To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (14 page)

I nodded. Inwardly, I cursed her considered Eastern manner and my own wild Western impatience. I remembered my mother playing her own vocal devil’s advocate as she walked around the house. So did my grandmother. At least I was keeping those contrarian voices on the inside.

“Ms. Katz, how did the
sifu
seem to you?”

“Very, very happy,” I said.

“Do you have any idea why?”

“I assumed it was the ceremony—but it could have been just being down here, alive. It could have been meeting a fellow New Yorker. It could have been all of the above. All I know is that he put me at ease.”

She smiled very, very faintly. “He was like that with most people. Was he wearing his wedding ring?”

That was a surprising question. I had to think about that. “I don’t know,” I said. “Was there any reason he wouldn’t have been wearing it?”

“He always took it off for class lest someone be hurt or one of the punching bags torn. In skilled hands it can be—what do you call them? The hard fittings placed on fingers to hit people?”

“Brass knuckles,” I said, sounding like I’d walked out of a John Garfield movie.

“Yes, brass knuckles. Sifu often forgot to put it back on. He usually kept it here.” She pointed to the arm on a trophy.

“I understand. But the ring is on his finger now, right?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive my asking, but what made you ask?”

“Vanity,” she said. “I liked to know that he was thinking of me when he was out.”

I wondered if maybe he didn’t take it off to fight but to conceal the fact that he was married. It wasn’t like men had never done that before. It was the international sign of “cad.” I wondered if Mrs. Chan had wondered that too. Or maybe there was another reason. Who knew what confused thinking lurked in the minds of men?

The woman took a long breath with her hands in front of her, slightly cupped, as though they were riding the outside of an inflating balloon. It was like everything was ritualized. Or, more likely, it was a way of life I didn’t understand. I began to see why outsiders—and some insiders—thought Orthodox Jews were incomprehensible and a little scary. What looked like eccentricities and tics were vital ritual neatly and unobtrusively threaded into the fabric of their lives.

“Do you see the article on the wall?” she asked. She pointed to the printout.

“Yes.”

“Three months ago the
sifu
judged a kung fu competition in Memphis,” she said softly. “His vote broke a tie, and the trophy was awarded to a bright young martial artist named Chingmy Mui. Though she attends a school in Memphis, she has visited here many times. The runner-up in that contest was a young man named Donnie Li from a school in Knoxville. It is not a part of our teaching to take defeat as a humiliation but as a lesson that we need to improve. Yet there are many who view a loss to a woman as a loss of face. Before the day was out, the Li family had begun to spread a rumor that my husband was involved in a relationship with Ms. Mui.”

“May I ask . . . was it true?”

She did not reply.

“You know it was the Li family who spread the rumor?” I asked.

“There was no one else,” she said. “After the competition Ms. Mui stopped coming to visit. She was not in contact with any of our students or with the
sifu
for those three months. And then her name appeared on the list of attendees for tonight’s belt promotion. The
sifu
was very, very happy.” The woman was silent for a long moment, staring at her hands, which were folded across her waist. “But then she came last night to pray at the shrine. Ms. Mui is three months pregnant.”

The first word in my head was
gevalt.
The pregnancy was not incriminating, of course, but the timing, her withdrawal, and the rumors sure didn’t make it look good. It would also explain Maggie’s interest in the ring. When you’re insecure about a relationship, even the smallest gestures matter.

“Ms. Chan, I hate to ask this, but would someone have tried to kill your husband over this relationship? Not just the family, but perhaps a jealous rival?”

“I do not know. I truly do not know.”

“Let me rephrase that,” I said. “Would it be a loss of face the way it happened—I mean, hillbilly style, with a rifle from a distance, instead of face-to-face?”

“The younger generation does not always understand such things,” she said. “And to have challenged him in a fight would have been pointless.”

“He was that good?”

“No. He would not have fought. He was a man of peace.”

Translation: that would mean dishonor for whoever came here and beat him into
tsibilis.
Better if it were anonymous. Of course, all of this was still speculation. Whoever killed him might still have been aiming at me.

“I wish I had more to offer,” I said. “I feel pretty helpless—and I don’t like to feel that way.”

“There is no need.” She looked at me. It seemed as though she wished to say something else and decided against it. “Ms. Katz, I very much appreciate your coming here and also taking the time to talk to me. I needed to meet the person with whom our beloved
sifu
spent his last moments.”

“I can only say that I was glad to have met him,” I told the woman. “Actually, that’s not all I can say. He saved my life. That’s a pretty major thing. I want to thank you, thank everyone, for whatever training he had or code he lived by. I hope that thought will sustain you, just a little.”

“It is who he was,” she answered sadly.

She looked at the clippings and certificates. I didn’t know if that meant I was dismissed, but I took the opportunity to leave.

“Wait a moment,” she said.

I hesitated in the doorway.

“May I have your cell phone?”

I was perplexed but passed the phone over to her. She studied it for a moment, then tapped some buttons and handed it back.

“My telephone number. If you should ever need it.”

“Thanks,” I said, not sure why I would but appreciating the gesture.

Once again, though I moved as quietly as I could, it seemed as though I was creating a racket. Not just the floor squeaked; the door also did. I swear, my ankles did. I walked past the family, bowed my head to Auntie May, who dipped hers back; I turned once again and bowed to the casket, then made my loud, cacophonous way to the front door, which the young man opened for me after I put on my shoes.

Dammit, but the open street and the fresh air felt good. I felt as if there were a dog on my tail as I walked briskly to the corner and my car. It was all in my head, I know, the self-consciousness of the Jew in an unusually strange setting.

As I left, something occurred to me.

Maybe Chan
wasn’t
looking at the napkin holder right before he was shot. Maybe that look of distraction wasn’t about focusing on someone outside the window. Or about a splash of mustard that may have caught his eye. Or a dent. Perhaps, for some reason, he was thinking back. Or ahead.

What was it, Sifu?
I asked him, frustrated and confused.
What was going on at that moment?

It was a wispy, elusive thought that nagged me for the rest of the night.

It was nearly nine
PM
when I phoned Banko Juarez. I got back to the deli, said goodnight to the policemen fore and aft, fed the cats, then sliced some Hebrew National salami, slapped it on a hard roll with Guldens, and went to my office. I took off my shoes and put a pair of very tired feet on the desk.

As I had expected, the etheric cleanser told me he’d gone to Kentucky on—I kid you not—the last train to Clarksville. He said he had appointments in Lexington. I did not doubt that. But he did not want to discuss his whereabouts, which I also understood. He really, really,
really
wanted to talk about his etheric findings.

“I couldn’t wait for you to call back,” he enthused. “I discovered something amazing about the two lines!”

“Do tell.” Until the words came from my mouth, I didn’t realize I was in
that
kind of mood, sarcastic bordering on cynical. What Banko hadn’t told me about himself undermined my faith in his authenticity. I wasn’t be angry at him for making money from women who sold their bodies; a lot of people have agents or brokers, in which case he and I had some stuff in common. But liars?

“I was busy comparing the lines from your restaurant with the lines from the park when I noticed something peculiar,” he went on quickly. “There were none that were the same.”

“Is that good or bad?” I asked over a mouthful of ham and bread and rolling my eyes and wanting to hang up. But I didn’t. When he was done I was going to give him both barrels.

“Neither. It’s fascinating. They were similar but not exact. So I started tinkering with the software to bring up—do you know what fractals are?”

“Sort of, but not really,” I said.

“Well—it’s not that important. I amplified different sections of my readings to look for similarities and discrepancies, and I made a real breakthrough. The lines of those two have a familial overlap, almost like a genetic map!”

“And that’s important because . . . ?”

“It’s like a remote DNA test!”

“But only of living people, correct? Because dead people don’t have energy.”

“That’s right.”

“So how does that help us? It seems to me you’ve just undermined your own research: whoever was in the park may not have been in the deli.”

“Yes, it could have been a sibling or a son or daughter—”

“Who knows nothing about these crimes,” I pointed out.

“Right. But it proves that my investigations
work
on a more sophisticated level than I imagined !”

This was without a doubt a stunning waste of my time. Though, as I looked around the office, I really didn’t have much else to do. Other than going over Thom’s bundled receipts and checking her tally, there was only computer solitaire in my future. I didn’t want to reveal that we had stolen data from his computer, but I decided to play this yarn ball out.

“Explain fractals,” I said.

“What?”

“You brought them up. What are they?”

“It’s a structure in life or math that has a pattern that, at whatever scale you examine it, reflects the shape of that object,” he told me. “It’s like seeing increasingly smaller patterns in a leaf that may not be identical to the entire leaf but are still clearly identifiable as a part of that leaf.”

I wouldn’t bet the deed to the deli, but that definition sounded right.

“So then, would one hooker be a fractal of a stable?” I asked. Yes, I said it with a heavy dose of irritation. But I don’t like men who lie to me. Call it scar tissue from my marriage, feminist ire, or just my own predilection for truth-telling, however blunt and tactless that may be at times.

There was a brief hesitation. “No,” he said. “I’m not sure what mathematical definition would apply.”

“Perhaps a triangle, if the guy was really generous ?”

More silence. “What am I missing here?” Banko asked.

“You? Nothing. I’m the one who’s missing something.”

“What would that be?”

“A piece of the story,” I told him. “Your story.”

“I still don’t follow.”

I had to dance around it to protect my source. “I get the feeling that you were not at that hotel by chance.”

“I told you why I was there,” he said.

“The readings, right. You’re devoted to high-energy situations.”

“Exactly.”

The silence that followed was more useful to Banko than to me. I just looked around the office, waiting. He was obviously thinking, no doubt about whether to fess up. I had a deeper concern, one that had been knocking around the back of my mind.

“I still don’t understand what you’re talking about,” he said disappointingly.

Banko was either very stupid or very stupid, depending on which kind of stupid I went with. If he were truly missing my point, that was naive stupid. If he were still trying to perpetuate a lie, that was just plain stupid.

“I’m talking about hookers and your involvement with them,” I said. “What’s your involvement with them, beyond etheric readings?”

“Is that really any of your business?” he asked.

“It is if you were the target,” I said. “There was a guy who looked like you sitting at the counter when Mr. Chan was shot. Through the window, someone might have mistaken him for you. How do I know it wasn’t you being shot at in the park?”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Who would want to shoot me?”

“Exactly what I’m trying to find out,” I said. “Are you involved in any kind of business that would inspire a hit?”

“Only if someone knew I’d recorded the energies of a killer or his accomplice,” Banko said thoughtfully.

“
Loch in kup,
” I said. “What about a pimp turf war?”

This time Banko did not respond with silence but with a gasp.

“Didn’t think I knew, eh?” I said.

“Actually, you’re scaring me,” Banko said. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about!”

I was no longer staring at the
tchotchkes
on my desk. My tired brain was replaying what Banko had just said—not only the words but the tone. He sounded as earnest as a Chasid on Yom Kippur.

“You have nothing to do with prostitutes?” I asked.

“What a question! Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I never hire them.”

“How about anything else?”

“Like
what?
”

“Like—when I got to the hotel the concierge asked if I was one of your prospects.” It was an improbable lie, and he probably knew it. All of the ladies I saw were younger, taller, better built, and undoubtedly veterans of far more tangos than I. They also probably earned more, which irked me more than the other stuff. But that was the only thing I could think to tell him.

“It was probably a joke,” he said. Then, realizing what he’d said, he added, “I mean, you don’t look like an escort.”

He said “escort,” not “hooker.” I wondered if he knew the lingo. I did, from the time I checked the websites visited by my former husband.

“Thanks. That’s what all my out-call clients say.”

He didn’t bite. Not even a
huh?
Maybe he was really, really practiced at covering his illicit tracks. Or else he had no idea what I was talking about.

“Back to the more important matter,” he veered back quickly to his own geeked-out agenda, “it looks like one of the three guards or the dog walker had a relative who ate at your deli. A shot was fired after both encounters. That seems important. We should let the police know what I’ve discovered.”

“Sure. I’ll handle that,” I said.

“Tell them to call me if they have any questions,” he said.

“I will.”

We hung up, and I was more perplexed than when I’d called. Would a man with something to hide offer to answer questions from the police? No, I told myself. Even if his etheric device worked on some level, it couldn’t be that difficult to pick Banko up in Kentucky for soliciting, or whatever nice word they used to describe pimping, and extradite him to Tennessee.

Tennessee
.

The word echoed in my brain. My eyes drifted across suddenly unfamiliar surroundings.
I am in Tennessee
. What the hell was I doing here? And being held in protective custody no less. With people dying around me.

Just go. Pack up the cats and leave.

Just. Go.

“Uncle Murray—this is a lot more than I was expecting,” I said to a fading, cracking Polaroid photo tacked to the bulletin board. It showed my father, my uncle, and me during one of our fishing trips in Montauk when I was a kid. “Why is this happening? It isn’t like I’m not working hard.”

I saw the round face, receding hairline, and frozen smile looking back at me. How did he do it? How was he always happy? Because he had a real passion—music and songwriting?
No,
I told myself.
It was because he had priorities.
He didn’t keep one eye on the business and one eye on potential relationships and one eye on music and one eye on questions like these. His priority? Being happy.

I bit off a bit of ham, and it sat in my mouth, unchewed. I wanted to cry. I wanted to
talk
to someone and there was no one. I ate the mouthful, sat back, and stared at the ceiling and answered the office phone when it sang without looking to see who was calling.

“Hello.”

“Gwen Katz?”

“Yes.” It was an unfamiliar voice with a slight southern sparkle.

“My name is Chingmy Mui. Sifu Chan was my teacher.”

“I know who you are,” I said.

“I thought you might. May I speak with you?”

“Sure.” I was apparently the clearinghouse for all things Ken Chan.

“Face-to-face, I mean.”

That set me on my guard. “Why?”

“I want to meet you.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the police cordon, out front,” she said. “They will not let me in.”

That was a surprise—
another
surprise. “You’re alone, right?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me for being cautious, but I had some difficulty with some of your friends or enemies yesterday—I’m not sure which.”

“I am very sorry for that. May I come in?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the front door.”

I hung up and got up and tried to perk up. I couldn’t. My bare feet dragging, I found a nugget of glass that had been blown from the window the other day. That woke me. I pulled it from my heel and tossed it in Thom’s wastebasket. I went to the door and looked out.

No one was there. Not even the police officer.

My brain went to Defcon One before my body did. Fortunately, my body deferred to my brain. I dropped facedown as a bullet charged into the counter behind me. Some survival instinct instructed me to roll from the door, and I did, backward, protected as a second bullet hit the jamb. By the time a third bullet clipped the floor, I had rolled into the diner, behind the plywood, where I was safe.

The shooting stopped. I heard footsteps coming through the restaurant from the back door and others from down the street. The front-door cop was in the door, her gun drawn, talking into her radio and looking up at the rooftops across the street. The back-door officer dropped to my side.

“Are you hit?” he asked.

I did a push-up to get off my chest. Nothing seemed weak, numb, or tingly. With the officer’s firm, supportive hands on my arms, I tucked my knees in and rose on them. There was no blood on me or the floor.

“I think I’m okay.”

“Do you need medical attention?”

“No,” I assured him.

“All right, back to the office,” he instructed, as he helped me to my bare feet and now very wobbly legs.

I went. While I waited for the cavalry, I checked the phone log. The call had come from a public phone. I was sure the police could pinpoint it. I was equally sure they’d find it was somewhere away from any kind of surveillance. I was somewhat sure that it wasn’t from Chingmy Mui at all. Now that I thought about it, nothing she had said indicated any prior knowledge of my abduction. I offered all the information.

The triumvirs arrived separately. Detective Bean was first on the scene by about a minute, Grant was second, and Agent Bowe-Pitt was third. They all made their way in via the back door so as not to contaminate the crime scene.

Bean strode past the office door, saw me sitting on the edge of the desk as she passed, and doubled back. She asked what had happened and I told her. I asked where the officer was who should have been at the front door.

“Called away by a cry for help around the corner,” Bean said. “Radioed it in. Said she would not be letting the front door out of her sight.”

And she hadn’t, apparently.

Grant walked in just as I had started telling my story. When we were done, Bean left, Grant stayed.

“You’ve got dirt on your blouse,” he said.

“
Shmutz.
”

He smiled. “That’s right.”

I saw my unfinished ham on a roll, took a bite, chewed slowly.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“Yeah. The person who keeps shooting at me. Did you find anything in the credit card receipts ?”

“I can’t really talk about that,” he said.

I made a face. When we were intimate, he told me everything. He knew he could trust me; who would I tell? This was his way of punishing and controlling me. But I did realize something just then. “I guess we can assume it’s me they were shooting at, right? There were no Chinese here.”

“Unless Ms. Mui was actually out there somewhere,” Grant pointed out.

“Then why shoot at the store?”

“To keep you inside,” he said. “This could be some kind of a vendetta against her, against the school, against Mr. Chan. We’ve spoken to the family. That’s a complex situation over there at the school.”

Dammit, that was true.
The officer
did
hear a cry for help. And there might be a pay phone around the corner—I usually went the other way and couldn’t say for sure. Though why would someone use that if they owned a cell phone . . . unless they didn’t want someone to know they were placing the call.

“No one on the rooftop,” I heard over Grant’s radio. “Looks like another two-hander. No obvious leave-behinds.”