A Killing Gift Read Online Free PDF Page A

assault of her parents. But he had to come before anyone in the sizable Chinese extended family claimed by the Woos was up watching TV. They didn't have any actual blood relatives left, but the large circle of friends and acquaintances from the villages of another world called each other sisters and uncles and cousins and thought of themselves as such. This prodigious fake family watched the local news twenty-four/ seven, always on the lookout for trouble.
    Skinny Dragon Mother would never have forgiven Mike if she'd heard that April was in the hospital from someone who'd seen the story on the morning news. It was his job to tell her before anyone else. He'd let them sleep as long as possible, but he himself had pretty much worked all night.
    Mike had a reason for staying up all night. Alfredo Bernardino had been overweight and in poor condition. The attack on him was bad enough. But a second nearly fatal attack only a few minutes later on a black-belt champion in the middle of Washington Square added a few lethal details to the story. The killer was not just lucky. He was highly skilled and fearless. The man was a trained killer who could break a man's neck in the blink of an eye. Damn right he'd been up all night talking to Bernardino's children and getting organized.
    Now he wasn't in the mood to listen to Skinny Dragon Mother yell bloody murder at him in Chinese. Never mind that he was telling her April was fine. Skinny screamed so loud she woke her husband, Ja Fa Woo, a chef in a fancy Manhattan restaurant who'd just gone to sleep a few hours ago.
    Muttering in Chinese, he stumbled out of the bedroom wearing shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of Midtown North on it, April's precinct.
    Skinny, who was dressed in black pants and a thin padded jacket, spun around to her husband and screamed at him for a while. He screamed back. At least he could understand her. Mike didn't interrupt what sounded to him like a dogfight. Finally Ja Fa Woo acknowledged him.
    " 'Lo, Mike. What happen?" he asked.
    In the early days of their courting, whenever Mike came by to see April, her father used to lean over and spit on the ground. But now he bobbed his head in respect. Mike was an important man. Almost son, so he gave him an almost bow in the middle of his wife's tirade.
    Mike bowed back and went through the story again, because Skinny always got her facts mixed up.
    "Somebody dead?" Ja Fa asked.
    "Yes, somebody is dead. But not April." Some other cop. Her old boss. Mike left that out. "April is fine. Just a little shaken up."
    "Then why in hospital?" Ja Fa demanded.
    "Aieeeyee!" At the word
hospital
Skinny's wail went up again.
    "Something wrong?" Gao Wan, the Woo's upstairs tenant, padded into the kitchen. He, too, was wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
    Mike repeated his sanitized version of the story. The three of them conferred in Chinese while Mike stood there trying to reassure them. As expected, his worst fears were realized when they insisted that he drive them to St. Vincent's immediately because they had no other way of getting to the hospital fast enough to suit them, then drive them back to Queens when they were ready to come home.
    Mike nodded. "I'll get you there and back," he promised. Of course he would. And April would kill him for bringing them. With the Woos he couldn't win. Either the parents would be furious because he didn't do enough, or April would be furious because he did too much. Today, because he'd almost lost her, he would err on the doing too much.
    Mother, father, and tenant ended their discussion and disappeared to get dressed and collect important items for April. Immediate action for them took a long time. The minutes spun out into a very long wait. It was an hour and a half before they squeezed into his wheezing Camaro for the trip into Manhattan.

Seven
    B y two a.m. Thursday, April had been examined, X-rayed, and admitted for the night. But once she'd returned to life she was too wide-awake to calm down.