The Silent Bride (7 page)

At ten to nine she pulled up in front of her personal albatross, the Woo family house in Astoria, Queens. Two stories high and red brick, it was a cookie-cutter copy of the five best, but all distinctly modest, houses on the block. Her rooms were on the second floor. The living room faced a small backyard where the tiny French poodle called Dim Sum ran around and did her business. April's small bedroom, large enough for a chair, a bureau, and a single bed, faced the street. Separating the two rooms was a tiny kitchen where she never cooked. Her full bathroom was well stocked with flowery bath-and-body products.

From the outside the only notable feature of the house was a bit of decoration over the windows that had been installed by the previous owners. Shaped like the NBC logo, the "awnings" were useless. They provided no shade against the southern exposure of the morning sun and caught rain with all the noise of a tin roof in the tropics. The fans were purely for show, as was April's signature on the mortgage, since she had debt but no title to the property.

Every time she looked at it, she was reminded that at the time of purchase she had not been included in the selection or the location of the house. She hadn't even known the transaction was in the works until she was pressured into the double bondage of using her savings for the down payment and assuming the mortgage so that her parents would be secure in their old age. At just twenty-one and new in the cops, she'd assumed a thirty-year debt. Nearly ten years later, she'd learned a lot. She'd discovered that many grown children could say no to their parents in bigger ways than choosing a career they didn't like. But somehow she wasn't turning out to be one of them. She'd fallen in love with Mike, but was afraid to tell him about the debt hanging over her head. Even worse, she was afraid of her mother's curse should she marry him. Her fears and her family loyalty made her ten thousand times a jerk, for no one was happy with her lack of decisive action. Her least of all

With these thoughts in her head again, she slowed the car. The pathway of small red-for-luck azalea bushes that her father had planted on each side of the walk two years ago hadn't bloomed the year of their planting. Four days ago when April had last seen them, they'd still been covered with buds. Now they were finally, spectacularly in flower and every bit as delightful as he had predicted. Sighing, she parked in her usual space in front of the house and killed the engine.

Skinny Dragon Mother, who must have been waiting for her by the window, came running out before she'd opened the car door.

"Ayeeai, ayeeai! You so late," she screamed. "Nothing for dinner." Skinny was wearing one of her mismatched outfits. Plaid pants, flowered shirt, knitted vest, all of different colors, as if she'd picked them up willy-nilly from a Goodwill pile at a disaster site.

Chinese people could be very noisy, or very quiet. Either way could be trouble. Tonight was noisy. "Where you been?" the dragon screamed.

"Hi, Ma," April said, trying to think of a story that would not spook her.

"You said five o'clock. Now nine o'clock." Sai Yuan Woo ran toward the car, sniffing at her daughter as if she were a dog that had gotten into the garbage.

"I'm really sorry, Ma. Something came up."

"Today day off," Skinny grumbled.

"I know." April opened the back doors and started gathering the plastic bags of staples she'd been careful to purchase before her meeting with Gao, just in case she didn't feel like it later. Lucky it hadn't been too hot a day and she hadn't bought a squirming fish that her mother would definitely reject now. Everything else looked okay.

"Bu hao.
Murder every day." Skinny correctly intuited murder even though April had not touched the corpse.

"I know, Ma." How many times could she say she was sorry? One time for every leaf in all the trees in the neighborhood. One time for every star in the sky. Ten billion times, more than the national debt, would not be enough.

"Look what I got you, Ma. Fresh litchis, baby bok choy."

"Murder more important than sick old mother?"

"No, Ma. You're the most important thing in the whole world." April crossed her fingers.

Skinny scoffed at the bags stuffed with two pounds of adorable baby bok choy only two inches long, and the fat bean sprouts, better even than the ones from Chinatown. Enough to eat for a week and still make the pickled vegetables she loved.

"If you so important, how come not on TV?"

There was no way to win with Skinny. If she was on TV, her mother thought she looked bad. Which always was true. April trotted an armful of groceries into the house. In the kitchen she found her father sitting at the chipped linoleum table she kept trying to replace. By Ja Fa Woo's side was the ubiquitous bottle of Remy Martin cognac that had replaced his former choice of Johnnie Walker Black Label. He was reading one of the four Chinese newspapers with opposing political views that came out every day. He was smoking a cigarette. A Chinese program was playing on cable TV. He was enjoying his day off with the poodle on his lap.

April's father was maybe five feet tall on a good day and had absolutely no flesh on his bones. Despite his profession as a chef, Ja Fa Woo was a walking skeleton, and he was bald except for a few stray hairs scattered over the top of his head. He wore glasses with big black frames and had a wide, toothy grin that revealed two bicuspids of twenty-two-carat Hong Kong gold. Although they were not the worst of her father's collection of features and characteristics, those gold teeth embarrassed April mightily at promotions and on other ceremonial occasions when police brass were present.

When she came into the kitchen, both the dog and her father came to life. The dog barked and Ja Fa Woo jumped up to give his only child what passed for a hug. He was a little drunk, but not so bad that he staggered. The ashtray was full of butts. She worried that he drank too much and was rotting his liver, that he'd fall down one night in the subway, that he'd get lung cancer from smoking all those cigarettes. All of the above.

"Beautiful girl," he said, lighting up now. "What want for dinner?"

With both Mother and Father Woo standing there so hopeful they'd have her at least for the night, she was at a complete loss for the right words to tell them she loved them a lot, really. But something had come up, and she had to leave.

Seven

O
n Monday at six-ten, when the cloudless sky outside his twenty-second-floor Forest Hills apartment was already brightly heralding the new day, Lieutenant Mike Sanchez was awakened by a throbbing erection. In his dream his body was pressed against April's. She was wearing a bikini, not much of one, yellow like her pantsuit. They were lying together, baking in the heat of a Mexican beach. Maybe a Caribbean beach. Hawaiian. Somewhere far away. He was caressing her flat tummy, the bare skin on her neck, her shoulders, her arms. Hugging her tight. Kissing her. April's skin was so smooth that he never got tired of stroking and admiring it. Smoother than any skin he'd ever felt before, and he'd felt plenty.

"Alpha hydroxy is the secret," she told him.

"Ha-ha." The very idea broke him up every time.

His mother, Maria Sanchez, complained that
la china
was too skinny and didn't eat enough (wasn't a Catholic), but her body was all roundness and generosity to Mike. Although she was not Catholic, April's spirit was just right, too. She was gutsy and tough, but not hard. How could he explain it to his mother, his priest? April's virtue came from doing right, not from fear of hell. Totally unusual where he came from.

Another difference was that her emotions didn't erupt when she was angry. She didn't get loud and hysterical like the other girls he'd known. She didn't try to eat him up from the inside or own him. How could he explain it? Oh, he throbbed with longing. April aroused so much feeling in him that he wanted to merge with her, be so completely together that their thoughts and bodies became one. This passion for her made him crazy because she would not m?»rry him. And marriage was on his mind, on his mother's mind.

Mike knew his feelings for his lover, the woman he wanted as his wife, were both nuts and not nuts at all. Nuts because they were so intense, beyond anything he'd felt for anyone in his life. And not nuts because every day he was handed death on a platter. And every day his mother nagged at him to get married.

"Almost thirty-seven,
un adulto, casate, dame ninos,"
Maria Sanchez complained.
Give me some babies!

But the only babies Mike saw were dead newborns stuffed in garbage cans. Young children burned to death in fires. Girls of all ages raped and strangled. College students mugged and drowned in the rivers. Almost every day some loon dreamed up an unimaginable horror to perpetrate on innocent humans. The World Trade Towers. How could a person absorb such horror? Mike often wondered how God could let such terrible things happen.

And he worried that he could never have a good life when this life he led of death every day destroyed so many marriages, including his own. His first wife had left him many years ago, then died of leukemia in Mexico. Mike was beginning to think April would never marry him and save him from that terrible failure.

But in his dream, he and April had escaped. They'd jumped all the hurdles. The snipers had missed them at their own wedding, and finally they were on the honeymoon seashore, set for life. He was breathing the tea rose smell of her, licking pina colada from her lips, and she was murmuring in his ear, urging him to hurry up... hurry up and come inside her. Oh, he was throbbing.

"Querida,"
he moaned.

"Hurry up, lover boy. It's your turn in the bathroom." It was April's voice, but not in any dream.

He smelled coffee, opened his eyes, realized that he was hugging a pillow. And she was standing with a cup in her hand, laughing at him. He reached out to grab her.

"Chico.
Time to get up!"

"Uh-uh." He didn't want to come back from heaven. He rolled over, turning his back on her.

"Fine." She walked around the bed, then put the mug down beside his nose.

He muttered, grumbled. Bleary-eyed and deflating quickly, he sat up. As in his dream he was naked. But unlike his dream, he was not married, and not on a beach. He was in his queen-size bed, twisted up in the blue sheets that April had bought and he liked so much. The sun was orange in the sky, and all the tragic events of yesterday crashed back on him in a single arid breaker.
"Que hora?"
he asked.

"Six-fifteen."

"Mierda."
He peered at her through a haze of sleep and groaned again. April was already dressed. She was wearing a light cotton wrap skirt, navy blue, and over it a slightly brighter blue jacket, smartly tailored, but loose enough to conceal the 9mm Glock she wore holstered at her waist. The jacket wasn't buttoned now. Her blouse was white. She was a very traditional girl, wearing a brand-new outfit for the first time. The skirt was not too long, not too short. Her face was fresh; her hair was newly blow-dried. She looked good. The woman he loved was a beauty.
Cdmo no?

Peering down at him, she refrained from scolding. He always had more trouble getting up in the morning than she did. This morning he looked so wasted that she took pity on him. She sat on the bed and began to rub the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders.

"Ohhh. Ohhh. Nice." He let his head roll around in her hands for about two seconds. Then, since she was now close enough to grab, he tried kissing her to get her to lie down again. This was not so easy to accomplish with an expert in karate who also wore a gun.

"Stop it and tell me about last night."

End of neck rubbing. End of nice sitting on the bed. She was back on her feet, fussing with the duvet and pillows that had fallen on the floor.

"We had a nice party, you and I. Come back."

"Too late." She threw a pillow at his head, then another, tidying up for the day.

He sighed and reached for the coffee, secretly pleased. She'd made coffee just the way he liked it, thick and sweet. He swallowed gratefully. "Angel from heaven, when are we getting married?"

"I had a dream about that girl last night," April said, pulhng up the sheet to cover his lap. Modesty.

He laughed. "Was the dream a special message for you,
queridal"
As his dream had been for him.

"Probably. Why didn't you want to talk about it last night when you got home?" she accused.