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sinuses.
    Sai Woo, April’s mother, liked to tell the story of April’s birth to explain her daughter’s occupation, which was unlike those of any of her friends’ children. From the start of her life, Sai said, April had been difficult. She said April had resisted coming into the world, so her poor mother had to push her, push her out by force. When she finally emerged from the womb, April’s head was elongated like a squash, and her nose was badly twisted out of shape. She looked as if she smelled a really bad smell. That’s how April became suspicious, the reason she was a cop, Sai explained.
    To offset the bad omen of her resistance to life, April had been given the Chinese name Happy Thinking, just in case her head remained the shape of a squash. But even though she had grown up beautiful and smart, she was still disobedient in many ways. Insisted on always seeing things from the worst side, never the best. And refused to get married, have children, be happy.
    April held the receiver away from her ear. “No, ma’am, I already told you we can’t assign a police officer to a clogged toilet.”
    Unless the toilet happened to be stuffed with body parts that wouldn’t go down the drain. Briefly, April considered asking if that was the case here, then decided against it. Even in New York it didn’t happen that often.
    “You have to.” The woman wouldn’t give up. “The man downstairs is a maniac. If the water goes through the ceiling, he’ll come up here and kill me.”
    “Sounds like you should call a plumber right away.” The chili seed exploded and she sneezed, shaking her head just like the dog did when it was annoyed.
    The sneeze made April think of the dog. She had given it to her mother to divert Sai from her preoccupation with April’s unmarried state. The orphaned poodle puppy came from a case April had had several months before. A famous dog, it had been the only witness in two homicides. April had worried that her mother might not accept any creature that wasn’t Chinese, but after the case was closed, she went through all sorts of paperwork to get it anyway.
    Turned out to be worth the trouble. Even though the puppy wasn’t a Shih Tzu or Pekingese, the Chinese dogs of emperors, Sai had liked the poodle and solved her problem by making it Chinese. She gave it the name Dim Sum, which meant Touch the Heart Lightly. And immediately the strong-willed animal and its many needs took over all the attention in the house.
    The puppy had to be trained, had to have lots of toys and learn not to teethe on the furniture. Had to have special cooking. When Dim Sum arrived, she had weighed hardly three pounds and didn’t even know how to play. Now she was nearly six pounds of confident apricot-colored poodle that behaved like a tiger. Whenever Dim Sum was annoyed or impatient or angry, she shook her tiny head and sneezed hugely. Sai Woo, who had never had a moment of true enchantment in her life, was enchanted. And forgot about her daughter’s wasted childbearing potential.
    April sneezed again.
    “God bless,” Mike said.
    The woman on the other end of the phone line continued to scream. “Oh, my God, you should
see
it. I’m not kidding, Niagara Falls.”
    April giggled.
    “Are you telling me you’ll come only if I’m
dead?
Is
that
what you’re telling me?”
    “No, ma’am. I’m just telling you we can’t fix your toilet.”
    “Bitch!”
The woman slammed down the receiver with a crash.
    Finally, April glanced over at Mike, now innocently sitting at his desk with his back to her, a file open in front of him. Only a slight tightening of her lips betrayed her suspicion.
    She was a classic beauty with a delicate, oval face, expressive almond eyes, rosebud lips, swan neck, and willowy figure. She didn’t look like a cop.
    “Buenos días, querida,
” Mike said without turning around.
“¿Cómo estás?”
    Her lips tightened some more. She didn’t answer.
    He swiveled around. “What did
I
do?”