The woman shook her head. Grandmother wasn't saying. Nanci paused at the table with the teapot on it. "If you see my cousin, tell her I have her things. I'm sure she wants them back."
"What things, in case I hear?" the woman asked a second time.
"Would you ask around and call me?" Nanci didn't want to tell her.
The old woman's hard eyes traveled to Nanci's purse. Nanci had never bribed anyone before. The idea of having to do so now made her nervous. She groped around in her purse, trying to count her money without appearing to do so. It would cost her another fifteen dollars, at least, to get back to Long Island. How much could she afford to offer? She gave the woman a ten. Was that enough? Apparently it was. A glimmer of recognition showed in the woman's eye.
"Maybe I'll look around for you," the woman suggested. "Maybe she has important things? Maybe you'll give a reward for her?"
Nanci's mouth went dry. "Yes," she said. "I have a reward."
"My name Annie Lee. How much?" she demanded.
Nanci frowned. How much was enough to get results? Now she was really frightened. Milton would be so angry about all this. She closed her eyes. She asked herself how much she'd pay.
"A thousand dollars," she said finally. "A thousand dollars if you can tell me where my cousin is."
The grandma nodded. "I'll ask around. What's your number?"
Nanci gave her the number. Then she walked back, crossed Bowery, and cut around to Elizabeth. On Elizabeth she walked back and forth in front of the police station a dozen times, asking herself if she should go to the police. What if Lin had done something criminal? What if Nanci were now an accessory to some crime? What should she do? The police were so dangerous. Her old friend, April Woo, the only representative of the police she'd ever liked and respected, wasn't there anymore. Nanci had seen her only twice since April started working uptown—it now seemed like a hundred years ago—and they never spoke on the phone or had lunch anymore. In the end she was too frightened to go into the station house and ask for April's current work telephone number.
CHAPTER 11
L
ieutenant Iriarte had two characteristic expressions when things were not going welclass="underline" fury at those beneath him for messing up and detached regret for those above him who could remove his head for it. Right now his face displayed the latter. "Nothing," he said flatly.
At quarter past eight on Monday morning Captain Bjork Johnson, the commanding officer of Midtown North, aimed frosty blue eyes at April Woo, the so-called rising star of his detective squad. Johnson was a man who looked as if he ate a cow for dinner every night and hadn't done any form of exercise since the day he stopped walking a beat more than fifteen years ago. The lack of discipline implied by his large, soft midsection, undisguised by his captain's uniform, gave him a somewhat dangerous air. His cold stock-taking of April told her he didn't think any more of her than Iriarte did. She wished that she'd had more than an hour's sleep.
Captain McCarthy, Johnson's second whip in the precinct, sat on the other side of the room, pretending to confer with his computer while waiting for the right moment to enter the conversation. He gave April an encouraging smile that did not actually mean he was on her side. Captain Johnson's eyes, however, made no attempt at nice.
What do you have to say for yourself?
they demanded.
April glanced quickly at her immediate boss. Iriarte was holding himself together with a studied air of comfortable authority. He sat straight-backed but relaxed, with both well-shod feet in their almost-pointy Italian loafers planted on the ground, like the gentleman he knew he was. He wore a carefully pressed Harris tweed suit with a purple silk handkerchief in the breast pocket. Under the jacket was a powder-blue shirt with his monogram on one white cuff. He was Puerto Rican and proud of it. April was trying to develop a similarly confident style. She stood beside him, not too close, and tried to appear professional— neither meek like the classic Oriental woman whom men of all races seemed to think they could push around, nor defiant like the butch American feminists who couldn't ever let go of their grudges. Thus she hung on to her tightrope balancing act, nervous as usual and right on the edge of a headlong crash into abject and groveling.
She was a boss now, but still so twitchy about the responsibility she could hardly stand still. A police department was most on the line in the "B cases"—the ones involving bombs and babies. Things couldn't get more intense or high-profile than this. She knew the department had a very good record with this kind of thing. With snatchings, detectives almost always came up with a scenario and a suspect within thirty-six hours. Same story with abandonment cases—young mothers who left their babies in parks or doorways or Dumpsters, either dead or alive. The babies were discovered quickly, and usually someone came forward with information about the mother. Of course, there were cases where women gave birth in secret and did away with their babies without anyone's finding out because no one, not even their mothers or boyfriends, had known they were pregnant. Those were the real perfect murders, and there were no statistics on how many of
them
happened in a year.
April tried to breathe evenly while three brass challenged her as if she alone, of all the detectives working the case, had failed the mission. No baby had turned up in the night. The papers were full of it.
Finally, Iriarte nodded at her.
"We had over a hundred people out checking garbage cans in the area and searching in the park last night," she said. "We also had officers checking Dumpsters parked outside a construction site two blocks away from where the Popescus live. Came up with two dead cats, that's it."
Iriarte made a face.
"You have a possible scenario for us, Sergeant? You're a woman," Captain Johnson said.
"It's not the victim's biological baby, sir. I think the most likely scenario is he was abducted by a brother, father, even husband of the baby's mother. Even by Popescu himself," April said, ignoring the implicit snickers. "I don't think Heather Rose could have killed him."
She got a cold stare in return. "Why not?"
"First, she was beaten up. That means there had to be at least one other person involved. Second, the baby's stroller is missing."
Captain Johnson chewed the inside of his cheek. He didn't appear to understand the significance of the missing stroller. All he wanted to know was how to allocate the officers for the day. He glanced at McCarthy, then Iriarte.
"We know about the stroller. We didn't come up with anyone who saw it, sir," Iriarte told him.
April jumped out on a limb. "Our guess is that the missing stroller indicates the baby is still alive, and someone has him."
Johnson seemed to like the idea. It would be better for them if they could find the baby alive. However, he knew it would be a poor idea to slow down the search in case the baby's corpse was in the garbage somewhere and they lost it forever. It would be next to impossible to prosecute later without a body. He wasn't sure what the best policy was here. He didn't want anyone to think he wasn't proactive enough or, on the other hand, that he was too dependent on the judgment of his squad detectives. In cases like this the squad detectives were supposed to direct the investigation and advise him of what they needed. He was supposed to get the manpower and technical support together, either from his precinct or from others in the area. It had been his patrol officer, McMan, who'd called for special units yesterday. Major Cases had already overrun the detective squad and now that the case was looking a lot more like a kidnapping, the FBI wanted in, too. That meant even more people hanging around, getting in the way, and confusing the investigation. Iriarte was not a happy camper. Captain Johnson, with only a few months in this job, was clearly nervous. He addressed the more experienced Captain McCarthy.