Loving Time (41 page)

“
Ni
,” Skinny Dragon continued screaming up the stairs. It was clear from the piercing tone of her voice that she had not slept a wink the whole night, either. Her voice was so violent, not even the dog was visible when April opened her door, found the note, and peered down the stairs, yawning.

“Yeah, Ma, what?”

This morning Skinny Dragon Mother was wearing black pajama bottoms and a padded blue peasant jacket to fool the gods into thinking she was poor. Suddenly she started smacking her chest with an open palm and screaming in operatic Chinese that April’s Protective
Qi
was weak, and this defect was the cause of all her troubles.

“What troubles?”

“You need treatment right away to get in hamony before your
jing
is so weak it’s too late for anything.”

“
Jing
? What’s that?” April demanded.

“Neva mind what is. Clock ticking, losing more every day.”

April yawned, bleary-eyed. If a clock was ticking, it had to be hormones. Jade Treatment was not for hormones. Any idiot knew that.

“Velly bad news. Come here,” Sai screamed.

April padded down the stairs to her mother’s kitchen, the official place of bad news. There Skinny Dragon told her that the Chinese newspaper had reported New York City was blanketed with a great fog of impure air so disease-ridden that no one outside or in a public place was safe from the dangerous colds and fevers all around. April was outside and in public places every day, Skinny Dragon said, scowling at her daughter. April breathed the impure air of rapists, thieves, and murderers. So April was in special danger.

April thought of Sergeant Joyce and knew this was true. The rest of yesterday’s disaster she deduced from her mother’s tirade about fat Foo Chang. Apparently the word had spread all the way to New Jersey (where Woo parents were visiting the Chang family) that April’s monkey business with Spanish had spoiled her chances with George Dong and now no one worth marrying would ever have her. Foo Chang told Sai Woo that George Dong’s mother, Mimi, had a cousin whose daughter’s best friend was a Harvard docta. The girl was small size, only four foot ten, and not good-looking. She had curly hair, freckles, and a boxy figure. Also much older than April but … she was successful docta of women at Lenox Hill Hospital on
Park Avenue, Manhattan. This small, old women’s doctor, Lauren Cha, and George Dong had played tennis together twice in the big Queens bubble, and now there was rumor of a spring wedding.

Foo then mentioned April’s Spanish boyfriend—everybody knew all about him—and this bitter news prompted Sai to tell the getting-very-fat Foo Chang that Spanish was highest-quality Sergeant, almost a Captain and a personal friend of the Police Commissioner himself. Foo countered by consoling Skinny Dragon with many kinds of food she did not want and by telling her she didn’t
have
to have the same unhappy, unlucky life as all other parents whose children fell away from golden path never, ever to return.

The only way April could think of to appease her unhappy mother was to swallow the nasty steaming liquid Skinny gave her. It was a suspicious color. April sniffed it anxiously, almost fearful that her mother was angry enough to poison her. This Jade Treatment was unpleasant in the extreme, but Sai promised it would strengthen her Protective
Qi
.

Protective
Qi
was the energy of throat and lungs—not the energy of the whole body—only the upper respiratory system. To protect the whole immune system, you went for the Protective
Qi
, the energy of the throat and lungs. But who knew what it really was? It could be something to weaken her spirit and confound her purpose. It certainly didn’t taste anything like the Jade Treatment she’d given Mike, and taken herself, yesterday to fortify them against Sergeant Joyce’s cold. That Jade Treatment was like a eucalyptus tea, deeply green and spicy, an opener of the chest. Mike said he liked it—even though he hadn’t known what it was for. April was eager to see if he was better today.

Leaving her mother lighting joss sticks for the gods of harmony, April left early for the Two-O.

W
hen April walked in at seven-forty-five, it was still dead in the squad room. The only person already busy at his desk was Mike, turning the pages of his notebook. Maybe he couldn’t sleep, either.

“Yo,
querida
, how was your day off?” he asked without looking up.

“A real bummer.
Pasé el día en blanco
,” she grumbled.

“You didn’t do a single thing?
¡Qué lástima!
You must be hanging with the wrong people.”

“Must be.
¿Qué pasa, chico?
”

He smiled. Now he was
chico
. “What’s happening is our new best friend wants a meeting this afternoon. He says he wants to give us a present. All we have to do is pick it up and it’s ours.”

April dumped her shoulder bag on her desk. She sank into her chair. “The last time I heard a Feeb ask a cop to make a pick-up, it was an unauthorized search-and-seize they didn’t want to take the heat for if we got caught.”

“Oh, yeah? You do it?”

April looked him over for signs of fever. Today Mike was wearing a red shirt and a black tie, his first foray into color. Must want to attract a bull. She smiled. “You’re looking better today, Mike. That Jade Treatment must have worked.”

He made a face. “You mean that nasty green stuff you made me drink? What was it supposed to do, shrivel my balls?”

“A girl does what she can.”

Mike leaned back in his chair, stroking his mustache and wearing his pirate’s smile. “Well, it didn’t work. You’ll have to try again.… ” He stared at her until she blinked. “So did you go in for the Feebs? Do the search-and-seize?”

She laughed. Laughing didn’t feel too bad. “Not me. I don’t take falls.”

He changed the subject. “Well, we have to do a little homework here. Let’s make a plan.”

April nodded. They decided who would do what and where they’d meet to discuss their findings before meeting with Special Agent Daveys for lunch at the Lantern Coffee Shop. By nine-thirty April was back in the Psychiatric Centre. Gunn Tram hadn’t told her the truth the last time they’d talked. April thought it was about time for another little chat.

Gunn Tram, however, wasn’t in her office. She’d called in sick that Monday. The young African-American slumped at the desk in the outer office said Gunn had a bad cold and sounded terrible. April asked the woman if she knew an employee by the name of Boudreau.

“Uh-uh.” The nameplate on her desk read Malika Satay. Malika had a spectacular head of braids that dusted off her shoulders as she shook her head emphatically with every statement. “Nobody by that name working here.”

“How about a little over a year ago, in the summer?”

“Wouldn’t know about that. I started last year at Christmastime.” Malika clicked the gold beads at the ends of her extensions with her long gold-painted fingernails.

“Would you check for me?” April asked.

“Huh?”

“Would you look in your files and see if you can find a Boudreau in there—B-O-U-D-R-E-A-U.”

“You with the cops? I seen you in here yesterday with that other guy.”

April leaned against Malika’s desk. April hadn’t been there yesterday. Neither had Gunn; neither had Malika. “What other guy?”

“I don’t know. Some other guy. Hung around all day bugging Gunn.”

“You mean Friday.”

“Whatever.” Malika figured she’d done enough talking and shut her mouth.

“Whatever isn’t good enough.”

“I don’t remember what day. One day last week.”

“Okay, why don’t we check the files?”

The woman got up sullenly. “Is that what he wanted?”

“The guy? What did he say he wanted?” April followed Malika’s heavy steps to an interior space lined with banks of files.

“Uh-uh. He had a gun on his ankle. Made Gunn real upset.”

“I can see how it would. What did this guy with the gun say he was looking for?”

“He just say Gunn knew what he wanted, and he’d stick with her till she tole him.”

“Did you see this guy around here today?”

The secretary swung her heavy braids around, shooting April a look she couldn’t read. “What’s it to you?”

“You like Gunn? Is she a good person to work for?”

Malika turned back to the cabinet, pulled out one of the
B
drawers, shuffled through the files around B-O-O. “Yeah, she’s all right.”

“Then help her out, okay?”

“She in trouble? I knew she in trouble.” The woman slammed the drawer shut. “I tole you, there’s nobody with that name in here.”

“It’s B-O-
U
,” April said patiently. “Try it again.”

“Huh?”

“B-O-U-D-R-E-A-U.”

“I done that.”

“You’ve checked before?”

“Yeah, when that guy was here.” Malika headed back to her desk.

“The file wasn’t there then?”

“Uh-uh.”

April turned back to the cabinet, wanted to see for herself. She shuffled through the
B
’s, found a file upside-down in the B-u section, and felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She
pulled a pair of disposable rubber gloves from her bag and put them on before touching it. It was Robert Boudreau’s disappeared, now magically reappeared, file. She looked around for a supply cabinet, opened a few drawers until she found a large manila envelope. The file disappeared again into the envelope. April went to see Malika.

She was slumped at her desk again. “Bye,” she said without enthusiasm when April stood in front of her.

“I’m not finished. Did Gunn know which files were gone?”

“She real upset after Dr. Dickey died. Real upset. She say she the only one knew which files was missing. She had to get ’em back right away. All of’ em.”

“Gunn told you she’d made a list of the files Dr. Dickey took?”

“Yeah.”

“Did she tell you where she put it?”

“I tole you—that guy upset her real bad. He say she gonna go to prison. I heard him tell her.”

“The guy with the gun?” April said.

“Uh-uh, the one with the ponytail.”

Oh, now there was a guy with a ponytail as well as a guy with a gun. April’s stomach churned. She could feel the burning acid attack a new clot of anxiety. There was another guy hanging around Gunn. Did Daveys know that? Neither April’s voice nor her eyes betrayed the impatience her body was beginning to vibrate.

“Any of these guys have a name?”

“I didn’t hear one.” Malika didn’t even bother to shrug. She didn’t give a shit.

“Can you tell me what they looked like?”

“Uh, one guy looked like a cop.”

Uh-huh. Cops came in all colors, shapes, and sizes. “The one with the gun on his ankle?”

Malika thought it over. It seemed to be a difficult question for her. “Yeah.”

“What did he look like?”

Malika sighed at April’s denseness. “Looked like a cop,” she insisted. “Like Tommy Lee Jones.”

April didn’t know any cops who looked like that. “Okay, and the other one?”

“Looked like a doctor.” Malika nodded.

“The one with the ponytail?” April asked doubtfully.

“Yeah. He was wearing a white coat.”

That didn’t exactly make him a doctor. “Could you see what he was wearing under the white coat?”

Malika looked surprised at the question. “It was buttoned.”

“Yeah, but could you see a dress shirt, a tie, a sports coat, the kind of pants he was wearing? Could he have been an orderly? A male nurse?”

Malika thought about it but stayed silent.

“What about his ID? Did you see that?”

“No.”

“No ID or you didn’t see it?”

“No ID. The cop had no ID, and neither do you.”

Daveys would have a pass like hers. April pulled it out so Malika could see it. “One last question. Have you seen the guy with the ponytail before?”

“Yeah.”

“Many times before?”

“A few times.”

“When?”

“A while ago. Maybe a month, two months.”

“Was he wearing a white coat the other times you saw him?”

“No.”

“What was he wearing then?”

Malika pursed her lips with annoyance. “Street close.”

“What kind of street clothes?”

“The kinda close you wear on the street. Jacket, sweatshirt, pants.” Malika prolonged her skimpy description because April was jotting down what she said.

“Where did you see this guy with the ponytail, the jacket, the sweatshirt, and the pants?”

“Huh?”

“On the other occasions when you saw him. Where was he?”

“He and Gunn walking on the street. They drinking in a bar.”

“Which one?”

“This is more than one question.”

“You have more than one answer to give me, Malika. What bar?”

“French Quarter.”

April nodded. She knew where it was. “This guy, was he white, black, Hispanic, tall, short? Fat, thin?”

“He beige, and he big.”

Beige, now that was descriptive. “How big? Six foot? Hundred and seventy pounds, eighty pounds? Two hundred pounds?”

“Yeah.”

That was all Malika was prepared to say at the moment. The guy had a ponytail. He was light-skinned with mixed blood of some kind and wore street clothes when he was not wearing a white coat. That did not put him in the doctor class. And he drank in a less-than-upscale bar way west on Ninety-ninth Street. April took Gunn’s phone number and address, then headed to the lab to have the file dusted for prints.

G
unn lived in a Gothic-style, highly decorated, four-story building with a heavy, curved stone staircase leading to a front door of leaded glass on the second floor. April shuddered when she saw it. The entrance to the apartments on the street level and below was hidden underneath the stairs, directly visible neither from the street nor the upstairs entrance. Arching over the sidewalk, the roof corner on each side restrained two attacking cement dogs with permanently gaping mouths and straining fangs. On the second and third stories three yawning bay windows with pointed vaults over dark stained-glass were faintly lighted from within. The house had a predatory look about it, almost as if it were alive and hungry. April parked her unmarked unit in a fire-hydrant space and hurried up the steps. She didn’t have a lot of time to get this thing with the file sorted out.