Tracking Time

Two

At a quarter past eight, Detective Sergeant April Woo sat in the front seat of her unmarked gray Buick, irritably tapping her fingers on the dashboard. She noticed the light draining away, the sky deepening with the dark. The color right now would have been her absolute favorite blue if the rain hadn't left a slight fog clinging to the earth, muting the brightness.

It was Tuesday, a turn-around tour for her. She'd be home in her bed by two and back on the job tomorrow morning at eight. By four tomorrow afternoon, her week of four and two would be over. Thursday and Friday she had off. She was looking forward to spending the time with her boyfriend, Sergeant Mike Sanchez, lately of the Homicide Task Force, and she hoped nothing would come up to alter her plans. Woodrow Wilson Baum-a.k.a. Woody-the preppy-looking detective recently transferred from anticrime, whom she'd chosen to train and to drive her, happened to be her biggest annoyance at the moment. She was trying to get him to think more and drive better, but like many men, Woody was dedicated to resisting anything he didn't want to do. Just now he'd ground the car to a stop without warning at Columbus Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street and dashed into the Cuban restaurant on the corner.

"I'll just run in for a sandwich. How about I get you some buñuelos and a coffee?" Tempted, April didn't protest even though he was lying. She knew perfectly well he was trying to make time with the owner's daughter, Isobel, whom he'd met while chasing a purse snatcher a few weeks ago in Times Square. In fact, Woody had unceremoniously knocked the young woman down. Isobel Leon, twenty-five, slim, well-proportioned, luscious lips, long dark hair, a paralegal, had been in line to buy tickets for Lion King when he'd crashed into her. For Baum, who was a good-looking guy but hadn't had a date in many months, it was a case of love at first smite.

It so happened that Isobel helped out at her father's restaurant at night, hence Baum's sudden interest in Cuban food. If the Columbia Cafe had been in Baum's precinct it would have been designated a "Corruption Prone Location." Cops were not allowed to frequent businesses in the precincts where they worked. As his supervisor, April was extremely cognizant of all department rules. Romance, though frowned upon in crime-related matters, was not exactly at issue here since they were not in prohibited territory. Still, he was lingering and she wanted to get back on the job.

Sergeant April Woo was the second-in-command in the detective squad of Midtown North, the precinct covering the west side of Manhattan, Forty-second Street to Fifty-ninth Street from the Hudson River to Fifth Avenue. It was a prestigious area encompassing the big office buildings and corporate headquarters on Sixth Avenue, the big hotels on Sixth and Seventh, the theater district and the Times Square area, Hell's Kitchen, Theater Row on West Forty-second Street, and Rockefeller Center. It was not a hot-button area in terms of violent crimes, but there was a fair amount of pickpocket activity and robberies in the stores. This area was one of the great magnets of New York, frequented by all the tourists who came to town. As such, it was a high-visibility precinct, carefully monitored. April was the only woman in the unit, foisted on her Puerto Rican boss as a political favor. The lieutenant disliked La China Famosa and was not so patiently waiting for an opportunity to disgrace and unload her.

Tonight April was sitting in an unmarked unit in her old precinct, the Two-O, acting as a detective supervisor covering the wider area called Manhattan North because a high-profile rape on a yacht anchored at the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin was occupying much of the detective squad from the Two-O as well as her own commanding officer, who'd taken a run uptown to join the party. On the Upper West Side, aside from the rape, there was quiet after the day's rainstorm.

April tuned out the background crackle on the police radio while she waited for Detective Baum to come out of the restaurant with his bribe of the crispy, sugar-dusted, honey-coated buñuelos and Cuban cafe con leche. Briefly, she brooded that she'd become so easy she could be turned for a piece of fried dough. Then she forgave herself because the evening tour had started on an upbeat note. She'd helped an old Chinese woman whose family inadvertently left her behind when they got off the bus. The woman could not speak a word of English. She did not know where she was staying or what the telephone number was. She'd been brought weeping into Midtown North, on Fifty-fourth Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues, and there she had remained convulsed with tears on a folding chair for many hours until the tour changed and April-the only person in the precinct who could speak Chinese and deal with the situation-reunited the family in a New York-style happy ending.

A voice broke through the static with a radio run. April heard the 4th division radio dispatcher hit the alert button usually reserved for 1013s-officer needs assistance or other crimes of a serious nature.

"All units in the vicinity of the West Drive and West Seventy-seventh Street. Caller states someone is screaming in the area of the rowboat lake."

April checked her watch and leaned over to activate the siren to attract Woody's attention. Almost instantly he burst out of the restaurant and galloped across the sidewalk empty-handed.

"What do we got, boss?" Suddenly hot to trot, he flung open the car door, leapt inside, slammed the door on his foot, yelped, gunned the engine. A nice show if his love happened to be watching from the window.

"Call for help in the park. Go in at Seven-seven," April ordered. She reattached her seat belt as Woody abruptly pulled out into the traffic on Columbus.

The driver of the BMW behind them braked sharply to avoid a collision. He leaned on his horn in fury and speeded up to catch them, maybe to have a shouting match, maybe to fight, maybe to take out a gun and shoot them. Clearly he had no idea they were cops.

"Christ, Woody," April muttered.

"Sorry, Sergeant," he said without contrition. He hit the siren to alert the BMW driver and the world in general to their status. Magic. The car behind them fell back suddenly. The cars ahead of them moved aside.

April tensed as Baum played his favorite game. He had to run through all five lights to Seventy-seventh Street without stopping, no matter what color they were or what was going on with the traffic around them. His own personal rule was he could slow down when running a red light, but if he had to come to a complete stop to avoid an accident, the game was over and he lost.

April thought the game was puerile, but didn't fight the premise. In law enforcement, you did what you had to do. When a life was on the line, every second counted. Force of habit made her check her watch again. It would be noted how long it took officers to respond to the call. She didn't think of herself as competitive, but she wanted to be there first.

Traffic wasn't too bad. Baum was driving unusually aggressively, either to impress the honey who could no longer see him or to make up for the seven minutes he'd kept his supervisor waiting. April's verdict on him was still out. He was a wild card, but people couldn't hide their colors forever. The smart ones got ahead. The dumb ones got left behind. The squirrelly ones made trouble.

Baum was smart enough, but he was also squirrelly. He'd been in one of the rough and tumble anticrime units for several years and was having trouble coming in from the street. This kind of wild driving was an example. Baum sometimes went so far as to gently "nudge" the car ahead of him to get it to move over. He made other mistakes in judgment, too, which April tried to overlook on the grounds that he was green. They were all green in the beginning. Her motive for having him as her driver was that Lieutenant Iriarte, the CO of the unit, disliked the Jew almost as much as he disliked her. That kept Baum fiercely loyal to her, which was a refreshing change.

Woody was silent as he sped along the back side of the Museum of Natural History, made a gleeful left turn, and stormed the park without slowing down for the light at Central Park West. They entered the park, heading the wrong way on the drive. It was a good thing the lane was cleared for them.

Coming toward them at the same time, a blue-and-white 4X4 with two uniformed officers from the Central Park Precinct raced down the hill, and a female mounted officer cantered south on the bridle path from the Eighty-first Street entrance.

"Turn it off," April barked.

Woody turned off the siren, pulled onto the grass, and stopped. All seemed to be quiet in the area now. There were no bystanders to a fight, no sobbing victim sitting or lying on the ground, nobody screaming or calling for help. April and Baum got out. The officer in the 4X4 pulled up beside them but remained at the wheel. Daylight was nearly gone now. Only a few lights punched an eerie glow into the fog.

April lifted her department radio and spoke. "Mid-town North Detectives Supervisor to Central. Units on the scene, Central. Will check and advise." Then she went to investigate.

Central Park was eight hundred and forty-three acres of terrain that was unusually varied for a city park. It was both wild and cultivated, with broad, shaded avenues for walking, playing fields south and east of where they were, the zoo across town at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street. Tennis courts in the northwest, a five-mile running track that went up to Harlem, a bridle path, a rowboat lake in the lower west, a sailboat pond and Bethesda Fountain at Seventy-second Street. The notorious Ramble-thirty miles of unlighted, unpaved wooded paths, a hangout for adolescents smoking pot, gays looking for action, addicts looking for a hit or a mark, and the homeless-was not far away. Since the Giuliani administration strictly enforced zero tolerance on disorderly conduct and all the other quality-of-life values that were the new hallmark of New York City, there were not that many homeless. When dark came, the third tour of the Central Park Precinct, patrolling in cars, on scooters, horses, bicycles, chased them out.

"Hey, boss, it's probably some fag getting corn-holed in the bushes," the uniform in the 4X4 called out in a who-gives-a-shit tone. April heard and ignored the crude remark. Most likely he was right. Still, they didn't take any risks about people in trouble anywhere, and especially in the park. Every 911 call was thoroughly checked out.

The mounted officer joined the party. She slowed the panting horse to a walk, then reined in close to the Buick. The chestnut she was riding was a beautiful animal. It tossed its head and dropped a steaming load. "Anything?" the officer asked, unperturbed.

"Looks like whatever it was is over," April remarked. "But we'll check it out. Come on, Baum, let's take a walk." She stepped off the pavement onto the part of the Ramble that skirted the water. Large boulders on either side formed a minicanyon. Between them, tall grasses still thick with their summer greenery rose over six feet high. In the cooling air there was no sound but the rustle of the grass and the leaves above. Baum pulled out his flashlight and shined it into the bushes and into the water as they walked along the shoreline. A family of ducks glided toward them, rippling the surface and almost taking her breath away with their beauty.

Then a sudden noise to her left lifted hairs on the back of April's neck. Reflexively, her hand brushed the 9mm Glock semiautomatic at her waist.

"Jesus, look at that." Baum shone his light on a rat the size of a lapdog, scurrying across the rock.

All over the city April had seen plenty of those. "Maybe that was the cause of the trouble. Quite a specimen," she said with the cool of a connoisseur.

Farther on, the unmistakable sweet smell of marijuana smoke was trapped in a stagnant pocket of heavy air. The smokers were nowhere to be seen.

For ten minutes April and Woody walked around the area. If they'd found the smokers and they'd been kids, April would have given them a talking-to. She would have taken their names and called their parents. She often took young offenders into the station to give them a taste of the law. She liked to think that occasionally it did the job and scared them straight. But tonight nothing. No sign of the 911 caller, no sign of anyone in trouble. All they saw was the usual array of people minding their own business. And the rat. Finally the two detectives got back in their unit and drove away.