Tracking Time

Thirty-five

In April's first seconds of consciousness, she was hit with a blinding headache and didn't know where she was. Then she turned her head and saw the white ruffled curtains in the small windows of her bedroom and groaned. Her legs explored the confines of her narrow bed, and she remembered a few things. She was not in Mike's apartment in Forest Hills in a bed as big as a playground, where the kitchen, living room, and bathroom were bigger, newer, and higher than hers; there was air conditioning that cooled the whole place, and a terrace where she and Mike had sat many times over the summer, drinking beer, kissing and fondling each other, and watching the lights of Manhattan in the distance.

The headache escalated as she remembered Skinny Dragon Mother insisting that the man she loved was a she (snake). She remembered telling Zumech a search in the park would be no problem. She remembered her little slipup of losing Jason's mental patient without a name. She dragged herself out of bed to face the day.

Like millions of American-born Asians, April believed that she was 100 percent American, with no foreign accent and none of her mother's ridiculous superstitions or prejudices about the nature of people, character, or luck. And yet, she had no doubt that something was in the air. Call it the stars, the ghosts, the dragons, the yang that was the force of irritable, risky male action. Didn't matter, something was weird. Events were spinning out of control.

The missing shrink had a patient who wasn't the person anyone thought she was-and who was also a good enough liar to fool everyone, even April. Mike's judgment had failed over Carla. In the boys and girls department, it was pretty clear that the girls were winning.

Now April was losing her harmony, too. Whenever it came to Jason Frank, she couldn't let go. She just couldn't let go. She just couldn't. In Asian thinking, good luck (lots of money) and long life were the most important things to have. Getting face and saving it were the most important things to do.

In the face department, April suffered humiliations everywhere she turned. On the job she was bossed around by people stupider than her. She was doubted and snubbed by the civilians she served, by the males she outranked and the males who outranked her. At home she was constantly humiliated and berated by her mother, who wanted for April only what she wanted for herself. She wanted her only child, and a daughter at that, to be rich, idle, the wife of a Chinese businessman or doctor, with many babies and a big house she could fill with anything she wanted. A TV the length of the room. A big car. Big one. Maybe two. She wanted that important married daughter to spend more time caring for her, listening to her problems, buying her gifts, and making her happy in all the little ways that daughters should.

April was angry with her mother for failings of her own, like not learning how to drive and change light-bulbs, speak better English, read the labels on cans and bottles, work for the community as other Chinese matrons did. But when April weakened she felt sorry for her mother. Skinny was not educated, was not a college graduate as she was. April had gone for six years at night to get her degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and she did not consider herself by any means finished in the education department. She felt sorry that her mother worried and suffered so much over so many wrongheaded ideas. April had no doubt that Skinny suffered a great deal, and she knew at the same time she had to both set limits and social-work her mother to ease that suffering just a little. Call that filial duty.

Same thing as a cop, she had to toe the party line. She had to hold her head up and keep it down at the same time. She had to know how to work the system. And although she had risen from beat cop to detective sergeant, second whip of the Midtown North detective unit, most of the time she felt she was still treading water, getting nowhere.

Jason Frank was the only highly educated white man who trusted and believed in her. He didn't know her mother or father or bosses and how much they disrespected her for one thing or another. To Jason, she was not just an Asian cop with a yellow ghost boyfriend. She was the hero who'd literally walked through fire to save his wife, and she had the scars to prove it. To him she was the only one in the department who could get things done. Jason and Emma had elevated her to a place of esteem where she'd never resided before. Their daughter was named after her. There was no honor greater than that.

April could not lose face by letting Jason down. Could not do it. Today, she did not go out jogging, do her leg and arm exercises or her abdominal crunches. Instead, she stood under the shower and let cold water bombard her throbbing head. She drank two cups of hot water with lemon juice, swallowed two aspirin, and dressed carefully in a lavender blouse, a cinnamon suit with a short skirt and a long jacket to cover the Glock at her waist. She finished the outfit with an iris print silk scarf that mixed both colors. She let her hair dry straight, didn't care how she looked. She was in a no-nonsense mood. She was going to get into trouble, maybe even ruin her career.

The honking began at six-forty-five when she was dressed and almost ready to start the walk to the subway because she'd left her car in the city. Even before the noise brought her to the window, she knew the horn was that of Mike's aging red Camaro, and the racket it made would wake her mother and father. She didn't want them making a scene so she grabbed her purse and ran downstairs. When Mike saw her coming, he got out of the car.

April's headache disappeared, and instantly she was on super alert because Mike looked the way he did when he was about to trick a dumb suspect into giving up the story that would put him behind bars for life. She shook her head as the lover of many women spread his arms to give her a big hug as if right now that had to be the thing she desired most on earth.

"Mira, mi amor. Yo soy tuyo. Todo, todo tuyo. Tu es mi vida, todo. Soy tuyo." Today Mike was wearing another bright blue shirt, the color they called French blue, which practically broke your eyeballs. April had bought this one herself, too, as well as the bubble-gum pink tie he was wearing with it. She smelled his powerful sweet and spicy aftershave that drove women nuts and made men like her father think he was gay. He was saying that he was hers, that she was his whole life, and she was moved by the pleasant sound of a man pleading in Spanish.

In the boys and girls department, however, she knew she must never let him get the upper hand, so she walked around him and got into the car, where she firmly closed the door before he could give her that hug.

"Querida, what is this?" he said, looking hurt.

"Thanks for coming to give me a ride," she said, gazing straight ahead out the window.

"Of course I would give you a ride. What did you think?" His tone was soft. He stood at the car window, looking like a lamb. "You're not mad at me, are you?" He looked at her with his melting love look. She could feel it burn through the window. He didn't even mention last night. He was going to bluff his way through it. Men!

"Let's go," she said, all business.

"Of course, of course. Where are we going first?" Soft, soft voice. He moved around the car, got in, started the engine, gunned it, and pulled out into the street. If he was worried about the missing jogger the whole city was looking for, he didn't show it. That pissed her off, too.

She did not answer.

"Querida, I get the feeling you're mad at me," he said.

"I am."

He countered with indignation. "You left in a hurry last night. You didn't have a car. What did you do, fly?"

"Yeah, I flew."

"I should be mad at you. You didn't return my calls. What kind of behavior is this from someone I adore with all my heart?"

She said nothing as he threaded through Astoria streets.

"Querida. How about breakfast?"

"No way."

"Let's talk about this."

"Go ahead, talk."

"I met this girl before you came to the Two-O."

"What was she, twelve then?"

"No, she was over sixteen. She was a kid in trouble. She'd run away from her parents. She'd been abused. She was on the street."

"La-la-la-la." April started humming to block out the confession she feared was coming.

"Querida, don't make me mad," Mike said softly.

"Call me Sergeant, we're on the job."

"Oh Jesus, you're my girlfriend. We're a couple. Couples work things out."

"La-la-la-la-la." April sang some more.

He laughed. "Oh, come on. I was kind of proud of having a girl like that think she was in love with me. Gorgeous girl like that. Old guy like me. I thought it would give me points with you, make you like me more."

"Are you crazy?"

"Look, I saw her in a bar. The girl was in trouble, she had no place to stay. I told her she could stay at my place."

"How drunk did you have to be to make that offer?"

"I wasn't drunk, just a little too trusting." His mustache twitched.

April shook her head. "Doesn't play. You gave her my nightgown."

He took his hands off the wheel and braked again. "No! I would not do that. She slept on the sofa with all her clothes on. She must have put it on after I left. The only mistake I made was trusting her to leave in the morning."

"You're a cop. Cops don't leave street people in their homes while they go off to work. Who do you think you're kidding?"

"Do you think I'd have taken you there if I'd known she'd be there nuda? Escucha, I never did it with her. Trust me on that one."

She chewed on that for a moment, tempted to believe him. The man was muy stupido. And, if it worked out between them, she would have the pleasure of throwing this incident in his face whenever they fought for the rest of their lives.

He braked for a red light at Van Dam. "Do you want to help me with my case? I'd welcome your support," he said magnanimously, moving right along now that he'd won his argument.

"Oh yeah, what about the other little matter? You dismissed my detective last night."

"There was nothing more to do. It was time for you both to go home." He kept his reasoning tone. The light changed. The morning traffic crawled to the bridge.

"You undermined my authority. You made me lose face." April said. Frankly, she wasn't going to let it go.

"It wasn't intentional. It was a bad day. I'm sorry I caused you distress. Very sorry."

"How did you worm your way into this case?" she demanded.

He gave her a little smile, a little shrug. "I have my ways." He changed the subject. "Tonight will be good for you, I promise."

"Oh yeah?" She doubted that very much. So much for getting any substantive information from him.

"Yeah."

It was a boy-girl kind of conversation, steeped in nuance and not much on content. The informational flow was always going the other way. She hated that. The traffic crawled off the bridge into Manhattan. The sun was climbing up the sky behind them. Time was marching on, and they had to hurry with it.