neck.
The game was over. April's heart almost stopped when she saw the Dragon she'd thought all-powerful transform into an old woman in a giant's choke hold.
That was it. She lunged for the gun in the corner of the room, kicking away the table that blocked the kitchen door. Frayme flew to block her. She rolled away from him, and the gun skittered under the sofa. As she dove after it, the kitchen door swung open and her father came out with a butcher knife in each hand. Stunned, Ja Fa Woo saw his wife of forty years caught in a killing hold.
'No!' April screamed. Her father had bleary eyes behind his thick black frames. He was a cook, and not entirely a sober one. His watery eyes seemed puzzled as he tried to choose in a nanosecond which knife to throw at the bloody-faced man holding his wife.
'Ma,' April screamed. She did not have a chance to say 'duck.' She was distracted. In that second Frayme grabbed her and twisted hard. She felt searing pain as her shoulder dislocated. Then her mind cleared, and she came up with her head, bashing him under the chin. His body jerked up. As he straightened and became a clear target, Ja Fa Woo moved like a ninja in his underwear. One hand, one knife. The biggest one, his hacking knife, he wielded like a hatchet, striking Frayme between the shoulder blades.
April dodged the falling body as Frayme crashed on the sofa. Then Ja Fa turned to a stunned Leaky.
'Aieyeee,' he yelled, and launched his second knife. This one had a very thin razor-sharp blade and was his favorite. It was the one he used for boning duck and chicken.
Leaky screamed as the knife sliced into his chest only an inch from the top of Skinny's head. He reached to pull it out and her knees gave way.
At that moment, Woody Baum charged into the house with his gun drawn yelling, 'Police-freeze!' at the bloody scene.
Fifty-nine
April had a headache that wouldn't let up. Long after her shoulder and other bruises had healed, important Department people were still dragging her through every move she'd made in the weeks since Albert Frayme had first tried to take her down in Washington Square. She felt terrible. The terrible feeling was constantly reinforced by everyone.
The questions IA investigators asked over and over sounded to her as if they actually believed it was her fault for not immediately linking Al Frayme with karate after his name came up as a caller on both Bernardino's and Devereaux's phones. No, she had not been holding out on them. No, she could not have acted sooner to identify Frayme as Bernardino's killer and save Birdie Bassett. It was an insulting idea. Still, she felt bad. The killer had been an expert at locating disappearing graduates. He had known exactly who she was and where she lived (or used to live) as soon as her name appeared in the press following Bernardino's murder-long before he decided he had to kill her and her parents in their home. She hated to think about missing that.
She told herself that it was not her fault that Frayme had known ways to escape from his office, and had done so many times when people assumed he was there. Before the unfortunate incident in her home, she had told Mike everything she knew about Al Frayme. It had not been on her watch when he took a subway to Queens to meet Leaky after she and Woody had fingered him as an accessory in the case. Nor was it her fault that they set out to convince her parents into thinking they were Con Edison workers so they could get into the house to rig an accident. But she felt that it was her fault. They all could have died. All the Woos.
IA's job, of course, was to deconstruct any and all failings occurring in the system. Why had the case ended in a spectacular mess in an officer's private home? How could they prevent such a disaster from happening again? It wasn't a hard one: Keep cop victims away from their own cases. That was their conclusion. Even though she had solved the case, she hung her head.
Like Harry Weinstein and his story about the quarter mil from Bernardino's lottery money, April had her story about what had happened in the Woo house. She stuck to it. The knives got into the perpetrators' bodies… she had no idea how. The dead couldn't speak, and Ja Fa Woo could speak, but only in Chinese. She didn't want him under any kind of scrutiny, so she took the Department hit for a thousand mistakes. It was her filial duty.
So many faults gave her a bad headache, but there were a few compensations. Mike couldn't apologize enough, couldn't do enough to atone for sending her almost to her death with only the useless Woody Baum to protect her. He'd do anything to win back her love and trust, and April had quite a list of tasks toward that end. Paint the interior of her parents' house, buy new furniture for the living room. Renovate the awful avocado bathroom. Promise never, ever to thwart her again in any way.
In the middle of her interview ordeal, when April was holding back one of several hundred little details about the case that she didn't want known, she had a surprising insight that was so obvious she couldn't imagine why no one had thought of it before. On her first day of freedom she called Kathy Bernardino.
'Thank God you're still there,' she said when Kathy answered. 'I was afraid you'd left already.'
'Soon. But April! I'm so glad you called. I hear you're getting it bad,' Kathy replied.
'There's never any mercy for the innocent, but I'm okay,' April told her. 'When are you leaving? I want to talk with you before you go.'
'That can be arranged. Bill and I want to thank you properly for what you've done for us.'
'Your father was good to me. I owed you,' April said. But she had more to do.
Bill was wearing a crumpled gray work suit and was in his usual hurry to get back to court when they met in Chinatown for lunch. April had the day off, and Mike had been promoted to captain but not yet reassigned. Kathy was returning to Seattle in less than a week. She'd had her hair done and looked good in a lucky red suit, April's second-favorite color after blue.
April ordered the lunch in Chinese. Dumplings, Ants Climbing Tree, Peking Duck, Noodles for Long Life, Golden Coin with Broccoli. Too much, but so what?
Everybody was in a good mood. Bill slapped Mike on the back a few times, and the two talked about how his messy Tiger Liniment had almost put him on trial for murder.
April poured the Chinese tea for health and began.
'Mike and I were talking. Loose ends were bothering us,' she said, 'so we have a few details to clear up.'
'Oh, yeah?' Bill laughed uneasily. 'With you guys it's never over, is it?'
Mike shook his head. 'This is just between us.'
'Okay, what?' Kathy looked a little nervous, too.
'What's your mother's date of birth?' April asked.
'Four, four, forty-four. She was younger than Dad. Weird, right?'
April knew that because she'd checked it out. 'Anything strike you about that number?' She glanced at Mike and smiled.
'Of course, Bill and I talked about it a lot. It's the amount of missing cash. And, you know, those numbers came up on her winning lottery ticket. She used them every time.' Kathy shook her head.
'Kathy, I'm sure you looked into your dad's files and found the receipts that showed he had your mom cremated.'
She locked eyes with her brother. 'I did look after you brought it up,' she admitted. 'Mom would never have wanted that. Why did he do it?'
April took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly. She glanced at Mike again, and he nodded for her to take the lead. Figuring it out hadn't been hard once she'd had time to give the mystery some thought. For Kathy and Bill, she took it one step at a time.
'You know, the Chinese burn fake money at funerals to help their loved ones in the afterlife.'
'Interesting.' Bill glanced at his watch.
'And the Egyptians filled the tombs of their pharaohs with everything they'd need in the afterlife, including their wives and servants. In many cultures people send loved ones off with the things they valued most.'
'Oh, shit!' Bill said, getting it. 'You're not suggesting Dad buried money with Mom!'
