Free The Silent Bride by Leslie Glass Page B

been able to avert really bad luck by nonaction. Now he was suggesting nonaction itself was dangerous.
"1 think you're in a funky mood/' she said.
"And I think you have a problem, April."
Oh , now she had a problem. This cold reading sent her feelings careening from hurt, to anger, to anxiety about truth and untruth and what she had to do about it. The feelings vied for supremacy. She had a problem! He didn't understand the complexities of her life. He was her problem.
She wanted to lash out at him but had to contain herself. It wouldn't be fair to make a scene in his home territory. From the second he exited the highway and crossed the overpass to Broadway he always got funny, thinking his childhood was looking him in the eye. There, the skating rink from his vouth. It was now a Loehmann's. There, where it used to be the Dale movie theater, now a bank. There, the Stella D'oro factory with the air still percolating with baking anisette and almond cookies. And Pauline's was still a grungy bar down the block from the precinct. McDonald's was still next door. Stop and Shop was across Broadway. Van Cortlandt Park a few blocks down. Two hundred thirty-eighth Street, still the end of the line for the Broadway El. And his mother within hailing distance. She couldn't say a word with his mother's ghost so close by.
April simmered on low as Mike parked outside the Five-oh, not a bad house, as precincts went. The blue building was three stories high and had been built within the last twenty years. But it was far from her home base back in Manhattan.
Mike got out arid stretched. "Todo bien, quenda?" he asked, as if he didn't know perfectly well that he'd ruined her day and she couldn't do a thing about it.
"Oh, yeah, everything's just hunky." April didn't lash out. She pulled herself out of the car, smoothed the wrinkles out of her blue skirt, adjusted her gun, her jacket, her brains. And she jerked herself back into line. There was no place for private feelings in police work. Anyway, she always got butterflies in a house not her own where she didn't know the personalities and no one wanted them there. She was far from hunky right now, but what else was new?
Cool as could be after laying his cards squarely on the table, Mike clipped on his ID and headed for the detective squad. It was in the usual spot on the second floor, had the usual components of holding cell, locker room with table for eating, a TV. Six desks that were home for twelve detectives, now scrambling because they hadn't had a homicide in quite a while. Suddenly smiling broadly as a man coming home, Mike raised his hand in salute to the worried-looking sergeant on command, and the guy dipped his head in acknowledgment.
"Hey, Sanchez, look at the big shot now. A lieutenant, hogging all the good cases. How ya doin'?" Sergeant Hollis held out his hand, oozing friendship.
"Hey, shut up. Let me think here," Hollis barked at the crowd in the room. No one shut up or moved out of the way, so he had to push through them.
Hollis was a man just over forty, five-ten, medium build, thinning ginger hair, light dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks, blue eyes, a mustache almost as lush as Mike's own. A man in a quiet house, used to an easy life. He was wearing jeans and a Mickey Mouse tie.
"Jimmy, good to see you." Mike clasped the hand and made quick introductions. "This is Sergeant April Woo. Jimmy was my boss when I came in. April worked with me in the Two-oh."
Hollis nodded. "I know. Another hotshot. I've seen your picture, both you guys. How's Dev, see much of him these days?"
"From time to time." Mike's smile turned a little chilly. His old partner was a big boozer, always got him in trouble.
"This is a bad one," Jimmy said, getting right down to the case. "We're lucky on the other injuries. You hear about the kid in the hospital?"
"Anything new?" Mike asked.
"Twelve-year-old lost his ear. Could have been worse. The other one, bullet went right through him. He was