CHAPTER TWOAt a quarter past eight, Detective Sergeant April Woo sat in the front seat of her unmarked gray Buick, irritably tapping her fingers on the dashboard. She noticed the light draining away, the sky deepening with the dark. The color right now would have been her absolute favorite blue if the rain hadn't left a slight fog clinging to the earth, muting the brightness. It was Tuesday, a turn-around tour for her. She'd be home in her bed by two and back on the job tomorrow morning at eight. By four tomorrow afternoon, her week of four and two would be over. Thursday and Friday she had off. She was looking forward to spending the time with her boyfriend, Sergeant Mike Sanchez, lately of the Homicide Task Force, and she hoped nothing would come up to alter her plans.
Woodrow Wilson Baum-a.k.a. Woody-the preppy-looking detective recently transferred from anticrime, whom she'd chosen to train and to drive her, happened to be her biggest annoyance at the moment. She was trying to get him to think more and drive better, but like many men, Woody was dedicated to resisting anything he didn't want to do. Just now he'd ground the car to a stop without warning at Columbus Avenue and Eighty-fourth Street and dashed into the Cuban restaurant on the corner. "I'll just run in for a sandwich. How about I get you some bu'uelos and a coffee?" Tempted, April didn't protest even though he was lying.
She knew perfectly well he was trying to make time with the owner's daughter, Isobel, whom he'd met while chasing a purse snatcher a few weeks ago in Times Square. In fact, Woody had unceremoniously knocked the young woman down. Isobel Leon, twenty-five, slim, well-proportioned, luscious lips, long dark hair, a paralegal, had been in line to buy tickets for Lion Kingwhen he'd crashed into her. For Baum, who was a good-looking guy but hadn't had a date in many months, it was a case of love at first smite. It so happened that Isobel helped out at her father's restaurant at night, hence Baum's sudden interest in Cuban food. If the Columbia Café had been in Baum's precinct it would have been designated a "Corruption Prone Location." Cops were not allowed to frequent businesses in the precincts where they worked. As his supervisor, April was extremely cognizant of all department rules.
Romance, though frowned upon in crime-related matters, was not exactly at issue here since they were not in prohibited territory. Still, he was lingering and she wanted to get back on the job. Sergeant April Woo was the second-in-command in the detective squad of Midtown North, the precinct covering the west side of Manhattan, Forty-second Street to Fifty-ninth Street from the Hudson River to Fifth Avenue. It was a prestigious area encompassing the big office buildings and corporate headquarters on Sixth Avenue, the big hotels on Sixth and Seventh, the theater district and the Times Square area, Hell's Kitchen, Theater Row on West Forty-second Street, and Rockefeller Center. It was not a hot-button area in terms of violent crimes, but there was a fair amount of pickpocket activity and robberies in the stores. This area was one of the great magnets of New York, frequented by all the tourists who came to town. As such, it was a high-visibility precinct, carefully monitored. April was the only woman in the unit, foisted on her Puerto Rican boss as a political favor.
The lieutenant disliked La China Famosaand was not so patiently waiting for an opportunity to disgrace and unload her. Tonight April was sitting in an unmarked unit in her old precinct, the Two-O, acting as a detective supervisor covering the wider area called Manhattan North because a high-profile rape on a yacht anchored at the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin was occupying much of the detective squad from the Two-O as well as her own commanding officer, who'd taken a run uptown to join the party. On the Upper West Side, aside from the rape, th.