Stealing Time

CHAPTER 21

A

t nine

P.M

. on Wednesday Mike Sanchez closed the file on the castrated corpse he'd studied in the ME's office for the third time a few hours ago. Only a week ago Schlomo Abraham had been living in Israel with his wife and three children. By the wife's account, they'd been living a perfectly happy life. Their perfectly happy life had ended during a routine business trip to New York, when he was stabbed several dozen times in the chest and abdomen, presumably for the diamonds and cash he was carrying. This was a bad thing for this family, a bad thing for the Israeli Trade Consulate, and a bad thing for the city of New York.

Schlomo's tearful partner, Mickla, another Israeli, had told Mike that Schlomo always got himself a girl and suggested Mike look for prostitutes who worked the hotel. Today Mike had done just that, located the last person to see the victim alive. It was someone who worked the hotel on a regular basis, a hooker who called herself Helena. Turned out she was a guy. Real name Roberto Portero, always dressed like a girl, managed to stay out of trouble, had no priors—which was unusual because some customers got real upset if they found out they'd gotten a flavor they hadn't ordered. Some guys had simple tastes, though, and never found out. Mike didn't know about Schlomo yet. He shook his head, thinking about it. He always got the queers. He'd talked to the he/she for three hours, trying to ascertain if the guy was their suspect. Helena was really spooked, crying half the time, and all that Mike had found out so far was his taste in clothes and designer drugs. This particular boy-girl was clueless about anything else, a real ditz. Afterward Mike had gone back to the ME's office to try communing with the body. Not everybody did this kind of thing. But a couple of points kept bothering him: the wife's insisting everything was fine in the marriage, and the fact that it took more than a ditz to slice a guy's dick and balls off. After looking at the body again and coming up with no new ideas, he'd gotten a message that April wanted to see him and had gone home to meet her at his place.

In the old days, before he'd fallen in love, Mike would not have taken a break from a major case to see a

chica.

He would have stayed with Roberto/ Helena and seen the

chica

later, if the timing worked out. But here he was, waiting for half an hour in his apartment before the doorbell finally rang. When he opened the door, April was bedraggled and dripping in the hall.

"I couldn't find a place to park. All the spots were taken—Oh."

His embrace finished her sentence. He hadn't noticed it had started to rain, but rain always turned him on, reminded him of all those times he and April had been stuck in a car during radio runs and she wouldn't let him touch her. At the moment she was cold and wet. He figured he had to warm her up, so the kiss took a while. She resisted for about a second, then dropped her bag and her jacket on the floor and let herself be swept away by it.

Her reactions always surprised him. They'd been in some difficult situations, had their clothes burned off, witnessed autopsies of men and women in various states of decay. They'd seen violence, deviance, and death and had brought in nutcases exposing themselves, masturbating on the street. April herself had restrained a drunken security guard who'd shoved the barrel of his loaded pistol up his girlfriend's vagina. He was threatening to pull the trigger when April came in to deal with the situation. She'd also been the one to locate the severed head of a twelve-year-old who'd been decapitated in a five-car crash on the Henry Hudson Parkway. The girl might have lived if she'd been wearing her seat belt. Instead, her head landed in the woods, sixty feet away, and April had found it. Yet, after all that, she balked at leaving the lights on when they made love; she didn't want her mother or any Chinese ghosts to know what she was up to.

"Chinese are kind of puritanical about sex," she'd explained their first time together. "No one in my family ever mentions it. It's something you do only to get a doctor to marry you." She didn't elaborate.

It had been a big step to get her into the shower with him. But then, everything was a big step with her. She might have seen just about every horror imaginable on the job, but she'd been bullied and sheltered by her parents and hadn't experienced much pleasure. He liked opening her eyes to it, seeing her amazement.

Right now, she wasn't in the mood for fun, though. She stepped out of his embrace and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm having a bad day. I just needed a break."

He went to get her a towel. "I didn't mean to rush you," he said a little sheepishly when he came back.

"No problem." She toweled her head, then raked her fingers through her damp hair. "Actually, I came because I wanted to talk to you."

"That's nice. Have a seat. What's on your mind?" He cleared his case file from the sofa, sat, and patted the cushion beside him.

"I don't know. Maybe I got used to you as a partner. And I don't like this new thing." She didn't want to sit down.

"Come on, sit down. I won't bite. What new thing?"

She lifted her shoulders. "You know."

"You mean

amor, queridal

You're having a little trouble with

amor?"

"I'm not in love." She flushed as she said it, though.

"Okay, you're not in love. What's the problem, then?"

April sat down as far from Mike as she could get. "This case is really bugging me. Mixed marriage;

she's

battered and loony. The baby's missing.

He's

lying about everything. The family is weird and has this sweatshop in Chinatown that's mixed up in it somehow. His cousin is a maniac and, you know, the bottom line is I think the baby is dead. I really think so." Her eyes teared up.

"Oh,

querida."

He moved over and put his arms around her.

"It shakes me up. I never even wanted a baby myself, did I ever tell you that?" She said this into his shoulder.

"No, you never mentioned babies one way or the other."

She pulled away to look at him. "And now I'm seeing them everywhere. It just feels so bad. They're great, you know, really cute, like puppies." She shook her head again.

"You're so maternal." Mike laughed. "Nah, babies are better than puppies."

"Why would anyone kill a puppy?" "It's not a puppy,

querida.

And it hasn't even been forty-eight hours. You may find him yet."

"I don't want to just find him. I want to find him alive." April rooted around in her bag for the photo of Paul. She found it and held it out to him.

Mike took the snapshot and studied the baby for a while. It was a pretty generic-looking baby, wrapped in a blue blanket. "He has blue eyes," he said finally.

"Anything else?"

"It's a cute little guy, what else is there?"

"Anything about the eyes?"

"You said it wasn't her baby."

"That doesn't mean it isn't a Chinese baby. The factory is in Chinatown. It's not nice, Mike. The baby could be one of those Little Italy-Chinatown mixes. Maybe somebody sold him to them. Could be something worse."

"Oh." Mike was silent for a while, thinking about what could be worse.

"You know what I have to do now?" she said.

"You have to hit every hospital in the metropolitan area looking for white-Chinese combination babies."

"Tristate area. The whole world, if I have to. Mike, I don't think I believe in mixed." That's what she'd come to tell him. She flushed some more.

"Mixed marriages, mixed love affairs, mixed drinks, what?" Suddenly he was angry.

"You know what I mean," she said softly.

"I know that's the prejudice that keeps all the wars going," he said evenly. "But sometimes you don't choose who you're going to fall for." He gave her a look to calm her down, but she wasn't buying.

"Don't give me that. It's not prejudice. I lost a friend. I lost my parents, everything," she cried.

"What are you talking about, you lost your parents? Are you nuts?"

"My mother's giving me the silent treatment. I went

home, no one's there. I call, no one answers the phone. Ever had your mother boycott you?" she asked.

"No, mine wouldn't know how. What's her beef?"

"You are." April put her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes. "I can't take it."

Mike sat up. He'd never seen that expression on her face before. "You going to cave for your freaking parents? That's

locoV'

"I'm not making this up, Mike. She's wiping me out."

"Nah, she wouldn't do that."

"Yes, she would. She'd cut off her only daughter for face."

Face! You couldn't fight Chinese and their crazy concept of face. Mike chewed nervously on his mustache. "

Querida,

give me a hug. I'll help you with this. You want something to drink? Huh, how about a beer? You want to eat something? How about dinner?"

She shook her head again. "Sorry to throw off your sex schedule."

"Oh, don't do that." What was this? What was in her head here? Suddenly he needed a beer. He got up a little self-consciously and padded into the kitchen. In the refrigerator, he found a six-pack of Dos Equis. He came back with the tops popped on two and handed her one. She put hers on the floor without taking even a sip.

Mike swallowed some beer. "You want me to talk to your parents?"

"What can you tell them, that your intentions of ruining their precious Han daughter are honorable?"

"I could tell them we love each other and want to get married sometime within the millennium." Mike handed her back the baby picture.

"That's dishonorable. It would bring on World War Three."

"You told me World War Three has already started."

"It has."

"If they're boycotting you, how do you know something else isn't going on?"

"Like what?"

Mike shrugged. The Woos had a complicated variety of relationships with people they called sister-cousins, old uncles, young uncles, aunts, grandfathers, and grandmothers they weren't even related to but who nonetheless had the power of family members to one-up and torture them. Could be some crisis had come up with one of these nonrelative relatives.

"I have a feeling they'll get over it,

querida.

Why don't you ask me to dinner?"

"I can't do that, Mike. They're not at home. They're not speaking to me."

Most people were glad to get a little relief from their parents. But the silence seemed to unsettle April more than was absolutely necessary. He felt bad for her. "So leave them a note. Let me spend a little time with them. Trust me on this. They'll get used to me."

"Oh, they'll never get used to you. They're going to make me pay. You're costing me." A ghost of a smile played on her lips.

The sun was going to come out. "And the lost friend? Who might that be?" he teased.

"You. Chicks and guys can work together—I guess—but once you turn the corner into the other thing, God, it's babies and marriage and—nothing but trouble." She shook her head. "I hate this."

She loved it, but he wasn't going to argue. "You want to hear about my case?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Guess who was the last person to see Schlomo alive?"

"A queer. A transvestite."

He jumped away from her in shock. "Oh come on, who told you?"

She laughed suddenly. "No one told me. I was kidding. A transvestite, really?"

"He/she. Could be he castrated him for a souvenir, but it's hard to buy." Mike finished the beer and rolled the empty can around in his hands thoughtfully. "I'm looking for missing sex organs and you're looking for a missing baby. Your parents aren't speaking to you, and you're scared to death about race, sex, and friendship, in that order. Phew, this is a heavy week."

"Jesus. Somebody took his

cojones

? You didn't tell me that."

"Yes, I did. You weren't listening."

"You didn't tell me," she insisted.

He tickled her. "You weren't listening."

"Well, maybe they'll turn up. Look. I've got to go." She gathered herself together.

"Bueno

." Mike lobbed his empty beer can into a wastebasket across the room.

"What about you?" She finished the beer and put the can down on the floor.

"I've got to go, too." He stretched. "Anything else on your mind? I mean, other than breaking up."

She hesitated, then gave him a sly smile. "You want a last fling?"

He threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, no. You'll have to beg me now."

"I don't beg."

"Okay, then strip for me." He sat back with a grin.

She rolled her eyes.

"Go ahead. Otherwise, we'll just end it now. Clean break. That's it."

"All right.

Bueno.

Turn off the lights. I'll strip." "I'm not turning off the lights."

"Fine, I'll do it." April got up and unzipped her skirt. It fell to the uncarpeted floor. She unbuttoned her blouse, took it off slowly, and tossed it away from her. Then she gave him a shy smile and stopped.

Good enough for a beginner. He held out his arms. "

Venga."