Judging Time

4

The Park Century was twelve blocks north on Fifty-seventh Street. Mike and April headed up Eighth Avenue without speculating whether Frederick Douglass Liberty would be at home to receive them at four in the morning. Patrice Paul had told April that Mr. Liberty was out of town. The restaurant manager had been in tears, almost hysterical the whole time April questioned him. Over and over he had begged her to let him try to reach Liberty on his cellular phone and inform him of what had happened. He didn't want Liberty to hear about the tragedy on the news. Though it might have seemed a reasonable request, April could not let him contact Liberty. She needed to cover some ground about precipitating events. What had happened during the evening. How was the restaurant run. What were the relationships of the people involved. She did not give Patrice a single opportunity to be alone. Even now he was getting a ride home to Brooklyn in a squad car.

April would not have let him make the call and give away any information under any circumstances. But in this case there was something worrying about the nature of the restaurant manager's extreme distress. April wondered why he was so eager to be the first one to reach his employer, as well as someone he called his friend, with such devastating news. Informing relatives was the worst job anyone could have. April hated those moments more than any other in her job.

But maybe Patrice Paul was glad Merrill Liberty was gone forever. April didn't have to remind herself that she had to be careful here. Really careful. The race issue made her uneasy. Sure, it was always there, and it always complicated everything. The chemistry of every case was affected by what sort of person was the primary detective managing it and what sort of people were the suspects. Class made a difference, as did the level of education people had and their attitude toward the police. Cops didn't even know they were adjusting the circumstances in each case to fit their own particular prejudices. It wasn't conscious. And color probably made the most difference of al. Color made people nervous, made them jump one way or another, changed the way they acted or didn't act. Color raised the stakes on the possibility of political repercussions. It guaranteed deeply emotional and often dangerous responses that were camouflaged or not depending on the parties involved. Anybody who said only the facts mattered was dreaming.

Patrice Paul was a witness. It was more than likely he knew more than he was telling. Maybe he was more involved than he would like to admit. What if Petersen had died of other causes? They'd been in -a restaurant, had eaten and drunk. Maybe he'd been poisoned somehow and been stricken when he got outside. It would explain how two people had been taken out so suddenly without a fight. Maybe the death of Merrill Liberty was an employee/boss's wife thing. Maybe it was a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. Maybe it was a race thing. Maybe it was a random act of violence, which would make it the worst possibility of all—a mystery. No one liked a mystery.

April wanted to handle this correctly. She knew this was an explosive situation no matter who had killed the victims or what the motive had been. Even if the perpetrator turned out to be a white homeless person who didn't even know them—which everyone who had seen the victims tended to doubt—there would still be plenty of battles fought over this case. The two victims were white, rich, and celebrities. The husband of one victim and the employee who went out to help them were black. It wasn't supposed to make a difference but it would.

It was a visceral thing. A lot of people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds didn't like each other. And they especially didn't like mixed marriages of any kind—people like her mother and her father who were otherwise fine people. But Sai and Ja Fa Woo didn't stop at disliking blacks. April's parents didn't like anybody—not whites, not Hispanics, not Pakistanis or Native Americans or Koreans. Chinese were best people to them. That was it. Nobody else counted. It was hard to take, especially considering April's current not-so-secret passion for a Latino. She sneaked a look at Mike.

Very few cars were out to challenge the snow on the street. The Camaro was low, and it plowed through some fresh inches, making grumpy, straining car noises. Mike seemed concentrated on his driving. She could tell he was in his waiting mode. He knew all about male sexual jealousy and how lethal it could be, but he would not make anything of Merrill Liberty's having been out with her husband's best friend, a white man, and the possible implications of that until there was something to make of it.

April couldn't help remembering the speculative way the ME had looked at Patrice, and then the way Dr. Washington's gaze had returned to the restaurant door more than once, as if she thought the killer might have come from inside the restaurant with an ice pick and not from the street. Why did the medical examiner think that? April made a mental note to ask Dr. Washington what her suspicions were. But April also had her doubts that Rosa Washington, well known for her rigid correctness, would tell her anything unless she knew April really well and trusted her. And the doctor had seemed extremely professional, not the kind of person to speculate about things she couldn't prove.

The Camaro took the turn through six inches of slush on Fifty-seventh Street like a small motorboat heaving through a mighty swell. It pulled up in front of a building that was splendid even at four in the morning on a storm-ravaged January night. Mike crossed himself. Whether in gratitude for getting there without mishap or in comment about the place itself April couldn't tell.

Like a sentry on either side of the front door was a topiary that looked like a lollipop with Christmas lights. Green letters on a white canopy importantly declared the building's name: PARK CENTURY. Race came back to mind again as April wondered how many other blacks lived in this building, how many Latinos, how many Asians. Cops were trained not to make assumptions. In the department they were supposed to be all one color, blue. On the street they were supposed to look at everybody the same. But they didn't. In confusing situations, black cops in plain clothes who ran with their guns unholstered in pursuit of bad guys risked getting shot in the back by their white colleagues.

At 4:12 A.M. Sergeants Sanchez and Woo entered the Park Century, where Liberty had shared the penthouse with his wife Merril. The doorman was a large sleepy-eyed man who smelled of cigarettes and didn't like the sight of them.

"You're sure Mr. Liberty is here?" Mike asked after identifying himself and April and hearing that the former football star was at home.

"Of course I'm sure. I got to write everything down, don't I? Mr. Liberty came in before midnight." A black pin on the doorman's jacket gave his name as Earl.

Earl checked the clipboard on his porter's desk under the intercom board. "But Mrs. Liberty is still out. Is that what you're here about?" He wore green and gold livery even this late on the graveyard shift. A gleaming black top hat sat on the credenza along the wall. "Is she all right?" Earl suddenly looked concerned.

"Would you ring the apartment for me?" Mike asked.

"Mr. Liberty won't like it."

No one ever did. Mike jerked his chin at the intercom. It wasn't his problem.

April pursed her lips. Instantly they'd fallen into their usual routine. Mike being the authority figure. The man. She would have been more conciliatory with the doorman because they would need his cooperation later. But hey, who was complaining? Mike always got the job done.

Three minutes later they got out of a gleaming, dark wood-paneled elevator on the twelfth floor. There was only one door on the floor, but they wouldn't have confused the apartment anyway. The famous quarterback who'd been known as Liberty (and whom April recognized now that she saw him) stood there bleary-eyed in his doorway. In spite of the lateness of the hour, he was dressed. He wore a pair of gray slacks and was pulling a gray cashmere sweater into place as he frowned at them.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"I'm Sergeant Sanchez. This is Sergeant Woo." Mike pulled out his ID, but Liberty turned his head away without looking at it.

"Do you mind if we come in?" Mike asked.

The impression he gave was not one of alarm. Liberty looked wary, eyed them with distrust. "All right," he said evenly. "Come in here." He led the way across a tan marble floor, then hit the light switch in the living room, stunning the two detectives with its splendor.

For a second, Liberty seemed shocked by it also, for he gripped his forehead, shielding his eyes from the great expanse of room and windows heightened by lengths of soft white sofas, white throws, miles of textured white rugs on a white marble floor, and white gauzy curtains, all of which were offset by many pieces of striking African art. Chieftains' stools served as coffee tables. Masks hung on the walls and were suspended above ebony columns by long metal rods. Ceremonial objects, cups, tobacco boxes, brass figurines were arranged on shelves. Particularly arresting were several large wooden statues of women with out-sized breasts and men with outsized penises. Some were decorated with small shells, colored cloth, raffia, and many bits of mirror. April knew the contrast of primitive and ultrasophisticated decorating was done for a particular purpose. She didn't want to guess what it was.

Liberty waved his hand at one of the spans of sofa but didn't go so far as to invite the two detectives to sit. April noted his demeanor carefully. The man was clearly annoyed by their intrusion, but she couldn't attribute a meaning to the tension in his jaw. He looked as if he were about to, or just had, bitten off the end of his tongue. As men often did, Liberty concentrated on Sanchez, stared at him challengingly as if he did not want to lower himself by asking again what was the reason for their predawn visit.

As she watched the set of Liberty's powerful clenched jaw that was so photogenic and had daunted so many opponents on the playing field, April flashed back to the story she'd heard several years ago of the middle-class man who claimed his wife had thrown herself from the fifteenth-floor window in their bedroom. Simple case. The husband gave a great performance, weeping, telling the detectives how the tragedy occurred—what the distraught woman had said, how she stormed out of the living room where he had been sitting reading the evening paper. Everything. Problem was it didn't add up. For one thing, there had been no sign of an evening paper. For another, the woman's makeup was carefully laid out on the dressing table, and only one of her eyes had been completed. The picture was of a woman interrupted in the middle of an activity. In addition, one of her slippers had snagged on the claw foot at the end of a leg on her dressing table. The other slipper was on her foot when she was found. When confronted with the question of the unfinished makeup and the snagged slipper, the man calmly confessed that after thirty years of his wife's boring conversation he couldn't face another dinner with her and threw her out the window as she was getting ready to go out.

"I'm sorry to have to bring you bad news," Mike said now.

Liberty swallowed. "What kind of bad news?"

Mike glanced at April.

Liberty closed his eyes. "Is it my mother?"

"It's two people," Mike said slowly.

The man looked hostile. "Who?"

"Your wife. And the man who was with her."

"That's not possible. You're mistaken."

"I'm sorry, sir," April said. "Would you like to sit down?"

"No." Liberty spun around as if there were a sound at his front door. "My wife's fine. She's on her way."

He stared at the door, waiting for it to open. Nothing. The tan gallery was dark and silent.

Mike and April watched him watching for an elevator that wasn't going to come.

"I'm sure you've made a mistake. They're fine. I know they are," he said again, concentrating on the front door.

Mike shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir."

Suddenly Liberty's face contorted. He put his hands to his forehead and gripped it with both huge paws, shielding his eyes.

"Do you want me to get you something?" April murmured.

"I get migraines. My doctors say they come from an old football injury. But I've always had them."

Mike glanced at April.

Liberty's hands dropped to his sides. "I have to call the restaurant. My wife is there."

"It's four in the morning," Mike said. "There's no one there."

"Four?" Liberty lifted his arm to check his watch. He wasn't wearing it. He frowned. "I just spoke to her. Four in the mornings—? I must have fallen asleep." He stared at them. "What happened?"

"We're not sure yet. Mr. Petersen may have had a heart attack."

"A heart attack?" Liberty cocked the head he said was hurting him. "A heart attack? Where's Merrill? Did she go to the hospital with him?"

"No, she was assaulted in front of the restaurant."

"What?" Sweat glistened on his forehead. His two-hundred-pound physique still looked like solid muscle. He towered over them. April would not like to fight him in a dark alley.

"She was struck as she left the restaurant," April said, taking up the slack.

"Struck? That just can't be true—"' Finally Liberty sat down.

Mike and April remained standing. After a second the big man got up again. "Tor had a heart attack and my wife was attacked? How could such a thing happen? Where were they? I—"

"They were leaving the restaurant. Somebody attacked your wife in the yard. She's dead. I'm sorry," April said softly.

"Dead—?" Liberty clutched his head. "In the yard?" His face was ashen. "Oh Jesus. This can't be happening. He was a thief. I didn't think he was a killer. No, no."

"Who?" Mike said sharply. "Who's a killer?"

"I told Tor that guy Jefferson was trouble. He just wouldn't listen. First my car. Now this—I can't believe—" He broke off.

"Your car?" Mike frowned at April.

"He took my car while I was in Europe. When I got back last week he told me the car had been stolen off the street. I tried to convince Tor to fire him right then."

"Who are you referring to, sir?" April asked gently.

"Wally Jefferson, Tor—Mr. Petersen's driver. My head is bad. I need a doctor."

"Yes, sir. We can call one right away."

"And call Jason Frank. his wife was with them, with Merrill and Tor. Emma's not—?"

"No, she wasn't with them." April had been feeling hot and dizzy and a bit confused herself in the warm apartment. Now she relaxed a little. They had a suspect. Liberty seemed to think the chauffeur who had stolen his car might have been the killer. That was a start. She was also comforted by the fact that Jason Frank was Liberty's doctor. April narrowed her eyes at him. So the former football player was seeing a shrink. In her eyes that made him suspect of something, but she wasn't sure what. It could mean Liberty was depressed, or mentally unbalanced in some other way. Maybe violent. Interesting about the headaches. Certainly Jason Frank would know. April had influence with Jason Frank.

Mike's hand brushed April's arm. She knew what the gesture meant. Everything in their lives had changed, and yet here they were again, back on a case together—she, Mike, and Jason Frank. The ghost of Merrill Liberty was like the wing of a butterfly fluttering against April's cheek. Her heart thudded so loudly in her chest she could almost hear it.