Hanging Time

61

It was well after one o’clock by the time April pulled her car into an empty spot in front of the Woo house. The light by the front door was still on, and April could tell from the glow spilling out from the kitchen into the downstairs hallway that her mother was still up. She groaned.

She had left the house before ten that morning, was bone tired, and due back in the precinct in less than seven hours. That left no time for study, and hardly any for sleep. At this point it was the sleep April worried about. She had been back and forth across town a half dozen times that day, and had to cross again to get to the Queensboro Bridge. At this hour the traffic wasn’t so bad, but all the way to Queens she worried about Chinese torture. The worst torture was to have to eat, and be deprived of sleep.

One thing April liked about her job was the perpetual growling hunger she acquired in the long hours when there was too much to do and no time to eat. As a child she had never been allowed to grow hungry, but always fed before the need came. To Sai Woo this was the sign of a good mother. By feeding April she could change the long history of hunger and famine in China, and ensure for April a good future, full of plenty. April was sure plenty on her plate at all hours of the day or night was her torture for being her mother’s only child. Only child had to have special care for good luck.

Chinese didn’t wear crosses or medals of tortured saints on chains around their necks. Good luck, not heaven, was the great Chinese pie in the sky, the thing most prayed for and revered. Good ruck, rots of money, rong rife. Those were the symbols most often stamped in gold.

Gold symbols made April think of Mike, or maybe it was the other way around. She wondered if the great generic God that monitored the North American continent might be punishing Maria for leaving him, and not letting him go. That was sure thing bad luck for everybody. No way to put a good face on it.

On the other hand, sometimes you couldn’t tell good luck was coming even when it was right in front of your face. Like the breaking of this case. Woman comes in with a story her sister might have killed somebody, doesn’t say how she knows. Police check the story out, and before the A.D.A. even has time to get there, before there is any exchange of information at all, two people get shot.

Then, when it turns out the sister Camille was a virtual prisoner of the boyfriend, the sister Milicia can’t be found to come and take her away. So now they had an officer guarding the boyfriend in the hospital, and an officer in the house making sure the wacko made it through the night. And still no word from the sister who started the ball rolling.

Well, good luck and answers to all questions were like shadows in the mist. You had to know how to interpret them, and when to follow them into the murk. April turned off her headlights and sat in the dark for a moment. What she remembered most about the Sherlock Holmes story she read a long time ago was the part about the London fog so dense, policemen could lose their way following a suspect around the block. At NYPD she learned fast that almost every case presented such a fog.

In her early training the question was once put to her: “What do you do, Officer, when you get called to a scene where there’s a body splattered on the sidewalk and you don’t know the first thing about it?”

The correct answer was: “You look up, sir.”

A lot of people would give different answers, but that was the right one. First things first. Use your head, see if you can determine where the body came from.

April sat there, trying to sift through all the thoughts whirling around in her head. What was she so apprehensive about? Her Sergeant’s test in two days? The command from the Captain to get together with the A.D.A. and wrap up the boutique case in the morning?

Higgins actually suggested they go to the hospital and wait there till the suspect regained consciousness, then arrest him for the murder of Maggie Wheeler before he fell asleep again. Then they could relax and put the Rachel Stark case together.

Damn. The shadow of Skinny Dragon Mother crossed to the window, cracked it open.

“What you doing out there?” Sai Woo threw her best English out into the night, so the neighbors, if they were up to hear her, wouldn’t think she was an immigrant.

Often when April was on the four-to-midnight shift, her mother waited for her to get home, then invited her into the kitchen to feed her and hear about her day. That’s why April was sitting in the car. Hoping to avoid it.

“Just getting my stuff.”

“Come in, come in. I have good dumprings. Your favorite kind. Been waiting all night.”

“Okay, I’m coming, Ma.”

“Not come soon enough. Best kind. Clab, flesh pea.”

That was just great. April grabbed her two bags and got out of the car. Her father was top cook in an Upper East Side restaurant. He must have brought the crab and ginger delicacy to bribe boo hao daughter to sit in kitchen, middle of the night, discuss cases with Skinny Dragon Mother, who didn’t have anything else to think about but making her daughter as miserable as possible.

Sai Woo’s greatest amusement was to steal many precious hours from her daughter and use them to scold her for choosing a hard life when, if April only smiled a little, she could marry and have a soft one. In this way she passed the time happily by making her daughter’s hard life a whole lot harder. April trudged up the short cement walk to the house.

Magically the window closed and the front door opened. Sai examined her daughter critically, noticed right away that April was wearing her locker outfit. “Change crows,” she said, wrinkling her hose.

“Yes.” April turned away, didn’t want to discuss it.

“ ’Nother dead body?”

“Yes.”

“Bad?”

“Yes.”

“Very bad. Can smell from here. The one on TV? I watch, didn’t see you.” Sai Woo led the way back through the living room to the kitchen. “Why you never on TV?”

“Ma, I’m very tired. I’ve got to go to bed.”

“You got to eat first.”

“It’s late, don’t go to the trouble.”

“No trouber.”

“I can’t eat now, really.”

“Got to.”

April suddenly got a look at her mother in the light. Sai Woo was all dressed up, wearing her good gray silk dress, stockings, and shoes. Her face was carefully made up. April regarded her suspiciously.

“What’s going on?”

There was a sly smile on Skinny Dragon Mother’s face that April didn’t like.

“I’m cerebrating.”

All alone at one o’clock in the morning? Sure. “What are you celebrating?” April asked.

The smile got wider. Ha. Got her. “Your good ruck,” Sai said triumphantly.

April stared at her mother. What good luck? Everything in her life was a mess. “What good luck, Ma? Did I win the lottery?”

Sai got tired of being looked at and shoved April along the rest of the way to the kitchen. “Sit down. Eat clab dumprings. Don’t mess up.”

April shook her head. “I don’t know about any good luck. I don’t want crab dumplings. I had a hard day. I want to go to bed.”

“Eat clab. Clab good luck.”

April shook her head again. She could stop a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound drug-crazed thug with a razor knife and a gun no trouble. But couldn’t get away from her mother when she wanted to talk.

“All right, give me a hint. What’s the good luck?”

Sai nodded her head approvingly. “My friend say vely good ruck. He don’t rike nobody, rike you.”

Oh. If her mother got all dressed up for that, she was going to have a long wait for the wedding. April sat down at the table meekly. She’d bet a thousand dollars that even though Dr. George Dong was willing to ask her out again, maybe even take her to a nice place this time, it was very unlikely to work out the way her mother hoped. She decided she’d better have a dumpling, make her mother happy while she could.