It was fully dark now. Sai hauled herself out of the car and breathed the air of home. She turned to look April over as if she were a child making an important appearance at a grown-ups' party, then marched down Elizabeth Street, carrying her two shopping bags of offerings. They passed the apothecary she liked that sold nasty powders of ground insects and plants and bones of mythical animals guaranteed to cure any ifl-ness known to man. The rank-smelling store April had visited only a few days ago would still be open when they came out.
Near the bottom of the hill, they turned into the funeral parlor. As April had predicted, the room was cloudy with incense. On one wall, the large cross with a vivid depiction of Jesus Christ's suffering was not illuminated. Nor was the small, kneeling statue of Mary praying at his feet. Sometimes it was a mixed crowd and both Christian and Buddhist rituals had to be observed. Not today. Chinese music played softly in the background. A crowd of some twenty, mostly old people, had drawn the chairs away from the center . to better display the coffin—best quality, white with much brass, look like gold. The people sat in two lines on either side of the coffin, talking, and in some cases, screaming at each other.
The room became silent when Sai and April Woo entered. Sai did not greet anyone. Silently, she staggered (the better to exhibit her grief) over to the coffin. She carefully examined the features of the corpse, as if to make sure it was really he. And then she burst into tears, wailing loudly. Three people held out boxes of Kleenex tissues. Ostentatiously she grabbed a handful and blew her nose. Then wept some more. April stood beside her, exactly as she had all those times in her childhood when her mother had dragged her along to funerals to show respect. She felt like a complete fool. Suddenly her mother whispered, "Look good, much makeup." April thought she was going to be all right.
Then, out of the corner of her mother's mouth came the old command, same as it used to be when April was four or five. "Cly, ni," she demanded.
April glanced at the crowd of old people in their best clothes. They were watchful, silent, waiting for her. She knew the only way she was going to get out of there and get down to the prosecutor's office in a building a few blocks south was to make the correct display and save her mother's face. April let all the frustrations of the case wash over her. Her problems with Iriarte and Rosa Washington, Dean Kiang, and Mike's butterfly kiss that she couldn't help thinking about all night. Lumping it all together she managed to summon a tear. Then an actual sob erupted from deep in her throat. She wanted love, sex, a high rank in the department, and a happy life. Why was it so hard to get those things that were supposed to be within the reach of every American? Tears streamed down her cheeks. She hiccuped. Skinny jabbed her hard in the side with an elbow. Don't go overboard and show me up.
But the crowd was happy. An approving murmur rose from the mourners as more boxes of tissues appeared. A woman April had known from the cradle, Auntie May Yi, jumped up to congratulate Skinny on her obedient and loving daughter, the cop who could cry. Then everybody started speaking at once, and April's beeper went off, letting everyone know how important April Woo was to the safety of every citizen in New York.
44
The computers in the detective squad of Midtown North were a big step up from the typewriters of years past, but the unit still didn't have a modem. Without a modem Hagedorn couldn't go on-line and reach deep into the system to tease out the secrets of the phone numbers behind the entry codes. Hagedorn had to move downstairs to the main precinct computer room, where Mark Salley, the lean, anal-retentive sergeant who manned it, was not pleased to see him.
"Hey, wait just a little second. What do you think you're doing here?" Salley demanded when Hagedorn marched into his computer room, heavily laden with two Styrofoam cups of coffee, light on the milk, a fistful of sugar packets, and a six-pack of cola.
Hagedorn had come downstairs to the main floor of the precinct, trotted quickly past the open door of the precinct commander's office, where Bjork Johnson, the brand-new commander, was at his desk talking into the phone with some urgency.
"Nobody told you I got a priority assignment here?" Hagedorn asked, his watery eyes opening wide with surprise.
Salley sneered. "I mean that shit there." The sergeant pointed to the drink supply.
"Gotta have sustenance." Hagedorn held the cans by one finger hooked through the plastic harness. He rattled them for emphasis.
"No, no. Not in here, not with my equipment, you don't." Salley shook his head and gave a little whistle. "Outta here."
Hagedorn whined. "Oh, come on. I can't think without my caffeine."
"I don't give a fuck." Salley gave Hagedorn his back.
"What's going on here, Sergeant?" lriarte trotted into the room, pushing Hagedorn aside.
At the sound of Iriarte's voice, Salley made an quick about-face. "Well, hello, Lieutenant, how ya doin'."
"You got a problem?" lriarte radiated genial concern at the sergeant.
Salley smiled ingratiatingly. "I hear you need to go on-line. Wouldn't you like me to help you with that? I got the experience from the Kerson case, that fraud-"
"Yeah, yeah, I remember. Good job, Salley." Iriarte flipped his hand at the chair in front of one of the computers, indicating that Hagedorn should take it.
"Lieutenant, excuse me, sir—"
"Computers are the wave of the future in police work, Salley. No doubt about it. You're riding the crest. You'll be right there at the top."
"Thank you, sir. But we have a rule here, no food or drink in the computer room."
"You heard Hagedorn, Salley, he can't think without his caffeine. Now, we've got a special assignment here. The whole country is waiting on us to pick this guy Liberty up. You want to obstruct or help with that effort?"
Salley watched with horror as Hagedorn put the coffee cups down beside the computer.
"So help him out, Sergeant." Iriarte spun on the heel of his woven leather slip-on and left the room. He headed down the hall to brief the commander on the break in the Liberty case.
When Iriarte lingered in the door, Captain Johnson waved him into the office, then kept him waiting for twenty-eight minutes as the commander tried to negotiate with someone at headquarters for a postponement of his first Comstat appearance.
Comstats were computer compilations of the number of crimes and arrests in every precinct every week. They were programmed and analyzed by the precinct commander's aides. Every precinct commander periodically had to go downtown to explain and defend his numbers. The way it looked the new commander would have to take his turn in the hot seat, defending the police work in his precinct for the last month with less than a week on the job. Iriarte tapped his fingers impatiently, but could not get up and leave. When Captain Johnson finally hung up, he immediately reached for his hat. His second-in-command jumped up to help him with his coat.
"I have to go to a meeting downtown, Lieutenant—"
"Iriarte, sir." The lieutenant saluted.
"I'll have to catch you later." He nodded imperiously as he left.
Iriarte went back into the computer room and hung over Hagedorn's neck. "How's it going?"
Sergeant Salley spoke first. "We're lucky. He uses one of the easy services."
"So—1" Iriarte prodded.
"Liberty hasn't generated any E-mail activity today," Hagedorn said. "We can't trace yesterday's numbers. We can only locate the phone he's using if we're in the system at the same time he's in."