Judging Time

43

The sky was still clear, though the light was fading fast at four-thirty when April illegally parked her white Chrysler Le Baron in front of a fire hydrant fifty yards from the 5th Precinct on Elizabeth Street. She glanced at her watch, aware that she had to check in with Mike soon. When they'd parted earlier, he'd taken Merrill Liberty's minkcoat over to Ducci in the lab. They probably knew by now if they had the piece of physical evidence they needed to make a case. She hoped things were finally coming to a head.

For a few seconds she forced herself to linger in the driver's seat while Skinny Dragon chattered excitedly in Chinese. April longed to get away from her mother, to jump out of the car and pay a visit to the 5th Precinct, a landmark building in the middle of renovation. She wished she could check out the ceiling in the detective squad room, see if it is still leaked. See if her old boss was still there, or if he'd retired as he'd been threatening to do for the last ten years. She could use the phone to return Jason Frank's call. He'd told her he'd be home about now with some new thoughts about the murder weapon. She wondered how he'd take being proven wrong in a diagnosis.

April was distracted by her mother's shrill excitement over the funeral. She herself was not looking forward to the viewing of Dai's body in a funeral home fitted out to look like the Buddhist temple from hell. Lots of red everywhere, folding chairs, clouds of incense, an altar dazzlingly bright to scare off any evil spirit that might want to come in. And the body strategically placed in front of the altar, face serene for the voyage and dressed in best clothes, with stacks of fake (red) paper money and ritual good-luck food gifts in shopping bags scattered around as sacrifices. But duty demanded that she attend.

Skinny was rattling on about the virtues of the dead man. Sai considered Uncle Dai a great man, a pillar of the community. Always good to his friends. Dai had helped April's father when he first came to America. Dai had come first, in the early fifties, and had never paid a single cent in taxes. A truly great man, not afraid of anything. This last was a snide reference to April's high level of honesty that baffled and annoyed her parents. Sai believed that the gods had played her a cruel trick at April's birth and given her the wrong baby. April worked in a corrupt police department, paid taxes for no reason, ran around all night with Spanish man, didn't honor the ten thousand years of Han dynasty ancestors. Or drive her mother where she wanted when she wanted. Today Sai had had a lot to say about the police department and the personal inconvenience she was forced to suffer because of it. She almost went so far as to blame the police commissioner himself for causing the death of her old friend. But she stopped short of that in case the gods were listening and heard the insult to April's boss.

It was fully dark now. Sai hauled herself out of the car and breathed the air of home. She turned to look April over as if she were a child making an important appearance at a grown-ups' party, then marched down Elizabeth Street, carrying her two shopping bags of offerings. They passed the apothecary she liked that sold nasty powders of ground insects and plants and bones of mythical animals guaranteed to cure any ifl-ness known to man. The rank-smelling store April had visited only a few days ago would still be open when they came out.

Near the bottom of the hill, they turned into the funeral parlor. As April had predicted, the room was cloudy with incense. On one wall, the large cross with a vivid depiction of Jesus Christ's suffering was not illuminated. Nor was the small, kneeling statue of Mary praying at his feet. Sometimes it was a mixed crowd and both Christian and Buddhist rituals had to be observed. Not today. Chinese music played softly in the background. A crowd of some twenty, mostly old people, had drawn the chairs away from the center . to better display the coffin—best quality, white with much brass, look like gold. The people sat in two lines on either side of the coffin, talking, and in some cases, screaming at each other.

The room became silent when Sai and April Woo entered. Sai did not greet anyone. Silently, she staggered (the better to exhibit her grief) over to the coffin. She carefully examined the features of the corpse, as if to make sure it was really he. And then she burst into tears, wailing loudly. Three people held out boxes of Kleenex tissues. Ostentatiously she grabbed a handful and blew her nose. Then wept some more. April stood beside her, exactly as she had all those times in her childhood when her mother had dragged her along to funerals to show respect. She felt like a complete fool. Suddenly her mother whispered, "Look good, much makeup." April thought she was going to be all right.

Then, out of the corner of her mother's mouth came the old command, same as it used to be when April was four or five. "Cly, ni," she demanded.

April glanced at the crowd of old people in their best clothes. They were watchful, silent, waiting for her. She knew the only way she was going to get out of there and get down to the prosecutor's office in a building a few blocks south was to make the correct display and save her mother's face. April let all the frustrations of the case wash over her. Her problems with Iriarte and Rosa Washington, Dean Kiang, and Mike's butterfly kiss that she couldn't help thinking about all night. Lumping it all together she managed to summon a tear. Then an actual sob erupted from deep in her throat. She wanted love, sex, a high rank in the department, and a happy life. Why was it so hard to get those things that were supposed to be within the reach of every American? Tears streamed down her cheeks. She hiccuped. Skinny jabbed her hard in the side with an elbow. Don't go overboard and show me up.

But the crowd was happy. An approving murmur rose from the mourners as more boxes of tissues appeared. A woman April had known from the cradle, Auntie May Yi, jumped up to congratulate Skinny on her obedient and loving daughter, the cop who could cry. Then everybody started speaking at once, and April's beeper went off, letting everyone know how important April Woo was to the safety of every citizen in New York.