Burning Time

by Glass, Leslie

  It was hard to concentrate with so many things going on. She was trying to talk to San Diego, and something had happened in Central Park so the room was filling up. She hadn’t been called in on it, so she didn’t even know what it was. And right in the middle of it, while she was waiting for her contact in the San Diego Police Department to get on the phone, Sanchez was looking at her so that anybody looking at him would know exactly what he was thinking.

  She wished she could handle these things the way Sergeant Joyce did. Sergeant Joyce had already passed her test for Lieutenant and was waiting for her number to come up to get the promotion. She was only thirty-six, Irish, with wanna-be yellow hair cut like April’s. But she was tougher and had a sharp tongue. She could swing her hips and not look stupid, make a joke back when someone flirted with her. She was decisive and powerful. Sergeant Joyce would never get stuck lowering her eyes like some caricature of the demure Oriental.

  April tapped her finger on the desk and switched her thoughts to Jimmy Wong, with whom she had worked on a case once, and got to know when she was in the 5th. That was two years ago. Jimmy Wong would never let anybody know he was interested in her. Never in a million years, not for a ten-million-dollar lottery. He just wouldn’t. He was on Night Watch in Brooklyn now, which meant he went out on whatever calls came in from the whole borough from eleven o’clock at night on.

  April worked some days, some nights, but in the precincts the night shift of the detective squad ended at eleven. Jimmy Wong said he was waiting for a promotion to ask her to marry him, but she doubted he would ask her if she was transferred back to the 5th and got hers first. It would not stop her, though. Sergeant Joyce’s police officer husband divorced her, and left her with two small children, when she went into the Academy. April wanted to be like her. Sergeant Woo, BA, MA. Some day. She wasn’t sure she wanted to marry Jimmy Wong anyway.

  “Yes, I’m holding,” she told San Diego, looking down so she would not have to make eye contact with Sanchez.

  April had a list of things she knew and did not know about Sanchez. She also had a list of things she didn’t like about him. First and foremost she did not like being aware of him. And she could not help being aware of him. He draped his body in front of her and used some kind of after-shave that was very powerful. He didn’t just wear it on special occasions, either. It was there every day.

  Once when she was in a Cosmetics Plus store, she smelled all the men’s cologne trying to find which one it was. She wasn’t much of a detective; she couldn’t find it. But maybe she wasn’t a bad detective. Maybe the chemistry of his body changed the smell so she couldn’t identify it once it was on him. She didn’t like thinking about the chemistry of his body. But she couldn’t help that, either. It was in front of her all the time.

  She had given some thought to the fact that different kinds of men had different smells. This was the sort of thing no one would say, and she probably shouldn’t even think, but she thought about it anyway, and wondered what effect things like hair and smell had on a long-term relationship like marriage.

  Caucasian men had a sour smell. When she was little, she had been told this was because they ate cheese. Asians don’t eat cheese. When she walked in a crowd in Chinatown, she could smell garlic coming out of the pores of Asians the way sour sweat did in other kinds of people.

  Sanchez smelled so sweet she couldn’t tell what his true smell was like. The worst thing was that she had gotten used to it, so she knew when he was in the room without having to see him. The sweetness was kind of comforting, and she missed it when it wasn’t there.

  Her thoughts shifted to the after-shave she had given Jimmy for Christmas. It was called Devin, was very expensive, and had a citrusy aroma. Jimmy made a face when he opened it and said it smelled like urine. He said he’d never use it. But after he had broken the cellophane on the box, she couldn’t take it back. It gave her a bad feeling about him. He was wiry and not much taller than she was. She thought if he wasn’t grateful or generous-minded before he asked her to marry him, she’d have plenty of trouble pleasing him after.

  April gazed at Sanchez’s arms as she waited for Sergeant Grove to come on the line. The heat was too high in the building again, and Sanchez had rolled up his sleeves. She could not help noticing the fine black hairs he had right down to the backs of his hands. This led April to speculate he probably had hair on his chest, too; somehow she did not find this as unattractive and barbarian in a man as her mother and aunts did.

  Sanchez also had a mustache, which tried but did not succeed in making him look fierce. The mustache was irritating because, well, she wasn’t sure why. Another thing was he smiled often, letting people know when he was friendly and in a good mood. The Chinese laughed or frowned, but rarely smiled. Everybody knew a smiling Chinese was a troublemaker, probably a cheat and a liar. Sanchez’s smiles were confusing.

  Two other items on the list were his physical type and his eyes. April was disapproving of both Chinese body types—chubby with undefined musculature, and thin with undefined musculature. She disliked her own flatness so much she exercised with free weights every night to encourage her shoulders and buttocks to become more rounded. Nothing short of surgery could change her eyes, though.

  Sanchez had well-formed eyes and a well-proportioned body large enough to carry someone much bigger than herself from a burning building, if the need ever arose. There had been more than one burning building in April’s childhood, so it was the sort of thing she thought about.

  She did not like being attracted to Sanchez. And the thing she disliked about him the most was the fact that he was a fish in water. He belonged where he was. He spoke Spanish on the phone. He spoke Spanish to people on the street. He had cases that involved his people. His eyes danced with his happiness at being where he was. April wanted her fins back in her own water. She did not want to have to study him with interest. He was Hispanic, she was Chinese. They were structurally different, and not bilingual in the same languages.

  Her thoughts about Sanchez were cut off by the San Diego P.D. They had finally managed to locate Sergeant Grove.

  “Missing Persons, Sergeant Grove,” he said.

  “Yes, Sergeant Grove, thank you for coming to the phone. This is Detective Woo in New York. I’m calling about the Ellen Roane case. Have you found anything?”

  “How are you doing, Detective? Nope. I told you, we’ve got eight Jane Does here. Had five of them around before your girl disappeared. And none of them is a match. Three Mexican, two black. We have three Caucasians, but they’re all older women.”

  “Is there any chance you could take her picture around in the neighborhood where she put the charges on the credit card, and see if you can locate her?” April wasn’t exactly looking for the girl’s body, and had counted on Grove’s not coming up with it. Ellen Roane would probably be back in her dorm room in two days, mad at her parents for making such a fuss. April had seen it a hundred times before. Still …

  “Hey, I can check out the hospitals and the ME’s office. I’ve already done that, but you know as well as I do that our job is to match names with bodies. We want to get the dead ones buried. We can’t go looking for every kid that takes off on a lark.”

  “Is there anybody who can go out in the field for a few hours?” April said patiently.

  There was a short pause. “Look, I only tried the city. Do you want me to try the surrounding jurisdictions?”

  “Yes, might as well,” April said, discouraged.

  “Detective?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “How’s the weather in New York?”

  “It’s forty-six degrees and raining.”

  “It’s seventy-eight and real sunny here.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me, Sergeant.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up.

  “He hit on you?” Sanchez asked.

  April shook her head. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  It wa
s Friday, more than a week since Ellen had left for San Diego and used her MasterCard to buy food and clothes. There had been no new charges on the credit card in three days. Where was she eating? Where was she staying? April had checked with American Airlines on Ellen’s return ticket, and found out that Ellen did not show up for the flight she was booked on. College had started up again, and she was not back. Something was wrong.

  And what was wrong with the system was that the San Diego P.D. would not send someone out with her picture to find out what happened to her unless they had good reason to believe a crime involving her had been committed. Ellen had to commit a crime herself, or be abducted with a number of witnesses looking on. That was on the SDPD side. NYPD would not send someone out there to look for her under any circumstances.

  It was not easy to tell parents that the network of police departments and the FBI did not actually investigate missing persons. What they did was try to match descriptions with unidentified bodies. It was terrible, but if the Roanes wanted to find their daughter, they would probably have to hire a private detective to look for her. April reached for the phone to tell them if she wasn’t able to come up with something soon, a private detective was their best option.

  16

  Troland took the girl to the crummy house he grew up in. Back then, the streets around it had been quiet. When he and his brothers drove by, their bikes blaring a continual fart, people used to come out on their porches to see what was going on. Not anymore. The houses had gone down. Some of the porches were about falling off, and whole families were living on them, lying out there in hammocks with the Latino music blasting. Laughing, smoking, arguing in loud voices. Everywhere there was the smell of beans and frying foods. Broken-down cars were parked on the street, in the short weedy drives. Shit. His mother died seven years ago, and his aunt Lela had been living there ever since. He’d given her a trip to Disneyland to get rid of her for a few days, and offered to look after her house for her. She’d handed over the keys and taken off.

  Troland unlocked the door and the girl followed him in.

  “This your place, Willy?” she asked.

  He was a foot or two away from her. Suddenly his hand whipped out, caught her arm, and wheeled her around to look at him.

  “Hey, that hurts. What’s the matter?” Tears sprouted in her eyes.

  “Don’t call me Willy,” he snapped. Willy’s voice thundered in his ear. Only Willy is the real Willy.

  “I thought that was your name.” She sniffed, trying to hold back a sob.

  “Don’t cry. I don’t like crying.”

  “What’s the matter?” She gulped a little, pulling on her arm to get him to release her.

  “Nothing. Just do it right.” He looked at her so intensely, she turned her head away from his eyes.

  “You’re not going to be weird, are you?” she said faintly. “Weird scares me.”

  Troland snorted. “What’s weird?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.” Her eyes were on the coke.

  He had pulled some cellophane packages out of his pocket. He put one package down on the table and went to check the doors. Front door locked. Back door locked. Windows locked. He made some patterns with his foot around each entrance, to seal it from the outside. He went around the house three times, first to check the doors and windows, then to pull down the discolored old blinds. Finally he came back to the table and laid out a large piece of paper to put the lines of powder on.

  “Hey, what’s that?”

  “What does it look like?”

  She shivered. The paper was almost completely covered by a drawing, very vivid with strong reds and blues.

  “I don’t know.” She leaned closer.

  Her blond hair fell over her face, and she didn’t brush it back as she tried to figure it out.

  “Uh, two snakes with wings?” she guessed. “No, an eagle with two snakes in his mouth. Ugh, it has teeth, and it looks like the whole thing’s burning up around the edges.”

  “Great, huh?”

  She raised one shoulder, noncommittal.

  “I drew it,” he said flatly.

  “Uh, no kidding. Can we have that now?”

  He gave her two generous lines and watched her expertly snort every tiny grain. She breathed deeply a few times, shuddering, then turned to him.

  “Your turn.”

  “Go away. I like to do it alone,” he said.

  She wandered back into the dining room and took her clothes off. She started dancing naked to music in her head. For a few minutes, Troland watched her grinding away for his benefit. She had a small flat ass, no hips, and a stomach like a board. Probably hadn’t eaten anything in months. The girl was way into it. He wasn’t turned on.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “I’m waiting for you.”

  He frowned at the command and turned his attention to the coke. He had to have something, but didn’t want as much as she had had. Finally he turned his back to her and took a little, just enough to enjoy it. He sniffed a few times afterward, letting himself go with it. He felt better.

  “Com’ere.”

  She danced over to where he stood by the table, humming to herself and snapping her fingers.

  “Unzip my jeans.”

  She unbuttoned the button, then began on his zipper, opening her thighs around his legs and pressing her flat chest against his shirt with her two hands between them. He wasn’t wearing anything under his jeans. She reached in and giggled.

  “Ah.” She rubbed with one hand and pulled at his jeans with the other.

  “No, leave them on,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to get undressed?”

  She started yanking his shirt up, but he jerked away from her before she could get it very far.

  “I said no. Do it right.”

  “What’s right for you?” She sounded peevish.

  “On your knees.”

  She looked at the worn carpet on the floor, the dining table and the chairs around it, puzzled. “Where?”

  “Here. Suck.” He planted himself in the chair with his legs apart. He turned his head away from her and studied the drawing as the girl got on her knees and started rubbing his inner thighs, the bare V of his stomach where his jeans were open. She nudged him out and rubbed for a while, then lowered her head over him.

  “Wait. Put this on.” He dropped a condom on the floor beside her.

  “Geez,” she muttered. She tore the foil, pulled it out, and unrolled it.

  He watched her to see that she did it right, put it on so that none of her filthy germs could get inside. All the way up he wanted it. She pulled it all the way up.

  He looked at his drawing some more as she put her mouth around him and squeezed tight with her lips. She moved up and down, slowly at first and then hard.

  “That’s good, more tongue,” he said. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes and reached for her tits. He couldn’t get to them. Both her hands and her mouth were working on him. He tried to get into it.

  Finally he stood up, moved her aside like a piece of furniture, and went into the bathroom to take a leak. When he came back, she was on the same place on the floor. On her hands and knees wiggling her ass at him like a picture come alive from a nudie magazine.

  “You didn’t come, did you?”

  He sat down again, ignoring her.

  “Let’s try something else,” she said.

  He looked at her. She was up, up, up, showed no signs of fatigue even though she’d been at him for thirty minutes at least. He’d lost interest. He had his true purpose in mind now.

  “Hey, whatever your name is. Come on.” Her tongue darted in and out of her mouth as she wagged her tail.

  He laid his pens out. Then he carefully put the transfer paper over the design and taped the edges.

  The girl frowned. “Hey, do me now,” she said.

  “Go take a nap.”

  “I don’t want to take a nap.” She stuck her tongue in his ear. “Come on, you want a good time, don’
t you?” She began moving against him, rubbing her pointy breasts back and forth across his arm, nuzzling his neck.

  “Beat it. I’m busy.”

  “I wanna do it,” she whined. “Come on, let’s fuck.”

  “Later.”

  “I don’t wanna do it later.” She backed away from him so he could get a better view of her. “Hey, look.” She posed, standing a few different ways, then bent over so he could see her crotch, anus, everything.

  He wasn’t looking, though. He paid no attention to her as she crawled under the table. Suddenly her head poked up between his legs and she had him in her hand. A firm grip on his balls and cock. He jumped a foot.

  “What the fuck? Get away from me, you crazy cunt.” He pushed her away furiously.

  “But I’m not finished. I want to do it,” she complained.

  “You want it so much, do it to yourself.”

  She put one hand on her hip and tossed her blond hair impatiently. “Hey, don’t you have what it takes?”

  He reddened. She had no idea what he could do to her. The big wave rose, almost taking over. Then he glanced down at his beautiful drawing and his true purpose. Willy told him to let it go. He let the wave go back.

  “I said I’m busy now. Do it to yourself.”

  “All right.” She sniffed angrily and put her hand to her crotch. She had a very small tuft of light brown hair. She started exploring it with her fingers. She became engrossed almost immediately.

  For a minute or two she stood there swaying in front of him, dancing to the music in her head with both hands teasing at her crotch. Then suddenly she squatted on her heels and shoved her two fingers as deep inside as she could get them.

  17

  “Have you checked with Sex Crimes?” Milt asked.

  Newt stirred his coffee with a bent spoon. Absently he bent it back into shape. “Yes. No burning or branding cases in San Diego at the moment. Plenty of other kinds of assault, though. They have a rapist that dresses up as Superman, even has a cape.”