The Big Killing (19 page)

Zabar’s on a Friday night. Not the best time to try to rush in and out. There were three limousines double-parked in front. She could remember when Zabar’s was just a small neighborhood fancy deli-grocery, with pots and pans and kettles and gadgets hanging from the ceiling. Now it had tripled its size, adding prepared foods and salads and knishes, fresh cookies, a chocolate shop, many more unique breads and rolls, and a second floor that undersold every housewares shop in the world. People came to New York City now with the request to see Zabar’s, as if it were a landmark like the Statue of Liberty.

She took a number from the machine near the cheeses: 99. The number on the light box was 80.

She walked around the aisle of prepackaged cheeses, looking at the different types from all over the world, and picked up a soft, creamy French brie. There was no prewrapped Royal Province with peppers, so she would have to kill time until her number was called.

Kill time
.
More death words
, she thought, as she went to get the coffee, which was now in the renovated addition of the store. Here were the coffee beans, big wooden barrels full, set in a semicircle. The grinders were all going full speed. Although they didn’t give numbers here because the lines were usually shorter, that was not the case tonight and she would have to wait. But in general, people on the coffee line were polite and didn’t push. She wondered if coffee drinkers were less hostile. The cheese people were impatient, and the fish and meat people were often pushy, even angry.

The two coffee clerks were moving in almost a syncopated rhythm, filling the treated paper bags with beans, tossing the scoops back into the burlap sacks in the barrels with a soft
whoosh-swoosh
. The smell of ground coffee was intoxicating.

It was almost another fifteen minutes before she walked back through the rear of the store and into what had once been the main store, passing the hot and cold foods, pasta salads on her left and the smoked and other fish counter on the right, walking to the front, toward the cash registers, alongside of which were the breads, rolls of infinite variety. The croissants, muffins, and scones were piled up on trays on the counters next to the rugalach, which were not always available. There were long lines at each register.

“We have a special, ladies and gentlemen, on croissants tonight, sixty cents each. Take some home with you for tomorrow’s breakfast,” the metallic voice over the speaker urged. She took four.

She was beginning to feel the strain of the day. She half-wished Dr. Rick wouldn’t come, so she could just put her body into bed and forget about the last two days.

Wetzon, you dopes
she chided herself.
There are no men in your life, and here’s this adorable doctor who likes you, and all you want is to be alone. You should have your head examined.

A sharp breeze had sprung up when she left Zabar’s. Fewer people were on the darkened street and those were hurrying home to dinner. There was a line at the Loew’s theater complex for the seven o’clock show.

On the corner of Eighty-third Street and Broadway she stopped at the Burger King and bought two coffees, with three sugars each, to go. It might be too late, and Sugar Joe was probably already under his blanket at the bus stop on Eighty-sixth Street, but she owed him the coffee because she’d missed him for the last two days.

She walked up Broadway, balancing her briefcase and the paperbag with the hot coffee in one hand, the small Zabar’s shopping bag in the other, and her shoulder bag on her shoulder, the strap of which kept slipping off because she had both hands occupied. Her open raincoat flapped in the wind, catching at her legs.

“Hi, Joe, sorry I missed you,” she said, bending to place the hot coffee next to what she decided was the head of the blanket-shrouded body. As usual, no movement, no evidence that anything was alive under there. She straightened up. There was a faint grunt from the blanket. “Good night, Joe,” she said softly, mostly to herself, and headed across the street.

At this time of day, particular to this time of year, when daylight vanished all too quickly, leaving a certain rawness in the air, a peace-filled silence settled over the City. Shops were closed, grillwork up, streets emptied, children were home at dinner; yuppies were either not home from offices or home and preparing to go out to dinner. Traffic and noise in all of the City’s middle-class neighborhoods faded gradually. Wetzon loved this special quality of New York. It was as if the magnificent machine that was New York wound down and literally came to a rest for a short time before the crew of the night shift came on.

Right now, as grateful as she was for the stillness, her thoughts moved inexorably back to Barry Stark and the ultimate stillness of his death.

A giant crane stood at the far side of the avenue where a building was under construction, surrounded by the usual on-site clutter: dumpsters, a concrete mixer, stacks of bricks and cinderblocks, and an assortment of large black metal drums. The deep shadows of unfamiliar objects were reflected in the hazy light from the street lamps.

Her shoulder bag slipped off her shoulder again as she was crossing to the north side of Eighty-sixth Street, shifting her center of balance. Her abstraction was pierced by a peculiar, hollow cry that echoed distortedly, bouncing off the sightless glass windows of Lichtman’s Bakery on the southwest corner of Eighty-sixth and Amsterdam.

“Out—out—out—
out!
”

She pivoted, catching a whiff of a familiar scent, and something tore at her coat. A sharp blow on her side from another direction winded her, spun her out of control, rendering her unable to scream, and threw her across the avenue. Her instincts all the while messaged her to relax, relax in flight, for she was flying, no brakes, no help. She rolled over and over in the dirt and refuse, slamming into something solid.

Stunned, tangled in the raincoat and shoulder strap of her handbag, she half-crawled toward the dull light. Her hair had come loose and was hanging in her eyes. Had she been mugged? Is this what it was like? She looked up cautiously from her crouching position to get her bearings. She was half under the construction crane. Dirty, filthy, torn hose. Awful mess. Car horns blaring.

On her knees now, in the distorted shadows cast by the streetlights and car headlights, she saw what appeared to be two figures dancing grotesquely in the middle of Amsterdam Avenue. Rigid, breathless, she watched in horror as one of the dark figures separated from the other, arms raised skyward. The streetlight caught on something, glinted, something in the hand, coming down hard on the other figure. She heard a short cry, like that of a small animal in pain, and then a gurgling sound, as if someone was choking. One of the figures broke away and ran toward Broadway. The other figure, spinning briefly, staggered, then toppled over in the street. Traffic was at a standstill. An oncoming bus came to a shuddering halt. The cabdriver behind the bus hit his horn, adding it to the others. From the shadows, people began to gather.

Moving with bruised precision, like Coppelia, Wetzon pulled herself up, trying to grasp what had happened. Her briefcase lay with the torn Zabar’s bag in front of the crane. She must have held on tightly until the last moment. She was missing a shoe.

The avenue was alive with voices, horns, lights, people. Limping, holding her purse by its long strap, she wove her way to the front of the group of people and saw the crumpled body of a man lying on the street. His long white hair fanned out over the pavement. Someone in uniform, a doorman from one of the adjacent buildings, bending over him, cried, “He was mugged, he was mugged!”

“Terrible,” someone said.

“Ordinary people can’t go out at night anymore.”

Approaching him, Wetzon took off her raincoat, rolled it up, and slipped it under the fallen man’s head. She didn’t know if he was alive, but his eyes, in a long, cavernous face, were closed. The last two dead people she had seen had open eyes.
My God
, she thought,
where am I? Am I
having a nightmare
? She straightened up, confused, and limped back to the crane. Where were the paramedics? She crawled around on her hands and knees looking blindly for her shoe; then, not finding it, she picked up her briefcase and what was left of the Zabar’s bag and walked the short distance to her building.

Javier, the night doorman, was standing in front peering behind her, toward Amsterdam Avenue. “What—” he started. He stared at her as if she were an apparition.

“Quick, Javier, call the police,” she cried. “Someone was just mugged. He’s lying in the middle of the street.” Javier hesitated, then raced to the phone at the back of the lobby.

Then a new sound, the
putt-putt
of a Honda, came west across Eighty-sixth Street. The Honda pulled up directly in front of her—it was Rick.

A sharp cry rose from someone in the small crowd gathered at Amsterdam and Eighty-sixth.

“What’s going on?” Rick asked, turning off the motor and unloading a big shopping bag. “What happened to you?”

“Not me, Rick, hurry, someone’s been mugged. Can you see—”

He dropped the shopping bag unceremoniously at her feet. “Wait here,” he ordered, and raced to the corner.

The Zabar’s bag, her briefcase, everything she was holding slipped out of her hands without her being aware. A siren sounded and then two blue-and-whites sped past her, screeching to a stop on the corner.

Wetzon leaned awkwardly against the door of her building, wondering why she couldn’t straighten her body. She was listing to the side. Oh, she had lost a shoe. She took off the remaining one. That was better. From where she stood she could see the rolling police lights bouncing off storefronts and an eerie yellowish reflection in the dark sky. The crowd was strangely mute. Car and bus noises had subsided. Traffic was probably being detoured.

Another siren shrieked and a white emergency medical truck came up Amsterdam and pulled up beside the two police cars. Helplessly, she felt herself being drawn back to the accident, unaware that she was shoeless. There was something she was trying to remember ... before she was pushed. She caught the thought and held it. Pushed? Had the mugger—

Rick emerged from the crowd and walked toward her, slowly.

“Rotten business,” he said, shaking his head, putting his arm around her.

“What was it? Is he all right?”

“No, he’s dead. What happened to you?” He was looking her over professionally.

“I don’t know. I got caught in it, I guess. It was almost me. I think I was ... someone pushed me out of the way. Who was the man? Do you know who he was?”

“A derelict. Apparently he slept in the bus stop on Amsterdam and Eighty- sixth. Someone recognized him.”

Wetzon felt sick. She couldn’t breathe. “Oh, no. Sugar Joe.”

“Sugar Joe? You knew him?”

“Yes. He liked his coffee with a lot of sugar,” she said, distraught. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. Who would have wanted to kill him? He didn’t hurt anybody. I’ve been bringing him coffee....” Her voice broke. “Why would anyone want to kill him?”

“Who knows? There are some really crazy people out there. Come on, babe, let’s go upstairs. I want to get a better look at you. I think you’ve had enough for today. Listen to your doctor.” Rick picked up the shopping bag and, bracing her with one arm, led her to the elevator.

Javier followed with her briefcase and the shopping bag, handing it to her as she got on.

“Hey, what’s this?” Rick was staring at the back of her jacket. “How did this happen?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know,” she said wearily. “I felt something and then someone hit me or pushed me—”

“This is bad stuff,” he said, putting down the shopping bag and inspecting her back. “Your coat was slashed—this isn’t a tear. This was done with a knife. But it’s only the coat that’s cut. You were lucky.” He ran his hand gently down her back.

She collapsed against him, and it felt good. He was wearing a crisp, freshly laundered blue shirt under his jacket, and his body was hard and fit. He smelled of antiseptic. Clean and pure. She needed that right now. She couldn’t stop shivering. He pressed the Up button and the elevator door opened.

“How was he killed, Rick?” she asked, unable to let go of it.

“The last question about this?” He looked down at her sternly.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I promise.” But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to think about it.

He kept his arm around her and pressed 12. He hesitated for a moment. “He was stabbed,” Rick said.