Judging Time (41 page)

"You got a problem?" lriarte radiated genial concern at the sergeant.

Salley smiled ingratiatingly. "I hear you need to go on-line. Wouldn't you like me to help you with that? I got the experience from the Kerson case, that fraud-"

"Yeah, yeah, I remember. Good job, Salley." Iriarte flipped his hand at the chair in front of one of the computers, indicating that Hagedorn should take it.

"Lieutenant, excuse me, sir—"

"Computers are the wave of the future in police work, Salley. No doubt about it. You're riding the crest. You'll be right there at the top."

"Thank you, sir. But we have a rule here, no food or drink in the computer room."

"You heard Hagedorn, Salley, he can't think without his caffeine. Now, we've got a special assignment here. The whole country is waiting on us to pick this guy Liberty up. You want to obstruct or help with that effort?"

Salley watched with horror as Hagedorn put the coffee cups down beside the computer.

"So help him out, Sergeant." Iriarte spun on the heel of his woven leather slip-on and left the room. He headed down the hall to brief the commander on the break in the Liberty case.

When Iriarte lingered in the door, Captain Johnson waved him into the office, then kept him waiting for twenty-eight minutes as the commander tried to negotiate with someone at headquarters for a postponement of his first Comstat appearance.

Comstats were computer compilations of the number of crimes and arrests in every precinct every week. They were programmed and analyzed by the precinct commander's aides. Every precinct commander periodically had to go downtown to explain and defend his numbers. The way it looked the new commander would have to take his turn in the hot seat, defending the police work in his precinct for the last month with less than a week on the job. Iriarte tapped his fingers impatiently, but could not get up and leave. When Captain Johnson finally hung up, he immediately reached for his hat. His second-in-command jumped up to help him with his coat.

"I have to go to a meeting downtown, Lieutenant—"

"Iriarte, sir." The lieutenant saluted.

"I'll have to catch you later." He nodded imperiously as he left.

Iriarte went back into the computer room and hung over Hagedorn's neck. "How's it going?"

Sergeant Salley spoke first. "We're lucky. He uses one of the easy services."

"So—1" Iriarte prodded.

"Liberty hasn't generated any E-mail activity today," Hagedorn said. "We can't trace yesterday's numbers. We can only locate the phone he's using if we're in the system at the same time he's in."

Iriarte sucked in his lips pensively. "He was in the area of the Thirtieth last night. We know that. Shot someone. Ballistics tells me we may be able to tie some other homicides to that gun. Maybe Liberty's been a busier boy than we thought."

"There's a BOLO out on him. Everybody's looking for him," Hagedorn said.

"Yeah, but I want to be the one to get him. I want him nailed out of here, out of this precinct, understand?" Iriarte stuck a finger in Hagedorn's back. "We didn't get that raper last summer. If it turns out the same guy hit that woman up in the Two-O, we're going to look like fucking idiots. We've got to get Liberty."

Sergeant Salley smiled. "Don't worry, they always reach out to their mothers, or somebody they rely on, sometime. If he has the habit of E-mailing, he'll do it now."

Iriarte checked his watch. "He'd better do it soon. I go off duty at six."

At a few minutes past five, Liberty E-mailed Jason Frank from a phone in the one hundred block of 110th Street. The E-mail intercepted by the police at Mid-town North read, "Jason, everything is going to be fine. I'm going on TV with my story tonight at seven. Watch me on WCRN."

Iriarte flipped. "Oh, man. Oh, shit. We got him." He clapped his hands with excitement. "I'm telling you that is good work. I'll remember you in my will."

"Thank you, sir," Hagedorn chirped.

"Any word from Sanchez and Woo?"

"Not for an hour, you want to leave them a message?" Hagedorn didn't bother to swipe his empty containers into the wastebasket at his feet.

"Nah, get me four bodies, two units, and that address."

"Yessir." Hagedorn was on his feet.

Iriarte grabbed Hagedorn's sleeve and continued talking. "We go up there. No sound and light show. We're talking real quiet and real fast. We have an advantage. Liberty's not expecting us. We have a disadvantage. We don't know where the interview is taking place. If there's a camera crew arriving, we've got to move fast. Go!" Iriarte nodded at Sergeant Salley and left him to deal with Hagedorn's garbage.

45

T
he kitchen cabinets and table dated back nearly a hundred. years to the turn of the century, but the dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator were brand new. The rest of the brownstone Belle called home had been carefully restored in a style Rick Liberty recognized from historic photographs of the lives of wealthy people of color at the turn of the century. The dim light of the January afternoon did not diminish the warmth and glamour of the rooms. Entering such a place in his ripped parka and bloody sweatshirt, Rick had felt like the felon that half the world thought he was.

Belle took him into the kitchen, gave him a cup of coffee, brought him into the living room to drink it, then went upstairs to shower and change her clothes. When she returned fifteen minutes later, she was a different person again. Now her long hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a maroon turtleneck, gray tailored trousers, and a navy blazer. Black alligator belt. This Belle was no child of the slums. The change was unnerving.

"We have to get you some clothes," she said briskly. "Is there anybody you know who can get in and out of your apartment?" "Sure, but it's probably being watched." "Fine, I have a friend about your size. I'll get you some clothes. How about a lawyer?" she said casually. "I know a few of the best. But I'm sure you do, too. By the way, what do your friends call you?"

"Rick," Rick said, sitting forward on a rich burgundy velvet chair with a complex braid trim.

"Rick, you're bleeding on my chair," she remarked.

"Thanks."

"What for?"

"You stopped calling me nigger. Do you have any gauze pads?"

"I'll get some. You need stitches?"

Rick shook his head. "Just a messy scratch. I'm sorry about the chair. I'll have it recovered. Who are you?"

"Nobody important. My name is Isabella Wentforth Lindsay." Belle grimaced as if the three words gave her a bad taste. "This is my grandma's house. Granny isn't very well, but doesn't want to leave. So I stay here and watch her home-care nurses, make sure she's all right." Belle looked toward the bow window overlooking the north end of Central Park.

"This house belonged to her father. My father grew up here." She stroked the patterned cut velvet on the antique sofa. "Daddy left here after law school. I grew up in White Plains. My parents live in Westchester now. But I still love the house. Granny let me do the restorations. Do you like it?"

"Very much." The shooting of Jefferson, the cuts on Rick's chest, and the long sleepless night of worry over Belle's head wound and her barrage of insults were all catching up with him. He was having trouble taking everything in. Now he knew who her father was, a prominent conservative black New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother was a documentary film producer. A white documentary film producer.

Grief swept over him, tightening his chest until he could hardly breathe. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of nausea that severe pain often brought him. Belle's mother was white. Until that moment Rick had never considered the possibility that the children of white mothers might feel anger, even despair, at having to go through life bearing the color their fathers had not wanted to—would not have—married themselves. Belle's skin was honey-colored, as if the sun had warmed her from within. Her famous mother was white. The charge always leveled at him was that when black folk came up in the world and married white, they forgot that their children would be black no matter how light their skin. Perhaps if he and Merrill had had children, they would have fell the same.

"You okay?" She studied him.

"I'm sorry to get you into this," was all Rick could say.

"I do this with adolescents all the time. I do it with battered wives. It's my calling—anyway, I've always thought you were—" Belle broke off. "Why don't I go get you those clothes and stuff?"

An hour and a half later, dressed in borrowed clothes, Rick was waiting for Marvin's van to pick him up when a shriek of sirens brought him to the bow window where he parted the lace curtain. He saw a forest green Chrysler with a light flashing on top and two blue-and-white police cars speed up the wrong side of the street and cluster in front of the brown-stone, blocking Marvin's van that was pulling up at the same moment.

Rick watched four uniformed cops and the WCRN news team scramble out of their vehicles. Four cops unholstered their weapons. A man in a gray overcoat and a man in a suit jumped out of the Chrysler and started screaming at the man with the TV camera.

"Get back!"

"Get out of here!"

"Is that camera on?"

"Get that camera off."

"What's going on, Officer?" The reporter moved in with the camera.

"Get back, please."

"Can you tell me your name, Officer?"

Rick watched the scene with horror. A white uniformed officer shoved a black reporter with a video camera. The cameraman shoved him back. The red light on the camera was on. Six officers jostled each other as they climbed up the front stoop to get him. He was afraid, and he was angry. He wanted to tell Belle he was sorry, that he would make it up to her. But he couldn't open his mouth, knew he could not make anything up to anybody.

It occurred to him that Marvin had friends in the police. He could have set this arrest up. Or maybe Belle had set this up. He glanced at her. No, Belle looked as frightened as he. She held his hand, speechless for once. How could the police have found him? The doorbell rang.

"Stay here. I'll go by myself." Rick's head pounded as he went down the graceful circular staircase toward the insistent ringing doorbell. He opened the door. Cops were arranged all around it with their guns pointed at him.

"Put your guns away," he said. "I'm not going to resist you." His hands were by his sides. He did not think to raise them. Belle had followed him down the stairs. She stood beside him, pressed against his arm in case they intended to shoot.

The man in the dove gray overcoat did not bother to ask who Rick was. His first words were, "Mr. Liberty, you're under arrest for the murder of Wallace Peter Jefferson. You have the right to—"

"What—?"

"Remain silent—"

"Wait a minute—wait, you have the wrong man."

"Tell it to the judge, Mr. Liberty."

"Wait—!" Liberty shouted. "Just wait one minute."

Two uniforms jerked his hands together and wrestled his wrists into handcuffs, closing them tighter than they had to be. Rick heard Belle's voice, but couldn't make out what she said. The camera crew filmed him with Belle, then him alone as he was hurried, in a huddle of blue, down the stairs and pushed into a car—protesting so vigorously the arresting detective never got a chance to finish reading him his rights.

46

A
t five-fifteen, April rapped sharply on Dean Ki-ang's doorframe, then walked into the prosecutor's office. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, didn't seem to have heard her knock.

"You never go home, do you?" she said, sorry to have to wake him up.

He started, looked surprised, then checked his watch. "April, you're early . . ." He recovered quickly. "But looking very good," he amended. "I'm glad to see you."

"Thanks." April took off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat.

Dean gazed at her appreciatively, smoothing back his hair. Then he got up from his desk to close the door. "Here, give me that." He took the coat, threw it over a chair, then stepped back to look at her as if from a distance, making a telescope with his fingers the way he had the last time they met. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Did I tell you I'm a sucker for female Chinese sergeants?"

She smiled, trying to think of a suitable reply, neither too cold nor too warm. Something pleasantly neutral that wouldn't generate deeper forays into the subject, for she didn't know any other female Chinese sergeants. But Dean moved before she could think, stepping forward into her space and in one fluid move drawing her into a full body hug. April was too surprised to react. The unexpected embrace took her breath away. It was as if she'd been waylaid by someone on the street she'd never suspected.

Things like this happened all the time in the station houses, particularly to unwary patrol officers. April had always managed to step aside, get out of reach, show it wasn't ' worth it to mess around with her. She'd never been one of the "girls" the horny ones went after.

But this was no cop on a power play. This was a highly desirable suitor. Dean Kiang was a lawyer, a Chinese. He' was the kind of person Skinny Dragon told her she must smile at—be honey to his bee: work for if she could get the job, be indispensable to, then clinch the deal, lie back, and do nothing for rest of life. In the case of Dr. Dong a few months back, Sai had gone as far as to advise kissing on command, as necessary, the way the prescriptions on pill bottles read. Just to close that pie-in-the-sky deal for a June wedding and the happy life Sai wanted for her. Just keep up that kissing, and never mind what the man looked like, or whether he was an asshole. Never mind love. Sai liked to say love was like a lily: bloom only one day. Better think of other things.