She chewed on the cilantro, hoping to purify her mouth. This reminded her a little of the time she tried goat cheese and felt like she was eating vomit. But Sanchez was studying her with such intensity she knew it was a matter of national pride to him that she approve of it. His father did this kind of cooking. His mother must be very fat. April smiled at the thought of a waddling Maria scolding her son the police sergeant on the phone. “Hola, Miguel, es Mama.”
Both April’s mother and father were very thin, the kind of thin that always looked unnatural to her in light of the number of dishes piled high with food that appeared on the table every day. It almost seemed to her like they were starving in the midst of plenty.
Maybe if she ate more of this kind of food, her bottom would become plump and round in the American style. April realized she was thinking all these things about food because she liked sitting there with Mike, listening to him talk about his family and the cases he’d worked on. And she felt better talking to him about the ten thousand things she had to do in the morning than she would if she had gone home to brood about it on her own.
“You liked it,” he said, “but what did you really think of it?”
April ducked her head, considering how to approach the subject. “Very good combination of tastes,” she said seriously. “I think I liked your fish the best. What’s that green stuff, kind of spicy on the side?”
“Tomatillo. It’s like a green tomato with an onion skin over it. You have to peel it.”
“The fish was very fresh.” She nodded her approval of the snapper. “And I think avocado tastes better plain. On your dish it was plain.”
There was a brief silence as they thought about avocado. They had talked about it earlier. It was another food the Chinese didn’t have. Like thirty different kinds of chilis and sauces made with chocolate.
“Do you like to cook?” Mike asked.
No one to cook for. April bit her tongue. Her mother or father did all the cooking. “I know how,” she said. “What about you?”
“I like it. Does that sound weird to you?”
The waiter cleared off the table.
“No. It runs in the family.” April reached for her bag.
“You want me to drive you home?” he asked suddenly. The table was cleared and a check put by his water glass. “They want to close.”
“Yeah, it’s late. Let’s go.” She reached into her bag for her money. “How much is it?”
He shook his head.
“It’s not a date. I have to.” She objected in such a passionate way he had to smile.
“Of course it’s not a date. But—” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s only a token. If they saw me letting anyone else share it, I would get a bad name.”
April fell silent. She liked the fact that he didn’t make it a man-woman thing. He said anyone else. She wondered if this was where his father was a cook before he died, and that’s why the bill was only a token. She understood about tokens. Everybody save face. She didn’t feel she could ask him right then, though.
“I’d like to drive you home,” he said when they were out on the street.
It was a warm, clear night. April looked up at the crescent moon. Her mother used to torture her with a story about a girl child whose angry parents sent her to the cold, empty moon as punishment for her disobedience. April grew up thinking the world’s favorite symbol of romance was a prison whose walls closed in to nothing every thirty days. No romance for her. She smiled at fish-in-water Sanchez.
“Thanks, but then I’d have to take the subway back.”
They turned up Columbus, heading for the precinct.
“Not necessarily. I could come and get you. We could talk about the case,” he said.
April shook her head. “That’s a very hard way to get from the Bronx to Eighty-second Street.”
“I get up early,” Mike argued.
“I thought this wasn’t a date,” she said more sharply than she meant to.
“Who said it was a date? We’re working a case together. So I drive you home, what’s the big deal?”
They debated about the bigness of the deal all the way back to the lot. Fine to work with each other. Maybe okay to have Mexican food. Not okay to drive back and forth in red Camaro making everyone in her neighborhood and everyone in the precinct think just what April didn’t want them to think. She drove herself home, stewing about the trouble she was in with this case, and with Mike who wasn’t going to be happy just working together for long, no matter how nice he could be when he wanted to.
She was not surprised to find the light on in her parents’ part of the house when she got back at two o’clock. Nor was she surprised when her mother opened the door loudly demanding, in Chinese, explanations from her thoughtless daughter. How she could stay out so late without letting her worried mother know where she was? Who was she with, and what kind of no-good person would let her come home at this hour all alone?
“Mom, I’m a cop,” April said wearily. “I’m on a case.”
“What kind of case at two o’clock in the morning? I know what kind of case. Humh. Boo hao case.”
“I’m a cop,” April protested. “Just doing my job.”
“Maybe a cop, but still a woman.” Sai stood there with a hand on her skinny hip, resolutely blocking the door, as if she would not budge an inch until her every question was answered, including what her daughter had been eating to make her mouth smell so bad.
52
Emma sat on the edge of the sofa for many minutes, fighting the nausea and dizziness that came from the effort of leaning forward and untying the ropes around her ankles, knot by knot, with shaky fingers. The pain from the blow to her head was intense, and her legs trembled so much they didn’t support her when she finally tried to stand up. She sank down on the hard sofa again.
“Help.” Her voice sounded pitifully weak.
She looked around. Must be a phone. Everyone had a phone. Where was the phone? She saw a window by the sink with the dripping faucet. Maybe she could open the window and call for help. Maybe she could jump out.
She organized herself enough to get on the floor and start crawling toward it. How many feet was it?
“Help …”
She couldn’t seem to make much noise.
The window was just above the counter. She pulled herself up to the counter and grabbed at the shade covering the window, missing the cord on the first two tries.
She sagged against the sink. Don’t fall down, she told herself. She grabbed the cord again and this time succeeded. When she pulled on it, the shade snapped all the way up with a ferocity that startled her. She cried out and looked behind her, certain the door had opened and he was back. Everything was the same.
She turned back to the window, panicked. She had to get out there to the other side. She was on the second floor, pressed against the glass, naked in the artificial light. There were cars but no people on the street below.
She could tell by the sky that she wasn’t in Manhattan. There were no skyscrapers with lights that cut pieces out of the sky here. In fact it was a long way across a maze of roads with walls to the row of low buildings on the other side. Where would the street be so wide she could hardly see the houses on the other side? The skyline was a map for anyone who knew the buildings.
It was dark, but there were a lot of streetlights. It seemed that the window fronted on a number of streets parallel to each other. Emma desperately tried to think. What was she looking at?
She pounded on the window at a man in a passing car. He didn’t turn his head.
The latch on the window was too high for her to reach it without climbing up on the counter. Her muscles ached from having been stretched so long over her head. She shuddered. How long had she been lying there with him looking at her? Had to get away. She struggled to get up on the counter. She could hardly stand, much less pull herself up.
She stopped suddenly, confused by the roar that kept pushi
ng through the haze in her brain. Through the thunder she could see lights and a dim shape in the sky. She frowned, struggling to name what she saw, tilted her throbbing head to one side.
Looking at it this way, she suddenly realized that although the street in front of her was flat, the street beyond that was on an angle. It was going up a hill to a Christmas tree of lights. Strings of lights out there like lace in the sky. That made no sense.
She inched down the counter. There she could see the side of a house. The light was on in the room opposite her, but there was no one in it.
It was then that she saw the phone. It was a white wall phone, a few feet to her right, almost hidden by the refrigerator. If she hadn’t been standing right next to it, she might never have seen it.
“Oh, God.” She reached for the phone and almost collapsed with relief when she heard the dial tone.
She tried her own number first. The receiver shrilled three discordant notes in her ear.
This number is not in service in area code seven-one-eight.
Oh, God, where was she? Emma fought back her panic and tried two-one-two, then her number. Was flooded with relief when it began to ring. Please, Jason, be home.
The phone rang and rang. Had she called the wrong number? She dialed again, more carefully this time. Two-one-two and then their home number. It rang again, a series of hollow echoes in her head. What was wrong? She was sure she had left her answering machine on. Had he come home and turned it off?
“God, Jason, pick up,” she cried.
Maybe he was in his office. She tried two-one-two and then his office number. The machine picked up on the second ring. His cool, reassuring voice said he couldn’t be with her right now, but if she would leave her name, date, and time of the call, he would get back to her as soon as he could.
I can’t be with you right now. I can’t be with you right now. I can’t be with you right now. Those were the most powerful words she knew. Her father couldn’t be with her because he was always in the middle of some ocean. Her husband couldn’t be with her because he was always with someone, with someone, with someone. Always someone in trouble. The words had an echo that resounded all the way to the depths of her soul.
Jason was always telling her he’d be there if she needed him, but he was always “with someone, with someone, with someone” whenever she felt she did. No needs that she’d had were ever sufficient for him to consider it necessary to be with her right now.
She was sobbing uncontrollably by the time the beep sounded.
“Jason. Please come home,” she sobbed into the receiver. “This man—He’s cra—crazy. Please. He took my clothes. He has a gun, and he said he’d shoot me. Oh, please, help me.”
The thunder sounded again. She couldn’t stop crying. “My head hurts. I can’t think. I’m in a house. I don’t know where it is. Low houses, somewhere in Brooklyn, or the Bronx. I see a—lights and a ramp. I think it’s a bridge. Oh, God, Jason, he tied me up,” she cried hysterically. “He’s going to kill me.”
Beep.
“Oh, God.”
She clutched the receiver in her hand, staring at it dumbly. The tape machine clicked. She was cut off. She was alone. She started sobbing again.
Then a shape moved in the window opposite.
Someone was standing there looking at her. Emma’s eyes widened.
“Help!” she cried. She banged on the window. “Help me.”
The person stood there stolidly, all in black, studying her grimly. Maybe it was a ghost.
“Oh, God,” Emma cried.
A nun, or a Russian patriarch.
Without knowing what she was doing, she dialed 911.
“Police Emergency.”
In the window across the way, the mouth began to move.
“Help,” Emma cried. “Help!”
“All right, miss, calm down. Are you injured or is there an injured person with you?”
“Uh,” Emma gulped.
“Try to calm down, miss. Where are you located?”
The mouth was moving across the way. The narrow black figure was making hand motions. It was too confusing. Emma started to cry.
“Help …”
“Okay, take it easy. Let’s take it one step at a time. Can you tell me your name?”
Nausea swept over Emma. She gagged over the sink. She couldn’t talk. She needed something to drink.
“Miss, are you there? I need some information to help you. Give me something—a location, a phone number.”
The words dribbled out of the receiver that Emma had dropped on the counter. “Call back later,” she muttered, hanging up the phone. Moments later her head hit the edge of the counter as her legs gave way under her, and she sank to the floor.
53
The girl came out of a bathroom so small and filthy Troland would not have used it under any circumstance.
“That’s better. What’s your name?” She tossed her blond hair and started to unbutton her shirt.
“Willy.” He said it flatly, looking around the room.
It had a table with only one chair, a hot plate with a pot on it that clearly wasn’t used for food. No sink or refrigerator. A sofa with very old fabric on it. There was nothing female in the place, no clothes or lacey pillows or soft objects of any kind. No makeup or hair ornaments. It occurred to Troland he better be careful. This place didn’t seem to be hers.
“Willy? Like Willy Smith?” She giggled. “You a Kennedy?”
Troland turned to her and snorted. “Yeah.” He snorted again. She was high already, didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You live here?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Nope. It’s a friend’s.” She had her shirt off now and was peeling her tights down, like she was in a locker room getting ready for a game.
Troland watched her with little interest. The pressure he felt before had eased with the trip into the city, and the cruising up and down in a car. He didn’t like driving a car unless he had to. He didn’t feel that great now. He wanted to get back to the real girl and get started.
He sat down at the table, suddenly disgusted. Although it seemed right at first, inside the place had a lot of things wrong with it. It was dirty. Troland didn’t like dirty. His lip curled at the smell of glue and old leather that leaked up from the shoe repair downstairs. The guy from there was probably the one whose place this was. Troland didn’t like that, either. He might come back in the middle and give him some trouble.
He switched his attention to the body that was now fully naked in front of him. He was turned off by a number of blemishes on its neck and arms. There were a few black-and-blue marks on the thighs, too. In fact, except for the thin, pale, young-girl hair, this body wasn’t as good as the one he already had. That made him feel a little better. He had a real prize waiting for him. Something that was well kept and smelled good, didn’t have any diseases like this probably did. He had a real movie star, all his own. He snorted, and instinctively reached for the items in the pocket of his leather jacket.
“There’s a bed in there.” The girl pointed to a closed door.
“You have somebody coming back?” Troland asked.
There were four lengths of the thin nylon rope he had specially cut to size, his knife, his Zippo lighter, and several marking pens with medium points. The feel of the familiar items comforted him. He fondled the lighter, pumping himself up.
“Not for a while. What do you have in mind?”
She came over and sat on his lap. He pushed her off. “Do it my way,” he snapped.
“Hey, just being nice.” She retreated through the half-closed door into the other room.
It occurred to Troland the guy might be in there, and the whole thing was a scam. That made him mad. He jumped up and kicked the door open with a bang, the switchblade in his hand.
“What’s going on?” he snarled. He didn’t like scams.
The girl was dancing on the bed. “Nothing,” she protested. “Hey, you’re r
eally wired.”
“I’m not wired. I don’t get wired. Look at you, you’re the one that’s bouncing off the wall.”
He kicked around for a minute, looking for a hiding place, or a mirror someone could be looking through from the other side.
“Why don’t you chill out and have a good time,” she said.
“Get out of there,” he commanded.
“What’s the matter?” Now the baby voice with the New York accent was offended and a little scared. That was good.
“I don’t like it in here,” he said.
“Okay. That’s fine.”
She got off the bed. The sheets were grimy. He didn’t like the setup. When she got close to him he grabbed her arm. “Okay. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. You lie down over there. I tie you up. You try to get out.”
“Okay. I can get out.”
She walked the short distance to the sofa and sat down.
Troland clicked his tongue against his teeth with annoyance. “You don’t get out,” he said. “That’s the whole point.”
She made a little half-shrug with her shoulders. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“I don’t hurt people.”
She lay back on the sofa. “Okay, so you tie me up, and I don’t get out. Then what?”
“Then I draw some pretty pictures on you and I fuck you.” Troland took one of her wrists and started to tie it to the sofa leg.
The girl popped up, wrenching her arm away. “No kidding,” she said with interest. “What kind of pictures?”
He grabbed the arm and yanked it until she squeaked. “Don’t do that. It’s not a game.”
“Ow.”
“Do it right.”
“I just wanted to know what kind of pictures,” she whined. “You can’t mess me up.”
“I only do good pictures. Now hold still.” He tied her hands together over her head.
She giggled. Then he went to the other end of the sofa and grabbed a foot. She stopped laughing.
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