"Who?"
Anton pushed air through closed lips making a farting noise.
"How could I know? I wasn't there."
Jason didn't like the guy, but oddly enough he believed him. Half an hour later, when Anton nodded off in the middle of a sentence, Jason went home for dinner.
CHAPTER 31
By evening Mike was beginning to worry about April. It had been a big day. He'd received a call from the Tel Aviv police in the morning with some information that broke his homicide case. He tried to reach April with the good news, but she didn't respond to his page. This prompted him to stop in Forest Hills on his way home to buy two cell phones. April still wasn't responding to her beeper when he got home at half past seven. Mike paced around his apartment for nearly an hour, then was astounded when she arrived with two shopping bags at quarter past nine.
"Querida, where have you been all my life?" He took the shopping bags from her, drew her arms around his neck, and gave her a lingering kiss that threatened to go on for a long time.
She let her arms slide down his sides and around his back. Her fingers felt around in the waistband of his trousers. Still kissing him, she raised her knee up the inside of first one leg and then the other, like a spy on assignment, looking for a weapon.
He realized what she was doing and laughter bubbled up from deep inside. April was feeling him up and patting him down, arousing and teasing him at the same time. His pants were suddenly unbearably tight. Then, with sleight of hand worthy of a magician making tigers appear and disappear, April had his trousers unzipped and around his knees. He stopped trying to kiss her because he was laughing too hard.
"Ha ha ha ha."
She sure knew how to disarm a guy. "Ha, ha-ha, ha!" He was laughing, and then she had him nailed.
"Look at what I found," she murmured. "Sir, did you know you're carrying a concealed weapon?"
"No, ma'am. Nothing concealed about that."
"Oh, yes, it was concealed until I revealed it. You have a license for this?" she asked, giving him a friendly squeeze.
"Ahhhh uhaaaa."
"You wouldn't want me to take you in for this. This is big. What is it, a semiautomatic you've got here?"
"No, it's completely automatic. Ahhhaaah—" He made some more noises, not laughing anymore. "Oh, my God. Okay, okay, you win, querida. What do you want?"
April stepped away, appraising him with a raised eyebrow and a smile the way men did so often with women. Then she patted him on his bare bottom and let him go. "I need a few minutes, mi amor. I have to call my mother."
Then she turned to look for the phone. And his heart, pumping away at his lifeblood, wouldn't let him calm down. She'd turned the tables on him. Once again he was on fire and didn't know whether to take his pants off or put them back on. Whew. The woman knew how to even the playing field, and she had a mind of her own. It was going to take some getting used to.
April dialed the phone in the kitchen and waited a long time. Then she dialed again. He could hear her hang up. She came out of the kitchen shaking her head.
"What's going on?"
"I'm making dinner," she said, a little distracted. "I was in Chinatown all afternoon. I couldn't help shopping."
"But how'd you know I'd be here?"
April gave him a look. "Where else would you be?"
"I could be out on a homicide, could be anywhere." He pulled at his mustache, trying to figure her out. Why hadn't she just let him know she was coming so he could have been happy and anticipated the pleasure of seeing her, trying out her cooking. "I broke the case."
"That's great," she said.
"Yeah, I got Schlomo's killer."
"Who was it?"
"Another Israeli. Get this, the victim's wife received her husband's private parts by Federal Express this morning. Guess there wasn't any problem with customs. Scared her so much she told Tel Aviv police she and her husband's partner had been having an affair for some time. When she decided to break it off and go back to her husband, the partner made good on his threat that the next time she saw the gonif's dick it would be in a box."
"Wow." April still looked distracted.
"This guy was in trouble over there a number of times dating back to his army days, so they were eager for us to keep him. Guess where he was?"
"Do I have to?"
"He was doing business in his office as usual, selling the diamonds he'd stolen without the slightest fear of getting caught." Mike laughed. It was constantly amazing to him how people did the stupidest things and thought they could get away with it.
April started unpacking her shopping bags. "Well, you had a better day than I did. All I did was check out a lot of people who had new babies, none of which was the one we're looking for. Bugged the Popescus some more, didn't get anywhere with them. And I went shopping." She took two jars of nasty-looking stuff with Chinese labels out of the bag; then came garlic, ginger, scallions, and something that looked like green beans but were way too long.
Mike recognized cucumbers and dried mushrooms but couldn't identify some leafy things or the black bulbs in a plastic bag. A bottle of mushroom soy sauce emerged from its wrapping in a Chinese newspaper.
"I needed a break," she said.
"Hmmm . . . This cooking and break thing is new with you. What am I supposed to do, hang around here just in case you decide to come over on the spur of the moment?"
She gave him a mischievous smile. He leaned against the counter close to her, trying to be cool and not grab her again. "What are these black things?"
"Fresh water chestnuts. We're lucky. You don't see them every day." She finished unpacking the bags, finally taking out a whole roast duck. This she left on the counter. "Want to fool around?" she asked, touching the buckle on his belt.
The invitation threw Mike off balance again. He hadn't wanted to rush her and be corrected again. He took a teasing tone. "Right now? Don't you want to call your mother, hear more about my day, tell me about yours?"
"No." April put her arm around him and drew him back into the living room and sat on the sofa. She checked her watch, then took off her sweater. Under it she was wearing a lacy bra he hadn't seen before. "I've been here five minutes. You want to fool around now?"
"You sure we've been civilized long enough, quer-idaV' Mike teased, finally on solid ground.
An hour later April was still drunk with love. Gone was the gun at her waist; gone was her heavy shoulder bag with all its necessary supplies like her second gun, notebooks, beeper, Mace, flashlight, rubber gloves, tissues, breath freshener, plastic bags, wallet, and keys; gone were her sweater, jacket, tights, and boots. Without all the paraphernalia of life as she knew it, weighing down her every breath, both her soul and body felt light. She felt as light as a leaf, as light as a butterfly perched on a flower. She felt like a bee, a honey-seeker in her lover's thrall. The curtains were open in the living room, and from where she lay in Mike's arms April could see the skyline of Manhattan. They were so high up, and there was no building in front of them; even if the lights in the apartment had been on, no one could have seen them. Mike's lips caressed her arms and her fingers, distracting her. He was a lover whose enthusiasm did not diminish when the main event was over.
"Tienes hambre, querida?" he murmured.
"Mmmmm."
"Is that a yes or a no?" He nibbled on an earlobe.
"Hambre si" April said. Inamorada, si tambien. She didn't want to say she loved him.
"Te amo," he murmured. With a finger he traced the curve from her shoulder to her ear. He lifted the hair from her neck and blew gently. "Me amas tu?" he asked, nudging her with his chin.
Did she love him? What kind of question was that? How many people did she cook for? "Maybe," she teased. She shifted in his arms, turning over, grazing his stomach with her lips. Then she slid off the sofa, stood up, and stretched. Never had she spent so much time without any clothes on.
"Come back."
"Uh-uh, I've got to get going." She
reached for his shirt and put it on without buttoning it.
"Going where, querida?"
"I have to clear a few things up."
"I thought you were making dinner."
"I'm making dinner; then I'm going home."
"That's a really bad idea."
"Bad or good, I've been putting it off too long. I have to do it." She moved into the kitchen, washed her hands, then carefully washed the vegetables. When Mike came in she was examining his knife collection.
"Pathetic," she remarked, testing the bigger of the two blades with an index finger. "How am I going to hack the duck with this?"
"Why do you have to hack it?" Mike put his arms around her. She was wearing only her panties under his shirt. "Te amo," he said again, patting her bottom.
"Hacked duck has to be hacked; any idiot knows that. Never bother a woman holding a knife." She opened a cabinet, found a frying pan, examined it for dust, rinsed it anyway. "Can you peel the water ches-nuts, garlic, and ginger, and shred the scallions and cucumber?" She was all business as she opened the jar of hoisin sauce. "I like a man who's useful in the kitchen."
"Uh, I can be useful in the kitchen." He patted her bottom again.
"We did that already," she said. With one stroke of the poor-quality knife April split the breastbone of the duck, then pressed down on it with both hands, cracking the rib cage and loosening the meat. He watched her for a minute, then set about the task she'd given him. Even though he didn't have much in the way of equipment, and two very poor knives, he knew his way around the kitchen. In twenty minutes she'd finished making the crispy hacked duck with five flavors and the Buddha's delight with pan-fried noodles. At quarter of eleven they sat down at the table by the window with the view to eat the feast off unmatched plates.
"I like this." Mike struggled a little with the red-lacquered chopsticks April had put by his plate. Finally he stabbed a piece of duck and dipped it in the hoisin sauce before putting it in his mouth. "I like this a lot. This is sexy."
April laughed. "Not like that." She rearranged the sticks in his hand. "You have to make a hinge with your finger. You know how to do this."
"I like it when you make the hinge with my finger. Will you still be cooking like this for me when you're old and gray, querida?"
"Probably not." She frowned, thinking of her mother, who dyed her hair, and of Mike's Mexican mother, plump and very Catholic, who probably dyed hers, too.
"Oh, come on, querida, don't fade on me. This is good, this is more than good. I cook for you, you cook for me. You don't nag me about my day, or tell me about yours. We can do this, querida. You can tell me about your case. Maybe I can help you."
She ate some noodles. "You like my cooking?"
"Yeah. I told you I did."
"I hope we find this baby alive and well."
"I know you do."
"You know what Woody told me?"
"Who's Woody?"
"Didn't I tell you about Woody?"
Mike shook his head.
"Yeah, I told you about Woody. He's the new guy in my squad." She made a face. "He's from Anticrime, drives worse than you do. I'm lucky to be alive."
"Good-looking guy?"
"Nobody's as good-looking as you." April smiled.
Mike raised an eyebrow, pleased with himself. "I don't like him anyway. What'd he say?"
"He thinks Anton is the one with the problem and that's why he beats her up. We found the stroller in
Chinatown. So we're thinking the baby's down there. Don't you like my cooking?"
"Yeah, yeah." Mike shook his head and picked up the chopsticks. "Am I going to have to use these every day?"
"Get used to it." They ate quietly for a while. Then she touched his hand. "Gotta go. I have to be in early tomorrow. Maybe I'll get lucky and break the case. That would make it a good week for both of us."
"It's already been a good week for us, querida," he reminded her.
"True." April put on her clothes and left Mike with the dishes, promising to do them next time. Just as she was heading out the door, he gave her the cell phone so they'd always be in touch. She thought it was so unbearably romantic she actually cried in the car on the way home.
CHAPTER 32
Lin Tsing hadn't been feeling well on Tuesday. But she hadn't felt well in so long she'd almost forgotten what it was like to have no sores and no pain. That morning she'd been hotter than usual and knew she had a fever again. The aunties always scolded her when she was sick and made her go to work anyway. She was sitting at the sewing machine, on the stool that was backless so she couldn't slack off or fall asleep, when Annie Lee marched over to her, face frowning.
Right away Lin knew more trouble was coming to her. This certain knowledge that her troubles were not over made her homesick for China, where she'd lost her mother and almost starved to death more than once. To save her life, her cousin Nanci had paid for her to come here to this land of golden opportunity, but it hadn't been so golden for her. Lin knew everything that happened after she got here was her fault, but fault or not, Lin did not know how she could have done anything any other way. She had traveled with the two aunties, who were at least as old as her mother would be if she had lived, more than thirty-five. Lin was half their age and by far the prettiest of the three. She had worked in a factory before, and knew that she could not do any of the jobs her cousin expected of her. She'd been convinced by the two aunties that she could get a good job right away even though she didn't speak a word of English, and further that she was obliged to do this for them to repay for the care they had given her after her mother died.
The aunties' confidence in Lin was rewarded by immediate good luck. Some people in the apartment where they stayed told her of a job that paid ten dollars a day and required no English. Lin could have it right away. She went to the place at eight in the morning. A Chinese woman, who turned out to be Annie Lee, talked to her and made her sew a seam to prove she could use a Singer machine. Within half an hour she was hired and had the two aunties claiming to be her dependents. Still, Lin had considered herself lucky to be independent of the cousin who made her feel stupid, told her so many lies about her future, and frightened Lin with her certainty about the bad things that could happen to her if she didn't listen.
But Lin hadn't believed her cousin, and she got in trouble right away. The very first day, after she'd sewed all her pieces, the Chinese boss, Annie Lee, asked her to get more work from the space upstairs. Lin went where Annie told her to go and picked up a stack of unsewn pattern pieces, balancing it on her head. The stairs were narrow. When she started to come down again, the big foreign boss was down at the bottom, blocking her way. He said something and laughed. She thought he wanted her to move away to let him pass, so she backed up a few steps into the space upstairs where broken furniture and rubbish were stored, along with the cut garments to be sewed. The pieces came in thick stacks and were tied up with long strips of the same fabric. She still remembered what the fabric was that day: yellow-brown corduroy the color of sesame-seed candy.
It had been August then and the air was stifling up in the attic space. The bundle of heavy fabric on Lin's head weighed her down. The red-faced man said something she didn't understand. He pointed to her head. She could see his mouth laughing. She didn't know what she was supposed to do, come up or go down. It was three o'clock. She'd been there only since the morning and didn't want to do the wrong thing, anger the boss, and lose her job after she had been so lucky to get it.
On the floor below, eleven sewing machines roared, chewing up the miles of seams like hungry animals devouring easy prey. The red-faced man came up the stairs and Lin stepped back, frightened that she would be fired and the two aunties who depended on her would be angry and they would all have to leave the place they lived. All these fears crowded into Lin's head. Her heart hammered in her chest as she searched behind her, looking for a place to hide from the man's view so he would not try to talk to her.
She did not
think this was like the moments she had known before, when rough bosses in China teased the girls and did things to them that were not allowed but not prevented either. She thought the red-faced man wanted her to do some work she did not know how to do because she was so new in the golden city. But when the boss reached the top of the stairs, he did not seem angry. He pointed and laughed at the bundle on her head. He closed the plywood door on its squealing hinges and waved his hand at her to come with him to another stack of cut fabrics across the attic space. She let her breath out; she must have taken the wrong pieces. When she came to where he pointed, he reached over and lifted the bundle off her head. This caused her to let her head drop the way she'd been told by her mother and the aunties to do when men were talking to her. She'd been told not to look in their faces and tempt the devil. Later, whenever she had a fever, she saw herself like this, with her head turned away from trouble, then trouble coming after her anyway. She was busy warding off shame when his hand reached out and squeezed her breast as if it were a piece of fruit in the market. The vibration from the sewing machines roaring below was like her heart sinking to her feet, then beating helplessly on the floor as he took his other hand and seized her other breast. Time stopped.
It had been so hot that August day; all Lin was wearing was a thin T-shirt and cotton pants with an elastic waistband. She was seventeen and had never owned a bra. He was an old man, a heavy man, smelly and red-faced, the big boss and source of her lucky job. He pushed his hands with spread fingers against her breasts, flattening them, then opened and closed his fingers around her nipples, pulling up the T-shirt so he could look at her stomach. He pushed the waistband of the pants down, so more of her stomach showed. He pinched her ribs. Then he said something in English and she was so terrified she thought she'd pee in her pants.
Her eyes were on the ground, her chin was glued to her collarbone. Her tongue was frozen in her mouth. She could not look up. He had to pull up her chin to get where his mouth and brown teeth and big tongue wanted to go. He was in a hurry. He bent his knees to get lower, shoved his chest and hips at her. She was small and thin, undernourished, and so shocked she was shaking all over. He dragged her pants down to her feet, pulled her legs and her buttocks apart and held her up like a dummy for public ridicule then stabbed into her with deep, determined jabs like someone who was used to entering closed, unwilling places where nothing had ever been before. He hurt her so much she thought her body would split apart, but she did not dare to make a sound. She didn't want anyone to know.
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