Judging Time

7

Well, querida, ready to do battle?" Mike pushed his chair back from their window table at the Anytime Diner on Eighth Avenue and tried a smile.

"Not yet." April glanced at her watch, then resumed turning the pages of her Rosario. "We have a few minutes," she murmured.

"Mad at me?"

His question made her look up. Her eyes felt puffy and dry, as if the part of her that was supposed to make tears had been claimed by the night's victims. She could hardly see a thing, and now she'd be on duty until 4 P.M. These all-nighters on turnaround days really stank, especially when one was a boss and had to follow up on everybody's ongoing cases, as well as organizing new ones. Now she had some sympathy for her former supervisor, the once-despised Margaret Mary Joyce, who had two children, nine detectives, hundreds of cases to oversee, and a former husband who divorced her for getting ahead.

She yawned behind her hand and tried to focus. "How could I be mad at you? I can't even see you." She squinted at him. "What's your name again, Sergeant?"

"That's good. I didn't know you could tell jokes, querida."

"I can't." She soured her face so he wouldn't laugh too hard.

"Yeah, you're mad. I can tell. Look, I got the call. I didn't know it was your case, okay?"

"I'm not mad. I'm tired. I accept the lie that your presence here is a big accident. So forget it."

Mike eyed the potential leftovers on her plate. "You going to eat those potatoes?"

She pushed the crisp hash browns in his direction, shaking her head.

"You should eat more, querida. You're always sorry when you don't. I'm glad you're not mad." He reached across the turquoise linoleum tabletop for the ketchup bottle, then dumped a lake of crimson in the middle of her plate.

"God, if I were a lady, I'd swoon," she muttered.

"My table manners a problem, or does this trigger something important?"

April blew air out of her nose, thinking of some of the delicate habits of her people. Before she'd left Chinatown, she'd assumed that rotting garbage on the street and a dozen people speed-eating from the same plate were normal. Her family and friends dug into the communal serving platters with their chopsticks. They hoisted succulent morsels across great expanses of table to their own rice bowls, then lifted the bowls to their faces and shoveled food into their mouths, making great slurp, slurp, slurping noises with an urgency that might lead an outsider to think this was the last meal anyone would ever get.

This, however, was not the case at Mike's mother's table. At Sunday lunch six weeks ago, the one time April had eaten there, Mike's mother, who was as well fleshed and smiling as Sai Yuan Woo was skinny and scowling, had worn a purple dress that looked like taffeta and was cut low enough to show off her ample bosom. Maria Sanchez served fastidiously. She filled al the plates with the different foods from the platters in the center of the table, using a separate serving spoon for each platter. When everybody's plate was piled high with food, the four people at the table ate slowly. They put their forks and knives down frequently to savor the tastes and talk in the manner of people who had eaten not long ago and would soon eat again.

No, the ketchup had given her a flash to the body of Merrill Liberty lying in the bloodied slush. When April had seen her, not even a half hour had passed since the woman had died. Her body was still so warm to the touch, it made April think her soul might not yet have departed, might still be hanging around there trying to tell them something. April figured Merrill Liberty had been standing when it happened. Her blood had pulsed out of the hole in her throat with the last of her heartbeats, soaking the front of her dress before she fell. April felt a pricking sensation behind her eyes.

Patrice had said it must have happened almost the minute they left the restaurant. He told April he usually went to the door with them. Sometimes he walked with them out to Mr. Petersen's car. Yes, he knew the car well. He knew the driver. Sometimes they gave coffee or food to Mr. Petersen's driver. The driver's name was Wally Jefferson. Patrice said he didn't know why Wally Jefferson hadn't been outside the restaurant waiting for them last night.

"Didn't you wonder where the driver was?" April asked.

The question renewed Patrice's weeping.

"I didn't know he wasn't there so I didn't have any reason to think about it," Patrice replied. And no, he hadn't known how bad the weather was. How could he know? He was busy taking care of customers. That's why he wasn't at the door with them. He'd been very busy. It must have been a mugger crazed for dope money, he insisted to April.

A few things the maitre d' said didn't play for her. Restaurant people always knew the weather. The weather accounted for the number of customers. Not only that, rain soaked people's shoes and made tracks on the floor. People wore raincoats when it rained, carried umbrellas. They dripped all over the place. Coats were wet or dry. No way Patrice could not have known. When a person lied about one thing, it was hard to believe anything else he said.

And as for his crying, you couldn't tell anything by tears. Sometimes people screamed, really shrieked. In Chinatown, relatives of victims sometimes went nuts, made enough noise to bring the house down. But one woman she'd informed of the suicide of her last living child, a son of twenty-six, had gone to the gym that very afternoon because she didn't want to change her schedule and disappoint her trainer. And of course the big-breasted widow of Tor Petersen might now be sobbing brokenheartedly over her loss. You never knew.

"You didn't answer my question," she said.

"What question? I forgot." Mike was working on the ketchup-laden hash browns.

"Are you keeping me company for the food, or are you in on this? I have to go back and get organized."

"What makes you think I know?"

"Back at Liberty's you went to the men's room more times than you had to go. The phone is back there. I figured you were making some calls."

He dabbed at his lips with his paper napkin, crumpled it, and dropped it on the table. "Very good. Watching me like a cat. I like that."

April shook her head. Her hair had grown out into a bob that framed her face and sometimes got in the way of serious conversation. "Uh-uh, it's my job."

"Gee, and I thought you loved me."

"I don't do work-and-play combinations, Mike, you know that." In their last case Mike had almost killed a suspect who'd insulted her. Later he told her that was when he realized he loved her. It was also when she realized he could be dangerous. But he was still more powerful in the department than she was, and if he wanted in on a case in her house, there was nothing she could do to stop him.

She smiled, had to be smart about this. "You drove through a blizzard to help me out. Thanks, chico."

"Ab, it's my job." He smiled back.

"Uh-huh. I get the feeling you don't like the ADA on the case. What's the problem there?" She reached for the shoulder bag by her feet. Time to go. The lieutenant would be in. She didn't want to anger Iriarte by not reporting everything right away. She put the bag on the table and reached for her coat.

Mike caught one of her hands and held it with both of his, squeezing her fingers just enough lo give her the shivers. "You like him?"

"He seemed to know what he was doing." She did a quick suvey of the diner, looking for a spy from the precinct who could make something of this. No one she knew was around. She suddenly wished Mike's hand would travel down her neck and into her sweater. Weird. She figured she was overtired.

"Uh-huh, and your lieutenant, he know what he's doing, too?" Mike was asking.

"Iriarte? He dresses well, wants women to be women. Has a short mustache like your mother's boyfriend." April was distracted.

"Is this a professional assessment of his competence?" Mike brought the tips of her fingers to his lips, tickling them with his mustache.

The gesture got her in the stomach. No, no, and no. Flushing, she grabbed her coat and scarf from the back of the chair, making a face at the smell of wet wool as she put them on. "I take it you're coming with me."

"To the ends of the earth, querida." Mike gave her a knowing smile.

"That would be nice, chico, but I'm not going that far."

"Uh-huh. What kind of hole do you have for people who work on special cases?"

"Oh, a real nice closet, has a phone and everything. Just outside my door."

"Bueno." Mike tucked his stiffening leather jacket under his arm and reached for the check. "Well, let's go meet the boys."

April glanced at her watch again. It was 9:13. They really had to hustle now. She had to put in a call to

Jason Frank. Funny, the food must have helped. She was wide awake now.

At 9:29 Lieutenant Iriarte gestured with a cupped hand, inviting April and Mike into the already too crowded space of his office. Today he wore a glen plaid suit in almost mossy tones with a pale amber shirt and bold-patterned orange-and-khaki tie. His suit jacket was buttoned, and a thin stripe of long underwear ribbing peeped out from under his shirt cuffs.

The cheerless trio arrayed around his desk included the woebegone Hagedorn, who warmed his chubby hands on a cup of precinct bilge that smelled a week old; Tom Creaker, a fierce-looking giant with a number of battle scars visible on his close-cropped skull who claimed he was three-quarters Native American and one-quarter Irish; and April's favorite, Billy Skye, a diminutive man whose biceps were so large they threatened to split his sleeves every time he moved his arms. The four men had been working together for years. No one offered Woo or Sanchez a chair.

"How ya doin'. I'm Mike Sanchez." Mike looked them over, taking the temperature in a friendly way.

Iriarte's office was deep in the bowels of the second floor. No windows fronting the street leaked in frigid air or gave a view of the prevailing weather as in the Two-O. But even so, there was no doubt about the season. Skye and Hagedorn had sweaters under their sport jackets, disproving the oft-told lie that the radiators in the building were working well.

"Mike." Iriarte held out his hand. Mike leaned over the desk to shake it. "You've met Charlie Hagedorn. And you know Tom Creaker, Billy Skye." At his name, each man lifted a hand in a modified salute.

"I got a call you were coming." Iriarte sniffed at the air like an animal with a new scent, then glanced at April with a raised eyebrow. You have something to do with this?

She shook her head.

The lieutenant returned his attention to Mike.

"Well, good to have you with us, Mike, in your new position. How's it going?" lriarte tapped a finger on his desk and consulted a portion of puckering paint on the ceiling over his head.

"It's going well," Mike replied. "How about you guys?"

lriarte nodded. "I like a team that cooperates. Want a cup of coffee?"

Mike glanced at April. "Thanks, we just ate."

lriarte's eyebrow came up at April again. You sure you weren't the one to invite your old partner in on this?

A spark ignited in her boss's eye that made April nervous. She'd only known lriarte for a few weeks. The lieutenant could have been a real bastard to her, could have withheld the kind of everyday information that would have made doing a good job almost impossible. But so far he'd been fair. He hadn't coddled her or made nice, but he'd been fair. April couldn't ask for anything more than that. He could still make life miserable for her, though. Anytime he felt she wasn't on his team, he could chop her up into little pieces and feed her to his three ugly musketeer henchmen.

As the lieutenant had done only a second before, April sniffed the air and smelled Sanchez. Sanchez really complicated things for her. He edged even closer to the door now, smiling at a scenario he was beginning to get used to, that of the outsider who, depending on his mood, had the power anywhere he went to make things more chaotic, or less.

April decided to take a chance. Some cops talked to each other really well without saying a word. On the street, communication was everything. A cop could have peace or war just by his body language and the tone of his voice. The idea was to get the suspect to give up his hands for the cuffs, not reach for his gun hidden in some unexpected place and blow everybody away. One had to know how to keep the competitive macho thing on both sides of the badge as low-key as possible. April didn't know if Iriarte had ever been on the street, but she cocked her head in the same engaging little way she used when she told some disgusting dirtbag thief or rapist—who thought it would be easy to kill her because she was an Asian, or didn't have her gun pointed at his head, or was a woman—and smiled as she said, "Come on now, put that gun down. You don't want to spend the rest of your life on death row for killing a lady cop, do you?"

Now she raised her own eyebrows, such as they were, back at Iriarte. Can we talk about this later, sir?

Still fair, he gave her a little nod. "Okay, what do we have here? You talk to Liberty yet?"

"Yes, sir." April decided to show Sanchez she was taking the lead here.

"What's the story there, he our killer?"

April drew breath and exhaled slowly. "It's early days to rule it in or out," she answered. "He was supposed to go to the theater with his wife last night, but at the last minute he went to Chicago."

Hagedorn sniggered. "Chicago, huh? That sound familiar to anyone? I'd bet a grand it's the black bastard."

"You don't have a grand," Skye sneered.

Creaker agreed with Hagedorn. "Nine times out of ten it's the husband."

"Could have been the wife," April threw in. "Petersen's wife has a motive and no alibi."

"One woman, two victims? Does that sound likely?"

"Nobody said she didn't have help. The woman has a lot of rivals, including our victim, and a lot to gain with hubby out of the way."

Iriarte ignored that. "So when did Liberty go to Chicago?" he demanded.

April checked her notebook. "He said he took the two p.m. flight, had a meeting, flew home, and returned to his apartment at the Park Century around midnight. The doorman at his building verified his return at between midnight and twelve-ten."

"Which is it?" Definitely after midnight when the building's porter stopped by to give him some coffee before he went home and before twelve-ten when he double-locked the door and left his post to go to the john."

"Libery come out again?"

April shook her head. "He says not. The doorman says not."

"How about the back door?"

"The back elevator is shut down at six p.m."

"How about the fire stairs?"

"Anybody who opens the gate on the main floor sets off an alarm. I think we'd better look in another direction. Liberty says Petersen's driver—Wally Jefferson—took his car without his permission while Liberty was in Europe a week ago. The car has disappeared. Jefferson claims it was stolen off the street."

"Where are you going with this, Woo? You think this Jefferson had something to do with it?"

"I don't know, sir. Jefferson was Petersen's driver. He knew where they were. He had opportunity."

"I thought you said he was Liberty's driver," Iriarte said impatiently.

"It seems he drove Liberty freelance. In any case, he borrowed Liberty's car without permission, and it's missing."

"Where's the motive for a double murder with him?" Hagedorn muttered.

"We don't know he wasn't there waiting for them. He could have been there, killed them, and left after it was over."

"What's the fucking motive, huh, Woo? A stolen car?"

Mike flushed but kept silent. April was grateful for that. .

"Liberty said he told Petersen his driver was a thief and urged him to cut the man loose. Maybe Petersen took his advice and Jefferson was pissed."

"Because he lost his job?"

"In the postal service, employment beefs end up in mass murder all the time," Creaker joked.

"Good ballplayer," Iriarte commented about Liberty. "What say you, Mike?"

Mike chewed on the ends of his mustache. "It doesn't look to me like one person made the two hits here. That's what's bugging me. There might have been two killers. If they'd been thirsty crackheads, they would have taken the time to grab the purse and Petersen's wallet. Nothing would have stopped them from getting the money. No one took their money. It wasn't robbery."

"Maybe someone's after a lot more than pocket money."

lriarte stared at Skye and Creaker. "Garbage time," he said. "Start with five blocks all around. What are we looking for, April?"

"For the lady, the ME said possibly an ice pick. Maybe a double-edged knife, thinner than a switchblade.' Maybe some specialty item." April shrugged. "Possibly a switchblade. We don't have a COD on the male yet. The ME said he may have seen the woman being attacked and had a heart attack."

"Jesus. Okay, go over the scene again, see if daylight turns something up." The lieutenant glanced over at Mike. "Hey, big shot, you got a plan?"

Mike moved away from the door so Creaker and Skye could get out. "I've always got a plan."

"Well, put it up on the board. I like my cases up on the board, every step of the way. I like to see what we know and what we don't know. I like to see the holes plugged, you know what I mean? April will tell you, Mike, I'm a detail man all the way."

Mike coughed. "That's great, but not in this case."

"Oh, yeah, why not?"

"Because the press is all over this one."

"The press is all over all of them."

"Yeah, but we're going to look really dumb if we're the last ones to know how our investigation is going."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I think. Hagedorn, show the sergeant here where his desk is, and make sure he has everything he needs. Out." Iriarte turned his attention to April. "Anything else?"

April shut her notebook. "That's all we have at the moment."

"All right. Go find the driver." Iriarte contemplated her silently for a moment before adding his final thought. "That's your puppy out there, Woo. You'd better keep him on a leash."

"Excuse me, sir?"

"You heard me. If your boyfriend fucks up the case, your ass is out of here."

"Yes, sir." Was this childish or what? April turned on her heel to hide the flush, spreading over her body like a fatal disease. She didn't bother to insist that Mike wasn't her boyfriend. Iriarte didn't care and wouldn't have believed her anyway.