while trying to break up a fight. Or someone responding to a radio call for a DUI and ending up shot in the face when he approached the driver's side of the car. Nothing personal. Accidents.

Cops didn't get assassinated after their retirement parties. This was personal. April knew Bernardino. She'd worked with him and known his cases, but that was years ago. She had no idea what he'd been working on lately. She worried about it, drifted off to sleep, was awakened when a new patient was brought in at four-fifteen. She could hear the nurses whispering. It was an old woman with death-rattle breathing. April didn't want her to die right next to her. One death that night was enough. She wanted to go home.

She was up with the light and getting dressed in her torn party dress when her mother appeared suddenly, pulling open her curtain with one yank.

'Ma!' As usual, April was horrified to see her mother.

Ja Fa Woo stuck his bald head in to get a look at her, too. No such thing as privacy.

'Dad!'

Then her replacement, Gao Wan, the substitute son she'd offered Skinny to get her mother off her back about marrying Mike, pushed into her space as well. Gao was the one carrying the bulging plastic shopping bags. April knew they contained the emergency medical supplies, stuff Skinny knew the hospital wouldn't have on hand. Ghastly fake medicine to cure whatever was wrong. Usually April didn't even have to be sick to be treated by her