by Leslie Glass
“Yeah, it’s a riot, all right.”
Mike sobered. “But, hey, we’ll check it out. Maybe we’ll find out Johnnie Walker’s his brand. Maybe we won’t.”
“I don’t see gratitude here. What did you kids get on your own, huh?”
Mike glanced at April. On their own they’d gotten Boudreau’s personnel file. He’d been a blood donor, so they knew his blood type, O negative. It matched the blood type of the semen in the condom. Bobbie had been arrested a number of times for drunk-and-disorderly, for assault—bar fights. No one had ever pressed charges. His prints were on file. They hadn’t had time to find out if Boudreau’s prints matched any of the prints that had been lifted from the file, but somehow they doubted he’d been the one to put it back in the drawer in Personnel. They knew about Boudreau’s history in the Army and his dishonorable discharge. They knew where he lived and was currently working. Now they knew where he was hiding out.
“Thanks,” Mike said. “You’ve been a big help. We’ll go for it tomorrow.”
“Good man.” An apparent stickler for details, Daveys nevertheless forgot to pick up his tab when he left.
sixty-one
At a few minutes before seven P.M. on Monday night April adjusted her blue silk Chanel scarf nervously in the cage elevator that hauled her slowly up to the fifth floor of Jason’s building. It occurred to her that Jason’s wife had many real designer scarves and could spot a fake a mile away. She scraped through the lint at the bottom of her jacket pocket for a shred of tissue to blot her lipstick.
April had been upset that afternoon at the coffee shop when she saw Emma’s face freeze at the sight of her and her lips move, I … can’t go in there, as she turned away. But she wasn’t really surprised. The two women hadn’t met again after the perpetrator in Emma’s case died. Not meeting again was usual. Unusual was April’s working with a victim’s husband on another case since. And yet another one after that.
If she was there to answer the door, the movie-star wife would look her over and April knew she looked a wreck. Her hair was absolutely flat on her head. Her clothes were wrinkled, smelled of mental hospital and the Victorian potpourri from Gunn’s apartment. Her stomach was making terrible noises. She didn’t feel up to Jason’s wife tonight. She was in a state of panic, terrified about messing up the case.
Right now she knew that the Chinese god of messing up (whoever he was) was hanging over her as her Yin and Yang wrestled hopelessly out of harmony. She could feel him hanging around out there, just beyond her vision, waiting for the perfect moment to disgrace her and destroy her life. Maybe he’d come in the form of Special Agent Daveys. Maybe the NYPD was being set up somehow and she’d be the one to take the fall for this. She had a bad feeling about the situation with Boudreau. It didn’t all fit together the way it should, and she had no idea how it would be resolved tomorrow.
Jason’s elevator made a few little lurching hops before the two levels settled into one and the folding metal door clicked to let April know she could get out. Usually she and Jason talked in his office where the clocks didn’t chime. Tonight he’d asked her to come next door to his apartment where the clocks did chime. April hadn’t been there since the night Emma disappeared. Jason’s wanting her to come there must have something to do with his wife.
April hastily retied the scarf one last time. Emma opened the door before April touched the doorbell. She was caught fiddling with the silk folds, felt she lost face. She was also stunned by Emma’s loveliness. Emma had the kind of classic American features that were admired and coveted by the entire planet Earth. She was the standard of beauty by which all else was judged and found wanting. Emma’s creamy pure skin, wide hazel eyes, slender (slender!), graceful, slightly upturned nose. Her hair, more golden than ash now, had just enough curl at the ends to give it body and bounce. Her mouth was larger than April’s, which was on the rosebud scale, and she was taller. April felt small and ugly and utterly humbled.
“Ms. Chapman,” she said. “I’m really sorry to bother you at home.”
“Oh, please, call me Emma. Everyone else does.”
Emma was wearing toast-colored suede trousers and a celadon silk blouse. Tied around her neck by the arms was a soft-looking sweater of the same color. That pale, almost translucent green was greatly prized in the Chinese pottery of the Sung dynasty for what was believed to be its magical power to detect poison in any food served in it.
“I’m glad to see you, Detective. You saved my life, after all. And who knows, maybe Jason’s, too. Come in, he’s waiting for you.” Emma’s slightly uncertain smile made April feel shabby, in addition to everything else.
“Ah, please call me April.” April shrugged a little, returning the courtesy. The truth was, Emma shot the guy, too. And Emma shot him first. Who knew, maybe it was that first shot that saved both their lives.
The French doors were open. Jason was sitting in the living room that April thought was so eccentric. It was filled with books, ticking, bonging clocks, and aging upholstered furniture that was kind of threadbare and needed a face-lift. The curtains on the windows fronting the river also looked as if they had seen better days.
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 Cen
tre 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.
sixty-two
Maria 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 Almigh
ty 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.