The Silent Bride

by Glass, Leslie

  Oh, God. She didn't feel good. She'd missed lunch and dinner. Again. Nausea rolled over her. Her head hurt. Her vision was impaired. Would he love her if she couldn't see? "Where's Ching?" she mumbled.

  "Matthew took her home."

  "She okay?" she asked five minutes later.

  "Yeah, she's fine. How about you?"

  She nodded off.

  "Did they check the other gowns?" she asked, reviving for a second when they hit the bridge.

  "For angels? Yeah, the lab picked it up right

  away."

  "Could have told us sooner," she muttered. Then, "I love Ching."

  "I know you do, querida." He stroked her arm, her cheek. "I love her, too."

  "I love my mom," some minutes after that.

  "I know you do."

  "You guys okay back there? The temp okay?" the driver asked. Somebody from the Nineteenth.

  "Oh, yeah, everything's fine." Mike gazed out the window. They were on the LIE. They'd already passed Astoria. He'd ordered some food and planned to take April home to his place. She was used to eating late at night. But he'd figured if she was too tired to eat, he'd just put her to bed. Now he wondered if

  he ought to take her home to her mom, who must be worried sick.

  "But I love you most, chico. You're my only home. I want to be with you forever." She interrupted his thought. Her arms were around him. She was holding on dght. Her eyes were closed, but maybe she wasn't asleep.

  "Is that a proposal?" Mike was surprised. They'd been through a lot, but he hadn't expected the gunshot wound to unscramble her brains.

  "Uh-uh, that's your job. You have to get on your knees and give me a ring. That's the way it has to be."

  "Okay. I was saving up for a new car, but I can get a ring instead. What kind do you want?" He thought he'd better get it tomorrow before she changed her mind. But she didn't answer. She slept the rest of the way home.

  Epilogue

  After an intense family debate about her wedding gown, Ching Ma Dong finally decided to be married in a traditional Chinese suit of lucky red and gold, with a huge dragon on it. Her wedding to Matthew Tan at the Crystal Palace in Chinatown had nearly three hundred guests and went off without a hitch. Ching and Matthew said their vows over a microphone so everyone could hear them. Then the food and music began. By the fourth of twelve courses the guests, many of whom had flown in from California, were pie-eyed with happiness and too much drink.

  Ching wore her hair up and looked like a movie star in each of the jade, gold, and pink-and-gold cheongsams she changed into. But the real star of the show was wearing a startling purple-and-red cheongsam, a large bandage on her head, and a diamond engagement ring on her finger. Her birthstone.

  April Woo was only a little drunk and grinning from ear to ear when she gave her loving-sister speech and was royally toasted for her own engagement in return. As the glasses were raised April called Mike Sanchez, her intended, up to the microphone to be introduced to the crowd. Wearing a tuxedo, a red scar on his hairline with his bruises yellowing, Mike said a few hastily learned words of congratulation to Matthew and Ching in Chinese, ending in English with his deep appreciation for April Woo, the love of his life. It was very touching and the applause was thunderous.

  The one abstainer was Skinny Dragon. Even at this magical moment, April's mother could not stop talking. How could she, when she was aloft with pride for her daughter? April the immortal was so powerful that she could be shot in the head and survive with just a scratch. Her daughter, April Woo, was so important in the police department that no crime could be solved without her. Skinny happened to be seated at a huge table that included Matthew Tan's Mexican-American and Caucasian sisters and brothers-in-law from California and their many children. Skinny was so happy that she nodded and smiled at them constantly, as if she'd known them all her life. Her husband, Ja Fa Woo, was seated next to Gao Wan, the chef from Hong Kong. The two chefs drank and laughed and talked China and cooking until they couldn't see straight.

  April Woo returns!

  Turn the page for a special preview of the next Leslie Glass crime novel,

  A KILLING GIFT,

  a thrilling homicide investigation coming soon from NAL.

  "Well, I've had about all the nostalgia I can take." Lieutenant Alfredo Bernardino's retirement party was still going strong when he abruptly pushed away from the bar at Bad and called it a night. "I'm outta here."

  "Hey, what's the rush?" Sergeant Marcus Beame, his second whip in the detective unit of the Fifth Precinct, protested. "The night's young."

  "Not for me." Bernardino raised two fingers at his famous protege, Sergeant April Woo. Woo had her eye on him while she sipped tea with Poppy Bel-laqua, another girl star. It made him sad. He was going. The girls were taking over. He snorted ruefully to himself about the way things were changing and how he wouldn't be there to gripe about it anymore.

  Poppy didn't look up, but April nodded at him. Coming in a second. Her body language told him she wasn't walking away from an inspector for nobody. Bernardino snorted again. He hated this girl ganging-up thing. They were getting to be a pack. Then he smiled and let up on the resentment.

  Even if April didn't jump for him now, he knew she was a good girl. She'd planned the event tonight, had chosen his favorite restaurant, had made sure that the invite was up all over the puzzle palace so everybody knew. Made sure enough brass was there.

  It was a nice party, and she hadn't even worked for him in dve years! Yeah, April was a good girl, and she had a good guy now, too.

  Bernardino glanced over at Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, April's fiance. The good-looking CO of the Homicide Task Force was having his third espresso with Chief Avise, commander of the Department's six thousand detectives who never hung around anywhere for more than a minute or two.

  Bernardino was aware that a lot of important people were there to give him a nice send-off, but he was feeling drunk and more than a little sorry for himself. He couldn't help feeling that it was all over for him— not just the job to which he'd devoted his whole life, but his life itself.

  What does a man think about when he has a premonition that he's on the very last page of his story? Bernardino was a tough guy, a bruiser of a man. Not more than a hair or so over five nine, he was barrel chested. Always an enthusiastic feeder, he had quite a corporation going around his midsection. He still had a brush of gray hair on top, but his mug was a mess. His large nose had been broken a bunch of times by the time he was'thirty; and his face, deeply pitted from teenage acne, was creased and pouchy with age. He was sixty-two, not really old in the scheme of things. His father had lived past ninety, after all. Bernardino wasn't as old as he felt.

  "Thank you guys for everything. That's about all I can say," he muttered to the detectives nearest him. Charm was not exactly Bernardino's middle name. He was done. He was goin' home. That was that. No pretty good-byes for him. He took a quick survey. The dark Greenwich Village hole-in-the-wall where he'd spent so many happy hours was so full of old friends that he actually had to blink back his emotions.

  Thirty-eight years on the job could make a man a lot of buddies who wouldn't want to call it a day or a lot of enemies who'd barely stop in for a free feed. Bernie had been surprised to see that he'd collected the former. At eleven forty-five on a Wednesday night, the speeches were long over. His awards were sitting on the bar, and the buffet of heavy Italian favorites—the lasagne and ziti, the baked clams and calamari fritti, the eggplant parmigiana—had been picked clean and cleared away.

  A lot of the guys had gone to work, or gone home, but the pulse of the party was still beating away. More than two dozen cronies—bosses and detectives and officers with whom Bernardino had worked over the years—were eating cannohs and drinking the specialty coffees, vino, beer, and free sambuca. They were hanging in there as if there were no tomorrow, telling those stories that went back, way back to when Kathy and Bill were just kids and Lorna had been a beautiful young woman
.

  Bernardino shook his head at what time had done to him. Now Kathy was an FBI special agent, working Homeland Security out in Seattle. She couldn't make the party. Bill was a prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA's office. He'd come and gone without either stuffing himself too much or drinking more than half a beer. With Becky and the two kids at home and court tomorrow, Bill was out the door in less than an hour. A real straight arrow. But what could he expect? Bernie couldn't blame his son for turning out to be a grind just like him. He'd wanted to take off with his son. The party was like a wake—everyone reminiscing over his life as if he were already dead or gone to Florida.

  "Hey, congratulations, pally. You watch yourself in West Palm." His successor, Bob Estrada, patted him on the back on his way. "Lucky bastard," Estrada muttered.

  Bernardino snorted again. Yeah, real lucky. His wife, Lorna, had won the lottery, literally, then died of cancer only a few weeks later. You couldn't get any luckier than that. Lorna had finally gotten the millions she'd prayed for for all those years so they could retire in the sunshine and finally spend time together. Then she had to go and die and leave him to do it alone. What was Florida to him without her? What was anything?

  He slipped out the door, thinking about all the others who'd passed before they should have. In thirty-eight years he'd seen quite a parade of dead.. Each human who'd passed away too soon had been a little personal injury to him that he'd covered with macho humor.

  The worst of all were the bodies of cops and civilians all over the place in the World Trade Center attack. Smashed fire trucks and police cars. And the fire that had gone on and on. In Chinatown, you couldn't get the smell of smoke and dead out of your nose for months. Refrigerators in apartments down there had had to be replaced. Thousands of them. The smell wouldn't fade. And that was the least of it.

  When the unthinkable happened, Bernardino had been CO of the detective unit in the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street in Chinatown for over a decade. Too close to ground zero for comfort. Everyone in the precinct worked around the clock because nobody wanted to go home, or be anywhere else. They'd stayed on the job twenty-four/seven for weeks longer than they had to. People who'd retired years ago came back on the job to help. And they came from other agencies, too. Retired FBI or CIA agents manned the phones, directed traffic. Whatever had to be done. He shook his head, thinking about it.

  All through those long, long days, the cops who worked the front lines were waiting with the rest of the world for the second shoe to drop. They'd responded to hundreds of bomb threats a day, telling themselves they were fine. Doin' okay. But the truth was none of them was okay. The worst for Bernardino was that he'd let Lorna down. He'd been out fighting a war on New York and hadn't been home for her.

  Amazing how one thing could tip a person over. He hadn't been there for Lorna before she'd gotten the cancer. That was what ate away at him. He hadn't been there where she was well. Then as soon as things were back to "normal," people were out the door. Retiring left and right. And now he was out the door.

  Bernardino was a retired cop on a familiar street on a warm spring night, immediately enveloped by a deep warm fog. He looked around and was startled by it. You didn't see real pea soup in New York that often anymore. The thickness of it was like something in a movie. Downright dreamy. While he'd been inside, the haze had droppped low over the Washington Square area, blurring figures, lights, and time. Maybe that was what got to him. Bernardino dipped his head, acknowledging to himself the spookiness of the night. But maybe he was just drunk.

  He shuffled his feet a little as he headed north on a side stree he knew as well as his own home. On the other side of Washington Square was his car. He walked slowly, muttering his regrets to himself. Lively, funny, rock-solid Lorna had faded in a few short months. He remembered a social worker's warning to him at the time. "Denial isn't a river in Egypt, Bernie." But he just hadn't believed she would die.

  The smell of Italian cooking followed him down the block. He was a warhorse, a cop who'd always looked over his shoulder especially on really quiet nights. But tonight he wasn't a cop anymore. He was done. His thoughts were far away. He was feeling sluggish, old, abandoned. All evening his buddies had punched and hugged him, told him they'd visit. Told him he'd find a new honey in Florida. He'd be done. But he didn't think he'd ever be fine.

  Out of the fog came an unexpected voice. "You made your million, asshole. What about your promise to me?"

  Like a blind dog, Bernardino turned his big head toward the sound. Who the hell—? Instantly his guilt about the money was triggered. Someone hit the nail right on the head. But who did he owe? He puzzled over it only for a nanosecond. Then he burst out laughing. Harry was pranking him. Ha ha. His old partner from years ago following him to his car to say good-bye.

  "Harry, you old devil!" Bernardino had been unnerved for a moment but now felt a surge of relief. "Come out here where I can see you." He spun around to where he thought the sound originated.

  "Nopey nope. Ain't going to happen." An arm snaked around Bernardino's neck from behind and jerked hard.

  Bernardino didn't even have time to lean forward and flip the guy before the grip was set. Despite Bernardino's size and heft, he was positioned for death with little effort. After only a very few panicked heartbeats, his neck was broken and he was gone.

  LESLIE GLASS grew up in New York City, where she worked in the book publishing industry and at New York magazine before turning to writing full-time. She is the author of nine previous novels, the last six of which have featured NYPD detective April Woo. Leslie Glass has two grown children and lives in Long Island and New York City. Visit her Web site at www.aprilwoo.com.