Stealing Time

CHAPTER 20

Ivan and Marc Popescu were arguing and picking boiled beef and cabbage out of their teeth as they opened the door to their building after a late lunch. They found Lieutenant Alfredo Bernardino and a Chinese woman who looked like she might be from INS leaning against the closed door of their downstairs office talking with Annie Lee. Ivan pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and dropped it on the ground behind him. He gave his cousin a shove, but Marc was used to it and didn't respond.

"Come on in, Sergeant. Whatcha doing out here?" He was all smiles for the lieutenant, clapped him on the shoulder as if they were old buddies. "You here about the son of a bitch that stole my car radio?"

"Sure. He's sorry and brought it back when he found out it was yours."

"Ha, ha, I had no idea you were a funny man. Who's the pretty lady?" Marc opened the office door. Inside, the air-conditioning was on, and the room was nice and cool. When he flipped on the fluorescent lights, the old-fashioned office jumped into focus.

"What are you doing down here, Annie?" Ivan turned around to give the supervisor a tongue-lashing. "Didn't I tell you—?"

"Someone come—"

"Yeah, who come? I'll dock you a month's pay if you let people come in here."

Marc patted his cousin on the back, giving his shoulder a quick, calming massage. Ivan puffed out his stomach, straining the front of his silver warm-up jacket and looking hurt by the correction.

"This is Sergeant April Woo. Marc Popescu. Ivan Popescu."

April nodded.

Scowling, Ivan followed them inside. The front of the room boasted a cracked leather sofa and wooden office furniture from the year one. On the coffee table were a dying plant with a pink ribbon on it left over from Easter, and some recent fashion magazines. Behind it stood two messy rolltop desks covered with papers. Marc invited the detectives to sit down on the sofa. For a second the lights flickered, and Bernardino looked interested.

"To what do we owe the honor?" Marc asked the cop.

Bernardino continued to survey the room without sitting down.

"You won't light that up, will you? We have a no-smoking rule here," Ivan said.

"Oh yeah, this." Bernardino touched the end of the cigarette dangling from his top lip. "This is just for show. Fools me into thinking something's happening that isn't really happening, know what I mean?"

"Oh come on, don't start up. You know we're strictly legal here. Anyway, you guys aren't interested in our plumbing woes, or whether our girls have green cards. That's not your department." Marc's forehead furrowed as he looked over at the Chinese woman who hadn't spoken yet. The last thing he needed was someone nosing around the place.

"I thought you'd like to know we keep an eye on things around here." The cop kept looking around.

"Suit yourself, keep an eye on things. You know we're strictly on the up-and-up here."

"One of our Conditions boys noticed some wires hanging out the window upstairs. He wondered if the place was a hot spot. I said naahh, not my Popescu friends."

Marc gave Ivan a puzzled look. Conditions, what the hell was that? He could understand the two other detectives from downtown calling on them earlier to ask a whole lot of questions about Anton and his background, his associations, and his baby. That had been unnerving enough. But what was this Conditions thing about? "What kind of hot spot?" he asked.

"Oh, you know. With the mayor's new drug initiative, we have to check everything out."

Marc put his hand on Ivan's arm, but it didn't stop Ivan from exploding. "Are you nuts? What do you think, that we're growing weed up there?"

The cop shrugged. "Yeah, could be for lights. Could be you're converted into a happy dreams factory these days, cooking with gas up there. Could be unauthorized phone lines for drug buys. Could be a lot of things. I'd like to take a look."

Marc took it as a joke and laughed. "Could be we're a sewing factory and we run sewing machines. Listen to that rumble." He pointed upstairs. "Sewing machines."

"You're outta your mind. Get outta here before I punch out your lights." Ivan's face flushed as he took a boxer's stance in front of the detective. "Nothing here is your fucking business."

Marc was shocked. "Jesus! Relax, brother. He's just putting us on." He chortled. Good joke, a drug factory right down here on the Lower East Side, where everybody knew everybody's business inside out, sure.

"I'm not your brother, asshole." Even though he was wearing an expensive warm-up suit like an athlete, Ivan wasn't fit. He wasn't young, either. He looked like a character trying to be a bad guy in a movie. "Okay, you visited. You asked about the wires. Now get outta here," he told the detective.

Marc cringed. Bernardino wasn't going to do what Ivan wanted and leave when he was spoken to like that.

"Well, let's just take a little look upstairs and in the basement," the detective said easily.

"No way! Get a warrant if you suspect something."

Once again Marc closed in on him and put his hand on Ivan's shoulder. "I'll take care of this. You need to calm down."

"Don't tell me what I need to do. Don't you see what this guy's doing?" He looked at the female, who still hadn't said a word.

"You need to calm down," Marc snapped. "Cut it out, are you crazy?"

"I swear I'll kill you if—"

"Who are you threatening to kill?" Now Bernardino was really interested.

Marc attempted humor: "It's just his digestion. He's always like this after lunch. Come on, Sergeant, I'll take you anywhere you want to go. You're welcome to our rats. Maybe you can put in a good word to the city about them."

"It's Lieutenant."

"Really? Congratulations, is that a new title?" Marc jumped ahead of him to open the office door.

"Nope, it's been Lieutenant for a good fifteen years now."

"Gee." Marc closed the door and led the way up the stairs. "Now, tell me what can I do for you."

"You have any idea about those wires?"

"Uh-uh. You'll have to show them to me." Marc opened the upstairs door. Only five of the sewing machines were going. Steam burst from the iron in short blasts, but no one was pressing finished trousers. The heads bent over work were white and gray.

Annie was admonishing an older woman to work faster. Bernardino's teeth closed around the filter tip on his cigarette. Tobacco dropped on the floor. "Oops." He bent over to pick it up. Marc stiffened.

"You want to see the roof?" he asked. "The storage room?"

Bernardino sniffed. "Yeah, and tell me about your brother."

"What?" Marc was shocked. "Are you local cops in on this witch-hunt, too?"

"We're looking for a missing baby." The female spoke for the first time.

"Yeah, this is bad news." Suddenly, Marc realized Annie was listening. "Let's go for a walk, huh? It's hot in here."

"Yeah, you ought to get someone to turn that iron off when it's not in use." The female climbed the stairs to the storeroom, looked around, apparently didn't see what she was looking for, came back down.

"These girls don't have any respect for anything." Marc and the lieutenant both knew that the sewing machines and the steam presser had been abandoned by the girls who were working without green cards the minute the cops appeared at the door.

"Come on, Lieutenant, let's get away from my cantankerous relative. He doesn't always know the score, know what I mean? How about a walk? I'll tell you everything I know." Marc got the two cops outside without further trouble. They were heading north in the sunshine when the female hit him with a question he wasn't expecting.

"Did your brother always beat up women?"

"Oh, shit. Oh, come on. This is getting personal. Your friend here knows us. He knows better than to bug me about rumors involving my family. It's not true. My brother would never touch his wife, so don't follow that path with the rest of the scum." He shuffled his feet, kicking an empty soda can along the sidewalk.

"You don't look too happy with that line," she said.

"What's your name again?" he demanded.

"Sergeant Woo."

"Well, Sergeant Woo, I know my brother, and I'm telling you, he might get mad, but he'd never touch Heather. He adores her, same as I do and all the rest of the family."

"That's not what I hear. I hear he beats the shit out of her all the time."

"It's not true," Marc said gloomily. "I'll never believe that of him. Never!"

"So what about the baby?"

"I don't know nothing about that. This whole thing makes me sick."

"It's making a lot of people sick. Heather Popescu didn't give birth to a baby, so whose is it?"

"What are you talking about? Of course she did," Marc said vehemently.

"You know, the phone records show you guys are on the horn to each other every day. If you know your brother so well, and he claims he's the baby's father, then who's the baby's mother and where is she?"

"Whoa. Stop right there. Where are you going with this?" He stared at the Chinese sergeant. This was making him really angry.

"The Health Department doesn't have any record of any Popescu birth, and Anton says he's the father, so who's the mother?"

Marc whistled to cover his rage. "Don't look at me. This is new to me. I don't know nothing about it. Honestly, this is way out there." He whistled again. "That's what he said? He said he's the father?"

"That's what he said."

"Wow."

Bernardino cut in on the questions. "How come Anton isn't in the business with you?" he asked suddenly.

"He's a lawyer, he makes more than I do," Marc said sharply.

"No kidding."

"Yeah. Every family has to have one professional. In our family it was Anton. It was never in the plan for him to go into the business."

"Did he want to be in the business?"

They'd been walking slowly, but now Marc stopped. "I said it wasn't in the plan. He was the lucky one. He's uptown in a fancy office, eating caviar. We're down here in the slums, eating deli and working our asses off. What does this have to do with the price of tea?" He looked away, knew he was losing it. All this family crap was painful. He didn't want to talk anymore about it. He turned around to go back.

Bernardino shrugged and followed suit. "You tell me. I'm looking for a missing baby. This missing baby we're looking for doesn't seem to have a birth certificate. That means we don't know whose it is. So we're going to keep digging until we find out."

Marc made a rude noise. "I'm sure this can be cleared up."

"So, clear it up for us."

"Look, I'm not in the loop. I don't know any more than you do. I can ask, that's all I can do. The minute I hear something you'll be the first to know. Okay?" Marc didn't want to leave Ivan alone too long. He picked up his pace, eager to get back.

"Yeah, do that. Hey, and the next time you tell the girls to get out, you might remind them to take their garments out of the machines before they go."

"Oh come on. You didn't see anything up there. You know we're on the up-and-up with the labor."

"INS will be interested."

They came to a red light. Marc walked into the street anyway. "I

said

I'd ask around. But now I'll tell

you

something. These girls are pregnant, they're not sentimental. They get abortions. If they don't get abortions, they keep the kids. I know these people. They'd rather drown an infant like a kitten than give it away."

"Who said anything about giving away? I'm talking selling away. But whatever you're looking at—killing, selling—they're both against the law. Maybe you better think about having that baby turn up, huh?"

Marc tripped on the curb on the far side of the street. The lieutenant grabbed his arm to keep him from falling on his face. He made another of Ivan's noises. His fuse was slower, but he was sputtering now, trying to contain his fury and hang on to himself. He hated letting go the way everyone else in his family did. His brother and his cousin were the volatile ones. He'd always been the mediator, the gentleman. He wanted to keep it that way.

"I'll see you later," the cop said as he walked away.