Stealing Time (15 page)

"That won't be necessary, and Emma's fine. Thanks for asking."

April hung up, and Gabe walked right back in.

"Okay, have a seat. Let's do that debriefing now," he said.

"Sorry, I can't. Something's come up downtown."

He looked disappointed. "How about later?"

"Later's great." April picked up her purse and bade her office a sad farewell. She didn't plan to come back for a long time.

It was noisy out in the squad room, and chaos still reigned. Ousted squad detectives were trying to do their jobs in impossible circumstances, without their desks and phones. At the moment four of them were squeezed into Iriarte's office, having a conference. When Lieutenant Iriarte saw April through his window, he waved at her to join in the meeting.

"Whatchu got?" he asked, motioning for her to shut the door after her.

When no one jumped up to give her a chair, she leaned against the door frame. "I like our Feeb; he's a real charmer," she remarked.

"Oh, Gabe? He's from the New York office. We want to help out all we can, all right?"

"Sure. What's going on?"

Iriarte pointed at Hagedorn. "Charlie was about to give us some deep background on the Popescu family."

"What about the baby's mother?"

Charlie gave her a look. "Nothing on her yet. One thing at a time."

"Look, Charlie, if this guy Anton has a babe on the side, I want her name and address. When are you getting on it?"

"That was your job," Iriarte barked. "Go ahead, Charlie."

April shut her mouth. Charlie Hagedorn happened to be a first-rate hacker, good enough to go downtown to the Big Building with the big boys. Iriarte wouldn't let this happen as long as he drew breath. He saw computers as policing's future, and Charlie's talent for finding out things as his alone. He nodded for his favorite to begin.

Charlie gave April a smug look and let his chest puff. "The Popescu family came in from France in the thirties. The grandfather, Paul, and the two sons, Marcus and Peter. Had some money, set up shop on the Lower East Side. Marcus Popescu had one son, Ivan. Peter Popescu had two sons, Marc and Anton. Anton is the younger by twelve years."

"What kind of shop?" At the mention of the Lower East Side April got interested.

"Sounds like a sweatshop kind of thing. Any of your family in the sewing business?"

She shook her head. Her father was a cook. Her mother—though April found it hard to believe—had been pretty and popular enough to work in the front of a restaurant. A downtown hostess was a person who bossed people around. The job had been perfect for her. Skinny had screamed at waiters and argued with people who had problems with the bill or didn't like their food. The place had been old then. Now it was truly ancient. Thousands of holes-in-the-wall like it had come and gone in the ten years since Skinny Dragon had been lucky enough to stop working, but Doh Wa was still there, surviving the Chinatown trend to white tablecloths and dishes like Grand Marnier shrimp prepared with profoundly un-Chinese ingredients like mayonnaise and orange liqueur.

"But you came up in the Fifth, right?" Hagedorn demanded.

April nodded.

"Born in Chinatown, right?"

April nodded again. "Born and bred. Any particular reason?"

"The Popescu family's been in the business for quite a while. They've been shut down a number of times over the years. The usual: fire code violations, inadequate wiring for the machines and fans. Building condemned, plumbing didn't meet standards—" He thumbed his notes.

April snorted. Since when did plumbing shut anybody down?

Charlie looked up. "Problem?"

Only the usual societal complaints about exploitation and poor working conditions. April shook her head.

Charlie went on. "Illegal aliens. No record of trouble lately. Looks like they've cleaned up their act. Factory's on Allen Street, but it seems most of their work these days is being done in China. Two sons to Peter, as I said, Anton and Marc. Marc is in the business. Anton is a personal-injury lawyer. Marc has been married twice, messy divorces. Has two children by each wife. By the looks of their settlements, the business is doing very well. Marcus's son, Ivan, is also in the business. He's married, has two children, house in Queens, another one farther out on the Island. The father is retired, lives—"

"Okay, okay. That's enough." Iriarte shut him up.

"They're raking in the money. I gather you don't know them," Hagedorn kept at it. April ignored him.

"Any priors on the Brothers Karamazov?" Suddenly the tadpole Woody Baum kicked in. He was on a roll today.

April glanced at him in his blue sports jacket and blue button-down shirt.
Thank you, Woody.
No, she had not heard of the Popescus just because they happened to have a business in Chinatown. She didn't come from a sweatshop family. Her parents were skilled workers in the restaurant trade. The thought made her want to smile for the first time that day.

"Who the fuck are
they?"
Creaker demanded.

"Russian serial killers," Baum said with a straight face. "You never heard of them?"

"Fuck you, asshole."

"These guys are French. Get on with it." Iriarte was losing his patience.

"Popescu is not a French name. They must have just passed through," said Baum, happy being an asshole with legs and suddenly the self-appointed expert on passing through.

"Anton doesn't pay his parking tickets. And he's a speeder." Charlie gave Baum a dirty look. "Typical lawyer stuff."

"We need more on Anton. Where he went, who he hung with. Name of the girlfriend," April said. She was beginning to have her doubts about the girlfriend.

"That's your job," Charlie reminded her.

"All right. That's it. Check with the health department, see what you come up with on a birth certificate."

"You're not going to find that under his name," April told him. She had a feeling there was no birth certificate.

"It never hurts to check," Iriarte said. Everybody else filed out. He flapped his hand at April to stay, then gave her a little smile.

"Guess what, this guy Popescu wants to drop the whole thing." Iriarte shook his head. "Looks like he's gotten himself between a rock and a hard place on the adoption and wants out before it gets out of hand." He smiled cynically.

"What's your take?"

"This guy certainly has something to hide. Wife and a girlfriend. One baby between the two of them. Looks like the other woman has it. His wife in the hospital, beaten up. Let me tell you, the media would go nuts with this, so keep it to yourself."

"Has Popescu made an offer for some kind of resolution here?"

"Yeah, he says he won't sue us if we go away now. I told him that won't cut it. A baby's missing and a woman's assaulted. That's about as big as it gets for us, and we're not going away."

"I talked to Heather's mother in California last night. She had no idea the baby wasn't her daughter's."

Iriarte shook his head, looking impatient at all the lies. "Do you have any more thoughts about it?"

April did have another thought about it, but she didn't want to open a new can of worms to her boss just yet. What she hadn't verbalized, even to herself, was that the baby in the picture Anton had given them looked an awful lot like him and Heather Rose. Of course, she could be wrong. How much, after all, could one tell from the eyes of a three-week-old? She could easily put it down to just another creepy feeling. She wasn't seeing a white baby, she was seeing a Chinese baby with blue eyes. That didn't speak of an adoption from China, but of something closer to home. Oh, she didn't like this.

Iriarte changed the subject. "How you doing with Woody?"

"He'll be fine." April didn't want to say he could think but couldn't drive, so she didn't say anything.

"Oh yeah? That sounds tentative."

"He'll be fine," she assured him. "He's quick on his feet."

"Go find that baby." Iriarte flapped his hand. "Yes, sir."

CHAPTER
16

J
ason Frank was in front of his building at Riverside Drive and West Eightieth Street, studying his watch, at exactly two
P.M
. when the blue-and-white police cruiser pulled up at the curb. The police car took him by surprise.

"April?"

April leaned out the window on the passenger side. "Hi, Jason. Thanks for this—I know it's an imposition."

"No problem." Jason smiled at her. "You know I'd do anything for you\"

"I appreciate it, really. This is Detective Baum. Dr. Frank." She introduced them.

"Hi." Jason leaned over and smiled at Baum, too.

The sandy-haired young man in the driver's seat raised his hand in acknowledgment.

"Well, get in, Jason. Let's go." April got serious fast.

Jason gave the car a doubtful look. "What's with the squad car?"

"The unmarked unit we usually take has a flat. You have a problem with it?" She gave him an amused look.

"Yeah, I have a problem. I don't want my colleagues and patients to see me driven away in a police

car. It's bad for my image." He grinned as he said it, though, playing with her.

April grinned back. "Come on, don't make a political statement out of it, get in the car. We're in a hurry."

"All right, all right." Jason rolled his eyes and opened the car door. The outside was as clean as could be, but inside the car smelled as if the great unwashed had been living there for the entire millennium. Not only that, there was a thick wire screen between the front seat and the back. "What is this, your arrest car?"

"Yes." April turned around to talk through the screen. "Jason, I love you without the beard. When did you shave it off?"

Jason raised a hand to his chin, smooth for the first time in nearly a year. "This morning."

The car took off fast, throwing him against the backseat.

"Fasten your seat belt, it's the law," April ordered. Now she was playing with him.

"Whatever you say," he said, suddenly meek now that his life was at stake. "Where are we going?"

Woody sped down Riverside, hit the siren, and turned left onto West Seventy-second Street, plowing through oncoming traffic without slowing down. Jason had the uncomfortable feeling he was going to jail. No one relieved him of that apprehension.

He gasped when Woody braked suddenly. "Oh, God."

"Gee, I'm so glad to see you. It's been a while." April grinned some more again.

"Same here, I think. You look great, April." In fact, she looked gorgeous—radiant—in a red jacket, a navy skirt, and a white shirt with an oversized collar. In her ears were the jade studs she sometimes wore for good luck. His eye caught a chain around her neck.

"What's that?"

April reached to the middle of her chest for the medal hanging there. "Oh this? It's St. Sebastian. He's the patron saint of soldiers and policemen. Kind of like an evil eye, so I'm told." She said it deadpan.

"I didn't know you were a Catholic."

"I'm not." She smiled, shrugging.

"Boyfriend?"

April cocked her head in the direction of her driver. "Don't ask."

"Oh, I forgot how secretive you cops are. So what happened to Mike?" Jason couldn't help teasing, pretty sure the gift came from her old partner, Sanchez.

"He's in Homicide now." End of subject.

"Is Baum your new partner?"

"Jason, you're just full of questions, aren't you? We don't have partners in detective units. You know that. How's Emma?"

"Emma's great. She's taking a leave from the play, may or may not go back to it, depending." He grinned, didn't want to tell her why now. "So what's going on? What do you want from me?"

"I could have handled this myself if I had a few more days," she said airily. "But this is a right-now kind of thing. Sorry to haul you in on such short notice."

"Apology accepted. Now what's with the cloak-and-dagger?"

"Oh, God, will you look at that cutie?" April turned to admire a baby in a stroller stopped at a red light near them. Big fat cheeks, pink. Curls to die for. About twenty pounds, kicking feet in tiny red-white -and-blue sneakers. And a happy grin on her face that could conquer the world in a heartbeat.

"Adorable." Jason's eyes went all gooey.

"Jason, tell me about women who kill babies. And

I'm not talking about abortion here. I mean a full-term, three-week-old baby. Married woman, well-to-do, in her late twenties."

Jason clamped his jaws together to stop himself from showing his alarm at the way April always led him into things. He'd been through several investigations with her before, and each time whatever little problem she'd wanted his advice on had blossomed into a horror story that he couldn't wander out of. Baby killing! Nice of her to tell him.