Hanging Time

10

Eight of them were squeezed into Sergeant Joyce’s office, which was about the size of a walk-in closet. The window was on an air shaft. From time to time Sergeant Joyce tried to brighten the place up with a few pots of English ivy. There were two such plants on the windowsill now, dwarfed and brown-edged with neglect. April counted three crunched-out cigarette butts in the potted dirt and knew there were likely to be more below the surface. The tiny room with its three chairs was as close as the detective squad got to a conference room. Sometimes they sat in the locker room, where there was a refrigerator and a table. Sometimes, when it was quiet, the detectives gathered in a questioning room and questioned each other. Now, hours before the crime-scene photos were available, before the autopsy report told them exactly when and how Maggie Wheeler died, they assembled to get organized.

There were two women in the room. Only one got a chair. Sergeant Joyce sat behind her desk. April leaned against the windowsill near the dying plants. Healy and Aspirante, always the self-appointed honchos, sat in the two visitors’ chairs in front of Joyce’s desk. Aspirante’s beady eyes and large nose were moist with ambition and a lot more heat than the room’s air conditioner could handle. He was skinny, not a centimeter taller than April, and pugnacious to compensate. Now he was holding forth about psycho-killers he had known, not saying anything because he hadn’t ever known one, but pushing noise out his mouth all the same.

“It’s the guy on the tape,” Aspirante said. “All we gotta do is find him.”

Healy, at twice Aspirante’s height and girth and possibly half his intelligence, nodded his agreement.

Joyce put her hand over the receiver. “Shut up,” she said.

April glanced over at Mike. He was nonchalantly holding up the back wall as if nothing about anybody’s behavior bothered him in the least. It was their case. Theirs. They were the first men in, the ones who answered the call and found the girl. And Mike had to know there wasn’t a detective in the room who wouldn’t do anything in his power to upstage them and complicate the process as much as possible.

Mike nodded at her, a small smile teasing the corners of his mustache. Clearly he was thinking the same thing and coming up with a different take on it. She knew how he thought. Life is short, take a chill. Hah, some philosophy.

But April felt a sudden shock at the eye contact and the way he raised his chin at her. The jolt was unfamiliar and a little unnerving. All the time Sanchez was away experiencing his roots yet again, April hadn’t just missed him. She actually felt anxious, as if a part of her were missing. She didn’t like the sensation a bit and was pretty sure she wouldn’t feel that way if they hadn’t almost gotten blown up together last May.

Now she had to worry about the effects of gratitude on this relationship that Sanchez called “close supervision.” She didn’t like it. She had always felt safer just a little isolated and separate from everybody. “Watch your back” was not a sufficiently cautious approach to either life or work for her.

Maybe it was the effect of all those years hearing her mother’s litany of every possible danger of being alive in Queens, America, as well as constant replays of the violence and chaos, starvation, and family separations in China when she was young. In the fifties, in the Cultural Revolution, Tienanmen Square, now.

“Never forget best friends, even Chinese best friends, stab in front easy as back.”

April went to bed with those words in her ears the way she knew American children did the prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

She and Mike hadn’t talked yet. Maybe they wouldn’t have a chance today. She couldn’t help noticing how tan he was, must have spent his whole ten days in Mexico out in the sun with some Maria or other. Suddenly April was aware that Sergeant Joyce had hung up the phone and was frowning at her, as if already she had done something wrong. She hadn’t done anything wrong. All she did was take a call, cross the street to a fancy boutique—where neither of them could even think of shopping—and find a dead salesgirl in the storeroom. April wasn’t responsible for killing her, or hanging her up on the chandelier.

She clenched up inside, but refused to look down. It was a daily trial to her that Sergeant Joyce, who was so tough and so good with men, and smart enough to pass every test, didn’t seem to like her. Every day April was aware Joyce could orchestrate her removal to some other precinct, and this kept the edge on April’s anxiety nearly all the time. She didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn or Queens or the Bronx and get lost in the backwater. She wouldn’t mind being assigned to a special unit. Special Crimes, Sex Crimes. DEA. Even go home to the 5th in Chinatown. But not now, sometime in the future.

After a full year in the Two-O, April had seen a lot of things she had never expected to see, met people she never would have known. In Chinatown she spoke the language of the powerless and ignorant, the prey of every kind of predator. She knew how they thought, where to go to ask the questions. No matter what the case, she knew the path to follow, knew the secrets. And she had never known that she was one of them, as powerless as they, until she was summarily moved up to the Two-O.

Now she was in a different world, a world of random violence, where rich, educated whites tried not to rub shoulders with the disenfranchised blacks and Hispanics all around them. And the people of color refused to be ignored, pounded white heads whenever they could. But this homicide was no street crime.

April held her ground as Joyce stared at her with apparent hostility. “Have you located the other salesgirl?” she demanded. “Maybe she knows who the guy is.”

When in the world would April have had time to check out the second salesgirl? It took her and Sanchez three hours to get someone from the Sheriff’s office in Seekonk, Massachusetts, to locate Maggie’s parents. It was the part of the job she hated most. She was glad this time she didn’t have to be the one to knock on their door and tell them.

April had learned that the Wheelers had six kids, but the number of kids never made the slightest bit of difference. She once knew a Chinese couple who had five kids. Baby drowned in the Central Park reservoir, where they were picnicking in a rowboat. Afterward, the mother went crazy, sat in a chair staring at the wall. Never recovered even though she had four other children to care for.

“I’ve got her number and her address,” April said about the missing salesgirl. “She was first on my list.”

Joyce nodded. “Okay, get the hell out of here and find out what she knows.”

April shoved off the windowsill with a small sigh of satisfaction. Released without bail. Wow. She pushed through the crush of detectives, who didn’t exactly make way for her because Joyce gave her the show in front of everybody. It felt good. Two minutes later Mike was at his desk, and they began trying to find the other salesgirl, Olga Yerger.

It was an hour later when they finally located her. She wasn’t at home and the girl she lived with didn’t want to say on the phone where she was.

“Gee, I don’t know a thing. Monday’s Olga’s day off. I have no idea where she goes,” her roommate said with so many hesitations and pauses, April was pretty sure she did. “How do I know you’re really from the police?”

“You can call the precinct and ask for me. You want to do that?” April asked. “Or do you want me to come over and show you my badge?”

“How do you spell your name?”

“W-o-o. How do you spell yours?”

“Ah. We just share the rent. I hardly even know her. Do you want to leave a message?”

“No. I need to talk to her now.”

“Why, did she do something wrong?”

“Someone’s been killed in the store where she works.”

“Jesus.”

There was a pause. The girl didn’t ask how or when.

“Now will you tell me where she is?” April said.

“I’ll call around and see if I can find her. I’ll call you right back,” the girl promised nervously, and hung up.

April threw her notebook in her bag and turned to Mike. “Want to take a drive?” she asked.

“That was easy.” He reached for his jacket. “Where is she?”

“Doesn’t want us to know. She’s probably working without a green card. Let’s try the roommate.”

It was seven P.M. on the first day of a big case. The squad room was riotous and smelled strongly of sweat and stale coffee. Five people in the detective squad day shift were still there, the seven-man evening shift had long since arrived, and both shifts were jockeying for desk space and the phones. April and Mike’s departure opened up two desks and phones. In the barred cell which was the main decoration of the room, an outraged mugger screamed obscenities.