Stealing Time awm-5 Page 12

  "No one can hurt you here. Not you, or anyone else. It's safe to wake up. If you wake up, we can protect you. We can help you get well. Whatever happened, we have to find the baby. He's a person. What happened to him can't be a mystery."

  Jason squeezed her hand. It did not squeeze back. "Wake up now. It's over. You have to tell us about Paul. Heather, we need to find him. If someone took him, we need to know who and where he is. If something else happened to him, you can tell me. Please, wake up and tell me."

  No sound, not a thing. He was having a solitary conversation, but he had the eerie feeling she was listening. He'd had that feeling with patients before. Sometimes he was right, and sometimes not. As a doctor he felt helpless more often than not. He wasn't being very doctorlike now. One look and he should have been out of there. Head case or not, baby killer or not, this was not for him. Still, he'd offer her the choice.

  "I know you're coming up from a deep place. I know you want to come back. Come on, now's your chance to tell your side."

  He squeezed her hand again. "Does your husband have Paul? Did he get mad and hit you? Is that what happened?"

  Now a sound. Like a hiccup, a cough, a groan. Jason squeezed the hand. Still no pressure back.

  "Here's your choice. There's the police, there's me, or there's your mom. Every minute you wait, everybody worries more about Paul. Give me a sign. If he's alive, squeeze my hand."

  Nothing.

  "Heather, I have to go now. I'll try to come back to see you later tonight." It was then he felt the fingers of Heather's hand tighten and release. Startled, he blinked. When he saw no change in her face and body, he wondered if he'd imagined it. In any case, he knew he'd have to come back.

  CHAPTER 18

  W

  ell?" April demanded when Jason came out of Heather's room.

  He shook his head. "April, you know better than this."

  "She's coming out, though, isn't she? Come on, Jason, don't hold out on me. This woman threatened my life two hours ago."

  "What are you talking about, she threatened your life?"

  "Well, predicted my death."

  "That's pretty dramatic. What did she say?"

  "Jason, I know she's not in a vegetative state," April insisted.

  "People often attribute consciousness to people who are out of it." He gave her a sympathetic pat.

  "Don't patronize me. I know what I'm talking about."

  Jason sighed. "You always get me in trouble."

  "And you always get me out of it. Please, pretty please? I have to nail down whether this baby is dead or alive. Come on. It's a police investigation."

  "She didn't tell me what you want to know." Jason checked his watch, then started down the hall. "I have a patient waiting for me."

  "Did she tell you anything?"

  "No."

  April scurried after him. "All right, maybe not this time, but she's not totally out of it, right?"

  Jason blew air through his nose. "I'm not making a judgment call on this."

  "But you'll try again later, right? Please, don't make me beg. A life is on the line here."

  "Yeah, yeah, I'll come back later. Just take me home now. And don't come for me next time. I can get around on my own." They were downstairs, and Jason was looking at Baum as he spoke. April knew what he meant.

  After they returned Jason to his apartment, she decided to have a little talk with Woody. They had been heading uptown, and she tapped her finger on the dashboard, checking for trouble and trying not to think about Heather in the hospital. The shrubs and fruit trees here were in pink-and-yellow bloom and the parks were alive with activity: babies in their strollers, dogs, people sunning themselves, running around. She didn't see any trouble on the street or in the parks.

  "What did you think of Dr. Frank?" she asked Woody.

  "Great guy. I liked him. Where to?"

  "Fifth Precinct, Elizabeth Street."

  "I know where it is." Woody made a sudden U-turn. He didn't hit the hammer as a warning when he was about to execute the change of direction, just dodged between oncoming cars. April inhaled sharply at a near miss.

  "Woody, about your driving . . ." she said when her pulse slowed.

  "Yes, ma'am." One arm hooked out the window, the man was now driving with one finger.

  "What was your last unit?"

  "I was in Anticrime." He accelerated, racing downtown as if he were in a car chase with a bad guy who'd just shot someone in a mugging gone wrong.

  "I guess you did a lot of cowboys-and-Indians in that job," she mused.

  "We had some fun," Baum admitted, slamming on the brakes at a red light.

  April didn't doubt it. The boys (and the few girls) in Anticrime units dressed way down. They had unusual haircuts, tattoos, rings in their ears—whatever accessories they felt they needed to fit in with the scum they surveilled. Anticrime drove around in fast, battered, or flashy cars to appear badder than bad. Some never saw the light of day. Others looked like Con Ed workers. One Anticrime officer in a downtown unit drove a UPS truck. Another dressed like a pimp and drove a T-bird. Getting into trouble was what they lived for.

  "I'll bet you liked the action," she said.

  He gave her a sheepish grin. "It was fun for a while." Then he got silent.

  "Yeah?" she prompted. "How long is a while?"

  "Couple of years."

  "You were on foot patrol before that?"

  "Yes, ma'am. One-Nine."

  That was the Upper East Side. Park Avenue. Madison Avenue. Lexington Avenue. Foreign consulates. Fancy restaurants, shops, and deluxe co-op apartment buildings. "Nice quality-of-life neighborhood," she commented.

  "Yeah." He rubbed at his short sandy hair. That, apparently, was all he intended to say on the subject. April figured there was an incident in his past he didn't want her to know about. She made a note to check it out when things quieted down.

  So the haircut was something new for the new job. Probably so were the button-down shirt, the pricey blazer, and the loafers. The pistol in the ankle holster was no doubt an old habit. Like the driving.

  "So you want to be a detective," she said.

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "In that case you've got to do more than cut your hair and change your clothes, know what I mean?"

  "Does it show that much?"

  She shrugged. Out on the street cops had to process people and their body language in a special way, work on adrenaline and instinct. "Running on raw nerve and reflex is fine for the streets. Hey, slow down!"

  "Sorry."

  "No, I mean it. You've got to put that testosterone on hold. You can't live to scare people in this job."

  "You don't like my driving?"

  "In this job a lot of the time you're working with a different class of people."

  "Is this about my driving?"

  "I want to live to enjoy my next day off, so that's a yes," she confirmed.

  "I've never had an accident off the job," he said earnestly.

  "Well, how about improving your record and never having an accident

  on

  the job? If you hit somebody or scare one of my most important sources to death, it's on my head. Understand?"

  "Oh, so the

  shrink

  didn't like my driving. He complain?"

  "Nothing more than changing color a few times." She braced herself against the dashboard as Woody turned east without slowing down. This guy was going to be hard to train.

  "Listen, about the case. Whatever you hear while you're on the job with me, you keep to yourself, understand?"

  "Fine with me." Baum sped up through a yellow light.

  Apparently he'd decided against the West Side

  Drive, preferring to try to break the sound barrier going downtown on Seventh Avenue.

  April had kept the snapshot of Paul Popescu with her. Now she took it out of her pocket and stared at it for a while, wondering again who and where he was.

  CHAPTER 19
r />   B

  y 3:43

  P.M

  ., the temperature had gone up to a warm seventy-four degrees, but April felt cold shivers of apprehension as the car passed through the small area of Little Italy that hadn't yet been swallowed up by Chinatown. It slowed, then halted altogether in the traffic on Canal Street. At this hour the scene in Chinatown was wild, with kids out of school, merchandise blocking the sidewalk, residents shopping for dinner, tourists gawking. Life in Chinatown was a continual tide of humanity washing in, washing out. For many people, the neighborhood was only a port of entry, the hub where connections and arrangements could be made. It was a place crowded with a thousand dreams and schemes for every desperate newcomer. For tourists, simple hunger—delicious food for the belly—was an easier need to meet.

  Baum parked the car half up on the curb, blocking a fire hydrant. He was going to get hassled for it, but April decided she wasn't going to play mother. He knew better, and when he got nailed it would be his problem. She got out of the car and was instantly assaulted by the smell of Chinatown and her past. Suddenly she was in her element, a fish in water.

  The whole of her life was in her nose as she turned down Elizabeth. The complex mixture of odors brought memories flooding back. She could feel her temples smart from pigtails pulled too tight. Also the misery of loving boys who hadn't loved her back; her cold, cold face and feet from walking the home beat of the O-Five late at night that first year after eighteen scary months in Bed-Stuy.

  April hurried down the block, past parked police scooters and three-wheeled vehicles. She felt as if she'd been away for years and years, and at the same time it seemed only a few minutes had passed since the last time she'd rushed down this street to work. Today, she didn't see anybody she knew from the old days passing by or standing in doorways, and that made her sad. At the precinct, several uniforms, wrestling new-issue bicycles through the narrow entryway, stopped to hold the door for her. And then the smell of roasting duck and pork, frying dough, garlic, rotting fish guts, and vegetable matter was replaced by the dusty air of the precinct where she'd spent five good years.

  "Hey, look who the cat dragged in. April Woo, as I live and breathe. What's a big shot like you doing down here?" Lieutenant Rott was on the desk. He'd been on the desk April's last day in the house, probably hadn't been home to New Jersey since. His hair was grayer and his pink face was rounder, and he still looked mean and big, and pretty high up at the raised front desk, even though his squirrel eyes were trying hard to be friendly.

  "Hello, Lieutenant. How's it going?" April was a sergeant now, so she put some warmth into her own smile.

  "Not too bad. You're looking good. Now we have to read about you in the papers. That's how it goes, you move uptown, make sergeant, and forget all your old friends." He shrugged big shoulders in the blue uniform.

  "No, I haven't forgotten

  you,

  Lieutenant. You're always in my thoughts. This is Detective Baum. He's in the Midtown North squad with me."

  Woody raised a hand. "How ya doin'?"

  Rott fielded a phone call. "So, how can we help you?" he asked them when he slammed down the receiver.

  April had never heard those words from the lieutenant before. Help? She was stunned. "Is Alfie still running things upstairs?"

  "Yeah, he's still here. But we have a new CO since your time."

  April nodded. Inspector Samuel Chew. She'd never met him. At one time she'd hoped he would somehow hear of her, show an interest in her, and bring her back home. In those days, she hadn't known how to get his attention, however, so it hadn't happened. Probably a good thing, as it turned out.

  "You want to meet him? He's in there." Rott pointed across the linoleum of the lobby. April realized that she could now meet anybody she wanted. She turned her head. The door was closed.

  "Maybe later. I want to see Alfie first; is he in?"

  "Yeah, I think so. Want me to let him know you're coming?"

  She shook her head. "I want to surprise him."

  "Good to meet you, Baum," Rott said magnanimously.

  "Likewise," Baum replied. Like almost everybody in a new position, Woody was having a great time standing around and only getting to speak when spoken to.

  April went ahead of him down the hall to the center of the building. She could see there'd been a few changes at the 5th. Over several years in the previous administration, the crumbling Elizabeth Street landmark with its steep staircases had been poorly renovated at extortionate cost to the city. Now the quaint building, which harked back to the long-gone New York of Teddy Roosevelt, seemed to be in the midst of a second restoration, probably to fix the botched and unfinished repairs of the first. As April climbed the steps, she admired the work done on the magnificent banister and wondered if they'd gotten around to doing the women's room yet.

  The real changes to the house, however, were not cosmetic. The commander's office, previously upstairs, was now just inside the precinct front door. When April got to the top of the stairs and headed back down the hall to the front of the building, she got a bigger surprise. The detectives had always had a big, airy room fronting on the street. But now a glassed-in enclosure was planted just inside the door. With the CO watching the front door downstairs and Lieutenant Alfredo Bernardino on watch over the detectives, it looked as if the O-Five had become a precinct on the lookout for trouble from within.

  At the moment, the said Bernardino was in his glass office with his back to the door. Like a plant grown out of shape from straining toward an elusive ray of sunlight, the lieutenant was swiveled around in his chair as if striving to return to his previous place at the window, just above the precinct's entrance, where he could see everything going on in the street.

  When April knocked on the glass, he swiveled back. His face was dominated by a huge nose that had been broken more than once, and his tough, wrinkled hide was generously pocked with the scars of teenage acne. As he swung around, his shrewd brown eyes were challenging and cold in their pouchy sockets. They lit up when he saw who was seeking him. April took in the aging ruin in the wrinkled gray shirt and wrinkled pink tie as if she'd never seen him before. His crude visage was still double-ugly, a face only a mother could love. His stained brown leather jacket still hung on the back of his chair as it did in almost every season; a shoulder holster housed a .38 he'd only shot in action once, and a cigarette he would never light hung out of his mouth. April realized with a jolt that Alfie, a man nearly twice her age and ugly as sin, who'd given her a start as a detective, who'd sparred with her and taught her how to think—-the irritable old soul whom the people of Chinatown trusted and thought had more than a few lives behind him—was the model for Mike Sanchez, the handsome young man she loved.

  "April,

  cara,

  howya doin', sweetheart?" he exclaimed. His lean cheeks creased with pleasure and his skinny hand reached out to take hers.

  There it was, the "

  cara," "querida

  ," "sweetheart" bit. A surprised laugh escaped her lips. She wondered if they'd all still be calling her sweetheart when she made captain. She shook his hand.

  "Alfie. Look at this, they got you in a box now?" She went over and rapped on the glass. "This thing bulletproof?"

  "Nah, we don't go in for that sissy stuff. Who's the friend? Come on in."

  "Detective Baum—Woody."

  "Woody Tree, that's a new one."

  "Oh, you know Jewish," Woody said.

  Alfie snorted. "Sure I know Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Dominican—Fujian, Fijian, you name it, I know it." He moved a few chairs around. "Come in, sit, sit."

  April took a chair that faced the desks and empty holding cell. The desk that had been hers was also unoccupied at the moment, but the shift changed in a few minutes. Someone would come in and she'd see who sat there now. Again she was flooded with memories of a life more simple than the one she had now.

  The ghosts of all those shadowy longings
she used to have for things she'd known nothing about now hovered in the air over her head, as the ghosts that she didn't believe in always did. The things she'd wanted so much had come to her at the price of her peace of mind and her innocence. She found herself almost overwhelmed with nostalgia for the time when she'd had no responsibility for the people below her and few choices about how to handle anything.

  "Hey, it's great to see you, April. You made good, huh?"

  Her chin dipped in a modest curtsy, acknowledging the compliment. It wasn't always easy to know what to do when people suddenly got nice. "How's Lorna, the kids?"

  "Lorna's still Lorna, older. Kathy's an FBI agent. Bill's in law school."

  "Looks like they got through college, after all. Congratulations."

  "Could be worse," he said proudly. "What brings you down here? Still want my job, cutie?"

  "Nah, you can keep it now. I have my own." April glanced at Woody with a smile. He was listening, probably thinking about taking

  her

  job.

  "So what's up?" Alfie's eyes got shrewd again. "You won't believe this—an old friend of yours, remember Nanci Hua? She came in asking about you, oh not even an hour ago. Funny how things happen."

  "Nanci? No kidding. What did she want?"

  "She wouldn't say. She looked upset. She wanted you. I gave her your number."

  "She still in the same place?"

  He shoveled through the mess on his desk. "Uh-uh, out in Garden City. I have the number here somewhere, but I never thought I'd be seeing you. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  Alfie nodded at some people April had never seen before, coming in for the afternoon tour, staring at the visitors with frank curiosity.

  "Oh, just curious if you've heard anything about black-market babies," April asked.

  "Black-market babies?" Alfie scratched his head as if she'd gone loony from working uptown too long. "From down here?"

  April shrugged expectantly.

  "We had a girl die last year of a botched abortion. Her family didn't want to risk taking her to the hospital, so she bled to death. We get a few of those." He was thoughtful. "Then there was the girl a few months ago. Only twelve. They found her in the water under the Brooklyn Bridge, but she was dead before she went in. Thank God the case wasn't ours." He shook his head, then tried out the words again. "Blackmar-ket babies. That's a new one on me. But you know how it is down here. What are you working on?"