The Silent Bride (34 page)

April tried to disengage so her mother wouldn't know, but it was too late.

"Aiyeeei," Skinny screamed.

"Ma, come on, I'll make you some tea. We'll talk," she said. "Look at my dress. Here, isn't it beautiful?"

Skinny staggered into the kitchen, too traumatized to think about the origins of a dress. Sex made her absolutely nuts. She was nuts for ten minutes; then the kitchen restored her to what passed in her for sanity. Like a windup toy she went directly to the refrigerator and started taking out the food, which was a good thing because April was really, really hungiy.

Skinny's angry muttering while she cooked, however, soon drove April upstairs, where she threw her offending clothes on the floor, showered, and changed into a clean T-shirt and a pair of NYPD shorts. When she returned to the kitchen to mollify the Dragon with stories of Ching's kindness, the ham-and-scrambled-egg fried rice, pickled baby bok choy, and red-cook chicken was on the table. Relieved, April collapsed in one of three battered kitchen chairs and reached for her chopsticks.

"Eat," Skinny demanded, as if she weren't about

to.

"Thanks, Ma. I'm starved." April snagged a bite of succulent wing meat, perfectly simmered in gingered soy and saki and still warm. Her favorite.

"Bad luck," Skinny said.

"Yum." April savored that first bite, then attacked the mound of hacked chicken on the plate. For a few seconds Prudence's murder pushed back just a few inches and her mother's comfort food made life as poignantly sweet as it had been in April's youngest years. Her body tingled with the afterglow of Mike's love and the excitement of leaving the city for her first on-the-job flight out of town.

"Bad luck," Skinny announced again, pouring tea.

April stopped gobbling long enough to swallow some. Delicious. She didn't want to ask what in particular was bad luck, since practically anything from the Dragon's point of view could be. She tried distraction.

"The dress came from Ching, Ma. Isn't it beautiful?"

"She gave it to you, why?" Skinny looked suspicious.

"She wants me to give a speech at her wedding."

"Why!" Skinny was flabbergasted.

April lifted a shoulder. A little break with tradition. Skinny didn't wait for an answer.

"Ching called five times," she announced. "Bad luck."

"Okay, Ma, what's the bad luck?"

"Tang Ling on TV. Big interview. You see?"

No, April did not have time to watch TV today, or any other day "Is that what Ching called about?"

"Tang made Ching's dress."

"I know."

Skinny leaned over the table and took a bite off April's plate. "They're friends. She was invited to the wedding. You didn't know?"

"I know." April flashed to her garish Chinatown cheongsam. Too bad she didn't get a Tang Ling dress.

"Ching can't wear bad-luck dress! Tang very mad. Call her now," Skinny commanded.

April checked the kitchen clock. "It's almost two in the morning, Ma. I can't call her now."

"Tang very famous,
ni."

"I know." April put her chopsticks down, her shortlived feeling of well-being totally gone. Had Prudence been wearing a Tang dress? That was something she hadn't asked.

Five minutes with her mother and the fog was back. She remembered that she could have stayed at Mike's place and avoided this complication. She should have stayed at Mike's. But her makeup case was here. Her clean clothes were here, and she hadn't wanted to leave town even for a few hours unequipped. Tang Ling wanted to talk to her, or maybe it was Ching who wanted Tang to talk to her. That meant Prudence's dress was a Tang. Another thread to follow.

"You solve case?"

"I hope so, Ma," April said wearily.

"Good girl. You solve," Skinny said, nodding with approval for the first time April could remember.

Forty-six

T
oo soon it was morning. Birds called outside April's window. She heard them before the click of her alarm, almost as soon as the sun had dragged itself out of the ocean and made its presence known in Queens. The chirping and chattering heightened as light slowly suffused her little room. She'd had a deep and dreamless night, thanks to the feeding philosophy of Skinny. Fill the belly to cease all functioning of the brain.

It worked for only a little while, though. The new day always kicked April's thinking back into gear. Yesterday, storms and catastrophe. Today, birdsong and optimism. Two young women were dead, and nature didn't give a shit. Groaning, she punched the pillow to find a cooler place for her face. That kept her calm for exactly fifteen seconds. After that, all possibility of sleep was gone. She rolled over to stretch her spine and muscles. She hadn't run yesterday or the day before. No martial arts for weeks. Last night, love in a hurry, hardly the sustained hard exercise her legs and spirit required. Today she didn't have time to give it to them, either.

Exactly a week ago Tovah Schoenfeld died. Yesterday Prudence Hay followed her into an uncertain afterlife. But peaceful afterlife wasn't her business. Fully alert now, she jumped out of bed and into the shower. No dme for food or further thinking.

A few minutes before seven Mike pulled up in the Camaro. The second she heard the car begin to cough its way into her block, she charged down the stairs and out the door before her mother could ask her where she was going so early on a Sunday morning. The fact that she still had the habit of sneaking in and out at thirty-one years old would have filled her with her usual disgust if Mike hadn't been out of his car, standing by the passenger door. With his ample mustache, dark sunglasses, open-collared amber shirt, buff jacket, and cowboy boots he looked like a drug lord from Miami or
Miami Vice,
one or the other. One who'd been in a fight. But his open arms sent her heart sailing.

Seventy-one degrees, cerulean, nearly cloudless sky, and she was dressed for travel in all-American Gap. Navy polished-cotton trousers, matching blazerlike jacket, and underneath a lucky-red camp shirt, short-sleeved in case it got really hot later. On the job like Mike, she was wearing a Glock on her hip and dark shades. They kissed by the car. Mike's mustache prickled as his tongue nudged into her mouth. She sucked it in deeper, swaying a little in the embrace. Death and hunting: It always made them edgy and hot. She could have kept at the necking for some time, but they had a plane to catch. Reluctantly, she stepped back. Just in time to see her mother's face with its sour expression in the window. Freedom hit her like a drug, and she smiled.

"You're late. Will we make it?" she asked.

"Sure. It's only ten minutes from here." He closed the door gently and paused just long enough to wave gallantly at the Dragon. Then he got in, revved up the noisy car, and peeled out into the quiet street. Fresh spring air blew in from the open windows, bringing the thrill of escape. Mike raced through the back streets of Queens, avoiding the highway. He pulled into the short-term parking lot at La Guardia nine minutes later.

All was quiet there on May sixteenth for the American Eagle seven-fifty A.M. flight to Martha's Vineyard until they arrived—the couple on the job with four guns, one on the hip, one in a shoulder holster, one in the shoulder bag, and one in a cowboy boot. April and Mike had their boarding passes in hand, but before they'd pulled their gold and authorization to fly armed, the new, beefed-up security teams converged on them like birds to bread crumbs.

"Police," Mike announced, quickly producing the paperwork.

A uniformed officer and the four security persons manning the two metal detectors and conveyor belts each checked out Bellaqua's letter before falling away. The other passengers had backed away for the confrontation.

April's heavy shoulder bag with the .38 and extra ammunition never hit the belt. She kept her sunglasses on, trying to act cool when actually she felt as excited as a kid. City cops rarely traveled out of state on the job, and on those occasions it was usually to escort a prisoner or a suspect back. This trip was also a quickie. They were booked on a three o'clock flight back.

"Chico,
ever travel on business before?" April asked as they walked out on the tarmac into a stiffening breeze toward the tiny propeller job that was their conveyance.

He nodded. "Wasn't fun like this, though. I had to go down to South Carolina to pick up a guy who'd hacked up his wife. We had to sedate him pretty heavy to get him on the plane."

April had no comeback for that. "You want the window?" she asked as she ducked her head to climb aboard. Oh, it was small.

"No, you take it." Mike slid in next to her, scrunching into the narrow space with zero legroom. "Isn't this fun?"

"Oh, yeah, this is great." She checked her watch. It was getting late. Nobody came to close the door. The other passengers had been smart enough to bring their coffee and bagels with them. They'd been too cool to think of food.

Mike's cell rang and he reached into his pocket for it. "Yeah? Oh, yeah, hi. Uh-huh, we're there. Yeah, looks like we'll be on time, maybe a minute or two late. Weather's good. Little bit of a breeze. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay" He hung up and gave April's arm a pat. "How ya doin',
querida?"

"Who was that?" April asked, as if she didn't know.

"Bellaqua. Wendy hasn't moved or called anyone since last night. Ditto Louis. Tito's in the hot seat downtown. They'll work on him all day. She wants us to keep in touch and get with her later this afternoon at One PP."

April peered out the little window. Martha's Vineyard was about two hundred and forty miles, not that far, but ahead of her she could see a line of jets assembling for their eight o'clocks to wherever.
Let's go, let's go.
They didn't have all day. Yesterday, she'd taken a chance in the interview room and kept her questioning real general because she hadn't wanted to alert Wendy. Sometimes they talked around and around a subject, never hitting the nail on the head. In this case Wendy was holding out on them big-time. April didn't want her calling her mystery assistant, or getting on the road in the BMW herself. She hoped she knew what she was doing.

She turned to Mike with a little smile, remembering their search of Louis's place. They'd come up with a few fancy sex toys, but nothing of a more sinister nature than that. The detectives who tossed Tito's rented room in a small house found
Soldier of Fortune
magazines, but no guns. He said he liked to look at the pictures.

Let's go. Let's go.
The nineteen seats filled up. Affluent people with a certain look. Expensive khaki clothes, expensive casual carry-on bags. Buff people, Wendy's kind of people, fit and secure. And used to the drill. Only April and Mike were tapping their watches.

"Jesus, look at that. We're never getting out of here." April pointed out the planes lining up on the runway.

"We'll be fine." Mike squeezed her hand, always the optimist.

Finally, the door was closed. The two propeller engines sputtered to life, and the Tinkertoy plane taxied out sounding like something from World War II. Not too many minutes later, the copilot rattled off safety instructions and the little commuter took its place on the runway between jumbo giants off to faraway places.

Taking off, the plane teetered from side to side, fighting rising winds. At a hundred feet it hung there, engines throbbing. April watched the jets ahead of them soar up and away. Then the plane bounced a few times like a jeep off-road, losing altitude before it began to fight its way higher. Her empty stomach lurched. She clutched the arm of her seat and concentrated on the changing views: Rikers Island, the new Manhattan skyline, the George Washington Bridge receding behind them. Long Island and the coast opening out ahead.

Forty-seven

F
or forty-five minutes the little commuter bounced around in bumpy air. Then a patch of green appeared ahead in choppy, whitecapped water and grew larger undl it reached the size of Manhattan. The turbulence increased as they went inland and down. The plane seesawed as it came down and connected hard with the ground twice before finally settling into a jerky taxi toward a toy-sized airport.