Stealing Time

CHAPTER 19

B

y 3:43

P.M

., the temperature had gone up to a warm seventy-four degrees, but April felt cold shivers of apprehension as the car passed through the small area of Little Italy that hadn't yet been swallowed up by Chinatown. It slowed, then halted altogether in the traffic on Canal Street. At this hour the scene in Chinatown was wild, with kids out of school, merchandise blocking the sidewalk, residents shopping for dinner, tourists gawking. Life in Chinatown was a continual tide of humanity washing in, washing out. For many people, the neighborhood was only a port of entry, the hub where connections and arrangements could be made. It was a place crowded with a thousand dreams and schemes for every desperate newcomer. For tourists, simple hunger—delicious food for the belly—was an easier need to meet.

Baum parked the car half up on the curb, blocking a fire hydrant. He was going to get hassled for it, but April decided she wasn't going to play mother. He knew better, and when he got nailed it would be his problem. She got out of the car and was instantly assaulted by the smell of Chinatown and her past. Suddenly she was in her element, a fish in water.

The whole of her life was in her nose as she turned down Elizabeth. The complex mixture of odors brought memories flooding back. She could feel her temples smart from pigtails pulled too tight. Also the misery of loving boys who hadn't loved her back; her cold, cold face and feet from walking the home beat of the O-Five late at night that first year after eighteen scary months in Bed-Stuy.

April hurried down the block, past parked police scooters and three-wheeled vehicles. She felt as if she'd been away for years and years, and at the same time it seemed only a few minutes had passed since the last time she'd rushed down this street to work. Today, she didn't see anybody she knew from the old days passing by or standing in doorways, and that made her sad. At the precinct, several uniforms, wrestling new-issue bicycles through the narrow entryway, stopped to hold the door for her. And then the smell of roasting duck and pork, frying dough, garlic, rotting fish guts, and vegetable matter was replaced by the dusty air of the precinct where she'd spent five good years.

"Hey, look who the cat dragged in. April Woo, as I live and breathe. What's a big shot like you doing down here?" Lieutenant Rott was on the desk. He'd been on the desk April's last day in the house, probably hadn't been home to New Jersey since. His hair was grayer and his pink face was rounder, and he still looked mean and big, and pretty high up at the raised front desk, even though his squirrel eyes were trying hard to be friendly.

"Hello, Lieutenant. How's it going?" April was a sergeant now, so she put some warmth into her own smile.

"Not too bad. You're looking good. Now we have to read about you in the papers. That's how it goes, you move uptown, make sergeant, and forget all your old friends." He shrugged big shoulders in the blue uniform.

"No, I haven't forgotten

you,

Lieutenant. You're always in my thoughts. This is Detective Baum. He's in the Midtown North squad with me."

Woody raised a hand. "How ya doin'?"

Rott fielded a phone call. "So, how can we help you?" he asked them when he slammed down the receiver.

April had never heard those words from the lieutenant before. Help? She was stunned. "Is Alfie still running things upstairs?"

"Yeah, he's still here. But we have a new CO since your time."

April nodded. Inspector Samuel Chew. She'd never met him. At one time she'd hoped he would somehow hear of her, show an interest in her, and bring her back home. In those days, she hadn't known how to get his attention, however, so it hadn't happened. Probably a good thing, as it turned out.

"You want to meet him? He's in there." Rott pointed across the linoleum of the lobby. April realized that she could now meet anybody she wanted. She turned her head. The door was closed.

"Maybe later. I want to see Alfie first; is he in?"

"Yeah, I think so. Want me to let him know you're coming?"

She shook her head. "I want to surprise him."

"Good to meet you, Baum," Rott said magnanimously.

"Likewise," Baum replied. Like almost everybody in a new position, Woody was having a great time standing around and only getting to speak when spoken to.

April went ahead of him down the hall to the center of the building. She could see there'd been a few changes at the 5th. Over several years in the previous administration, the crumbling Elizabeth Street landmark with its steep staircases had been poorly renovated at extortionate cost to the city. Now the quaint building, which harked back to the long-gone New York of Teddy Roosevelt, seemed to be in the midst of a second restoration, probably to fix the botched and unfinished repairs of the first. As April climbed the steps, she admired the work done on the magnificent banister and wondered if they'd gotten around to doing the women's room yet.

The real changes to the house, however, were not cosmetic. The commander's office, previously upstairs, was now just inside the precinct front door. When April got to the top of the stairs and headed back down the hall to the front of the building, she got a bigger surprise. The detectives had always had a big, airy room fronting on the street. But now a glassed-in enclosure was planted just inside the door. With the CO watching the front door downstairs and Lieutenant Alfredo Bernardino on watch over the detectives, it looked as if the O-Five had become a precinct on the lookout for trouble from within.

At the moment, the said Bernardino was in his glass office with his back to the door. Like a plant grown out of shape from straining toward an elusive ray of sunlight, the lieutenant was swiveled around in his chair as if striving to return to his previous place at the window, just above the precinct's entrance, where he could see everything going on in the street.

When April knocked on the glass, he swiveled back. His face was dominated by a huge nose that had been broken more than once, and his tough, wrinkled hide was generously pocked with the scars of teenage acne. As he swung around, his shrewd brown eyes were challenging and cold in their pouchy sockets. They lit up when he saw who was seeking him. April took in the aging ruin in the wrinkled gray shirt and wrinkled pink tie as if she'd never seen him before. His crude visage was still double-ugly, a face only a mother could love. His stained brown leather jacket still hung on the back of his chair as it did in almost every season; a shoulder holster housed a .38 he'd only shot in action once, and a cigarette he would never light hung out of his mouth. April realized with a jolt that Alfie, a man nearly twice her age and ugly as sin, who'd given her a start as a detective, who'd sparred with her and taught her how to think—-the irritable old soul whom the people of Chinatown trusted and thought had more than a few lives behind him—was the model for Mike Sanchez, the handsome young man she loved.

"April,

cara,

howya doin', sweetheart?" he exclaimed. His lean cheeks creased with pleasure and his skinny hand reached out to take hers.

There it was, the "

cara," "querida

," "sweetheart" bit. A surprised laugh escaped her lips. She wondered if they'd all still be calling her sweetheart when she made captain. She shook his hand.

"Alfie. Look at this, they got you in a box now?" She went over and rapped on the glass. "This thing bulletproof?"

"Nah, we don't go in for that sissy stuff. Who's the friend? Come on in."

"Detective Baum—Woody."

"Woody Tree, that's a new one."

"Oh, you know Jewish," Woody said.

Alfie snorted. "Sure I know Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Dominican—Fujian, Fijian, you name it, I know it." He moved a few chairs around. "Come in, sit, sit."

April took a chair that faced the desks and empty holding cell. The desk that had been hers was also unoccupied at the moment, but the shift changed in a few minutes. Someone would come in and she'd see who sat there now. Again she was flooded with memories of a life more simple than the one she had now.

The ghosts of all those shadowy longings she used to have for things she'd known nothing about now hovered in the air over her head, as the ghosts that she didn't believe in always did. The things she'd wanted so much had come to her at the price of her peace of mind and her innocence. She found herself almost overwhelmed with nostalgia for the time when she'd had no responsibility for the people below her and few choices about how to handle anything.

"Hey, it's great to see you, April. You made good, huh?"

Her chin dipped in a modest curtsy, acknowledging the compliment. It wasn't always easy to know what to do when people suddenly got nice. "How's Lorna, the kids?"

"Lorna's still Lorna, older. Kathy's an FBI agent. Bill's in law school."

"Looks like they got through college, after all. Congratulations."

"Could be worse," he said proudly. "What brings you down here? Still want my job, cutie?"

"Nah, you can keep it now. I have my own." April glanced at Woody with a smile. He was listening, probably thinking about taking

her

job.

"So what's up?" Alfie's eyes got shrewd again. "You won't believe this—an old friend of yours, remember Nanci Hua? She came in asking about you, oh not even an hour ago. Funny how things happen."

"Nanci? No kidding. What did she want?"

"She wouldn't say. She looked upset. She wanted you. I gave her your number."

"She still in the same place?"

He shoveled through the mess on his desk. "Uh-uh, out in Garden City. I have the number here somewhere, but I never thought I'd be seeing you. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Alfie nodded at some people April had never seen before, coming in for the afternoon tour, staring at the visitors with frank curiosity.

"Oh, just curious if you've heard anything about black-market babies," April asked.

"Black-market babies?" Alfie scratched his head as if she'd gone loony from working uptown too long. "From down here?"

April shrugged expectantly.

"We had a girl die last year of a botched abortion. Her family didn't want to risk taking her to the hospital, so she bled to death. We get a few of those." He was thoughtful. "Then there was the girl a few months ago. Only twelve. They found her in the water under the Brooklyn Bridge, but she was dead before she went in. Thank God the case wasn't ours." He shook his head, then tried out the words again. "Blackmar-ket babies. That's a new one on me. But you know how it is down here. What are you working on?"

"I caught the Popescu case."

"Yeah. I heard about that. I thought the story was the mother offed it." Alfie gave her a sharp look, waiting for enlightenment, just like the old days.

"Could be. Could also be something else. Keep this under your hat, will you? Turns out it wasn't her baby. So it's a mystery. You know how I hate mysteries."

Alfie frowned. "Couldn't it be a friend's baby? An adoption. How about from China, that play for you?"

"I don't know; the husband isn't forthcoming with papers. If the baby came in legally, there would have to be immigration papers. We got zip. That makes me think dirty thoughts."

"What's the mother say?"

"She's not exactly cooperating. She was hit on the head. She thinks she's an insect. But she might always have thought she was an insect." April shook her head. "And she might be out of it. It's complicated."

"You think she might have killed the baby?"

"If she did, she got rid of the body very efficiently. We haven't found anything."

"So what do you want from me?"

"You know everything that's going on down here, Alfie. I want you to put out a BOLO on a blue Perego stroller. Woody here checked the price of those for me. They cost a bundle. Not many people down here can afford an item like that."

"Any particular reason?"

"None at all. Call it wishful thinking."

Woody cut in. "What do you know about the Popescu brothers?"

April didn't cut him, but Alfie looked over at him as if

he

were an insect. "Noise," he said.

"Noise?" April echoed.

"Yeah, the Popescus are two big letter writers. Everything's a problem with them. Their latest beef is boom boxes. One of them threatened to get a gun and shoot the next asshole who pollutes the space in front of his building. Lot of people have been asking about them. How many people you got on this case?"

April lifted a shoulder. "Too many. What did you tell them?"

"You know me, I'm always helpful. I'll tell you the same thing. In the past we've had a lot of complaints about those guys. Anonymous, of course, and not from the Chinese. They used to have some Latinas in the factory, and there were some incidents then. No formal charges were ever made, though. They switched to Chinese workers years ago. They own the building, and the complaints these days all come from them. Noise, traffic, garbage pickup, stolen radio from one of their vans. They want a yellow line painted on the curb so no one else can park in front of their building. Every month there's something new." He took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth and threw it away. "Filthy habit."

"You been in there to see what they're so defensive about?"

Alfie pursed his lips. "They're a pain in the ass. I like to keep out of their way."

"Maybe that's what they want you to do," April said. "How about I go over and have a talk with them?"

He shot her a dark look. "I know them, I'll take a look." His interest was piqued.

April wanted to take care of this herself, but didn't want to offend her old boss. Suddenly, outside the glass house, she saw a Chinese male, a guy who looked older than she, sit down at her former desk. For a moment she was distracted. Then she said, "I don't want to put you out."

"Put me out. I'd love a walk."

"Fine, I'll go with you."

"Sure, cutie, anything you say." Alfie reached in his drawer for another cigarette he'd put in his mouth and wouldn't light.

She took a last look at the Chinese who'd taken her desk and wondered if he was smart. Then she nodded at Woody. "Make some friends, I'll be back in a while," she told him.