Loving Time (44 page)

Jason put down the nearly full glass of clear liquid he’d been holding and got out of his chair to greet her. “April, thanks for coming. How are you?”

“Fine. Please, don’t get up.” No one else she knew got up for women. The gesture always startled her.

“Would you like something to drink?” Emma asked.

April eyed Jason’s glass. “Club soda?”

“Nope, gin. Want some?”

April shook her head, glanced at Emma for guidance.

“I’m drinking white wine,” Emma said quickly. “But we have everything. Pepsi, juice, beer …”

April realized that the movie star’s offer of refreshment meant this must be some kind of ceremonial occasion. She struggled with the idea of white wine for a few seconds. George Dong was the only person she knew who drank white wine. She thought of it as a wimpy Yuppie drink. It didn’t taste good or do much for her.

“Thanks, white wine would be fine,” she said.

Emma went to get her a glass while sixty-three
dings, dongs
, and
bongs
proclaimed the hour. April pulled off her jacket and took a chair, tried to arrange herself to fill it. She didn’t succeed.

“So,” Jason said. “Where are we?”

April smiled. “Still bearded, I see.” And back with the splendid wife.

Jason raised his hand to stroke the stubble. “Yeah, I’m still polling opinions on it.”

“What does Emma say?”

“I say it scratches.” Emma gave April the glass of wine, chose the sofa, and sat gracefully.

Ah. Six months ago this was the wife who hadn’t come to the station to discuss her own case. At two this afternoon she hadn’t wanted to come into the restaurant where cops were eating. Now Emma was part of the team, willing to sit down in the same room with her. Clever girl. April smiled.

“So, fill us in,” Jason said with a smile that confirmed her insight.

“The blood type of the semen in the condom matches Boudreau’s, as I told you on the phone.” April sipped at her wine, then put the glass down. “It looks like he’s the one who’s been harassing Dr. Treadwell. He’s been in trouble before—”

Jason nodded. “The inpatient suicide a year ago.”

“Even before that. Boudreau was a former Vietnam MASH unit surgical nurse. He may have killed his Captain after a young Marine the Captain was operating on died in surgery. Someone threw a live grenade into the doc’s tent that night. Boudreau was not charged with the crime but did not do well in the Army after that.” That was the part that had gotten Daveys all excited. Daveys’s brother had been a Marine and had died in ’Nam, apparently from the negligence—or cowardice—of one of his men.

Emma shivered.

“Boudreau was fired after the patient’s death. He may have blamed the Quality Assurance Committee for fingering him and the head of the Centre for firing him.”

“How did he maintain his access?”

“He has a friend in the personnel office. She helped him get a job as a janitor in the Stone Pavilion.”

“So he has all the keys,” Jason murmured.

“It appears that he does,” April agreed.

“Is he in custody?” Emma asked suddenly. “Did he kill other people?”

April’s wine tasted light and fresh, hardly like alcohol at all.
“Not yet is the answer to your first question, and it’s possible is the answer to your second.”

Emma poured herself some more wine. “What now?” she asked.

“We’re bringing him in for questioning tomorrow.”

“You mean you know where he is?”

April nodded.

Emma fell silent. April didn’t want to imagine what she might be remembering.

“What about Dr. Treadwell?” Jason asked.

“Daveys has that end covered.”

Jason glanced at the phone. “Maybe I should give her a call.”

“Why is the FBI involved in this?” Emma asked. The FBI hadn’t come for her when she was abducted. April saw the other question in her eyes.
Why not me?

“Dr. Treadwell’s boyfriend is a Senator. Treadwell was being harassed before Dr. Dickey died and she didn’t do anything about it. When someone got killed, the Senator may have stepped in on her behalf and asked someone for a favor. It’s just my hunch. That kind of thing happens.”

Well, that was enough for one day. Reluctantly, April dragged herself out of the chair. “Well, thanks for everything. I’ve got to go. I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“You’re not staying for dinner?” Somehow Emma managed to sound disappointed.

“We’re having dinner?” her husband asked.

M
aria Sanchez desperately needed to talk with her son. On Tuesday morning she could no longer restrain herself from speaking. “
M’ijo
—” She knocked gingerly on Mike’s door. “Will you have some coffee?”

A grunt came from inside the room.

“Are you awake?”

Another grunt.

“It’s six-thirty. Won’t you be late?”

No answer from inside.

“I made some coffee.”

A few thuds and rustles, then Mike appeared at the door rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “What’s going on,
Mami
?”

Maria looked modestly away, as her
hijo
had nothing on but the gold medal of St. Sebastian nestled in the soft thicket of curling black hairs on his chest and one of the smaller towels stretched across his groin. She directed her eyes to the door frame, not wanting to see any telltale bulge of
le verga en ristre
in the baby she loved so much and could no longer hold and caress. No longer even talk to.

“It’s six-thirty,
m’ijo
,” she said softly. “Won’t you be late?”

It was Tuesday and she was back in her usual black. He squinted at her dress, plainer than a nun’s habit and a very far cry from the shiny, stiff purple number of Sunday. “I never get up before six-thirty,” he pointed out. “What’s going on?”

“Are you leaving me,
m’ijo
?” Maria whispered. “I don’t want to bother you, but—”

Mike closed his eyes. “Give me a minute, Mami.”

She nodded as he closed the door, her son the Sergeant with the loaded gun on the chair beside his pillow and a Chinese girlfriend with very small
chichis
and no sign of being a Catholic. Sighing, Maria padded through the living room to the table by the window, sat on the wooden chair next to the one Diego
had taken when he came to lunch. She was thinking, as she had for two nights, about the things Diego had said after Mike and his pretty
novia china
had left. She smoothed her hand over the rich surface of the wood, darkened and glistening after many years of polishing and repolishing.

“Marry a man who will respect you, Maria,” her father lectured to her long, long ago when she was just a little girl playing before dinner under the dusty canopy of the old tree split down the middle by a bolt of lightning. He talked, she played with a rag doll.
Mami
had fed and sweated over the old woodstove making her father’s, and only her father’s, favorite things to eat.

“Marry a man who can cook,”
Mami
had liked to tell her. And following that, “Mexican men are defective.
Hiposexuado
. They cheat on you and they’re lazy,
también
. Marry an Anglo or an Italian, Maria.”

“Where will I find an Italian,
Mami
?” Maria had wondered, in that old town on the border of Mexico and Texas.

“Rosario Tebrones married an Italian. He went to Canada, then came here to visit a friend. Remember Rosario, Maria? She went to Canada and became very rich.”

Maria could no longer remember Rosario. She could hardly remember her
Mami
, dead of fever at thirty when Maria was only twelve. But she remembered the soft whispers, the exhortations like prayers in her ears each night before she slept. “
En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y del Espírit? Santo
marry a good man, Maria, or your life will be
fuego del infierno
from the first day to the last.”

Maria got up to pour a coffee thick as soup for her
hijo
, anticipating his arrival only seconds before it occurred. She inhaled his morning collection of fragrances: deodorant, toothpaste, Irish Spring soap, shaving cream, some kind of
crema hidratante
to soften his skin after shaving—and the strong perfume of many flavors that overshadowed everything, lingering in the apartment for hours after he was gone.

He sat down, his eyes, for a change, soft with concern. He did not begin with a thousand questions about Diego, and for that she was grateful. “What are you worried about,
Mami
?” he asked.

She sighed. “I saw the papers in your room. Are you getting married?”

“To April?” Mike swallowed some coffee down and choked, laughing at the same time. “You jump to the finish too fast,
Mami
I’ve never even kissed her.”

Maria was surprised.

“She’s a—serious kind of woman. She doesn’t play around.” He shook his head, lifting a shoulder as if a little ashamed at how hard he had to work toward that end. “It’s complicated.”

“What about the apartment papers?” Maria asked, puzzled. “You’re moving to Queens? You never said anything.”

He looked guilty. “I’m getting reassigned, so I’m thinking about it.”

What did that have to do with it? Maria gave her son a searching look. “You want a
compañera de cama
in Queens. That’s far away,
m’ijo.”

She traced the wormholes in the polished wood with a tentative finger. She didn’t believe her son had never even kissed
la china
. He was leaving home for her, so she must have grabbed him in the important place.

“She’s very nice,
muy bonita, muy simpática
. I liked her,
m’ijo
.” Maria didn’t say,
Even though
la chica
had no womanly flesh and clearly wasn’t a Catholic
. She loved her son. What can you do?

Mike smiled. “Thank you,
Mami
.”

“Is your promotion in Queens?” She licked the tip of her finger and rubbed at an imaginary spot on the glossy table.

“Ah, no.” Mike changed the subject. “
Mami
, I’m surprised at you. You didn’t tell me you had a—”

“
Amigo
. He’s a friend,
m’ijo
. I met him in Church,” she said pointedly.

“I’m sure you did,
Mami
. And you told me you were finished with men, an old woman ready to fly up to Heaven. Remember?”

Maria’s round cheeks pinked at the lie. Sunday Diego had told her his philosophy of women. It was very interesting and not the philosophy of a Mexican man, that was for sure. Diego’s theory was that there was more to a woman who had finished with her babies than one who hadn’t started with them yet. And he didn’t mean thickness around the belly, either. He meant more enjoyment, more time for eating and talking.
Ola
, Diego liked to talk. He wanted a woman of his stage in life who’d lived through the things he had and wouldn’t think him a fool.

Maria thought Diego was a wise man, possibly even a saint. And she felt his appearance in her life at such a time must be a sign from the Almighty Father Himself. It was not impossible. Such things had happened before. Not lately, perhaps, and not to anyone she knew, but
Todopoderoso
could do anything He wanted. And if He wanted a good woman to care for a saint, He could certainly reach down to such a woman from Heaven above—as she prayed in His holy place, don’t forget that—and breathe new life into the deepest part of her soul. The Holy Book, after all, was full of such miracles.

“Maybe not yet,” she said of herself and Heaven.

“Well, what do you know about Diego?” Mike said suspiciously. “When did he turn up? What does he want?”

“
M’ijo
, remember that dog your father brought home? Big as this table and covered with flies?”

“Fleas. Yes, I remember. He said the dog was Jesus and we had to keep him.”

“That dog followed him home.”

“Uh-huh.” Mike remembered that bit of insanity. “So?”

“Diego
también
.”

Mike pursed his lips. “Diego is a dog?”

“No,
m’ijo
, the other.”

“Diego is Jesus.”

Maria nodded soberly. “I met him in Church. God spoke to me.” Her meek eyes flashed with sudden passion. “That is more than you can say about
la china.”

Mike put down the coffee cup. He was not smiling anymore. Diego Alambra was the headwaiter in an Italian restaurant. So far that was all he’d had time to check out the day before. Diego’s parentage and country of origin were still a little on the vague side, but Jesus he was not.
“Mami
, we will talk more about this later.”

“Forgive me,
m’ijo
. I only want you to be happy. And no one can be happy without the Faith.
M’ijo
, wait a minute. What’s the hurry?”

Mike struggled into his leather jacket, adjusting the gun harness under his arm with a jerk. His voice showed how angry he was. “Maria had the Faith. And she had
me
. Was she happy,
Mami
?”

A giant tear collected unexpectedly in Maria’s eye. All her sorrows puddled into a lake and tipped over the dam of her lid, gathering momentum as it rolled down her cheek. He hadn’t gotten over it. Mike was still in pain, still suffering over that poor crazy
chica
.

“I’m sorry,
m’ijo,”
she cried. “Is it my fault that God’s plan is so mysterious we can’t understand it?”

Mike kissed the wet cheek. “No,
Mami
, it’s not your fault. But if you believe in God”—he opened his hands, shaking his head like a wise man—“then you have to trust He knows what He’s doing with me, too.”

Maria felt God’s presence in those words, too. She believed her son was assuring her that either
china primavera
would become a Catholic if they married or he was not that serious about her after all.

B
obbie Boudreau closed the door to the fire room he now called home in B3 of the Stone Pavilion. He had spent the last four nights here. It was dark, and all that could be heard was the machinery—the electrical relays of the elevators clicking and throwing off sparks one after another all day and all night long, as the buttons were pushed upstairs and elevators in the bank right next to him moved from floor to floor; the thud and creaky whir of the mammoth belts and gears on the pumps that drove the water; the hiss of the steam escaping from dozens of safety valves. It was very hot, like Louisiana in the summer, but none of the sounds there were animal or human. He liked that. He was in a hurry to get upstairs, though. He needed a bathroom, a hot cup of coffee, and a doughnut.