Judging Time

28

Oh shit, man, a visit to Staten Island? That's all I need today," Mike groaned when he got the call that Liberty's stolen Lincoln had turned up in such an inconvenient place.

"You want to see it as is, you go where it is. Otherwise we haul it away and you see it in the lot after we've finished with it."

"What's it look like?"

"A mess. Somebody got wiped in it. Trunk's splattered with blood and cocaine. Must have been quite a party."

"Body?"

"No body."

Mike sighed and looked at his watch, figuring up the three hours it would take to drive downtown, take the ferry to Staten Island, be picked up by a detective there, driven to look at the car, take the ferry back to pick up his own car in lower Manhattan, then return to the line he'd been investigating before the call about the car came in. What he'd intended to do was drive to Brooklyn to have a little chat with Patrice, Liberty's close associate, to see if Patrice knew where Liberty was, and if Liberty and his wife were dop-ers, too.

An hour and a half to get out there, and the car was indeed a mess. Brains and bits of bone all over the front. It looked to Mike like a gunshot wound to the head of the passenger in the front seat, but what was left of the head and the rest of the body was missing. In the trunk, more gore, and in the corners of the trunk, little spilled piles of white powder from what must have been a large stash.

"You look in the water for the body?" Mike asked the detective, a skinny Hispanic who looked about twelve. "Easiest to get rid of it out there." He pointed to the rocky shore past where the car was parked on a lonely stretch of road.

"Yeah, we looked, didn't see anything. Maybe in five, six days in this water it'll pop up for us."

"It's pretty cold for that time frame."

The detective shrugged. "Seen enough?"

Mike nodded. Now he had to change his plan. He suddenly thought there was a slight leak in one of his tires. When he got back to town, he picked up his car near the ferry and drove up Twelfth Avenue to visit a friend who used to have a little sideline at one of the big dealerships. Somehow the bits and pieces of newly stolen cars would end up in his possession for a brief period of time. Roger Pickard was part of a network that broke cars down and distributed the parts along to body and audio and car part shops in prime locations around the tristate area.

Within a matter of hours, a stolen car would be in pieces, headed in a dozen different directions and virtually impossible to trace. When a rash of cars stolen around the city, and even as far away as New Jersey and Westchester, were linked to new leases sold at the dealership where Roger serviced al models of the five makes of cars available there, Roger had insisted grand larceny was not in his line. He was encouraged to prove it by fingering some people who scared him a lot, but apparently less than Mike did. Roger now worked in a garage that serviced limos. He had been very helpful last year providing background material on the habits of some limo drivers whose murders Mike had been investigating.

The beefy mechanic was stuffed behind the wheel of a white superstretch Mercedes, playing with the audio wires when Mike drove into the garage too fast in his grubby-looking Camaro that hadn't been cleaned up in a long time. He stopped just short of clipping the Mercedes. Pickard stuck his big head out of the window but didn't attempt to get out of the car.

"Long time no see. I almost feel neglected. What's going on, Sergeant?"

"Hey, Roger." Mike got out and casually walked around the Mercedes. The car didn't have a nick or a scratch on its four miles of milky surface. He opened the back door and took an inventory of the inside. Four sofas, a couple of TVs, a bar. A sunroof that opened so that a dozen occupants could stand up and wave at admiring crowds. Two control panels for audio and visual with lots of buttons. The thing looked as if it could seat a football team. Mike finished walking around the Mercedes and glanced at the other limos in the garage. This took him a few more minutes.

"What can I do for you, rna man?" Finally Roger emerged from the driver's seat. He was a big man, thick all over with teak-colored skin and hair cut too short to curl. He smiled. "We're always looking for reliable drivers. Maybe you're interested."

"Maybe."

"You're still driving that old wreck. Looks real bad, man. Maybe you'd like a new car." Roger's grin widened.

"Maybe."

"What's up, man?"

Mike glanced around again. Roger seemed to be working on about a dozen cars. Town cars, stretch limos, a few exotics. The smell of lubricants, gas, oil, and leather intoxicated the air. "You all alone here?"

"Ah, Pancho is around somewhere." Roger didn't tum around to look for him.

"I've got a slow leak." Mike pointed at his right front tire. "Could you take a look at it for me?"

"It's an honor, man." Roger snickered as he rolled over a jack.

"You been following the Liberty case?" Mike asked casually.

"Who hasn't?"

"What can you tell me about it?"

Roger sniffed some air through his nose. Reference to nose candy, the dead white wife, or the pictures in the newspapers of the funeral without a grieving husband? Mike waited as Roger removed the nuts from the wheel and rocked it off.

"He came to fathers' day at my kid's school a few years back."

"No kidding."

Roger lifted the wheel and eased it into a tub of water without making waves, then slowly rolled it around.

"What do you want to know?"

"What kind of shape was his car in?"

"What makes you think I know?"

"You know everything about limos, Rog, rna man. You know which cars come with the boys to blow the gay gentlemen, and which ones supply the tarts. You also know who's got the medicine cabinets, and where they park for the parties."

"Nooooo, man, I don't know nothin' about that."

"I heard Liberty is a gay gentleman, what do you know about that?"

"I don't see no bubbles here. You sure about that leak?" Roger turned the tire over in the water.

"What about it?"

"No sir, no bubbles coming out of here. The man's straight as they come. I'd know that. I can smell it a mile away." He smiled. "Like I can smell you, man."

"What about snowflake?"

The smile faded. "You should have heard how he talked to those kids. He told them, 'Once you lose control of your body and your mind, you got nothin' left. Nothin'.' " Roger straightened up and lifted the tire out. "You didn't need me to tell you that.'"

"Liberty's car was nicked last week, just after New Year's. It showed up this morning with someone's brains spattered all over the front seat.' '

"Lord save us.' Roger bounced the tire to the ground and rolled it back to Mike's jacked-up Ca-maro. "You know who that somebody is?"

"I thought you might know."

"No, man. That's ugly stuff. I don't know nothing about nothing like that."

"I keep hearing that. You know Wally Jefferson?"

"Yeah, man, I know him." Pickard busied himself replacing the tire.

"He's the one who took the car out of Liberty's garage. He said he had permission to take it. Liberty says he's lying."

"Yeah, well, some drivers do that when the owners are out of town. One time a garage attendant took a limo home to impress his girlfriend, drove her around, did her in the backseat, had a few drinks from the bar, and totaled the thing an hour later." He shook his head.

"Now the other guy is a different story," he went on, suddenly voluble.

"What other guy?" Mike watched the wheel return to his car.

"That guy Petersen who died. Everybody knew he was deep into it. I heard on the news he died of a heart attack. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be bad shit." He gave Mike a shrewd look. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's all hushed up. Now what else do you want to know?"

Oh, just the names and addresses of Jefferson's friends and known associates, the exact nature of the coke connection to Merrill Liberty's death. Where Liberty's Lincoln had been on the night of her murder, what it had been used for, who the other dead person was, and when he (or she) had died. Mike also wanted to know how Liberty himself fit into it all.

"Who's Petersen's source?" he said finally.

"You got me," Roger said. He finished putting the nuts back on the wheel and let the front end of the Camaro whoosh down to the ground. "You come on back if you have any more trouble with that tire," he said. "And I hear Wally has a girlfriend up on a Hundred Thirty-eighth Street and B-way. That Petersen car is up there allllli the time, know what I mean?"

Out in Brooklyn at 4:05 P.M., Mike Sanchez was back on his original track, looking for his cocaine source and brooding about April Woo. He drove along a quiet street, searching for the building where Patrice Paul lived, feeling really peeved. Dealing with a cop was always a sketchy thing. No matter how well you knew one, how closely you worked together, you never really knew what a cop was up to. April hadn't said where she was going when they parted, so she could be anywhere, following up on any one of the several bombs dropped on them this morning. What if Petersen had in fact been murdered by his wife and the ME missed it? What if Liberty was gay and had a white woman as a cover? What if they were all dopers?

Mike cruised the street slowly, looking for signs of illegal activity and brooding about April. He guessed she'd gone over to see Rosa Washington, but that was just a guess. He'd seen all the messages on her desk from Kiang. It was just as possible that she'd yielded to Kiang's pleas to come downtown and see him. That bastard Kiang called her five times a day. The man happened to be the dumbest prosecutor in New York, and because there were a lot of dumb prosecutors in New York, that was saying something. Mike gave April the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she didn't know how dumb Kiang was. On the other hand, maybe she wouldn't think he was because her mother had always told her, "Chinese people are best people." What kind of bullshit was that? Mike scowled.

Out in Brooklyn, the snow of Sunday night's storm was still very much in evidence in spite of some rain in between. A low wall of snow blocked the cars that hadn't been moved before the plows came in to clear the streets. He watched a discouraged-looking line of kids with their hoods up straggle home in the early dusk. The snow was crusted hard on top from the melting and freezing of the last few days, too unappetizing for the most determined snowball fighters.

Okay, so he was getting a little messed up about this April Woo and Dean Kiang thing. Okay, so he didn't want to make any disparaging remarks about females taking shortcuts by sleeping their way to the top. But Mike had noticed over time that most women, no matter what their culture or class, tried to make their way up the success ladder on the horizontal first. And only when sex was not an option for getting ahead would women resort to actually working for their promotions. It didn't bother him, it was just a fact of life. In the department, female uniforms came on to detectives, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, who-ever's attention they could get. And higher ranking females came on to the highest ranking male officers. Not April Woo, though. Not until now. And now she was coming on to the dumbest prosecutor in New York just because he was a Chinese lawyer in a suit. It made him sick. All his sensitivity, his respect for her independence and her feelings. For nothing. Showed how much he knew about women. He drove along slowly, feeling lovesick and bruised.

He scanned the street looking for drug trade, didn't see any. This was a pretty good area, quiet. There was not much going on. A few people were trying to dig their cars out. But there were no suspicious clots of idle men standing around. Looked as if the people in this area were employed. Were at work. Kids going home from school. It was another block or so to Patrice's building.

The tire seemed okay now. Maybe it never had a leak, after all. Patrice Paul lived on the fourth floor of a modest brick building eight stories high. He answered Mike's ring by buzzing him in. The door was open when Mike got off the elevator. The tall light-colored Haitian, dressed in jeans and a gray cardigan, stood by his door watching Mike's approach down his hall like a foot soldier holding his fire on an enemy charge until he could see the whites of their eyes.

When Mike got close enough he saw that Patrice had surprising golden flecks in his eyes and was afraid. "Sergeant Sanchez," Mike said, identifying himself. "Mind if I come in for a minute?"

"I was just having a cup of tea, would you like some?" Patrice Paul's voice was low and musical.

"Uh, sure." Mike was startled. It wasn't the reception he'd expected. He went into the apartment first.

It was a three-room apartment that had been decorated with a lot of thought. The living room had a number of Caribbean-type throw rugs: Two were thrown over the highly patterned sofa. Two fan-top chairs like the kind in the restaurant. Probably came from there. Through the kitchen door, utensils for fancy cooking were visible on the wall and stove. Two doors on the other side were closed. One was probably a closet, the other a bedroom. A pottery teapot sent fragrant jasmine tea steam up into the air above the coffee table that was positioned in front of the sofa. Beside the teapot were a matching milk jug, a plate of large round yellow cookies studded with macada-mia nuts, and two cups as if someone had been expected. Their eyes met.

"Sorry to interrupt," Mike said.

"It doesn't really matter." Patrice looked anxiously at the bedroom door. "There's no hurry."

So, Patrice was the one who was gay. Mike hadn't picked it up the night of the murder. He opened his leather jacket without taking it off and sat awkwardly on one of the fan chairs. Usually, he felt kind of peculiar when he was alone with a queen, but Patrice was so demure and resigned that he suddenly had a wild feeling of elation, as if he'd cornered the squirrel who'd killed Merrill Liberty, or the squirrel was behind the bedroom door. Nah, couldn't be.

Patrice lowered his bottom to the sofa and drew his knees together as if to protect his manhood from the policeman's violation. Then he carefully poured the tea without spilling a drop.

"You know about Liberty's missing Lincoln?" Mike asked.

Patrice looked surprised. "I think I heard something about it. Liberty was upset."

"He's going to be more upset now. Do you know where he is?"

Patrice looked worried. "No, he didn't call me last night. Why will he be upset?"

"We found the car."

"I don't think he cares much about the car anymore."

"He may now. Somebody died in it."

Parice made a face and crossed himself quickly. "How, mon?"

"He was shot in the head."

"Aww that's bad."

"You know where Liberty is?" Mike demanded.

Patrice shook his head. "This is really bad."

"We need to find him before he gets hurt, you know what I mean?" Mike picked up his teacup, looked at it, then put it down. He looked toward the closed bedroom door, was going to have to go in there and check it out.

"Is he in danger, mon?"

"He knows a lot of things he hasn't told us about. Now three people are dead. You don't want him to be next, do you?"

"No, mon, I don't."

"Then give me some ideas where I might find him." Mike took a cookie and bit into it, looking away as Patrice teared up.

He ate another cookie. Patrice shook his head, didn't want to tell, then slowly he nodded.