The Silent Bride (40 page)

"Jesus." The super moved farther from the door.

April went in first, stepping over a broken teacup whose pattern she'd recognized a week ago as the famous Chinese Willow. Mike followed in her footsteps. The quiet after what must have been quite a storm was eerie and sad. It was the kind of scene where one expected to find the worst and found it. There was blood in Wendy's office. It was smeared on the walls and stained the carpet. There was blood on her pink quilt and on her pillow. A lot of blood on the floor of her closet, along with piles of her clothes, as if she had tried to get dressed before she died. They found her lying on the floor of her bathroom awash in a pool of vile-smelling vomit and clotting blood. They immediately called 911.

Three hours later they were sitting with Inspector Bellaqua at a table for four in the back of the Metropolitan, across the street from the puzzle palace. At five P.M. the day tour was over and the place was filling up with off-duty cops. Bellaqua was nursing a diet Coke, her eyes punchy with dismay at all the things that had gone wrong in a single day and the fact that two of her detectives had played a part in the worst of it.

"He did what?" she said of Mike Fray, who hadn't been able to tell the difference between a boy's back and fanny and a girl's.

"Kim's small. He's good-looking," April murmured.

Bellaqua studied the wedding photo. "Fray said he walks with a wiggle. Jesus. What about that silencer book you found, Mike?"

"It has Wendy's name in it," he said, noncommittal. They were all noncommittal as hell.

"How about Wendy?"

"She's lost a lot of blood. The place looked like a slaughterhouse. Ever seen an alcoholic hemorrhage? It's not a pretty sight. In her case everything went at the same time: esophagus, stomach lining. Just burned out by the booze. She had blood pouring out from everywhere. And she was so out of it she probably didn't even know how sick she was. She could have died if we hadn't come along," Mike said.

"Is she talking?"

"Uh-uh." April felt bad. They'd stayed in the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital for several hours waiting for word to come in. None had come. Finally they'd had to leave before finding out if she'd been stabilized. A uniform was posted at the hospital now, watching out for her.

Bellaqua sighed at the day gone bad. Then she picked up the wedding photo of Kim and Clio.

"I'll get this made up and we'll get Kim's face out there, all over TV. We'll get him."

"Good." Mike slapped the table and got up. He and April were heading out to Queens in case Kim had gone home.

Fifty-seven

S
oon after Kim left Tang's shop, he put on his blue Hawaiian shirt in the men's room of a coffee shop near the Lexington Avenue subway. He put on his baseball hat and his sunglasses. He felt bad and needed to make a new friend. The empty place inside of him filled up when he made friends. He wanted to tell someone how Tang Ling had mistreated and misunderstood him, how she'd thrown him out like a stupid salesgirl.

Around Hunter College he looked over the students. Nobody gave him a second glance. The empty place inside him hurt as he got on the subway and traveled one stop south to Fifty-ninth Street. He had a handgun, but it made a lot of noise and wasn't one he could use for anything. The one he liked was in the Dumpster a block over on Fiftieth Street. He approached the street with high hopes because he could see that the Dumpster was still there. The only problem was that now it was piled much higher with rubble from a renovation going on there. A construction crew was dumping more stuff in it, raising a cloud of dust from crumbling chunks of old plaster. He couldn't get anywhere near where he'd dropped the black garbage bag on Saturday. He walked back and forth a few times but didn't get any attention from the men on the crew. He was hoping someone would talk to him, help him recover that garbage bag, but gave up after a little while when no one did.

With his glasses on and his shirt dapping around his hips, he started walking downtown on Lexington. The bar where he danced somedmes and picked up men was on Broadway in the Forties. He didn't get that far. At Fifty-sixth Street through the window of the Shamrock Inn, he saw Tang Ling on a big TV screen over the bar.

Immediately he knew that Tang had gone on TV as a way to speak to him. He knew her temper, knew that she was sorry about the way she had treated him. Kim was sure Tang Ling had a special feeling for him and was not really mad. He did not think he'd done anything bad. What happened happened, like the rain falling, like the water rising, like bad feeling and killing everywhere. People were killed all the time. Six thousand people at once. Bodies were everywhere. Two, three, four little angels were nothing.

Excited to see Tang on TV, Kim went into the bar and sat down on an empty stool to look at her and to hear what she had to say. Tang was not a beautiful woman, not like Clio. But she was so famous. She could be on TV whenever she wanted. On TV she was wearing the gray suit and her magnificent pearls she'd been wearing when she hit him. He studied her hair. It was no longer black like it used to be. It was getting redder every month. Now it was almost the color of red wine. On TV Tang had her glasses on. She looked serious, reading from a piece of paper.

"The viciousness of these murders of young women at the very start of their lives has personally touched and horrified me," she was saying.

The sound was low, so Kim had to lean forward to hear her.

"At Tang Ling, we feel we can't stand by without offering our support. It is for this reason that I personally have set up a fund of ten thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest of the coward responsible for these unspeakably cruel crimes. Thank you." She put the paper down.

The person interviewing her started asking questions, but Kim couldn't understand what Tang was saying. All he could see was the sign in front of her. A sign in the shape of a check with the words on it: TANG LING, LTD., OFFERS $10,000 REWARD FOR ARREST OF THE BRIDE KILLER.

"I won't rest until I see the coward punished," she said.

The bartender finally came over. "What'll you

have?"

Feeling all alone in the world and sadly misunderstood, Kim hugged his carryall and shook his head.

Fifty-eight

C
lio's car was in the driveway. A yellow Saturn.

Mike pulled in behind it, and April felt a warning jab from the ghost, Trouble, that sometimes burrowed in her stomach. She was still queasy from Wendy's thirty-six-hour crisis—the sick and threatened woman all alone and drinking herself to death. Maybe on purpose, but maybe not. Now this innocent-looking two-family house with the dog inside barking its head off. Trouble everywhere.

Mike killed the engine. April was doing her calculations. There were two of them in the car with four guns between them and no wish to die. There were possibly two people in the house and no telling how many guns. If Kim was there, she didn't want him either to shoot or run again.

"Plan?" she said.

Before Mike could answer, the front door opened, and the woman from the wedding photo stepped outside alone. Clio Alma had long, straight hair, all one length, red lips. She was wearing a beige linen dress that showed off her well-rounded figure. Her lovely face was annoyed, not frightened or anxious.

"You can't park there," she said. Matter-of-fact.

Mike and April got out of the car at the same time, holding up their gold shields. "Clio Alma?" Mike took the lead.

"Yes?"

"I'm Lieutenant Sanchez. This is Sergeant Woo from the police department. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Is this about my husband?" she asked with a tense smile.

The two cops walked up the cement path. She stood in front of the door. "I can tell you he's all mixed up sometimes and doesn't always know what he's doing, but I'm fine. Everything's fine now. Nothing to worry about." She didn't want them to come in.

"Is your husband here now, Mrs. Alma?" April asked.

Clio gave her a sharp look. "I told you, everything's fine. We don't need you here." She tried to get back inside and close the door, but Mike's foot got in the way.

"We'd like to come in for a few minutes. It won't take long."

"Who called you, my tenant?" she demanded. "She's a liar; you can't believe anything she says."

"No, your tenant didn't call us. We're investigating two homicides. We're here to talk about that."

"Homicides!" Clio's fine eyebrows shot up. The distress in her voice caused the dog at her feet to start barking frantically. "I don't know anything about that. I told them before."

"Who did you tell?"

"The policeman who came here last week."

"Did you know there was another murder since then?"

"No .. . Maybe I heard something. I don't know."

She put her hand to her forehead as if trying to remember.

"Let me help you. Two young women, clients of Tang Ling, have been shot and killed," April told her.

"He's not here," she said quickly. "He's not here. Look for yourself." She shook her head, opened the door wider, and retreated into the living room, where she picked up her barking dog. "Shh," she told it. Unlike Dim Sum, the dog quieted instantly.

April entered the house, thinking fast in case Kim was really was there and she had to deck him. Stairs to the left. Click. Living room to the right. Click. In the back the kitchen, linoleum surfaces all clean and tidy. Wall-to-wall carpet, commercial grade. Sofa and recliner, stack of glossy magazines on the coffee table in the living room. Click. Nothing much on the walls. Home sweet home to Kim Simone. She prayed he was there and made a fast tour of the downstairs. Mike took the stairs two at a time and came down two minutes later shaking his head. April flipped the light switch for the basement, and they went down together. Nothing there either. When they returned to the living room, Clio was sitting on the sofa with the dog on her lap. Her pretty mouth sulked. "Too much trouble," she said.

"Your husband?" April went to the front window and looked out. Two officers were in a Con Ed van opposite. It was still light, and the street was quiet, except for some young roller boarders practicing on a curb.

"Yes. He's like a child. Sometimes he disappears. I don't know where he is." She heaved a sigh.

"On May ninth, Sunday a week ago, he delivered a gown to Riverdale and dressed Tovah Schoenfeld just before she was shot to death." April left the window and stood in front of her.

After the letdown of no Kim where she'd wanted him to be, her heartbeat finally began to slow. All the way out in the car, she'd been so full of hope that he'd be there. She'd prayed that he'd be there and more than half expected him to fall out of a closet, like a ghost in a funhouse.

Clio nodded. He'd delivered Tovah's gown and dressed her.

"You drove him there in your car?"

"He doesn't have a driver's license," she said, putting her face in the dog's soft fur.

"Did you drive him there and wait for him?" April asked.

Clio stroked the dog, hiding her lips in the dog's black fur, lowering her eyes.

"Did you use your car to drive to work?" April asked.

"No," she said softly.

"But you went to work that day, Mrs. Alma."

"No."

'Yes, you did. I spoke to your employer a few minutes ago. She told me they had a family party on May ninth. And you were there all morning, cooking." April struck a chord.

"I don't remember what day." Clio's eyes were in the dog's fur. "Maybe. I cook many parties for them."

"I understand. I get confused by dates, too. But we can straighten all this out. Did you know that Kim was driving your car to Riverdale?"

"No."

"Did you know when he returned?"

"No. I told you. As far as I know he didn't take the car."

"Why did you tell the detective that you drove him?" April asked softly.