Judging Time (39 page)

Then she realized she was awake and started thinking. Skinny Dragon expected a ride into Manhattan and the Chinatown funeral parlor where Uncle Dai was lying in state prior to his funeral tomorrow. Her mother wanted to bring offerings of paper money and fruit for Dai's journey through the afterlife. Sai wanted to light joss sticks, one after another, until there was enough incense to tease Dai's soul into repose. And Sai wanted to sit there with Dai's body for as many hours as it took for a good show of respect. After the "for show" appearance at Dai's coffin side, she wanted to kick up her heels in Chinatown and go shopping—accompanied by worm daughter to pay for her purchases with credit card and to carry her packages. Skinny Dragon had it all planned. The phone rang a third time.

April ignored it. No matter what, she was not going to deny her mother the day's pleasures Skinny had planned. She and Mike had not located Liberty last night. It was out of her hands now. They'd failed in their task. There was no way she was going to clear this case before Sunday, so why not sleep while she could. She'd decided absolutely. She was taking the day off, wasn't answering any phones. Through the fourth and fifth rings she held her ground. But the answering machine didn't pick up. On the sixth ring, April answered the phone.

"Wei. "

"There was a shooting in Harlem last night."

"Good morning, Dean. And how are you?"

"You know who was shot?" Kiang demanded.

"No, 1 don't. Are you in the office?"

"I hear you and your buddy picked someone up for questioning."

"Dean, you know, you have big ears for a Chinese. Don't you ever go home?"

"For a Chinese, April, you don't have much loyalty."

"What's that supposed to mean?' '

"I thought you were my pipeline on this case. 1 thought we had a deal to stick together on this."

"Hey, I'm a veritable pot sticker in the loyalty department. What's your problem?"

"Jefferson was shot last night. He was the one who was shot. Didn't you know that?"

April's mind raced. What did that mean? "Is he dead?"

"Yes, he's dead. You were up there. You were on the scene. You picked up a suspect. Did you call me? No, you did not call me. I'm going up there to question him now. I'll see you in my office tonight at seven. We'll review the case then."

He hung up before she had a chance to tell him she probably couldn't make it.

So another day off was lost. At eight-thirty April checked the squad room before pausing to hang her coat up on the wooden coatrack in the corner of her office that wasn't her office today because it was supposed to be her day off. Everyone, including her opposite number, was in the field. In the squad room, the holding cell and all the desks were empty. She did not peek into Iriarte's office to see if the lieutenant was there. It was now more imperative than ever to find Liberty. Now she understood Iriarte's disgusting respect for the chubby, colorless Charlie Hagedorn.

Iriarte believed technology was the future, and Hagedorn happened to be a computer whiz. Hagedorn could hack into anything. He'd be able to find Liberty's location by Liberty's E-mail activity. They had no choice about locating him now. April returned to the squad room and showed herself outside Iriarte's window. He beckoned her into his office, where the mood was not a happy one. Mike, Hagedorn, and Iriarte sat gloomily in the only chairs in the room. Mike got up and offered her his chair.

"What's the story on Wally Jefferson?" She took the chair Mike offered. "Thanks."

Warte scowled and jerked his chin at Mike to tell her.

"Story on Jefferson is they found a Glock on the sidewalk a block and a half west of the shooting," Mike said. "They think it might be the murder weapon. Ballistics is going over it." He sighed. "Looks like some kind of fuckup."

"What kind?"

Mike glanced at the scowling lieutenant, then back at April. "Seems when they raided a club last night someone had time to run in and warn the customers. The door was barricaded. Jefferson was inside. Apparently he had a date to meet someone there. There's a door to the basement of the building next door. When the raid started, Jefferson went out that way. Our guess is that the shooter was waiting for him. When he came out on the street, the shooter wiped him out."

"Was the hit man our little golden-toothed Julio?"

Iriarte made a disgusted noise. He and Hagedorn exchanged glances too. A lot was going on in the room. April had no idea what subjects the three of them had covered before she got there. She dug around in her purse for Liberty's E-mail of the day before, hoping that when Hagedorn successfully hacked into it, he'd get a boost and be transferred into somebody else's computer room. She smiled at her- boss. He looked surprised.

"It's not clear yet." Mike answered her question about Julio. "Jefferson was his mule. He could have been involved with the hit out on Staten Island."

"Witnesses?" April asked.

"In Harlem? Oh, you know the scum up there. Ten thousand people on the street. Every single one of them blind. No one saw a thing," Iriarte complained.

"Except one old lady who lives in the building next to the club. She said Jefferson was a regular there. Day, night, weekend, whenever," Mike said.

"So?' ' Iriarte studied April. He knew she had something. He cupped his hand at himself and waved. Give
it up.

Sure thing. She pulled Liberty's E-mail out of her bag. Then she laid it out for them. Hagedorn could be the one to locate the phone Liberty was using to send his messages. But she and Mike were the primaries on the case. They had to be the ones to pick hm up for questioning.

Hagedorn took the paper and studied it, his face all gooey with happiness. "We got him," he said. "Thank you, God, we got him."

"Now, wait a minute," April said quickly. "I told you. I want to handle this with Liberty."

"Sure, sure, April."

April checked her watch. She had a lot to do. She wanted to get hold of the mink coat at Liberty's apartment and send it to the lab to see if there were traces of Merril's blood on it. And she had to be home in Astoria in time to drive Skinny to Chinatown no later than three-thirty, four. Had to see Kiang at seven. She and Mike headed out into the field.

At five in the afternoon ballistics confirmed that the

Glock that had been found on the sidewalk a block and a half from Jefferson's shooting had been the murder weapon. But there was a big surprise. Three partials and one thumbprint lifted from the barrel of the gun were identified as belonging to the right hand of Frederick Douglass Liberty. No one beeped Sergeants Sanchez and Woo to let them know.

42

B
elle lay on the sofa in her sometime apartment, her eyes closed and a towel full of ice on her head. She had bruises and swelling on her forehead and every half hour Liberty woke her up, concerned that she might have a concussion. He'd had six or seven himself, and didn't want her falling into a deep sleep, not to wake up for a week or two. The man had kicked her hard. The yards of turban she'd been wearing hadn't protected her at all.

"Come on, baby, open those beautiful green eyes."

"They're hazel. Men don't know nothin'," Belle grumbled in her sleep.

The times she didn't respond, he squeezed some water from the towel onto her face and sponged it off, stroking her forehead until the green eyes fluttered open.

"Don't you touch me," she muttered, raising a hand to her hair that was a color hard to pin down. Red-gold, gold-rust. Brown-gold, harvest gold. No, definitely red something. It was good hair and there was a lot of it. Probably drew attention to her, and Belle clearly didn't like that kind of attention.

"Don't look at me," she mumbled.

"I'm not looking at you. Just worried about your health. You have a lot of courage. You got yourself messed up."
Because
of me, he didn't say. She'd jumped in front of a man with a knife, and the man had tried to stab her. What kind of crazy woman would do that? Some kind of urban guerrilla. Now Rick knew why she wore what had to be a thirty-pound raincoat. The coat was useful in case of fire and wasn't easily penetrated by a stiletto. He wondered if Belle also wore a bulletproof vest under all those sweaters and if she'd been stabbed or shot at before. He had a feeling she had.

"Belle, you got a family, a husband or boyfriend, somebody I can call to come get you?"

No answer. She'd fallen asleep.

he night had an eerie quality to it. Rick had three shallow cuts on his chest that oozed into the only other towel in the place, and burned some. He got up and washed them with soap in the grimy bathroom a few times. He was sore, and like other times he'd been hurt and his body was trying to mend, he was hungry. He thought about his restaurant. The restaurant was a place backed by him and his white partners, run by blacks, where both blacks and whites felt comfortable. Anyplace where blacks and whites both felt comfortable was considered trendy. Rick used to be amused by the term. Now it made him sick, as if all along he'd only been part of a zoo exhibit.

When everything was going wrong in her life, Rick's mama always said, "I am still. I am still so God can show me the way." She told her boy that God lived in stillness and only in stillness would Rick himself be able to find his way through this life.

"If God so still, then why the peoples scream and yell so loud in church?" he'd demanded.

"Is, do. Don't you go leaving out those verbs, boy, and don't question. Don't go questioning the ways of God."

But how could he find out what God's ways were if he wasn't allowed to question? Liberty couldn't question the ways of God now. He didn't believe God had a personal interest in him or anyone else. Merrill was gone for no reason at all. Water flooded his eyes, blurring his vision, but he couldn't be crying. "I don't cry," he said aloud. He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, which was ripped and bloody on the front. He glanced at the girl on the sofa, who was so leery about men. He wondered what had happened to make her that way, and realized she was beautiful.

He thought about the man with the gold teeth and the gun. A dozen people must have seen the man fire. Maybe more. Why had he bothered to cross the street and run a block and a half after him and Belle? Had he known they would be there? How did it fit? The street had been teeming with people. There had been people all over the place. It was possible that even some of the police had seen the shooter with the ridge of gold and the scarf on his head. Rick worried about Belle and couldn't fall asleep.

About eight hours later, at eight-fifteen in the morning, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "I'm hungry," she said.

Rick looked at his watch. "So am I."

She went into the bathroom and stayed there a long time while he made some coffee in an old pot. Maybe it was the aroma of brewing coffee that made his throat close up around his windpipe and finally acknowledge the truth. Merrill was not at home, waiting for him with her sexy voice and all her troubles and demons. She was not going to agonize anymore over not giving him golden babies in his image. There would be no more heated (and painfully naive) discussions of politics, no more arguments with them against the world about race or anything else. No more screaming fits about cocaine. Merrill was gone. Another one of his lives was over. Rick's eyes were wet, but he was not crying. He now had to make the choice Merrill hadn't been given. He could die and not be buried with her in that bleak New England cemetery that had probably never received a black body. Or he had to become someone new. Again. Neither prospect had much appeal.

The water had been running in the bathroom for a long time. He knocked on the door. "You okay?" he asked.

"Don't come in." The reply was a nervous mumble through the door.

Rick expelled the trapped air in his lungs. "I'm just asking if you're okay," he grumbled to himself. He didn't walk in on strange women in their bathrooms.

"Don't come in," she said again.

Jesus, she was exhausting. He poured some coffee and sat at the table drinking it as the sky cleared and slowly lightened. Finally Belle came out of the bathroom. Rick was careful not to look at her as he handed her a cup of coffee with He hoped her screwy brains hadn't been knocked any looser.

"Thanks." She sounded surprised.

"You're welcome."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Drinking coffee. Then I'm going to take you home, Belle. Where do you live?"

She sat down at the table and held the mug in both hands. "My head hurts."

"So does mine, but I can't stay here any longer, and neither can you."

"Why?"

"You got hurt. That crosses the line for me."

"So what, lot of men hit." Belle touched her head. "Kick, too. They think women belong to them, and hurting them doesn't signify much." She studied Rick thoughtfully. "Maybe not you."

"Not me."

"It's so touching when these guys visit in the hospital, bringing flowers. Everybody's crying, and that's what they always say. 'She wanted it. Yeah, we had some fun, but I wouldn't penetrate a twelve-year-old
baby.
I didn't
hurt
her.' Or, 'Yeah, we may have tussled around some, but I didn't put her eye out with a
poker.
No way, man. I loved her.' "

Rick bent his head and told himself he wasn't going to let tears fall down his face. "You've been hanging around with the wrong people too long, Belle."

She sniffed angrily.

Well, she might not think much of him, but she'd used herself as a shield to save him last night. Why did she have to be so tough on him now?

"What?" she demanded as if he'd said it aloud.

He shook his head. Now he knew the reason he'd avoided Merrill's funeral and left his home. He'd run away because he couldn't stand the world's accusation that he was just another one of those black scum who robbed and stole, took drugs and raped women, murdered them when they got too sassy. He simply could not bear the suspicion. All his life he'd worked hard to be clean, clean, clean to the world, clean to the core. So he wouldn't be his mother's nightmare. So he wouldn't end up just another rotten nigger. He finally knew what he had to do.