by Leslie Glass
“Sorry, Doctor.”
The doors closed on the appalling stink. Everyone was panting, sweating. Someone swore softly. The patient wasn’t responding. They couldn’t shock him with the paddles again in this tiny, crowded space with no electricity. Clara’s head pounded.
Finally they were at the front doors, rolling down a ramp out on the street. Then they were running with the gurney and the IV dripping an anti-arrhythmia drug, the breathing bag pumped by a paramedic. It was a block and a half to the emergency room. Traffic clogged the street around the ER entrance. None of it was going well. Everyone knew it. Harold wasn’t coming around. They were silent, running, gasping.
Suddenly a car careened through the changing light at the corner and the gurney tipped off the curb as they frantically tried to stop it from rolling onto the street into the oncoming car.
“Oh, Christ, hang on.”
Two paramedics held the patient as two pedestrians ran up to help the third right the gurney and get it going again. “Oh, man. Did you see that? Guy just kept going.”
Through ER, they moved into a back treatment room and continued working. Clara silently watched procedures she’d seen a hundred times. The airway removed, Hal’s mouth opened again, illuminated by a laryngoscope, a clear plastic tube was slid down into his trachea, then attached to a black ambu bag so that oxygen could be pumped into his lungs. Six, seven people were working on him now. He was hooked up to a respirator, an electrocardiogram. Adrenalin was shot directly into his heart. Clara stood back as they worked for the full required hour, trying desperately to resuscitate a man she knew had been dead almost from the moment he hit the floor.
Hal’s internist finally strode in. He’d been called from a tennis game and was wearing a black warm-up suit. He was tall and young and fit, and seemed surprised to be there.
“Jesus, smells like someone’s been hitting the bottle pretty bad,” he said, even before he looked at the flat line on the EKG or picked up the chart.
“Yeah, the patient.”
Dr. Chatman turned to Clara. “You’re Dr. Treadwell?”
“Yes.” She put out her hand and he shook it.
“Ivan Chatman. You were with him?”
She nodded.
“What happened?”
“He was in his office, pretty upset, I guess. He’d been drinking. He called me at home. I came over to check on him and almost the moment I arrived, he keeled over.”
The young internist frowned. “I checked him out only a few weeks ago. He was in excellent condition—”
“A man over sixty, you never know,” Clara said.
“I was fond of him.” The internist shook his head and pronounced Harold Dickey dead. The machines were turned off.
The ER cardiologist turned to Dr. Chatman. “Ivan, we’d like permission to do an autopsy.”
Chatman nodded. “Sure, I’ll call his wife. I don’t think it’ll be a problem. She’s a former nurse.”
The oxygen mask was off the dead man’s face now. The EKG and other machines were unhooked. The IV bag was detached, but the needle was still stuck in his hand with some tubing hanging from it. They had left it in him because they wouldn’t be using it again. He was blue, his hands already slightly clawed. All the efforts to save him made him look as if he had been beaten to death.
“Problem?” The cardiologist watched Chatman.
Chatman moved to stand by the dead man’s head. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “This doesn’t feel right to me.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Clara said.
“I knew him pretty well. He didn’t take narcotics or any medication that I know of. He was fit as a horse.… ” He frowned, then turned away from the body. “Oh, well.”
“You want to run the toxes?” the ER cardiologist asked. “You never know. If there’s a question later, I don’t want any problems on this end.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll speak to his wife. If she gives the okay, then go for it,” Chatman said.
“Any ideas what we might be looking for?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Clara muttered again. “The man had a heart attack. This is absurd.”
Chatman looked at the cardiologist, then shook his head. “I can’t imagine him taking anything.” He reached out and pulled a sheet over the dead man’s face.
Clara stalked out. They were going to run toxes on Hal. She didn’t want to hear Chatman’s side of the conversation with Sally Ann, Harold’s wax-museum figure of a wife. Or anything else, for that matter. Suddenly she was uneasy, deeply uneasy. Her mouth was dry and had a sour taste. Her whole body ached, smelled of sweat, vomit, and Hal’s Johnnie Walker.
She remembered Hal’s door had been left open. She had to go back to the Centre and secure his office. She didn’t want to go through the front doors and answer a lot of questions. She thought about the questions and how she would answer them. Her head was down; her eyes were on her feet. She felt numb, queasy, didn’t want to go back to the Centre. Had to. When she lifted her head, she was horrified to see the man Harold had mentioned in his message. Bobbie Boudreau was leaning against a tree across the street, smoking a cigarette, looking the other way. Clara had seen him many times on the locked ward, where he had been a nurse. She recognized him immediately.
thirty-four
“Aeiiiiii!” Sai Woo stood in the doorway of her daughter’s apartment, screaming. The sound was shrill and piercing like the radio signal for disaster.
Startled, April swung around to face her, the dangerous new Glock 9mm automatic that could fire off sixteen rounds without reloading still level in her hand.
Skinny Dragon Mother clapped both hands to her head. “I mother,” she shrieked. “No kirr me.”
Disgusted, April lowered the gun. “Maaa, haven’t you ever heard of knocking? I could have shot you.”
“Go ahead, shoot me. I dead awleady.” Sai’s screams brought Dim Sum scampering up the stairs. When the dog saw her mistress, she crouched like a panther and jumped several feet straight up into Sai’s arms, trembling all over.
“Oh, come on, Ma, give me a break.”
“Rook,” Sai said accusingly, “you scare ying’er.”
“Ma, I hate to tell you this. That thing is not a baby, it’s a dog.”
“Onny baby I eva see,” Sai muttered angrily, hugging the puppy to her chest. “You no have baby. Boo hao, ni.”
“Oh, come on, Ma, don’t start that.” April swung around and put the gun on the table beside the couch in her living room, then hunkered down to unstrap the weights on her ankles.
She’d been exercising with the gun and the weights, trying to keep her forearms strong and develop some perceivable curvature in her butt. The last thing she needed at the moment was Chinese torture. Skinny Dragon Mother seemed to have other ideas.
“What kind dautta prays with gun?” She answered her own question. “Long kind dautta. Boo hao dautta. You hear me, ni? No good dautta.”
Her mother sounded ready for a good long fight. Never mind that they lived in a free country, never mind that her U.S. citizenship papers said she was American now. Skinny Dragon Mother was old, old Chinese to the core. She believed giving birth to April made April hers forever. She also believed the path to heaven was paved with abuse and terror. She had crowded April’s dreams with demons and ghosts and monsters so terrible April had to become a cop to defend herself. Out there she felt relatively safe; it was at home that she couldn’t defend herself against the breaking and entering of her own mother.
This had not been the deal she had struck with her parents when they bought the house. The deal was April had the top floor, it was hers and she was supposed to be able to live as she wanted, come and go as she pleased. That was the deal. But not for a single day had it worked out that way. Although the second floor had a door and a lock, the two apartments shared the downstairs front door and front hallway. Sai not only knew the exact timing of her worm daughter’s coming and going, she also had a key to worm daug
hter’s apartment and dropped in whenever she felt like it. Now, as she studied April’s living room with an expression of extreme disapproval on her suspicious, Skinny Dragon Mother face, she dangled the keys she had used to get in.
“I thought you had a date,” she said in Chinese. “I came to help you get dressed.”
April was clearly not getting dressed for a date. She was sweating freely in a ratty Police Academy tee shirt and shorts. She did not look her mother in the face as she went into the kitchen for some water.
“It was canceled,” she answered in English.
Her kitchen was decorated with the same pea-green tiles as the bathroom. April had added many open shelves on which her collection of colorful ginger and pickle jars was displayed all the way up to the ceiling. Hung on hooks were two frying pans and two woks, many plastic bags of dried tree ear, dried mushrooms, dried lichees, tiny dried shrimp, gingko nuts, pickled radishes, and a dozen other items, all gifts from her father. Her collection of boning, hacking, carving, and chopping knives (and cleaver) was stuck on a magnet rack by the side of the door. They were the old-fashioned kind that rusted if they were not properly dried after each washing and had to be sharpened endlessly. These staining steel knives, too, were a gift from her father. April had known how to use her father’s set by the time she was seven.
“Cancered? Why cancered?” her mother demanded.
April’s favorite glass was sitting in the sink. It had the characters Good Luck and Long Life painted on the side. They were two of the five blessings the Chinese prayed for most. April filled the glass with tap water and swallowed half of it down. Please give me some good luck, she prayed silently.
“Ma, these things happen,” she told Sai.
Grimacing at the decadent plushness of it, Sai sank into the soft pink satin sofa April had bought for even less than half price in Little Italy. The sofa was opposite two windows that looked out over the backyard, where the garden, invisible in the dark, was already mulched for the winter. It was around six in the evening.
“What happened? He no rike no more?”
April swigged down the rest of the water. In front of the sofa were two good-size Chinese stools that also served as tables. She sat on one. Her mother was talking about George Dong, her great Chinese Doctor hope for a son-in-law. And the probrem wasn’t he no rike her. Probrem was she no rike him. April shrugged guiltily. It wasn’t something she could easily explain.
“Ma. He wanted me to meet him in Chinatown.”
“So?”
“So, it makes me lose face. He should pick me up. He should come here.” She put the glass down on the other table.
Sai thought it over. Since when was her daughter so correct, her face said. “Na bú shi gùyi de,” she said finally.
“Well, I’m not so sure it’s not an intentional thing,” April said slowly. “You stick up for him without even knowing whether it’s intentional or not. If he likes me, he should want to meet my parents.” Touché.
Dead silence for a long time.
Ha, got her. April suppressed a smile. There was nothing her mother could say to that. She had drawn blood on the first parry and her mother was stopped cold. Should have been a Japanese samurai.
Finally, Skinny Dragon Mother’s eyes narrowed to nothingness, and a clicking sound began at the back of her throat. This was a sound of pure rage that indicated soon Sai would spit out her true reason for being there.
“Why go to Mei Mei Chen?” Her voice got so cold and angry, the dog growled.
“Huh?” April was taken aback.
“You hear me, ni.”
“Oh, that, that’s nothing.”
“No nothing. Sunsing.”
April sighed.
“Terr.”
April sighed again. She couldn’t get out of it, had to tell. Damn Judy. “It’s nothing, Ma. You know Sergeant Sanchez who was here yesterday.”
“I know.”
“He said you are very beautiful, Ma. He wants to take your advice.”
Sai made another noise, something like a grunt that said “So?”
“So, he’s looking for a better place to live. He couldn’t find what he wanted, so I put him in touch with Judy.”
“Hmmmmph. I cousin with Judy mother.”
“I know that, Ma.”
“Judy terr mother. Judy mother call me.”
April shrugged. “So?”
“So she say mebbe you no mellee George. Mellee Spanish.”
Furious, April scooped up the glass and headed for the kitchen for a refill. “Ma, Judy is a real estate agent. She finds places for people. I gave her some business. That’s the beginning and end of the story.”
“No berieve. Yestidday, no rook for monkey business with Spanish, have date with docta. Today monkey business with Spanish, no date with docta. Boo hao ni.”
April thought she was pretty no good herself. She came back to the living room, the blood hot in her face. “Don’t call him Spanish. His name is Mike.”
“He no Spanish?”
“He’s American, like me.”
“You Chinese.”
“We’re both American, Ma. Both our fathers cooked in restaurants for a living. We’re both cops. Just the same.”
“Cook Chinese?”
“Mike’s father? No, Ma.”
“Cook what?”
“Mexican,” April admitted reluctantly.
“Ha,” Sai said.
“Ha, what?” April demanded. She was furious at the way her mother sat on the beautiful pink sofa in her black pants and padded black jacket just like a mean old peasant woman about to deliver a curse. She wasn’t going to choose a man to please her mother. It wasn’t love. And it wasn’t the American way.
“Ha Spanish,” Sai said, triumphant. “He Spanish.”
“Ethnically, Ma, he may be Spanish. He may even have some Indian in him.”
“Aeiiiii. Indian?” Now Sai was really upset.
“Mayan Indian. They lived in Mexico thousands of years ago, intermarried with the Spanish. I think they drank the blood of their enemies.”
“Aeiiiiiii.” Worse and worse.
“They cut out their hearts, and they have ghosts, just as old as Chinese ghosts. You don’t want to mess with these ghosts, you hear me? They’re a mean set of ghosts. And you know what else? These people may still drink the blood of their enemies. So call him Mike, Ma, and treat him with the respect he deserves.”
Sai glared at the gun, then away. April could see that her mother was fighting the urge to say something truly terrible, but for once she didn’t dare. Watching the wrinkles in Sai’s face close in around her rage, April realized that Skinny Dragon Mother was actually afraid of Mike Sanchez. She was afraid to say anything bad about him and push April into liking him even more. The thought that her mother was afraid of a friend of hers cheered April up quite a bit. “Come on, Ma. I’ll get you some dinner,” she offered. “You want to try some take-out chicken mole?”
thirty-five
Jason sat on the bed in his shorts and tee shirt, the Raymond Cowles file open on his knees. It was thick and quite detailed, and he wasn’t much further along in it than he’d been when he set it aside to make love to Emma seven hours earlier. Since then they’d done a lot of talking. They’d had dinner, talked some more. Then she’d gone for a run on her treadmill in the tiny room behind the kitchen. Now he felt her eyes on him as she padded into the bedroom.
He looked up from the page he’d read four times. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” Her shorts and the white cropped shirt that showed half her abdomen were wet.
Emma had a beautiful body that Jason had never been able to resist, no matter how hurt or angry he was with her. Her hair was blonder now, short. She had real movie-star hair and a real movie-star body—not too thin. Her face could be anything. Now it was a little tense. She shook her hair out as he watched her. She’d had all day to rim and finally gotten to it after dinner and half a bottle of wine. He didn’t
know how she could do it.
She spread out the towel on the floor, sat on it, and starting doing sit-ups. He figured she’d throw up soon, must be scared to death.
“What time is your audition?” he asked, watching her crunch and grimace.
“Really early,” she grunted.
“How early is really?”
Grunt “Eleven-thirty.”
He laughed. For him, by eleven-thirty half the day was over. She had twelve hours to prepare. “Nervous?”
Grunt. “Always.”
“You really want to do a play, the same thing over and over every night—and twice on Wednesday and Saturday?”
“You do the same thing over and over, with the same people year after year. Don’t you get tired of it?”
“Mmmm, no.”
“So, it’s a night job instead of a day job. Might be fun for six months. Then I’ll do another film.”
Jason felt a chill and shivered. Six months. His wife planned on being around only six months. Thanks for letting me know, he didn’t say. What did she think, that she could just come and go in the marriage without consulting him? What was he, a piece of furniture? His brows came together in a single angry line. Passivity wasn’t exactly easy for him. A part of him wanted to throw the baggage out, let her have her brilliant career on her own. Fine.
Emma stopped midcrunch, staring at the fringe on the bedspread.
Fine. He could live without her. There were lots of women in the sea. He’d find another. His jaw set.
“What?” she murmured.
“What yourself?”
“You know, I’ve been thinking. How would you like a different look in here?”
He looked around at the cream-colored walls and tasteful prints, the teal bedspread and chair, the many coordinating pillows. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for a change.”
“Humph.” Jason went back to the file. He’d never really liked the strange blue-green bedspread and drapes she’d chosen when they married. But he didn’t like change. He liked his life the way it had been before. He didn’t want a new bedspread or a new and different wife. If Emma got the part in this Broadway play, she’d be an even bigger star. If she didn’t get the part, she’d go back to California to her pretty rented house on the beach and make stupid movies, leaving him alone in limbo. The whole thing pissed him off.
