A Killing Gift (2 page)

I
t took Detective Sergeant April Woo only a second to realize that Bernardino had gone. The plaque from the Department for his wall and the watch from his cronies for his wrist were still sitting on the bar. He hadn't said his formal good-byes. But April was always finely tuned to what was going on around her, knew him, and knew he'd slipped away. She clicked her tongue. No doubt he was sad and hated to part, but there was no need to be rude.

"What?" Poppy Bellaqua followed her gaze to the bar, where her new driver, Martha Ciciatelli, was ostentatiously avoiding alcohol, downing San Pellegrino in a wineglass.

"Bernie took off," April murmured.

The inspector lifted her shoulder. The movement caught Martha's eye.
Want to go, boss?

Poppy raised five fingers for five minutes. "Maybe he's taking a piss," she said.

"Uh-uh." He'd have to pass the two of them to get to the men's room. Bernardino was a real old-school cop. He would not have been able to resist stopping to heckle the inspector, who was CO of the Hate Crime Unit, and the Chinese officer he'd promoted to detective who'd made good. Bernie would have tried to disconcert Poppy with his teasing. He would have called April
cara.
Nothing offensive, just guy stuff.

"Miss me,
cara?
"
he'd say. And, "When are you going to marry that bum?" Then something about her becoming an inspector herself someday. Yeah, he'd have done that.

A familiar chill feathered the back of April's neck. Something was wrong. She knew it for sure. Sergeant April Woo was an ABC, an American Born Chinese, as far from old China as a New Yorker could get. She had thirteen years in the Department-nearly twelve as a detective, and three of those as a sergeant. She'd solved a number of major homicide cases with her former supervisor, now fiancé, Mike Sanchez. Recently she'd been studying for the lieutenant's test and would take it in a couple of weeks. Everybody said April was a comer, a big boss in the making. But the magic of old China was formed in the foundation of her soul just like fossils were preserved whole in prehistoric stone.

Sometimes that ancient superstition informed April that vengeful ghosts from another age were about to wreak havoc on a human life. The ghosts and demons couldn't be banished. They had a life of their own. April didn't exactly believe in Chinese magic, and certainly didn't talk about it, but the supernatural was in the air nonetheless. The unexplainable happened. All the time. There was no way to hide from it.

"I'll be right back," she said, already on her feet and trailing her words behind her. Her handsome
chico
turned his head from his conversation with Chief Avise when she rose. He had his own radar. All cops did.

Time to go?
In cop talk there was body language for everything. She pointed at the forgotten gifts.
Be right back.
He nodded and returned to the shop talk.

April tapped Marcus Beame on the shoulder. "Looks like the lieutenant forgot his toys."

"He was just here a second ago. Did he leave already…?" Marcus seemed surprised to have missed it. April raised a delicate eyebrow. Marcus was too busy flirting with Martha to pay attention to his old boss.

"Anything you need, Sergeant?" Martha jumped in quickly. "Want me to go after him?"

"No, I'll do it." April scooped up the two gifts and was out the door without further discussion.

Then, like Bernardino hardly a minute earlier, she was stopped by the unusual fog. In a few hours it had blanketed the street like smoke from a deadly fire.

Rationally she knew a cold front must have hit a warm front. But the gray cloud clinging to the ground was creepy all the same. There would be many crashes on the roads tonight. Bad things would happen for sure. She shivered at the thought.

A chain leash chinked ahead of her as a man curbed his big furry creature. "Good girl," he said as the mastiff peed a noisy lake into the gutter.

A car's ghostly headlights moved slowly down the narrow side street toward Washington Square. No sign of Bernardino. She turned toward the square. Behind her, a young man and woman walked slowly arm in arm. Ahead she could just make out another figure, no, two figures. She frowned. No, it was one figure bent over. Her heartbeat spiked with the strong feeling that someone was sick. Maybe it was Bernie and he'd had way too much to drink. Hard to believe, but possible.

She was wearing the kind of shoes that defied haste, fashionable slides with really thin heels and no backs that made her mince along like one of those women who never had to walk very far. As she moved toward him, the blurry figure straightened up, glanced her way, then walked in the other direction toward Washington Square.

"Bernie?"

She hurried after him, her eyes pointed ahead, not down. She bumped into the thick bundle on the sidewalk. Her foot struck it; then she looked down and saw the leather sleeve with the hand at the end.

Air sucked into her mouth with a hiss as she dropped the retirement gifts and went to her knees.

"Bernie! Oh, no!" She knew instantly that it was him. She recognized the old jacket he'd worn for years. She knew the hand, and she knew by the way he was lying there, his face pointing over his shoulder, that no natural disaster had occurred. He wasn't drunk. He hadn't had a heart attack. His neck was broken. Her old boss, her rabbi, her friend was gone, and there wasn't a thing she could do for him.

Rage and adrenaline shot through her system. Her purse with her gun in it was on the chair in the restaurant next to Inspector Bellaqua. The restaurant was full of cops, but at the moment she wasn't thinking about them or what she was supposed to do: Sound the alarm. Get help. A cop was down. There was no more serious crime than that. Instead she was up again, running to catch the man who'd killed her friend. Her party shoes flapped against the soles of her feet, clacking on the concrete as she ran. She'd caught a glimpse, only a glimpse, of a figure in the fog, and didn't see him now.

Shit!
Where did he go? People in the square were just forms in the mist. But she had a feeling he was heading straight through. She crossed the street and picked up speed. Her heel caught in a crack in the concrete, and her own arrested momentum almost brought her down. She twisted, wrenching her back, but didn't fall. The shoe stuck, so she left them both behind. The cold of wet cement bit into the soles of her feet. But she was a fighter from way back, centered and fast. She didn't mind the wet.

Just ahead of her she sensed motion in the mist and heard footsteps. A man was walking, not fast enough to be in a hurry. She didn't want to yell,
Stop, police,
at someone she couldn't see clearly, someone who could take off. She didn't want to declare herself a cop without any backup, any muscle to protect her. Double stupid to leave the scene with no gun. Now it was too late to sound the alarm. She was running. The man ahead was walking fast. Useless strategies spun in and out of her head until some words spilled out of her mouth.

"Sir, you dropped something," she called.

"What?" He stopped, turned around, and took a few steps toward her, then crouched down, as if looking for whatever he'd lost. In that position it was hard to tell how big he was. April approached, automatically thinking she could take him.

"Beat it. I'm not interested." The voice was low and confident. The man thought she was a hooker. All she saw was a baseball cap pulled low. He seemed to be tying his shoes.

She moved closer. "It's right there. I think it was a credit card or something."

The rule was never to let them get close enough to stab or lunge at you. April was wary. She was thinking things over. He couldn't see that she didn't have a gun, but still she didn't want to take the risk of saying she was a cop and having him run. She wanted to engage him in conversation to keep him there. Her brain was spinning like a car wheel in sand.

"Where?" he asked, laughing.

"I'm not sure, I think near that bench." Under the light. April had both feet on the ground. She was balanced and sure of herself. The man was talking to her, way too calm to be Bernie's killer. But it felt odd, wrong. She was frozen, couldn't leave and didn't dare attack.

He crouched down as if to take a look. He wasn't acting like a killer, but she'd learned a long time ago to take nothing for granted. Then, soundlessly, he sprang at her with the full force of his coiled legs. His right shoulder tried to catch her in the stomach, and had she not moved backward a quarter step, she would have been driven to the ground. Instead his shoulder glanced off her side and she spun away. When he came back at her she kicked him, spun around a tree, and kicked him again. But he didn't go down. On her third kick he grabbed her foot and flipped her into the air as if she were a matchstick. She flew, and although she turned as she fell, she did not miss crashing into the trunk of the same tree that had shielded her before. Red blotches of pain filled her eyes. He was on her, pulling her to her feet, before her vision cleared. Helpless, she could feel the arm closing around her neck and another coiling around her shoulder. In a sickening instant she knew that this hold would leave her with a broken neck in a heap on the sidewalk like Bernie. She raised her right leg and smashed her shoeless heel down on his instep with all the force she could muster. The blow startled him, but did not ease the pressure of his arm against her throat.

"Arrgh." Her arms and legs tried to find a target as he held her from behind. More colors exploded in her own private fireworks behind her bulging eyes. This was what it felt like to die. Pure panic filled her as her throat was squeezed like a sponge. She could not call for help. She could not use her brain or her training. She didn't hear the screams from across the street or the sound next to her of a dog barking, or even the male voice that called, "Hey, cut that out."

Another cop was down.

M
ike Sanchez had been preoccupied all evening, but not with murder. Homicide numbers in New York had hit their lowest level since 1962, when murders first started to be recorded in the city. Although there were still too many gun-related deaths in the tough sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx, there hadn't been a high-profile Manhattan homicide in months. Mike had watched the love of his life socialize and thought about police politics. A few years ago he never would have dreamed that he and his fiancée would be a Department power couple, invited everywhere the top brass went.

To the chief of detectives Mike had appeared to be wholly focused on the conversation. But actually April's every gesture had drawn his eyes to her. He couldn't help it. April was so changed from the way she used to be, he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off her.

When they'd first met in the detective unit of the Two-oh, April had kept the lowest of low profiles on the job. She worked hard, kept out of sight, and interacted with superiors only when she had to. She had not approved of dating colleagues in the Department-or, indeed, mixed marriages-and tried to keep their relationship low-key and unofficial as long as she could. But after they'd gotten engaged everything changed.

The two famous case solvers were perceived as comers, and now it seemed that every few days they were invited to some Department function they couldn't avoid. April's shyness fell away with the higher expectations for her, and she was thriving in her new identity. Tonight she'd looked good with her sleek longer hair and silk wrap dress. Classy, and no longer afraid to show off her figure a little. She had been talking easily with Inspector Poppy Bellaqua.

Mike liked that. He never hung by her side, but he enjoyed watching her negotiate the new territory. Not that socializing with the chief of detectives was exactly old hat to him, either. He'd been a street kid from the Bronx who'd run with a gang and could have gone either way. In fact, it had been a young cop who'd turned him around after stopping a knife fight in which he had participated. The scars from it would stay with him forever.

"Yes, sir," he responded when his boss gave him a look.

Chief Avise was nursing a diet Coke and brooding about old times. "Back in the day" was always a big topic of conversation at retirement parties. And this was their third retirement party in ten days. March and April were bad months this year. It seemed as if good people like Bernardino were throwing in the towel every day. Even before 9/11, things had been bad. Experienced bosses with more than twenty years in had been falling away like hair on a cancer patient. Bye-bye to grubby precincts, bad guys, frustrations of the job. Bye-bye to risking their lives in the toughest neighborhoods.

The accrued overtime of 9/11 and the huge shakeup of a new mayor after eight years of triumphs in law enforcement with the last one brought about even greater upheaval and defections. The Department was still reeling from its losses. The new commissioner brought in retired CIA terrorist experts to reinvent security in New York. And comers in the middle ranks, like Mike and April, were moving up to fill the gaps.

Mike had done well on his captain's test-the last test for promotion he'd ever have to endure. Henceforth all promotions would be discretionary. For him job openings were coming up. Any day he would receive the promotion and change of command that would put him back in uniform as commanding officer of a precinct, or head of a special unit, and bring him up the next step in the ladder of his career. He was not thinking of the old days. He was thinking of the new ones to come.

"Chief, we've got a problem." Sergeant Becker's face was white. He didn't shout across the room. He'd come inside the restaurant, passed the people sitting and standing at the bar, and now spoke softly into the chief's ear.

Avise tilted his head slightly to listen. His face didn't change. Only the tone of his voice. "Jesus," he muttered.

Mike waited silently for his cue. Avise gave it to him. "Shit. Bernie's dead," he said softly.

"Heart attack?" he asked Becker. It wouldn't be the first time a warhorse died the minute the pressure was off. But the COD didn't matter. Avise was moving his heavy body before the answer was out, and Mike was right behind him.

Mike might have been finished for the night, full of food and thoughts of love with his
novia
later on, and far from thinking of disaster. But a cop was never really off duty. Tragedy always got sluggish blood going. He and Chief Avise joined the brass in suits hurrying down the block to the place where a clot of partygoers had instantly formed around the fallen man. Circling them, uniforms were already organizing with the efficiency that made it plain that Lieutenant Alfredo Bernardino was no more.

This was the moment when lightness usually broke the tension among cops. Corpses of former human beings always elicited inappropriate remarks because no one ever wanted to give in to emotion and weep. Tonight, however, no jokes were forthcoming. Aware of the chief's arrival, the recent revelers parted silently for Avise. One quick glance at Bernardino's body told him the one thing he didn't want to know.

"Aw, shit. What the hell happened here?" he muttered angrily.

Fog blunted everything but his voice. He was already barking out orders to people who didn't know any more than he did.

"What do we got here? You got any witnesses? Close this street now. Get every name. Everybody!" Avise shook himself and backed away, rattling off the to-do list as Mike took his place near the body.

"It's a homicide. Mike, you're it," he said, pointing his finger.

"Sorry, sir." Somebody shoved Mike from behind, inadvertently offering him an even better view of Bernardino's staring eyes and twisted neck.

Oh, no.
Mike took the punch and groaned without sound. Violent ends always told the most pathetic stories. Bernardino's eyes in his startled face made him look as if he'd been caught in some embarrassing faux pas. A bad finish for a tough and loyal soldier.
Poor Bernardino. Poor guy.

"Mike, you're it." Avise's words hit like a hammer in his head. Mike's promotion to captain was imminent. His days of test taking were over. No more hands-on homicide. No more knocking on doors to find out what made victims magnets and who were the killers.

But now he was tagged and It again. He had to find out who wanted Bernardino dead only days after his tenure in the Department was over.
Jesus.
Why Bernardino? Why now? What had been his last case? What had he been into? Who might be out on the streets that he'd put in the slammer five years ago? Ten? What was the story?
Shit.
Already the questions were roiling around in Mike's head. The last thing he needed.

A quartet of sirens were howling now. Blue-and-whites coming, an ambulance. He snapped to, thinking he had to find April and get organized. As he stepped aside, the toe of his cowboy boot caught the hard edge of the plaque that applauded Bernardino's thirty-eight years of service. His first thought was that April had been first on the scene and must have sounded the alarm. Bad luck for her. Bernie had been her old boss, her rabbi before she'd moved out of Chinatown. He wanted to push the weather away so he could see her, go to her side. He began searching the crowd for the familiar figure in the pretty dress.

"Anybody seen Sergeant Woo?"

Poppy Bellaqua touched his arm. "What happened?" she breathed into his ear.

"Some bastard broke Benardino's neck," he said tersely.

"Jesus!"

"Where's April?" His voice sharpened as he scanned the crowd and didn't see her. His second thought was that she might have been on the scene when it went down.

"She followed Bernie out," Bellaqua told him. "She must be here."

Mike knew she wasn't there and was rattled. He couldn't hear her voice, couldn't see her through the smoke, couldn't smell her or feel her presence. He felt the panic rising. He was a cop, but it didn't mean he didn't get scared. At the best of times he didn't like having April out of his sight. Times like this he was no better than her crazy mother, who wished she'd do practically anything else for a living.

"Mike, you okay?"

"April may have seen Bernie's killer." It hurt to spit the words out, but he had to move. April had gotten too close to a fresh kill. Way too close. She might have tried to prevent it. In any case it wasn't like her to leave a scene. Anxiety crawled all over him as screams broke out in Washington Square. He and Poppy locked eyes, then started running.