Tracking Time

by Leslie Glass

  "Early," he lied. He never even saw her last night. When did she get in? He was pissed at her for lying to him, but he gave her a sincere look because he was going to flunk math and get a C in biology, and he wanted that Beamer bad. He knew she'd give it to him.

  The limo sped up Park Avenue, and he peered hungrily out the window as they passed Brandy's building at Seventy-fifth Street. Brandy had told him she'd give him a call as soon as her mother let her out. They'd be together by noon, going over their triumphs. Now he was cool.

  "Good, I'm glad you slept well. You need your rest." Janice's eyes softened. She was satisfied, snapped open her briefcase, and started flipping through a pile of papers. Then her cell phone rang and she answered it. She became engrossed in her conversation and didn't even notice that David got out at a red light two blocks shy of school. She was happy with their exchange and had no idea he was playing hooky.

  Seven

  Woody was at his desk talking on the phone, chewing a bite of bagel, when April came out of her office at half past eight. She could tell by the way he had his feet up on the desk and was making decorative little piles of crumbs with the end of his pen that it was a personal call. She caught his eye and wiggled her fingers at him just the way her boss did to her when he wanted her to jump.

  His brow furrowed. Now? he mouthed at her.

  "Now," she said loud enough for the three ugly henchmen to exchange glances.

  Woody said something she couldn't hear and hung up. "What's up, boss?" he asked.

  "A shrink didn't show up for an appointment last night. We're going to check it out."

  Woody processed that bit of information as he got to his feet. April knew he was thinking the lieutenant hadn't mentioned any missing person complaint. She didn't enlighten him as they left the squad room, trotted down the stairs, said hey to some uniforms hovering around the front door, and went outside to their unmarked unit. Not until they were in the car did she give him Maslow Atkins's Upper West Side address, which just happened to be outside their precinct.

  "Who is this guy?" Woody asked.

  "Young shrink in training with Jason Frank."

  "I hate those head-shrinker quacks," he remarked.

  April would have rebuked him for his idiocy, but her cell phone burbled. She rummaged through her shoulder bag, disrupting the clutter of tissues, rubber gloves (for not contaminating evidence at crime scenes), notebooks, her telephone and address book that contained every source she'd ever used, second gun, lipsticks, hairbrush, wallet, badge, aspirin, all the essentials she needed to function. The phone was at the bottom.

  She grabbed it and flipped it open, but before she could speak, Woody stopped abruptly at a light, flinging her against her seat belt.

  "Jesus!" she erupted.

  "Estas enojada conmigo, querida?" Mike replied anxiously.

  April scowled at Woody and spoke softly to Mike. "Why would I be angry, mi amore? Te quiero mucho."

  "I have no idea; I'm such a wonderful guy."

  Uh-huh. "Did you get into trouble last night?" she asked sweetly, guessing he had a guilty conscience about something.

  "No trouble, I promise." The soft sweet voice was working to soothe.

  "I'll bet," she murmured.

  "Well, maybe just a little. The bar fight, the hooker brawl, and the trip to ER." He was teasing, but she didn't exactly laugh along. An evening out with his old partner might include any or all of the above.

  "Talk to you later. Something's doing," she told him. Then she glanced at Woody and sighed, wondering what was up with Mike. She wasn't a detective for nothing.

  Woody accelerated through Columbus Circle and shot up Central Park West. She ignored his high-speed race past the Museum of Natural History. He slowed down just enough at Eighty-second Street to do a gut-wrenching U-turn. He just missed a speeding limo coming at them from the north, braked hard in front of Maslow's building's entrance, and gave April a big grin.

  Something was up with him, too. Men had a primitive way of communicating.

  She'd warned him, but Woody wasn't settling down after his rough-'em-up years. Now, she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of chewing him out. She wasn't his mother. She got out and slammed the car door.

  The doorman came running out and screamed at them. "No parking here!" His accent was thick. He was a Russian. Alex Yelsin, his tag read. Alex looked about forty, had a big fleshy face, angry red-rimmed eyes. His belly strained the buttons of his uniform jacket.

  "Police." April's hand reached into her purse and instantly connected with her badge. She pulled it out and showed it to him. "I'm Sergeant Woo," she told him.

  Alex glanced at the badge, unimpressed. Then his angry eyes looked her over as if he didn't believe a Chinese could be a cop. She was used to it. She pointed to the curb in front of the building. There was no yellow line there. Anyway, they were cops and could park anywhere they wanted. If they got a summons, they had recourse.

  The guy was still unimpressed. "Something wrong?" he asked.

  Woody came around the side of the car. April introduced him. "This is Detective Baum. We're looking for a tenant by the name of Maslow Atkins."

  "So?" Alex challenged them.

  "Have you seen him?"

  "See him every day."

  "Did you see him today?" Baum asked.

  "Today?" He looked at Woody, scratched the side of his nose. "No, not today."

  "Would you ring him, please."

  They trooped inside to the cavernous lobby. Yuppies with their briefcases and workout bags trooped out around them as Alex tried the intercom. April reached into her purse and turned her phone off.

  When Yelsin rang, there was no answer from Maslow's apartment on the intercom.

  "We need to check out Dr. Atkins's apartment," April told him.

  Alex shook his head. "Oh, oh, oh. You'll have to talk to the super."

  "Fine."

  They hiked across the lobby to the building office, where more Russians were sitting at desks eating highly caloric bakery goods. An obese woman in a black pantsuit with intense magenta hair, magenta nail polish, and matching lipstick was the manager. Her name was Regina. She didn't want to help out.

  "It's a lot of trouble for me to do it," she complained.

  April shrugged. Too bad.

  With pursed lips, Regina collected the key, and they went up in the elevator. On Maslow's floor they followed her down a long hall and around the corner. As they neared his door, a strong aroma of bacon lingered from someone's breakfast. Homey touches of everyday life like this always gave April a bad feeling. Once she'd smelled toast outside the apartment of a man who hadn't shown up for work. The toast had given her the false hope that the man they were looking for was just taking a day off. But when she and Mike, who'd been her supervisor at the time, had gone inside, they'd found the man stone cold with a plastic bag over his head.

  Now she didn't want to open Maslow's door and find him in his bedroom with his throat cut, hanging from the chandelier, or lying on his bed, dead from pills. He was someone's son, friend, colleague, maybe boyfriend. Her heartbeat accelerated as Regina fumbled with the locks. She didn't realize she was holding her breath until the door was open and she had a clear sight line into the living room.

  Regina started to go in first, but April shook her head. "Please stay here for a moment."

  "This is my building," she protested. "I have to know what's going on in here."

  "You'll know soon enough," April told her, then nodded at Woody. The two of them went in, leaving Regina muttering angrily in Russian just inside the door.

  The lights were on, as if Maslow were home. But the place had the dead silence of emptiness. April's gaze swept the unexceptional living room. White walls, bare except for three large photographs, beige wall-to-wall carpet. Blue sofa, two red club chairs, a simple desk with one drawer. Laptop computer on top. Desk chair with wheels. Above the desk a bookshelf full of medical and psychiatric texts. Another pile of
books neatly stacked under the desk. Phone with message light blinking.

  April moved into the bedroom and exhaled. The bed was made, and on it no dead body was waiting for her. There was no body in the bathroom, either. The towels were carefully folded on the towel rack. Hairbrush on the sink with light brown hair in it. She looked in the medicine cabinet. The large quantity of prescription medicines indicated that Atkins either had health problems or was something of a hypochondriac. None of the drug names were familiar to her.

  Back in the bedroom, she found his plastic hospital ID and his wallet under the gray suit, white shirt, and blue-and-red striped tie he must have tossed on the bed before he went out. April looked through the wallet quickly. Stuffed in the billfold compartment were two foil-wrapped condoms that looked as if they'd been mashed in there a long time. She put them back before Woody could see them and make a smart remark. On the floor were black loafers and discarded black socks. It looked as if the doctor had come home, changed, and gone out without his identification. She frowned and moved on. The air conditioner was off. It was hot in the apartment, and a powerful smell of rotting Chinese food emanated from the kitchen. April checked the refrigerator. Diet Coke was the only food group represented. In the garbage were white containers with the gluey leftovers from a Chinese meal that must have been eaten several days ago.

  Back in the living room, Woody hit the play button on the answering machine. By now Regina was in the apartment. All three of them listened to the messages. Two were from Jason, asking him to call right away no matter what time he came in. Two were from the same girl. The first time she said, "I'm-um-really sorry for walking out. You upset me. Please call."

  The next few calls were hang-ups.

  The last call was the same girl voice again. "I don't want to explore it in the next session. I need you to talk to me now so I don't do something."

  Woody gave April a look. Girl threats were not his favorite thing. April jerked her head. "Let's go."

  "Disgusting." Regina was sniffing around the garbage.

  "Please leave it for now." April said.

  "Are you finished here?"

  "Not quite. I want to talk to the doorman who was on duty last night."

  "That's a lot of trouble for me."

  April gave her a little smile. "You can give me his number at home."

  "I don't have to do that. He's on the day shift today."

  "Fine. Let's go talk to him, and no one else in here until further notice, okay?" April left it to Woody to close up. She was upset by the wallet with Maslow's ID on the bed. This was a sticky situation. As far as she knew no sixty-one had been filed. The missing doc was not her case, not her jurisdiction, but he had become her problem. She had a bad feeling about it and knew she'd have major explaining to do if further investigation of his work, his life, his patients, and the contents of his computer became necessary.

  Eight

  It turned out that Ben, the four-to-eleven-p.m. doorman last night, was filling in on the back elevator today. April and Woody talked to him as they rode up to the fourteenth floor with a Federal Express driver delivering a package.

  "Dr. Atkins came in at seven," Ben told them importantly as the manually operated elevator jerked its way up. "These guys are cops," he told the FedEx driver.

  "No kidding," the man replied without interest.

  The elevator stopped. Ben heaved the doors open, the driver got out, went through the door out into the main hallway, and disappeared. The elevator bell rang, but Ben didn't close the doors.

  "At seven," Woody prompted.

  "Yeah, I remember everything. I have a memory for details. Ask me anything. It rained pretty bad in the afternoon. I had to take the mats out to cover the carpets. Thems are new carpets, and it's a big lobby out there, I have to put down two sets. Takes twenty minutes to get them all placed just right. So I place the mats. Then at five, all them damn dogs have to go out. Let me tell you, those dogs make a mess when it rains."

  April took out her notebook and began writing in it. She had a lot of things on her mind now and let Woody do the talking.

  "How about telling us about Dr. Atkins," he said.

  "I was telling you." Ben gave Woody a dirty look, then leaned his shaggy white head April's way. April's nose twitched. The man smelled of sweat and stale beer. She hated beery breath on people who supplied information.

  The elevator bell rang. Ben ignored it.

  "The rain stopped at five-fifteen. By six-thirty I was thinking about taking the mats up. But I was starving. I thought I better wait to see if we were going to get some more. I went out on break for a sandwich. I go to that deli around the corner on Columbus. There's two, but I don't like the Korean one."

  "Stick to the facts. We don't need a novel," Woody grumbled.

  The bell rang a third time. The FedEx driver returned minus his package. Ben closed the doors and got the elevator moving again. He was in a bad mood now. "Cops. Who knows what they're after."

  April didn't comment. The FedEx driver didn't comment. Ben stopped on ten. Two uniformed maids speaking Spanish got on with four bulging bags of laundry. "Hola," they said to Ben, then continued a lively conversation as the elevator went down to the main floor. There, the FedEx driver took off without looking back.

  "Nobody gives a shit," Ben complained.

  The maids kept up a heated argument as the elevator continued down to the basement. When the doors opened, they hoisted the bags off the elevator still going at it. April felt a pang of sisterhood. The topic was lying, cheating hombres.

  The bell rang a few more times. Several floor numbers popped up. Ben closed the doors.

  "All we got here so far is a time frame. Let's finish up," Woody said.

  Ben gave him another dirty look and spoke to April. "You take this down. I don't want no trouble later. Here's the fucking time frame. I just came back from my break. I had a cup of coffee. I ate the sandwich. It was bologna on rye, four pickles."

  All the people waiting for the elevator upstairs leaned on their bells at once, but April didn't care. After the elevator man started treating her like a secretary, April lost her patience.

  "Just take us up to the lobby and leave the door closed until we're finished," she told him.

  Ben took the elevator up without a word, then went on as if there had been no interruption. "I ain't had time to drink the coffee when Dr. Atkins comes down the street. If you don't let me get these calls, I'm going to lose my job," he whined.

  "What time?" Woody asked.

  "Seven, I already told you it was just seven. I opened the front door for him. He went upstairs. I drank my coffee. A few minutes later he came out in shorts and took off."

  The bells sounded like a swarm of angry bees.

  "Then what?"

  Ben shrugged. "That's it."

  "What time did Dr. Atkins come back?"

  Ben scratched his cheek. "He didn't come back."

  "Are you sure?" Woody asked.

  "Of course I'm sure. No one gets in here unless I let them in."

  The swarm got angrier.

  "Can I do something about this?" Ben was getting desperate.

  April shook her head. "What about when you go to the bathroom?" she asked.

  "The door's locked. They have to wait. Just like now." He licked his lips.

  "So Dr. Atkins went out in his shorts. Did you see where he went?" Now Woody.

  "Of course I did. I watched him. He went across the street to the park. A girl was waiting for him. They spoke. They went into the park together. He didn't come back."

  "What did the girl look like?"

  "Real pretty. Black hair. Pink sweater. Tight pants. Looked like she might be a hooker." Ben smiled for the first time. "But you know girls these days. She might have been a debutante." He smirked some more.

  April glanced at Woody.

  "Did you ever see her before?" he asked.

  "Maybe." The phone in the elevator rang. Ben picked up and said, "No
problem, I'll be right there."

  April shook her head. No, you won't. "Did you ever see this girl go up to Dr. Atkins's apartment?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "How about a name?"

  "Nope."

  "Okay, that's it. You can let us out now."

  The elevator doors slid open. April and Woody crossed the lobby and went outside. At a little after ten, a full sun beat down. The chilly morning had become a brilliant day, summer all over again.

  "The park?" Woody said.

  April hesitated. Last night they'd been on a radio run when they'd gone into the park. Now was different. The park was not like any other precinct. It was almost another country. When she'd been in the Two-O, every time a detective or officer from another house stepped foot in the park, they'd had to notify the captain of the Park Precinct that they were working there. It was an ownership thing, a protocol thing.

  But, for the second time that day, she strayed off the straight and narrow. She nodded at Woody. He grinned, knowing they were in the wrong as they left their unit in front of Atkins's building and crossed Central Park West, heading to the place where the doorman said he'd last seen Maslow Atkins with a black-haired woman in a pink sweater. Possibly the girl on the phone, April thought.

  By all appearances the doctor had gone out to run in the park, met a girl, maybe changed his mind about

  Jason-or forgot about him-and gone to her place for the night. That was a nice clean possibility. A nastier one would be, he'd been mugged. The mugger wouldn't have gotten much of anything, though; Maslow had left his wallet at home. April made a quick connection with the 911 she and Woody had responded to last night. She frowned, thinking about it. They had to call the local emergency rooms and the other precincts to see if anybody had anything on it. She and Woody had reached the entrance to the park and went in.