The Silent Bride (39 page)

"You brought this scandal on me with that terrible wife of yours," she cried. "I could kill you with these two hands." She pushed him, knocking him against the corner of the table. The hard edge bit into the backs of his thighs. Tang was little, but she was strong. Kim's brain felt thick. What was she talking about?

"You wicked toad!" she cried, pushing, pushing.

He wasn't a toad. Not wicked. Everything he did was for her. He loved her, wanted her to protect him and love him like his mother used to. "What did I do?"

Her hot breath was in his face as she pushed him, hurting the bruises where the broom hit him yesterday. He could smell her perfume in her clothes, stale coffee and garlic in her mouth.

"Get out of here now. You have one minute. If you aren't out of this room in one minute, I'll throw you out that window. Don't think I can't. I'm so angry I could kill you. I hope you die a terrible death!"

He looked at her blankly. Throw him out the window? After all the things he'd done for her?

"And don't leave anything of yours behind. Do you hear me? Just get your things and get out now. There is a police detective here to talk to you."

He couldn't figure out what she was saying. His feelings were too hurt by the tone of her voice. He was just a sewer, but he had feelings. Get out! How could he get out? He had gowns to finish. He had things to do. People counted on him. No one could fit a gown the way he could; Tang said so herself.

"I have to fit Ching Ma Dong's gown. She's waiting for me."

"She is not waiting for you. The police are waiting for you. You don't belong here." Suddenly a funny look came over Tang's face and she slapped him hard.

Kim had seen Tang do that once before to a young saleswoman who'd made a mistake and given someone a fifty-percent discount on a dress that hadn't been on sale. The customer walked out with it, and later when Tang heard about the incident, she slapped the girl's face, then fired her on the spot. That's how he knew Tang really wanted him to go. His cheek stung with the insult. But his heart was where he really took the blow. He'd been so kind to her. He'd worked so hard and been so loyal, he didn't expect it.

"Meet the police
outside the building.
Do you hear me! And don't ever come anywhere near me again." She turned her back on him and walked out of the room.

He stood there alone in the workroom for a second, stunned and almost expecting Tang to come back and tell him she was sorry. Then he felt ashamed that Tang had treated him like a girl and trembled with the thought of telling Clio he'd lost his job.

Clio would just yell at him and tell him how much he owed her even though he'd paid for the wedding, the ring, and the party. And he'd made her dress. But she thought he owed her thousands and thousands more. It made him sick to think of her screeching at him now for losing his job.

Kim did not want to meet the detective outside the building. He wanted to run away. He took the elevator to the basement, thinking that maybe he shouldn't go back to Clio's house in Queens. He got off the elevator and slipped up the back stairs to street level and exited the building from the back door. There, a narrow common area was shared by several buildings. He entered the building two doors down. It was a gallery with a back patio. The back door was open, and no one stopped him as he walked through. On Madison Avenue the sun was shining. He put on his sunglasses and quickly looked both ways. He froze, terrified for a second. A limo with a driver leaning against it. The driver was watching the shop door. April Woo, the cop he'd seen several times before, was talking with Ching, Tang's friend. The policewoman was pointing at a man standing on the roof of the building. Kim turned quickly and walked the other way.

Fifty-five

April, I am not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on." Ching had planted herself on the curb by the car. Ever since she was a little girl she got upset when plans were changed.

"Okay, see that guy on the roof?" April pointed up.

"Uh-huh. So?"

"He's a cop. Just get out of the way. We're going to take someone in for questioning."

"Really?" Ching's eyes opened wide. Now she was going to see April be a cop. Her face told April this was something new and excidng. "Somebody from here?" she asked.

"Yes, and it's going to take a while. So you might as well head back to your office."

"Hey, why is Kim running down there?" Ching pointed at a man sprinting around the corner.

April spun around. "Where?"

"He was there a minute ago. I'm sure it was Kim."

"Looked like a girl to me," Detecdve Fray said.

"Go after him," April told him angrily. "I'll check inside."
Shit!
She didn't like losing both the suspect and face in front of Ching.

Fray took off at a run, and April radioed Grant on the roof to come down and go through the building with her. "I thought I told you to watch the back," she accused Grant, who was hanging over the roof, gawking.

His voice crackled back. "I'm on my way."

April's face burned.
Shit.
"Don't say anything," she warned Ching. "Just don't say a word."

Ching raised her hands. She wasn't going to say anything.

Face still burning, April disappeared into the building and went through all six floors thoroughly She didn't come out for a long time. When she did, Ching was still waiting there, leaning against the Ford with her face soaking up the sun.

"Hi," she said. "Any luck?"

April shook her head, disgusted with herself. She'd been too busy trying to be polite to Tang, trying to be a big shot to Ching. And couldn't even hang on to her witness.
Stupid.
This was what happened when friends were involved.
Shit.
"There's a back way. He must have used it."

"I don't think Kim is a killer," Ching said, as if she thought April's whole operation was nuts.

"Asking people what they know is not assuming they're killers." Shit, her sister-cousin thought she was an asshole. And maybe she was. She stopped to call in a BOLO from the radio in the car. Be-on-the-lookout-for. She gave a description of Kim: Asian male, five-one. Wearing a white shirt and black trousers.

"Sorry, Ching. You can go now."

"Thanks for everything," Ching said dryly.

Preoccupied, April and her two detectives got in their cruiser and drove around for an hour, looking for Kim in the hope that he was still in the area. When they didn't find him, they figured he'd gone down into the subway. And for all they knew, by now he could be anywhere.

Mike caught up with April at one o'clock on Madison and Fifty-ninth. She left the two detectives in their Ford, and got into Mike's Crown Vic. He handed over a wedding photo of Kim and Clio, and April studied it, cursing in Chinese because she didn't want to let her mood out in English.

"Don't say anything," she warned.

"How about I fill you in?"

"Okay, fill me in." She was pretty dejected, but as usual, he was not one for casting blame.

"FAS has confirmed a .22 rifle was used in both shootings. In Tovah's, the killer used both hollow-points and regular bullets. Both were found on the scene. For Prudence only the lighter load."

"Same gun?" April asked.

"Same for the light load."

Hollow-points could rarely be matched, since they exploded on impact. "Why the two kinds of bullets?"

"Maybe the gun was already loaded with hollow-points," Mike speculated. "And the shooter just added bullets, didn't know the difference."

"If the gun was stolen, that could explain Wendy's print on the casing," April said. "You said you found something interesting at Kim's place."

"Yes, a manual for making homemade silencers. It was Wendy's. Her name was in the flyleaf."

"Aw, jeez. She's in deep. What are we thinking? Wendy's gun. Wendy's print. Wendy's silencer. Wendy is the shooter. No?"

"Unclear. Wendy's at home, hasn't moved. The squirrel took off when you cornered him. What does that tell you?"

April didn't want to speculate. Tang had been completely surprised that Kim left without talking to them. Everyone said he was a gentle guy. Gentle and sweet. It was time to bring in the wife. Get Clio on the screen, see what she had to say.

"What did the DAs say? We can get Wendy on felony murder no matter what, right?" she said.

Mike was heading over to Lexington. "We'll have to see how much she'll squeal. Wendy's still the center of the wheel."

"We're going to Wendy's, I take it?" April was hungry, didn't want to admit it. Lunchtime. Guess they didn't have time to stop for lunch.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Right." She turned her attention to the wedding photo of Kim and Clio.

The first thing she noticed about the photo was the quality of Clio's dress. It was a stunner, as elaborate as one might expect from a groom who could copy a Tang Ling. And Clio herself was a beautiful woman. Slightly taller than her husband, with almond eyes like a cat's, she seemed very pleased with her catch.

Kim, on the other hand, looked very young, and handsome in a soft kind of way In the photo, taken three years ago, he had punky gelled hair and was wearing a white suit. His sweet face was turned toward the bride, and he seemed to be smiling at the bouquet of pink roses clutched to her bosom. The half profile gave April a view of a child-sized ear, and she cursed some more.

Fifty-six

W
endy Lotte didn't answer her door when April and Mike rang her bell at one-twenty. The officers in charge of surveilling her maintained that she had not left the building since she'd arrived home early Sunday morning, but April was badly shaken after losing Kim Simone and didn't trust anybody's certainty about anything. There wasn't an elevator to a garage in this building, but maybe there were other ways out.

Sdll, Wendy had to have been exhausted. She could just be sleeping it off. April was wound tight as they stood there in the hallway waiting for her to rouse herself and come to the door. Five minutes passed. Mike tried her phone. Only voice mail answered. A gentle
ding-dong
sounded over and over. April felt the stillness inside the apartment as she kept her finger on the bell.

When a person was at home and the place was this quiet, something could be wrong. She glanced at Mike. The deep furrow between his eyes meant his thoughts were running on the same track. Saturday night, the last time they'd seen Wendy, she'd been feisty as hell, strangely unconcerned about her print on the spent cartridge that killed Tovah Schoenfeld.

Neither Mike nor April had pegged her for a suicide risk at that time. She could have crashed and done something stupid when she got home, or she could be a heavy sleeper.
Let it be that,
April prayed. Drunks were hard to rouse.
Let it be that.

"Shit," Mike muttered.

"You want me to get the super?" she asked.

He nodded tensely. He could have tried his hand at the locks, but there were two of them, one a Medeco. It would take him a while. April was the one who'd lost Kim, so he gave her something useful to do.

A few minutes later, she returned with a worried young man who didn't speak much English but knew enough to unlock the door and get out of the way. The smell alone was chilling. It was clear that Wendy had been doing some pretty heavy drinking in the last thirty-eight hours. The lights were on, and even from the front door several empty large bottles of Gordon's vodka could be seen in the living room. One was upended on the sofa; one sat on the cocktail table.

A third bottle lay on its side on the rug. Quite a bit must have spilled out when it went over, because the room smelled as if a lit match would send it up. A loop in an electrical cord beside the sofa suggested that someone might have tripped over it. The lamp attached was shattered. Other things had been destroyed, too. Shards from many pieces of broken china made a blue and white abstract on the kitchen floor. The whole apartment was torn apart.