The Silent Bride (18 page)

"Ching, can't this wait?" April wailed.

"No, it can't wait. I know your father is slowing down," Ching told her.

April groaned. She had to look at Wendy's client list, see if there was anything funny about any of the other weddings she'd done. She had to stay focused on finding Tovah's killer. But she couldn't resist the sore subject of her father slowing down. It would be a disaster if he retired.

"Who says?" she demanded. Her father looked pretty good to her. As long as she could remember he'd been bald and skinny, had worn thick glasses, and stumbled around with his buddies after drinking too much Johnnie Walker. As far as she could tell, he was still energetic on the two-P.M. to two-A.M. schedule.

"This is what I heard. You with me? Gao is interested in meeting him. He's very good. They come from the same area, you know, speak the same language. I thought it might help you out."

April didn't see how it would help her out.

"April?"

"Yeah."

"You're very stubborn, anybody ever tell you that?"

"Yeah." Everybody told her that. Her parents, her bosses, Mike, now her sister-cousin. What were they talking about? She wasn't stubborn. She was the essence of flexible.

"Look, I don't want you to have bad luck. Be an old maid. Do I have to spell this out for you?" Ching was getting impatient.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about," April said huffily.

"Oh, come on, April. I wanted to marry an American. I
intended
to marry an American. My parents flipped; I'm not kidding. Boy, did we fight. Every time we talked it was a fight."

"I remember. But you didn't marry an American." End of argument.

"Where Matthew grew up, he was like the only Chinese in school, okay? He's as American as they come, hot dogs and pizza every day, no Chinese food at all, and he doesn't speak a word."

"Ching, I have to get up early tomorrow."

"And frankly, he didn't want to marry Chinese any more than 1 did. He thinks Chinese girls are bossy. Our falling in love was an accident."

"Ching! Stop already."

"You love fighting with your ma. Get over it. Just make it happen. Take control. Listen to the
I Ching,
Apr 0."

April snorted. The
I Ching
was the Chinese oracle, possibly the world's oldest fortune-telling device and guide to correct behavior. April did consult the I
Ching
from time to time, but it never gave her any advice she wanted to have. Patience, patience, patience. That was about it. But that wasn't the
I Ching
Ching meant.

"Look, you and I go back a long way," Ching said.

True, all the way back to birth. Ching had a fat mother. April had a skinny one. In middle school they used to roll around in bed laughing about it. Same mother, different sizes. Ching ended up going to college in California and dating a bunch of American boys. She'd gotten out. April had always been jealous. Now Ching was marrying a Chinese after all and was considered the good and golden daughter by everyone. April's concessions to her parents left her with nothing but the unpleasant label "worm daughter" because she wasn't doing better.

"Stubborn!" Ching repeated. "If your dad retires without choosing his replacement, he'll have no one owing him. He'll get nothing out of it."

"So you're thinking of Gao as his replacement," April said slowly. That would mean she wouldn't have to take care of him and Skinny in their retirement, as they threatened every time she talked about marrying Mike.

"Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Ah, so. Replace me," she murmured thoughtfully.

"Yes, replace you," Ching said. "Duh!"

April wondered why she hadn't thought of this before. Outsourcing children was a ten-thousand-year-old Chinese tradition. No son, adopt a son. When April started dating Mike, she'd given Skinny Dragon the poodle Dim Sum as a peace offering. The dog was cute but couldn't pay the rent or fix the toilets, couldn't have a grandchild. Brilliant, Americanized sister-cousin understood Chinese manipulation better than she. Interesting.

"Gao had a good position in Hong Kong. He just threw it off and came here with the wrong people. You know your dad's a good guy. If he thinks Gao is a comer, he'll help out. If Gao caters to your mom, she'll like him. You leave. Gao takes your place and pays the mortgage."

"Does he have the money?" April said finally, a little breathless with the possibility of escape.

"He will as soon as he gets the job."

"Ching, you're amazing." In all the years that April's father and mother had schemed and plotted to get her to do what they wanted it never occurred to April that she might actively manipulate her parents right back. Ching interrupted her reflection on the subject.

"April, you know that murdered girl?"

Again
that girl.
"Her name was Tovah," April said softly.

"She was wearing a Tang Ling gown. I saw Tang today. She's very upset about it, but doesn't want her name in the paper. It's bad luck for her too."

'7esus." April was stunned. She'd forgotten Ching's acquaintance with the famous designer. "Did Tang know her?"

"Yes. It was a custom gown. She'd met the girl and her mother. It's just so terrible."

"Yes, it is, Ching," April murmured.

"One more thing," Ching said, suddenly hesitant.

"What's that?"

"Tang offered me a gown," she said meekly.

"Wow. Lucky you," April said lightly, though her head spun a little with the happy news. Not only a Chinese groom, and a Chinese wedding, but a famous Chinese designer gown, too! Skinny was going to have a field day with this.

"My mother doesn't know. She's going to kill me because she wants a traditional wedding, the whole bit. No white gown."

"No, no, Ching. Don't worry. It's your day. You get to choose. Mai will understand. Everything's going to be fine," April told her. The magic words finally got the happy bride off the phone.

Twenty

O
n Tuesday morning at quarter to eight April called in for her messages at Midtown North. Lieutenant Iriarte himself instantly came on the line.

"You in today?" he demanded.

"No, sir."

He grunted. "What's the story with that bride

case?"

"Unclear," she murmured, wondering whether she should ask for his help.

"Had a gypsy case a few years back," he mused, trying to be friendly. "Let me tell you, those Romanies sell their girls, too. At the weddings, they take over a trailer park or a motel. Relatives come from all over. Crime goes way up in the area. People don't know what hit them. They get ripped off every which way. You hear about that?"

"Yes, sir, there was a seminar about it a few years ago," April replied. Gypsies posing as plumbers, driveway pavers, phone repairmen, utility workers, went into people's houses, got them all confused, stole their money and everything else they could carry away. The victims were mostly old people, no longer sharp and thinking defensively. It didn't apply to midtown Manhattan, or to Riverdale.

"I could go on and on about those Romanies. Their weddings are just an excuse for a big brawl. They get drunk, gamble money and women, knife each other. When we bring them in, they run riot over the precinct. They have it all over us. I'm telling you these people have no rule of law. We've seen some pretty bad stuff. Killings, knifings, rapes ..."

"Yes, sir," April said. But it didn't have anything to do with her law-abiding Orthodox Jews.

"Anybody who'd sell a little girl is sick in the head. You got a line on that?" he said finally.

"Not yet." But after a late-night conversation with Inspector Bellaqua, April did have a slightly different take on the matter. Turns out it was the girls' families that enticed the boys' families. They didn't
sell
their daughters; they bought husbands for them. Quite the opposite of the Chinese way. During a restless night, April tried to imagine her parents putting out a nickel to impress a son-in-law. She thought about Ching agonizing over wearing an extravagant Tang Ling gown, and her auntie Mai worrying that she would never get married. This started her thinking about something Mike had said last night, but she couldn't tease out what it was.

"Thanks for the input, sir, I'll look into it," she said about the gypsies. Should she ask him?

"And you're getting behind here. That's not good," he grumbled, abandoning friendly. "Don't drop the ball."

"No, sir," April said.

Iriarte was always worried about her dropping the ball. But she never did. Last week she'd been working a car theft. A tourist from Tennessee had left his Mercedes unattended on Sixth Avenue in front of

Radio City Music Hall. She also had a home invasion on Central Park West. A white male posing as the decorator had forced his way into a co-op, tied up the maid, and stolen some expensive jewelry and silver that turned out to be the owner's family heirlooms. Neither exactly major crimes. She also had a court appearance on another case for which the DA's office needed to prep her. But it was nothing hot-button like this major homicide racing toward the forty-eight-hour mark with no resolution in sight. Should she ask him?

"Oh, and by the way, you got Doled," Iriarte said.

"What! Are you sure?" Was he pranking her?

"Dead sure. The notification's for today, so you gotta go, you hear me?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir," she said.

She was in her car on her way up to the Bronx to warn Hollis off Wendy before meeting Mike and Poppy Bellaqua at headquarters to view the wedding video, which had been viewed so far only at the Five-oh. She'd left Queens and just entered the Bronx going west on the Major Deegan Expressway toward Riverdale. Now she had to get off, turn around, and head back around the heel of the Bronx to the Bruckner Expressway that followed a northeasterly course in the direction of White Plains and New England.
Shit.

Dole was random drug testing. This was the one Department order that put all other orders, including major homicides, on the back burner. There was no getting around it, no missed appointments, no changing days, and nobody was exempt, from the police commissioner on down. Names were drawn every day, and the day you were picked you had to

go up to Health Services and pee into two vials. The second vial was kept in case there was a challenge on the first one. If the drug test was positive, you were fired. Period.

It was absolutely firm that you had to go that day so there was no chance for the passage of time to get anything funny out of your system. And there was no chance of cheating because someone came into the room with you and watched you provide your sample. In April's case, this was a particular agony because she had a major peeing-in-public phobia. Major. Everybody else breezed right through the nothing ordeal, but to April it was not a nothing ordeal. She didn't like even a female person in there with her, didn't like it at all.

"Listen, you could help me out," she said slowly.

"Oh, yeah?" Iriarte's voice brightened.

"You could save us some time and have Charlie do some background work for me."

"You got a suspect?"

"Could be."

"You got a name on that suspect?"

"Yeah. Wendy Lotte. That's Lincoln, Oliver, double Tom, Eleanor. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah. Lot with two Ts and an E. Would that be Gwendolyn?"

"No, just the W."

"Would there be anything else?"