by Leslie Glass
"I don't understand the question."
"Did your friend Tor take you on?" The Chinese woman was standing on the other side of him, watching him with the cold indifference of a sphinx.
"Me?" he'd replied, puzzled.
"Yes. Were you jealous of your friend's relationship with your wife and—?"
He shook his head. "I didn't leave the apartment."
"Why would anyone want to hurt your wife?"
"Why would anyone want to hurt anyone? Why would you want to hurt me?"
"We don't want to hurt you, sir. We just want to know what happened January sixth, the night your wife was murdered. Why don't you tell us. You know we're going to find out in the end anyway."
Keys ground in one lock after another. Liberty had fallen asleep and was dreaming of Merrill, bleeding to death on the side of a mountain and himself struggling to bail her blood back inside of her body faster than it was pumping out. He could hear the police on the stairs and screamed as the apartment door burst open.
"What are you doing? What's going on here?"
No sound came out of his mouth. He was screaming in his mind.
"Hey! What's the matter with you? Can't you hear me?" It was the sandblasting voice of the crazy sister who wrapped her head twice its size. He took a deep breath, shuddering at his dream.
For a second she reminded him of his great-aunt Belle who'd been as tall as this woman, but big as an apartment building. That Belle had thought the world was all right until the civil rights movement came along in the sixties and personaliy stole her self-respect and set her back a few hundred years to a place nobody in his right mind would ever want to be, a sorry slave from another land. In Belle's world, color had been everywhere and color was fine. Color put no limits on the thing, was neither good nor bad, just was, sweet and bitter like birth and death. But the Movement took the sparkle, the highlights, the savor out of color, drained the nuance of the human palette in all its glory from Aunt Belle's life and made her Black.
"What's the matter wit you?" This Belle talked to him with a voice that streaked graffiti through sound waves.
Liberty saw that his computer power light was on, but the screen was blank. It had gone into hibernation. He must have been sleeping for a while. He hadn't finished the coffee the woman had made many hours ago. His mouth was dry. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten.
"Hey, man, I axed you a question. You got some kind of hearing problem?"
"No ma'am."
She took a few threatening steps into the room. "Then answer me when I talk wit you."
"Is that one of your house rules?" Liberty asked.
"What you talking about?"
"Your house rules, remember?"
"Uh-uh."
He raised a hand in peace. "Never mind."
She sucked in the side of her face, scowling. "You some sorry bastard," she said after a minute of staring at his hair.
"I'll agree with you there."
"You got any pills? Marvin said you ain't got no pills."
"I don't have any pills," Liberty said.
She cocked her head. "You gonna kill yourself?"
The woman moved in as if to protect him from himself. Now he could smell her. She didn't smell the way she looked or sounded. Smell was one of the first things he learned when he went to boarding school, how the rich smelled different from the poor. Clothes made the caste of a man, and so did smell. A person couldn't look good to the right people unless he smelled good to the right people, too. Very early on Liberty had learned how culture and color determined smell, and what one had to do about it.
Merrill had smelled like a field of berries. Raspberries and strawberries lived in her hair, in her skin. Liberty's stomach churned. This woman's chin jutted the way his sister's used to when she was defiant and knew she was in the wrong. And Belle didn't smell right. Something was wrong about her. Liberty had a sudden paranoid suspicion that she was a cop or an FBI agent, even a reporter, because she didn't exude any one of the heavy African spice potions of the sisters he knew. True homegirls went for deep and musky, earthy oil-based perfumes guaranteed to drop a brother in his tracks at a hundred paces. This girl smelled light and floral, with an undertone of orange peel.
He scratched his forehead. "What do you do for a living?" he asked abruptly.
She glared at him, the chin advancing even further on the battlefield. "None of your business."
"Miss Belle, do you happen to be the dealer in this building the police are looking for?"
"I told you I don't got no shit. If you gotta have it, you can git outta here now. There's lotsa shit out there." She pointed to the door.
Liberty shook his head. "I never liked the stuff. It makes you stupid."
She humphed through her nose.
"What's that mean?"
"Nothin'."
"It means you don't believe me. Well, we're even,
then." He punched a few buttons to shut his computer down and stood up, stretching.
"What you doin'?"
"I've invaded your privacy long enough. I know this has been a huge inconvenience. I apologize, and I'll be on my way."
Belle hoisted the canvas bag she'd been carrying to the table. "What for?"
He didn't answer.
"I axed you a question." She opened the bag and started unpacking the lunch she'd brought.
Liberty's stomach growled. "And I asked you one. If you don't have to answer, I don't have to answer."
"Jeesus," she muttered. "Is this important?"
"Trust is important to me. I prefer to know the people whose houses I hide in."
She stopped setting the table and parked a hand on her hip. "You wanna know who I am?"
"Yeah."
"What's it to you?"
"I don't know you. It's nothing to me, but if you're a dealer I don't want to be here when you're arrested. If you're a cop, I don't want you to tum me in."
A genuine laugh lit up her face. "What makes you think I'm either?"
He glanced at the merriment softening her features, then eyed the food, determined not to touch it. "Miss Belle, your accent comes and goes, and you don't live here."
"I thought ballplayers were dumb," she muttered.
"I haven't been a ballplayer for a long time."
"I guess you'll want a napkin."
He surveyed the meal a last time, then shook his head. "No thanks, I'm not staying."
"I made it myself."
"I have to go see someone."
"You'll have to wait till later." Belle picked up a fork. For a second Rick thought she was going to reach over and stab him with it. But she used it to fill a plate. She set the plate down in front of him.
His stomach growled again. He'd never liked bossy women, was sure he didn't like this one. She stood there, a bag of rags, pointing the fork at him.
"Your friend Tor was deep into the shit, man. Deep into it."
"I know that. It had been a problem in the past. I thought he was over it."
"No way, man."
"What about my wife . . . ?" The question hung there.
If Belle understood the question, she didn't show it. "Your wife was killed by a black man, that much we know."
"A black man, you sure?'
She nodded. "Could have been you." She gave him a hard look.
"Or Wally Jefferson."
Belle nodded, then switched her attention to the food on his plate. "Nothing runs on empty," she said.
"I've got to find that bastard."
"How about eating something first." Belle looked at the food. "I made it myself."
"All right." After a moment Rick sat down and took a bite.
27
April hurried down the hall to the prosecutor's office, her scarf flapping. She checked her watch: 12:33. She had hoped to catch Dean Kiang at his desk, but now hesitated. His door was three-quarters closed. What if he was with someone, or out to lunch? Suddenly she was unsure that she'd done the right th
ing by driving all the way down here to see him in person without taking the time to call him first and say she was coming. An hour ago she'd been certain that the great sage, the judge of proper feelings and behavior (in whom Skinny Dragon Mother believed, but April did not) would say there was no fault in her actions. So why the sudden attack of nerves that caused her coat and jacket to feel like a sauna set on high?
April had talked to prosecutors dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. And this particular prosecutor had already called and missed her twice today. Why then did she find it easier to handle a bloody homicide than to be a fragrant flower for an interested Chinese bee? April thrust her gloves in her pocket and tugged at her coat, sweating freely now. God, she hated winter.
A cop was supposed to be professional at all times, wasn't supposed to be attracted to anyone. April had the deepest contempt for the constant flirting, teasing, and fooling around that was a permanent fixture of precinct life. She fluffed at her hair with nervous fingers, then knocked on the door. No answer. She was double stupid, should have called first.
Kiang must be across the street in court. No, the judges always adjourned for lunch. He could be anywhere, could have gone to a crime scene or a precinct on another case. She knocked again, telling herself she shouldn't be disappointed, then poked her head in Kiang's tiny, cluttered office. It was empty.
She stood in the doorway for a second, her heart pounding. What now? Should she go to the medical examiner on her own and ask a few hard questions, as Mike had told her not to do? Should she leave Kiang a note, telling him she'd been there? She debated with herself for a moment, staring at the messy piles of papers on Kiang's desk.
Suddenly an arm draped across April's back. She flashed to a sergeant in the tactics house. The sergeant had played a bad guy acting like a good guy, who happened to have a Glock in his handshake. In an instant that sergeant had shot April dead to demonstrate how you never knew who had a razor blade between his teeth or a gun under his chin. Now, she whirled around, her hand instinctively reaching for the gun in her waistband.
"Well, hello, gorgeous," Kiang said, squeezing the arm going for the gun.
"Dean." An embarrassed flush flared across April's cheeks as she let her hand drop.
Kiang grinned. "Thanks for coming, babe. Can't do lunch, though, I have . . ." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes." Smoothly, he led her into his office and closed the door.
April took a seat, still blushing. People had called her a lot of things in her life, but no one had ever called her "babe," or thought she was looking for a date. The sage says a perfect person does not show anger or hurt. A perfect person is like the earth, accepting of fire and thunder, earthquake and flood, uncomplaining. Surviving all. She did not protest being ' called "babe," which she believed was the name of a pig in a movie. Remembering Skinny Dragon's advice, she gave him a weak smile back.
Kiang sat down at his desk and put his feet up. He was extremely good-looking even with his feet in her
face. Taken for an idiot, April felt her heart banging away in her chest a lot faster than it had to. She wished she hadn't come.
"What can I do for you, sweetheart?" He made a telescope of his fingers and took a look at her through it.
Was it a Chinese thing for him not to admit he'd called her that morning? Or was it a male thing? April had come all the way downtown, past Chinatown, to the courts and prosecutor's office to talk to him. Kiang was the person with the greatest knowledge of the law, a higher authority than Ducci, than Mike, or Iriarte—even the CO of her precinct, whoever the new person was. But now that April was here, she didn't know where to start telling him her concerns. She'd met him over a dead body less than a week ago. Was she his sweetheart already? With men, sometimes it was hard to tell.
Suddenly Kiang put down the telescope and came down to earth. "I hear Liberty's taken off. What's going on?" he said seriously.
"Yes, he shook his surveillance sometime last night. We're trying to locate him." Ashamed of a failure that wasn't hers, April looked down at her hands. "But I didn't come about him."
"What then?"
"Sanchez and I had a meeting with Ducci this morning."
"So?" Kiang's face went blank at the mention of Sanchez.
April took a deep breath. "He's concerned about some irregularities coming out of the medical examiner's office."
"Yeah, like what?" Kiang twirled a pencil around two fingers.
"Someone from the ME's office called Mrs. Petersen and told her the tox reports on her husband."
"How do you know it was the ME's office?"
"The widow had the report before we did."
"What do they say?"
"I haven't seen them yet. They haven't come in. But somebody told Daphne Petersen that her husband had high enough levels of alcohol and cocaine in his body to cause his heart attack." April hesitated.
"Okay, I'll get someone to talk to Dr. Washington about the dripping faucet." Kiang glanced at his watch again, then dropped his feet to the floor.
"That's not the only thing," April murmured. "Dr. Washington didn't use the ultraviolets during Pet-ersen's autopsy."
"So—?" Kiang shrugged and began shoving files into his briefcase.
"Well, Ducci says the victims' clothing indicates that Petersen died first. Petersen collapsed, and Merrill bled on his back. Also, there's a tiny hole and traces of blood on the inside of Petersen's sweater."
Kiang dropped the briefcase with a thud. "What are you telling me, that Ducci thinks Petersen was a homicide?"
April inhaled sharply, thinking of Daphne Petersen and her bronze-headed stud. "It's not impossible that the killer made Petersen look as if he'd died of a drug-induced heart attack, and Dr. Washington missed—"
"Oh, give me a break, April. The killer made a bloody mess of Merrill Liberty. I saw the photos of Petersen. No wounds, no blood. Unless the labs come up with two DNA samples from what they've got . .." He glanced at his watch a third time.
April made a face at Dean's hurry to get out of there, wondering why he wasn't interested in the fact that Petersen had fallen first. She doubted this was a moment to bring up the question of the lint in the cashmere sweater from a T-shirt that wasn't on the body. Somehow, in this context, it might appear weak.
Kiang gave April a quick smile. "Hey, relax, baby. MEs make mistakes. You make mistakes. We all make mistakes. That doesn't mean we should complicate things unnecessarily by pointing them out. Frankly, this is the kind of conjecture that leads nowhere. It would confuse a jury and quite possibly lead to reasonable doubt in a cut-and-dried case."
"What if it isn't a cut-and-dried case?" With her index finger April worried a hangnail on her thumb.
Kiang started packing again. "Did you know I have an ulcer?"
"No. And frankly, I can't rule Petersen's wife out as the killer. She admitted he was planning to divorce her. He had another woman. She had a lot to gain."
Kiang nodded. "I saw the will, but we don't have a cause of death consistent with your theory."
April was silent as he clicked his briefcase closed.
"Look, this is the case of your life, baby. If you do this right, maybe you could get assigned down here, be a prosecutor's investigator. How about that? We could work together al the time." He reached out and patted her arm before leading the way out of the office.
"Show me your stuff. Bring in Liberty, huh, and then we'll have something to talk about."
They went downstairs in the elevator together. Then Kiang went off to court.
"Call me later, will you? Maybe we'll have dinner."
The wind was sharp and the air bitter cold as April turned to walk the two blocks south to One Police Plaza and the brick monolith that was police headquarters, where she'd left her car. Even in the cold, it was a long time before her sweat dried and her face stopped burning.
28
Oh shit, man, a visit to Staten Island? That's all I need today," Mike groaned when he got the call that Liberty
's stolen Lincoln had turned up in such an inconvenient place.
"You want to see it as is, you go where it is. Otherwise we haul it away and you see it in the lot after we've finished with it."
"What's it look like?"
"A mess. Somebody got wiped in it. Trunk's splattered with blood and cocaine. Must have been quite a party."
"Body?"
"No body."
Mike sighed and looked at his watch, figuring up the three hours it would take to drive downtown, take the ferry to Staten Island, be picked up by a detective there, driven to look at the car, take the ferry back to pick up his own car in lower Manhattan, then return to the line he'd been investigating before the call about the car came in. What he'd intended to do was drive to Brooklyn to have a little chat with Patrice, Liberty's close associate, to see if Patrice knew where Liberty was, and if Liberty and his wife were dop-ers, too.
An hour and a half to get out there, and the car was indeed a mess. Brains and bits of bone all over the front. It looked to Mike like a gunshot wound to the head of the passenger in the front seat, but what was left of the head and the rest of the body was missing. In the trunk, more gore, and in the corners of the trunk, little spilled piles of white powder from what must have been a large stash.
"You look in the water for the body?" Mike asked the detective, a skinny Hispanic who looked about twelve. "Easiest to get rid of it out there." He pointed to the rocky shore past where the car was parked on a lonely stretch of road.
"Yeah, we looked, didn't see anything. Maybe in five, six days in this water it'll pop up for us."
"It's pretty cold for that time frame."
The detective shrugged. "Seen enough?"
Mike nodded. Now he had to change his plan. He suddenly thought there was a slight leak in one of his tires. When he got back to town, he picked up his car near the ferry and drove up Twelfth Avenue to visit a friend who used to have a little sideline at one of the big dealerships. Somehow the bits and pieces of newly stolen cars would end up in his possession for a brief period of time. Roger Pickard was part of a network that broke cars down and distributed the parts along to body and audio and car part shops in prime locations around the tristate area.