Hanging Time

31

It was Friday, the end of a frustrating week. Other than Block, they had no leads on Maggie Wheeler’s killer. April spent the morning dialing numbers in Maggie’s phone book of people who hadn’t answered before. Sanchez and Joyce had disappeared soon after roll call. A tall, thin-lipped, gum-chewing detective in a powder-blue jacket with a department tag proclaiming him Lieutenant Braun, Homicide, was using the phone at Sanchez’s desk. As the hours passed, the surface of Mike’s desk became ever more littered with green gum wrappers.

In between calls the Lieutenant sat there, staring at the ceiling, cracking his gum and ignoring everyone around him. April wondered where the hell Sanchez and Joyce were. She smoldered quietly. She could see where this was leading, and hated feeling left out.

Around midday she could smell Sanchez enter the squad room. His aftershave, or whatever it was, reached out and proclaimed his entrance.

“Ah, lover boy is here,” Aspirante said, loud enough for six detectives and Gina the secretary to hear over four phone conversations and the protests of an extremely well-dressed suspect in the pen who had tried to walk out of Charivari with a lot of stock he hadn’t paid for.

“This is so embarrassing. I didn’t do a thing,” he kept saying. “I don’t know why I’m here. Hey, let me out of here.”

“What’s with him?” Sanchez tossed a file on April’s desk, cocking his head at Aspirante.

“I think the suspect came on to Sol in the car on the way over. Thing with this guy is he keeps ripping off the expensive stores, and then he tells his friends. And they rip the stores off.” She shrugged. “Sol caught the run.”

The waste of time had pissed Aspirante off. The suspect would be out in a few hours. April didn’t add that Aspirante, like herself, was maybe concerned that Sanchez might be moving up the department ladder on Captain Higgins’s discomfort with Sergeant Joyce.

“Who’s this?” Mike raised a crooked eyebrow at the man addicted to Wrigley’s spearmint who sat at his place.

“Papa bear?” April shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

“Not me. I’ve been in the field all morning. Look at this.”

April picked up the file he’d put on her desk without looking at him. She didn’t want him to read in her face the fact that Dr. George Dong had called her the night before. Now she had a date with a guy who wasn’t in the department and just happened to be Chinese. She wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about it, but she was certain she didn’t want Sanchez interfering.

After she’d gotten home, she had put aside her anxiety about Maggie Wheeler and started preparing her notes to study for her Sergeant’s exam. Tonight she was working on prioritized items, phone calls, and model responses.

Crime Pattern Bulletin must be read at roll call. Information is crime- and location-specific. Put special detail in area to work problem. Depending on procedures in your department, either implement special detail or recommend it to your Lieutenant or patrol officer. Prepare routing slips.

She was about to write up a few in-basket exercises, when the phone rang.

“Wei,” she said, thinking the caller was Lonely Skinny Dragon Mother on the first floor, too lazy to walk up the stairs.

“April Woo?” A male voice.

“Yes, this is Detective Woo.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Uh, this is George Dong.”

She almost said, “What’s your problem, Mr. Dong,” as if she were at her desk in the squad room, where no one called her who didn’t have a problem. Then she realized she was the problem. Her mother had done the feng sui, had fixed the tilting table and exorcised the bad spirit from her apartment. And still, no good daughter resisted the chance at happiness offered by smiling God.

Even though Sai Woo expressly warned her that George Dong “may be last chance,” April had forgotten to anticipate her shining future. She had completely forgotten about him.

“Yes,” she said, chastened. “Hello.”

Turned out George Dong had his practice in Chinatown. He was an eye doctor. Thirty-five years old. Always the suspicious detective, April asked herself what was wrong with him. Why not married? Then realized he could say the same about her.

“I’m a cop,” she told Dong right away as if it were a communicable disease that must be disclosed immediately.

“I know. Dangerous, long hours, uncertain schedule, uncertain future. I’ve seen it on TV. You wear a uniform?”

“No. Do you?”

“I wear a white coat.”

“So,” April murmured. Where did that get them?

“It reassures my patients,” Dong added.

“Uh-huh.” She had to hang up and study for her exam, reminded herself that she wanted to make Sergeant. “So,” she said again.

“You have to eat sometime.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t argue with that. They made a date for lunch in Chinatown on Sunday.

The file Sanchez had brought her was the report on Block’s blood. April had the thickening Wheeler file on her desk. She pulled the autopsy report and checked the blood type of the fetus in Maggie’s womb. Maggie’s blood type was A. The baby’s was O. She pulled Block’s lab file. Block’s blood type was B.

Sanchez leaned over April’s shoulder to get a look. The sudden closeness and aroma of heated cinnamon, citrus, and cinnabar made her dizzy. She could feel his breath on her neck. Shit, the man was hot. She rolled her chair back and looked up at him fiercely. “Don’t do that.”

“What?” He straightened up, looking like the surprised innocent. “What?” He turned around and asked the room. “What?”

Nobody answered.

Why was he breathing on her damn neck? April wondered if he knew about Dr. George. How could Mike know about George? She hadn’t even met him yet. But Sanchez was very smart, had some Indian blood—Mayan or Aztec or Native American. He claimed it accounted for his sixth sense.

April frowned, remembering Mike’s shoving her behind him while her gun was raised, risking getting shot in the back. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. He’d fallen right on top of her, a dead weight on her ankle so she couldn’t walk right for weeks. The doctor who treated it said she was lucky the bones hadn’t been reduced to mush. And now he was the hotshot of the squad. Cool and hot at the same time. He was smiling at her now, the old, old soul who knew everything except what Lieutenant Braun was doing at his desk.

“So, Block couldn’t have been the father of Maggie’s baby. Where does that get us?” She added the lab report to the file, telling herself to get a grip.

He shook his head, already knew it.

“Doesn’t help us one way or the other. Anything from Ducci?” she asked.

“Yesterday he said he was working on it. Any luck with her address book?”

“Lot of surprised people. The last guy I called turned out to be a piano tuner she went to kindergarten with, hadn’t seen her since, and didn’t have a clue why he was in her book. Lives in New Jersey. On the night in question he was with his wife and two children on Long Beach Island.… Couple of numbers no one answers any time of day. The boyfriend must be one of them.”

Mike shifted from one foot to the other, his back to his desk, ignoring what was going on behind him. He just wasn’t about to confront the guy at his desk. “Anything new with Manganaro?”

“She was going to go over the store inventory, see if anything is missing.”

“She said that two days ago.”

“Well, Maggie did all that for her. Mrs. Manganaro says she doesn’t know the stock all that well. She’ll have to match orders and sales. It’s going to take her some time.”

Earlier, Elsbeth Manganaro told them Maggie had had a lot of ideas. She didn’t tell them about the guest book that Maggie had bought for the store last spring. She was surprised when it turned up in a routine search of garbage cans shared by a number of stores behind the building. She had forgotten about it. That meant she might have forgotten about a lot of other things, too. It was possible Mrs. Manganaro wouldn’t even know if anything else was missing from the store.

The book was covered in green and black marbleized paper. After being asked about it, the boutique owner recalled it had been one of Maggie’s ideas. She always asked customers to sign it. The book had been dusted for prints. Whoever threw it in the garbage must have wiped it first. There was only one partial on it, down at the very bottom of the second page. A thumb, not Maggie’s and not Mrs. Manganaro’s. But Mrs. Manganaro swore she never touched it.

There were only thirty-eight names in the book, all dated since June seventh, when Maggie put the book out. Sergeant Joyce had a detective checking each one out.

“Look at this. Wilma Masters. John Dodge Road, Jackson, Wyoming. August twentieth.”

“Yeah, she was here visiting her sister. Bought a belt.”

“Linda Green, 860 Fifth Avenue. August twenty-first.”

“She’s in Maine, bought a sweater.”

“Margret Smart, Sarasota, Florida. August eighteenth.”

“She’s in Europe.”

“Camille Honiger-Stanton, 1055 Second Avenue. August fifth.”

“Second Ave? That’s right across the street from Bill Hadgens, the addict she knew from high school.”

Sanchez shifted feet again. “Any connection?”

“I don’t know. No one’s spoken to her yet. The number for that address is some kind of antiques shop. The person who answered the phone said he’d have the owner give us a call.”

Sanchez tossed the book back into the file. “This isn’t going to get us anywhere. They’re all women. A woman didn’t do her. Let’s go see what the Duke has for us.”

April picked up her bag, nodding. Good idea.