Judging Time (5 page)

He raised the eyebrow that was crooked with bum scars from the previous June, when he'd jumped in front of April and the hostage they'd been trying to liberate just before an explosion that almost killed all three of them. Whenever he raised that eyebrow, April felt a thousand times less worthy than she was. She felt double and maybe triple stupid in ways she didn't begin to understand. Loyalty and love had gotten her all mixed up. And now they weren't even on the same team.

"What is this 'your people and my people,'
querida?" Now both of Mike's dark eyebrows shot up.

April's cold fingers became still in her lap as she wrestled with the problem. Sanchez glanced at her hands speculatively. "I thought we were all one people,' ' he murmured, resisting the impulse to take one hand and squeeze it.

Outside, the snow was beginning to falter. The flakes were smaller, not so puffy and dry. It seemed to be warming up as suddenly as it had gotten cold;

it might even turn to rain soon. The wipers squeaked over melting snow on the windshield.

With a shrug April relented. "Sorry, I didn't mean to be territorial."

Mike laughed. "Yes, you did. Always have to do everything yourself, don't you?" he teased.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Only a few weeks ago, when Mike had been in a similar position in a precinct squad, he'd been every bit as territorial about
their
cases. But why argue? She breathed in the familiar cologne that permeated his clothes and even the upholstery of his car. Mike's perfume—one couldn't get away with calling it anything else—was unlike anything April had ever smelled before or since. On the surface it was sweet and spicy, but underneath it had a pungent sort of kick that kept her off balance as long as he was around.

In the early days of their relationship this almost palpable aroma used to give April a headache. The squad room of the Two-O had reeked of it. In fact, it was Mike's smell that had first gotten her attention. She hadn't known where the powerful essence originated. Then she realized that when Sanchez wasn't around for a while it would disappear, only to return when he did. After that she noticed the pirate's smile with which he studied her and his interesting hair that was different from Asian hair. Mike rolled up his sleeves when he worked, revealing the hair on his arms. He had a fine layer of hair on the backs of his hands, and most likely on his chest, too. In spite of the prevailing taste among April's relatives on the subject, hair on a man's body did not seem altogether barbaric to her.

Jimmy Wong, April's last lover, had one lone hair on his chest growing from a mole near his left nipple, had never smelled of anything but garlic and beer. He'd never said he loved her, or called her darling. He had enjoyed torturing her by telling her anybody who was her partner was guaranteed to die in a shootout since he ranked her the worst shot in the entire department. Jimmy didn't approve of ambition in women and went so far as to threaten not to marry her if she made sergeant. Lucky for her she'd broken up with him before his threat could be tested. In addition to all this, a five-days' growth of beard yielded a very sparse display on his face. Why she'd ever liked him in the first place was now a mystery to her.

In comparison, Mike encouraged her to enjoy life, to advance in her career as far as she could, and called her darling in Spanish in front of everybody whenever he felt like it. His thick and luxuriant mustache was long enough to skirmish with
his
top lip and often quivered with emotion, causing palpitations in her stomach. During moments of deep concentration he sucked pensively on the ends of it. After April had started working with him, she learned that he was also the best detective she knew.

"You have a problem with my being here?" he asked now.

"Uh-uh. It's just your day off ... so I wondered who called you," she said.

"You're in my thoughts, so you must have," he murmured. That sounded good to him so he smiled. This was going to be a really big case, after all, and no one liked being left out of big cases. "Oh, come on, you're glad to see me, admit it."

She shook her head, didn't want to.

"Fine, don't admit it," he said cheerfully, with every appearance of confidence in his ability to win all his battles with her in the end.

"I could handle this myself," April insisted.

Mike hummed some Spanish love song. At her level of mastery of the Spanish language April was able to make out the words
somos novios,
which mean "we are boyfriend/girlfriend. We are lovers." She bit back a smart remark. They were not lovers. They were not engaged. They were hardly even speaking to each other. Then he seemed to remember the awful task in front of them and fell silent as he put the car in gear and pulled out without spinning the tires.

4

T
he Park Century was twelve blocks north on Fifty-seventh Street. Mike and April headed up Eighth Avenue without speculating whether Frederick Douglass Liberty would be at home to receive them at four in the morning. Patrice Paul had told April that Mr. Liberty was out of town. The restaurant manager had been in tears, almost hysterical the whole time April questioned him. Over and over he had begged her to let him try to reach Liberty on his cellular phone and inform him of what had happened. He didn't want Liberty to hear about the tragedy on the news. Though it might have seemed a reasonable request, April could not let him contact Liberty. She needed to cover some ground about precipitating events. What had happened during the evening. How was the restaurant run. What were the relationships of the people involved. She did not give Patrice a single opportunity to be alone. Even now he was getting a ride home to Brooklyn in a squad car.

April would not have let him make the call and give away any information under any circumstances. But in this case there was something worrying about the nature of the restaurant manager's extreme distress. April wondered why he was so eager to be the first one to reach his employer, as well as someone he called his friend, with such devastating news. Informing relatives was the worst job anyone could have. April hated those moments more than any other in her job.

But maybe Patrice Paul was glad Merrill Liberty was gone forever. April didn't have to remind herself that she had to be careful here. Really careful. The race issue made her uneasy. Sure, it was always there, and it always complicated everything. The chemistry of every case was affected by what sort of person was the primary detective managing it and what sort of people were the suspects. Class made a difference, as did the level of education people had and their attitude toward the police. Cops didn't even know they were adjusting the circumstances in each case to fit their own particular prejudices. It wasn't conscious. And color probably made the most difference of al. Color made people nervous, made them jump one way or another, changed the way they acted or didn't act. Color raised the stakes on the possibility of political repercussions. It guaranteed deeply emotional and often dangerous responses that were camouflaged or not depending on the parties involved. Anybody who said only the facts mattered was dreaming.

Patrice Paul was a witness. It was more than likely he knew more than he was telling. Maybe he was more involved than he would like to admit. What if Petersen had died of other causes? They'd been in -a restaurant, had eaten and drunk. Maybe he'd been poisoned somehow and been stricken when he got outside. It would explain how two people had been taken out so suddenly without a fight. Maybe the death of Merrill Liberty was an employee/boss's wife thing. Maybe it was a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. Maybe it was a race thing. Maybe it was a random act of violence, which would make it the worst possibility of all—a mystery. No one liked a mystery.

April wanted to handle this correctly. She knew this was an explosive situation no matter who had killed the victims or what the motive had been. Even if the perpetrator turned out to be a white homeless person who didn't even know them—which everyone who had seen the victims tended to doubt—there would still be plenty of battles fought over this case. The two victims were white, rich, and celebrities. The husband of one victim and the employee who went out to help them were black. It wasn't supposed to make a difference but it would.

It was a visceral thing. A lot of people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds didn't like each other. And they especially didn't like mixed marriages of any kind—people like her mother and her father who were otherwise fine people. But Sai and Ja Fa Woo didn't stop at disliking blacks. April's parents didn't like anybody—not whites, not Hispanics, not Pakistanis or Native Americans or Koreans. Chinese were best people to them. That was it. Nobody else counted. It was hard to take, especially considering April's current not-so-secret passion for a Latino. She sneaked a look at Mike.

Very few cars were out to challenge the snow on the street. The Camaro was low, and it plowed through some fresh inches, making grumpy, straining car noises. Mike seemed concentrated on
his
driving. She could tell he was in his waiting mode. He knew all about male sexual jealousy and how lethal it could be, but he would not make anything of Merrill Liberty's having been out with her husband's best friend, a white man, and the possible implications of
that
until there was something to make of it.

April couldn't help remembering the speculative way the ME had looked at Patrice, and then the way Dr. Washington's gaze had returned to the restaurant door more than once, as if she thought the killer might have come from inside the restaurant with an ice pick and not from the street. Why did the medical examiner think that? April made a mental note to ask Dr. Washington what her suspicions were. But April also had her doubts that Rosa Washington, well known for her rigid correctness, would tell her anything unless she knew April really well and trusted her. And the doctor had seemed extremely professional, not the kind of person to speculate about things she couldn't prove.

The Camaro took the turn through six inches of slush on Fifty-seventh Street like a small motorboat heaving through a mighty swell. It pulled up in front of a building that was splendid even at four in the morning on a storm-ravaged January night. Mike crossed himself. Whether in gratitude for getting there without mishap or in comment about the place itself April couldn't tell.

Like a sentry on either side of the front door was a topiary that looked like a lollipop with Christmas lights. Green letters on a white canopy importantly declared the building's name:
PARK CENTURY.
Race came back to mind again as April wondered how many other blacks lived in this building, how many Latinos, how many Asians. Cops were trained not to make assumptions. In the department they were supposed to be all one color, blue. On the street they were supposed to look at everybody the same. But they didn't. In confusing situations, black
cops
in plain clothes who ran with their guns unholstered in pursuit of bad guys risked getting shot in the back by their white colleagues.

At 4:12
A.M.
Sergeants Sanchez and Woo entered the Park Century, where Liberty had shared the penthouse with his wife Merril. The doorman was a large sleepy-eyed man who smelled of cigarettes and didn't like the sight of them.

"You're sure
Mr.
Liberty is here?" Mike asked after identifying himself and April and hearing that the former football star was at home.

"Of course I'm sure. I got to write everything down, don't I? Mr. Liberty came in before midnight." A black pin on the doorman's jacket gave his name as Earl.

Earl checked the clipboard on his porter's desk under the intercom board. "But Mrs. Liberty
is
still out. Is that what you're here about?" He wore green and gold livery even this late on the graveyard shift. A gleaming black top hat sat on the credenza along the wall. "Is she all right?" Earl suddenly looked concerned.

"Would you ring the apartment for me?" Mike asked.

"Mr. Liberty won't like it."

No one ever did.
Mike jerked his chin at the intercom. It wasn't his problem.

April pursed her lips. Instantly they'd fallen into their usual routine. Mike being the authority figure. The man. She would have been more conciliatory with the doorman because they would need his cooperation later. But hey, who was complaining? Mike always got the job done.

Three minutes later they got out of a gleaming, dark wood-paneled elevator on the twelfth floor. There was only one door on the floor, but they wouldn't have confused the apartment anyway. The famous quarterback who'd been known as Liberty (and whom April recognized now that she saw him) stood there bleary-eyed in his doorway. In spite of the lateness of the hour, he was dressed. He wore a pair of gray slacks and was pulling a gray cashmere sweater into place as he frowned at them.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"I'm Sergeant Sanchez. This is Sergeant Woo." Mike pulled out his
ID,
but Liberty turned his head away without looking at it.

"Do you mind if we come in?" Mike asked.

The impression he gave was not one of alarm. Liberty looked wary, eyed them with distrust. "All right," he said evenly. "Come in here." He led the way across a tan marble floor, then hit the light switch in the living room, stunning the two detectives with its splendor.

For a second, Liberty seemed shocked by it also, for he gripped his forehead, shielding his eyes from the great expanse of room and windows heightened by lengths of soft white sofas, white throws, miles of textured white rugs on a white marble floor, and white gauzy curtains, all of which were offset by many pieces of striking African art. Chieftains' stools served as coffee tables. Masks hung on the walls and were suspended above ebony columns by long metal rods. Ceremonial objects, cups, tobacco boxes, brass figurines were arranged on shelves. Particularly arresting were several large wooden statues of women with out-sized breasts and men with outsized penises. Some were decorated with small shells, colored cloth, raffia, and many bits of mirror. April knew the contrast of primitive and ultrasophisticated decorating was done for a particular purpose. She didn't want to guess what it was.