To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (9 page)

It was odd to wake up for the third time in a single day.

The ambulance was just pulling up to the emergency entrance at Vanderbilt University Medical Center when I came to. I was light-headed but aware as I was sped through a room to a curtained area and moved to a bed. I answered a bunch of questions a nurse asked about what I could see—“The light you’re shining in my eyes”—whether I had feeling in my hands and toes, whether I felt nauseous.

An IV was poked into the back of my right hand, and then a doctor came over and looked under some bandages on my throat.

“I’m Dr. Nusses,” he said. “You are—?”

“Gwen Katz.”

“Hi, Gwen. You’re going to need a few stitches to close that cut. If you’ll tilt your head back,” he said, as he tilted my head back, “we can have you patched up in no time.”

“Suture self,” I said, having no idea what part of my brain that came from.

It was pretty quick and surprisingly painless, thanks to whatever they used to dope me up and swab the skin. I wondered if I’d have one of those sexy scars or an ugly one. Turned out that with two stitches I wouldn’t have any scar to speak of. In fact, a nurse told me I’d pretty much stopped bleeding in the ambulance. They just had to be sure.

When they were finished, Grant came to see me. I wasn’t surprised. Someone had to interview me, and I suspected he would pull rank. Seeing his head come around the slip in the curtain made me tense up. Remember what I said about people fawning over me? I liked it less when it came from a guy who was not especially simpatico unless someone
was
injured. And even then it had the reek of a police officer’s trained bedside manner. I’ve said it before and here it is again: yes, I was being a hard-ass. Grant wasn’t a bad man. Like me, he was all about his work. Unlike me, the way I was with customers is the way I am with everyone. The way Grant was with me is the way he was with women who had been robbed or were the victims of domestic violence. Behind his kindly face with soft eyes, the ones I fell for months ago, he was still a crime-solving machine. Unfortunately, after Phil and the other jerks scattered through my past, I didn’t want to spend my time with “no cigar.”

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” I rasped flatly.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Not as bad as I probably look,” I said. I craned to the left, toward the little nightstand. “Is my phone there?”

He came in, handed it to me. “You look fine.”

“Right.”

“You up to answering a few questions?” he asked, with the smile I’d seen before and used to think was cute.

“Sure.”

He pulled over a straight-backed chair and took a notepad from the pocket of his blazer—the clothbound little book he used to whip out and make notes in when we were supposed to be watching a DVD—and began asking the questions I had already asked myself. I answered them the same way. He added two that were obvious yet that I hadn’t bothered to think of. The first one was if my abductors had gone through my pockets. I thought back. They had not. They were cautious.

The second question was more troubling.

“What were you doing in that neighborhood?” Grant asked.

It was a legitimate question, even though, coming from him, it felt like prying. I answered honestly. Sort of.

“I was visiting a friend.”

“Where?”

“At the hotel. Isn’t there street video?”

“Yes, of you turning the corner and leaving the frame. Someone had cased out the street, knew where it was blind. Our guess is they were waiting between parked cars.”

“We seem to have a lot of blind spots in the city’s security.”

“This isn’t New York,” he said defensively. “We don’t have the money or need for a Ring of Steel.” Grant looked at me with disapproval. “So?”

“So?” I repeated. “Think this is related to that gal who was abducted two weeks ago?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “First things first. I know your friends. None of them works at that hotel. I repeat: what were you doing there?”

“Did I say ‘works’? Sometimes a hotel is just a hotel. He’s from out of town, a little naive. He’s rooming there.”

Grant’s expression told me he wasn’t convinced. I didn’t blame him. He knew me as well as I knew him. He let the matter rest—for now. “Were you coming or going?”

“Going.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“I had visited Chan’s kung fu school, I went home for an early dinner and then walked to the hotel.”

“Were you aware of anyone watching you?”

“Only the cop who saw me leave the school.”

“I mean after that. At the hotel. Outside or in the lobby.”

I was about to ask him if he’d checked the security cameras when I realized there probably weren’t any there either. The residents and clientele there would rather be mugged than photographed.

“I didn’t notice anyone,” I told him. “Given the other ladies with their blown hair and sprayed-on minis, anyone looking at me would’ve stood out.”

Grant was like a mountain lion circling a wounded coyote. He wanted to pounce. Finally, he did. “I’d like the name of this individual you visited.”

“No.”

“Gwen, I will go there and talk to the clerk and find out one way or the other,” he said. “It is an essential aspect of this investigation.”

I wasn’t keen on sharing that information with the police. Nashville is a city, but in many ways it’s still a small town. I didn’t want to get the reputation for being crazy in addition to everything else. But I couldn’t dispute the possibility that he was right. After all, I really didn’t know anything about Banko except what he’d told me. On the other hand, I didn’t want Grant looking into Banko’s etheric readings. I was dubious, but he’d be merciless.

“What time is it?” I asked.

He looked at his watch. “Ten past eight.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’m supposed to meet him in fifty minutes. Why don’t you come with.”

“Why can’t you just tell me—”

“Because when I say come with, I mean come with us.”

“Where?”

“To the highway where the flyers were put up.”

“Why?”

“The guy I’m going with is sort of a spiritualist,” I said, measuring my words. I didn’t want Grant confiscating his computer under some evidentiary pretext. “He has a computer program he thinks can ‘detect’ bad people.”

“Gwen, are you serious? Are you
sure
you’re okay?” Those weren’t questions, they were full-throated condemnations.

“I’m fine, Grant. Even if he’s
meshugeneh
, I didn’t want to sit around. Or lie around. I still don’t. It seemed like an interesting idea.”

“Like psychic detectives and cats who predict death by the way they wash their ears. I’ve heard it all, Gwen. And even if this wasn’t BS, you shouldn’t be nosing around where hate material was just posted. Go home, Gwen.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? I’ll take you there—you shouldn’t be driving anyway.”

“No, I mean I can’t. Agent Bowe-Pitt of the FBI told me I should sleep in the deli with a police guard, not at the house.”

Grant shook his head. “He’s worried about white supremacist terrorists. I’m worried about keeping the body count at one. And you’re—divining for electrical residue.”

“It’s more like elevated impulses, not residue.”

“Whatever, it’s ridiculous!”

I didn’t respond. This had gone past police work. It was our old dynamic of Grant being sure he was right. Even if he was, in this case, I liked being able to make choices without feeling like I had an adversary.

Grant told me to call if I thought of anything else or needed help if something went wrong on my “little adventure.” Even that was dismissive. I will never understand how people, couples, however intelligent and rational, slide so quickly and utterly off the road of good intentions into old, familiar ruts.

Well . . . that was one way to get Grant off the scent.

Dr. Nusses returned to check my wound and vitals and told me I could leave, admonishing me to drink a lot of juice because of the blood I’d lost. I assured him I would. He gave me a prescription for painkillers in case the wound or the stitches hurt. The nurse returned, wheelchaired me to the desk so I could fill out all the paperwork. Then while the receptionist took a phone call, an orderly came and wheeled me to the street. He helped me up, made sure I was steady. He was very tall, looked like that basketball player Jeremy Lin—whom I followed while he briefly played for the New York Knicks, didn’t care after that—and he had a nice smile.

“Would you like me to get you a cab?” he asked.

“They were kind enough to ask at the desk. I’m fine.”

He locked the wheels and came around to the front of the chair. “May I have your phone?”

I handed it to him. He put in a number. “If you need anything, call.”

“That’s really kind, but I’m sure I’ll be okay.”

He handed it back. “Also, if it matters—and you can tell me it’s none of my business—I believe in auras and spirits. Not like my grandma. She’s real big into divination and tea leaves and all that. She swears by it. But I like to leave the door open to all kinds of things.”

“You know what they say, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth . . . ,’” I said blandly. But that was not the big, red-faced thought in my brain. “So—did everyone hear us talking back there?”

“We couldn’t help it,” he said. “Okay, that’s a lie: we were listening. We love that stuff, and you two sound like you have a history.”

“More like a collection of skirmishes without much of a narrative,” I said.

He chuckled. “Well, we all thought he was being just a little intolerant. Even the guys thought that.”

“Thanks,” I smiled. “That’s good to know.”

“Well, take care of yourself,” he said. “And don’t push yourself.”

“I’ll try not to.”

He spun the wheelchair around and walked back toward the hospital. “The sympathy call can wait until tomorrow.”

The words hung in the air for a moment. Then I felt like I’d been hit on the back of the head with a boxing glove. “What did you say?” I asked, as I turned.

But he had already gone through the automatic glass doors. I looked into the lighted waiting area, with plastic chairs full of bleeding and aching patients getting the full measure of their spanking-new health care coverage. I thought back. I hadn’t mentioned the sympathy call, I was sure of it. Grant hadn’t either. I had mentioned Chan’s school, that was all.

I went back into the ward, a little faster than I should have, and leaned on the counter as I asked the receptionist if I could speak with the orderly. She asked me which one. I told her. She said there was no tall Asian orderly.

I knew I hadn’t hallucinated him. “Were people listening when I talked to the detective who came in?”

“Ms. Katz, no one has time to listen to anything here.”

Damn, dammit, and damnation. Someone was watching back at the house where they left me . . . they were prepared. They saw the ambulance, saw the name on it, and got here first.

But why?

To hear what I’d tell the cops? It was the same thing I’d told them.

Then why confront me afterward? I hadn’t told Grant anything useful.
Now
I had a face to attach to the abductors. All I had to do was—

I jumped as my phone beeped. I didn’t recognize the number. It was local. I answered.

“Yes?”

“Ms. Katz, we did not realize you have a relationship with a police detective,” the caller said. “Now we do.”

It was the woman from the car. “So?” I asked. “Now you also know I didn’t tell him anything more than I told you because I don’t
know
anything.”

“That is apparent,” the caller said. “We suggest you let it go at that. You do not want to call Detective Daniels and tell him about the orderly. You do not want to give him this number, which, in any case, is from a disposable phone. Just go on your expedition tonight and forget about us.”

“I’d like to,” I said. “How do I know you’ll forget about me?”

“Because this is our matter, not yours. You merely stumbled into it. Stumble out again.” There was an “or else” in her voice that she promptly articulated: “Next time, we will not stop at a prick to the throat.”

The caller hung up. I put the phone in my back pocket. I truly didn’t know what ticked me off more at that moment: the fact that I had been—still might be—under surveillance by Asian thugs, or that the kid I thought was so sweet and caring had actually been pumping me for information and—
and
—had lifted my number while pretending to give me his.

The big
chazer, I thought bitterly.

I guess they hadn’t done that in the car because I was sitting on it. Or maybe they didn’t want to leave fingerprints. I looked at the time on the phone. It was eight-thirty. I had just enough time to get my car and collect Banko Juarez. I wondered if I should bother, seeing as how it seemed that the Asians were my enemies and not the SSS.

When it comes to Jews being hated, one can never have too little paranoia,
I decided. I already had a date with Banko, and it was worth checking out. Besides, as I started in the direction of the parking garage—propelled by equal parts of determination and anger—I found myself actually looking forward to the excursion.

Compared to everyone else around me right now, Banko seemed the most reliably grounded soul in my circle.

I didn’t have the clearest head in the world as I got behind the wheel, though I had stopped at the deli to load up on OJ. I also packed some bananas in case I needed a potassium fix. One of the things that surprised me, when I took over Murray’s, was how many people had bodies that talked to them about very specific food needs. One customer claimed that her bones told her when they required milk. Another said the same thing about protein. Another said her teeth informed her when they needed egg matzo. All but that last one made at least a little sense.

With me it was potassium. Which meant that I ate more bananas than the average chimpanzee. I’ve read it’s important in brain function, and I use mine a lot. That doesn’t explain the chimps, but I’m sure there are environmental reasons. The point being, I always kept bags in the car for banana peels, and the car smelled of banana. I never noticed it unless I was giving someone a ride.

“It smells like a monkey house in here,” Banko said after he’d eased into the front seat, his computer open on his lap. He had brought something folded inside a pillowcase.

“I hope you mean the bananas,” I replied.

“What else?”

“A girl worries about how she smells,” I said.

“God, no. That isn’t what I meant.” But I noticed him sniff again, as though he were making sure. “No, you smell fine. The bananas smell fine too, I just don’t expect them when I get in a car.” He stared for a moment. “What happened to your throat?”

“Souvenir,” I said. “My abduction. I can’t talk about it. I’m fine.” I didn’t want to alarm him. “What’s in the pillowcase?” I asked as I pulled away.

“The shower curtain,” he said. “It felt like rain, so I checked the forecast.”

“Have you always had a strong sense of smell and—what, touch?”

“They’re something I’ve developed, along with my other senses. It helps in my work to be sensitive, obviously.”

“What did you smell in the hotel lobby?” I was curious about what he would say, how honest he would be. Either the guy was a human bloodhound or he was full of it.

“I smelled wine,” he said. “It’s very strong there.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” he said. Then he added, “The hallways—
they’re
different. Especially outside the rooms.”

Point to Banko. I let the subject drop.

“How was your session?” I asked.

“Interesting,” Banko replied. “I can’t tell you about it, of course. My work is confidential. It’s like being a doctor.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I will tell you this, though. It was my first transgender subject, a male-bodied female. It’s going to be interesting analyzing those readings.”

“A male-bodied female being a pre-op transsexual ? Someone who’s going to become a female-bodied former male-bodied female?”

“That’s right.”

Like Lou Costello in “Who’s On First,” I wasn’t even sure what I had just said. This was like the rabbit hole down which everything kept getting stranger. As with my previous remarks about neologisms, the plethora of sexual identities, foreign-American affiliations, and hyphenates in general had grown exponentially in recent memory and kept getting larger. Technically, I was a former-New-York-woman-Jew-thirtysomething-divorcée-restaurateur- bananaphile. How many defining qualities would be elevated to nom-de-guerre prominence before the language buckled from the weight?

Or my menu,
I thought. I couldn’t imagine having to list, as part of the name of each dish, every ingredient to which someone might be allergic or intolerant, along with the calorie count and, oh yeah, the name. That was when all of life would become like those fast-spoken qualifiers in TV ads for pharmaceuticals.

It was a moonless, overcast night, which meant that the glow of the computer screen would make us anything but stealthy. Banko suggested we go right to the spot where the flyers had been posted to see what he and the computer picked up.

I got off the interstate and drove toward the park. I had taken a little time to read up on the history of the place, and I understood why the hate group had picked it to post its signs. The thirty-four acres used to belong to the John L. Hadley plantation. In 1912 Nashville bought the property, and it became the first public park created especially for African-Americans. What seems, through a modern lens, to be overtly segregationist was considered quite forward-thinking at the time.

We parked on Alameda Street, where there were several other cars. I grabbed a windbreaker I had in the backseat and slipped it on, and put my cell phone in my pocket. We walked along the western rim of the park, toward Tennessee State University. It had begun to drizzle, and hunched against the rain, Banko held the stuffed pillowcase over the computer.

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“To the corner of John A. Merritt Boulevard,” I told him. “That’s where Mapquest showed the trees to be.”

I hadn’t wanted to park right on top of them in case anyone was there . . . or watching. The rain actually felt good, like cool, misty kisses on my still-groggy forehead. Also, my throat felt better with my face turned upward, the skin extended. The bandage had pinched a little as I drove. Not now.

I saw the trees through the drizzle. “There they are.”

Banko squinted ahead. “I can set up anywhere—let’s go to the bench by the tennis courts.”

The courts were between us and the trees. We stayed on the sidewalk. The courts passed to my right like freighters moving by a skiff—big, monolithic, impersonal. It struck me that many places required people to acquire a personality. Even monuments. When I worked on Wall Street, I often had lunch in Battery Park and sat facing the Statue of Liberty. In my brain, I always saw it with returning troop carriers after World War Two, with boatloads of immigrants passing en route to nearby Ellis Island, of fireworks on the Fourth of July. It was never just the big, green statue. If it were, I would remember which foot was forward, whether her feet were bare, how long her sleeves were.

The tennis courts were behind us as we turned the corner. There was a dreamy haze under the streetlamp. We went to a new metal bench that faced the trees. Banko used the pillowcase to wipe the dampness from the seat, then spread the clear shower curtain over us like it was a snowy-day Jets game. The computer glowed brightly, ethereally under the shroud. While my companion tapped buttons, I looked out at the university. Was it possible that students had put the flyers up? And if so, was it some kind of provocative hazing ritual or in earnest? Campuses weren’t just about political correctness. They were about free speech and self-expression. For all I knew. they had some kind of totally legitimate historical or socio-political club called When We Were White or The Ideals of the Confederacy. The perps could even be professors. God knows the one I had some recent dealings with, Reynold Sterne, was a diabolical, self-absorbed eccentric. And he might be one of the milder cases. Academia was a haven for crazies.

The graph was back on the computer. It was strange to think how different things had been the last time I saw that screen. We were about twenty feet from the trees, and Banko cupped his hands around the sides of the computer as he had done before. He was obviously concentrating, so I didn’t ask what I was looking at. There were two lines, which were us. They were pretty straight, apparently reflecting our repose. Apparently, there were no lingering energies here. Not even from the tennis courts. I gave myself a mental kick in the
tuchas
for imagining that there could be anything to this.

“Look,” Banko said quietly.

A third line had come on as a short spike. I looked ahead, didn’t see anyone. I snaked from under the shelter and looked back. I didn’t see anyone there either. I glanced back at the computer. A fourth and fifth line had appeared.

“Too bad there isn’t a compass on this thing,” I muttered.

Banko shifted his hands so they were both angled to the left at about forty-five degrees. The spikes softened. He moved his hands back to where they had been, fingertips toward the university. The spikes sharpened again.

“Oh,” I said.

The energy was coming from the university. Now I saw three people gather under an eave across the street, all of them smoking cigarettes. This was insane. The gadget actually worked.

I turned my eyes back to the trio as I saw the cigarettes get tossed aside. The figures were still there, a silhouette against the lighter darkness of the building behind them. After a moment, one of them came toward us. Banko was busy watching the lines and focusing his hands or whatever he did. I was starting to think it was a good time to get back to the car. I was about to tug on Banko’s arm when the computer pinged.

“There’s a match,” he said. “One of these lines was at your deli that morning.”

It wasn’t unusual for students to come to Murray’s. We had discount cards for students.

There was a sixth line now and a smaller seventh: someone was out walking their little wiener dog to our left.

“This is amazing,” I said. The dog walker’s lines strengthened, while two of the other three held steady. The third was jaggedly bolder. I looked through the filmy drizzle. The figures from the campus had stopped under a tree on the other side of Merritt. The dog walker’s gaze lingered on us, probably trying to figure out what the hell we were doing out on a wet night with electronics. He continued to the east under his umbrella.

It was rain now, no longer drizzle, and water was starting to run around the overhead lip of the shower curtain.

“We should probably go,” Banko said.

I was about to insist on the same thing, albeit for a different reason. Banko was so into his ethericism he forgot we came here to find bad guys. These men were not just lines on a graph; they were people, and they were near. We stood, Banko wrapping his computer in the plastic shroud, just as the men from the campus decided to cross the street. They weren’t walking, they were running. I had to know why.

I decided suddenly, impulsively—as I do most things—to stand my ground. I had come here to find out about a killer. The dog walker was still within earshot; there was still occasional vehicular traffic. If this man and his friends were bent on mischief, they wouldn’t do anything here—I hoped.

One would think, with all the knives I own, that I would have thought to bring one. Or a handgun. My uncle had owned a .38. It was in the safe in my office. I had not bothered to obtain a license, had never fired it, had never even held it except to check that it wasn’t loaded. So that wasn’t in my pocket either. All I had in the windbreaker were my hand and my cell phone. I took it out. I had a 911 app that took a picture and sent it to the police. That was useful in my business. I had my thumb at the ready as I pointed the phone ahead.

The three men arrived with a splat of feet on the sidewalk followed by a
squoosh
as they ran into the park. I turned on a flashlight app so I could see them. They were wearing security uniforms. They all squinted and shielded their eyes like vampires confronting a cross. One of the men turned a flashlight on me. It was a standoff in two wet, white beams. I shut mine. The man did not.

“We’ve had some trouble here,” he said in a cigarette-sandpapered drawl. “We wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“It was. It is,” I said. “Would you switch off the searchlight?”

He obliged. I saw a big bluish blob where his head should be. They were keeping their distance, still just dark shapes in the night.

“You’re not a student,” the man went on.

“I’m not on college property. What’s this about?”

They talked quietly among themselves, like the witches in
Macbeth.
I would have left, only I was interested to see where this went. From his anxious backing-away and shifting from foot to foot, Banko was way less intrigued.

“There’s been trouble out here,” one of the men said. “We were just making sure you weren’t in danger.”

“Thanks, we’re fine. What kind of trouble?”

“Vandalism.”

“Have you seen any of the vandals?” I asked. “Any idea who they are?”

The men hesitated. “Is that why you’re here?” one of them asked.

“Is
what
why I’m here?”

“Investigating? You two reporters or something? Bloggers?”

“No.”

The rain kicked up a notch, and we were all getting soaked. The three men were a featureless blur. They had not done or said anything overtly intimidating. but that hulking silhouette was hostile nonetheless.

“I know you,” one of the men said suddenly. “You took over the Jewish deli from Murray Katz.”

“That’s right. He was my uncle.”

“Well, you should probably leave,” the man said.

“Why?” I asked defiantly.

“Because smart people don’t stand in the rain,” he said.

“Any other reason?” I asked.

“Smart people watch out when there’s a storm,” he added. That was more pointed, more menacing.

The man didn’t say anything else. He lingered a moment, and then they turned to go in segments, like a caterpillar. I watched them run back to the campus. I didn’t realize that my hands were tight balls at my side until I finally released them.

Banko brushed hair from his eyes and came back to my side. He was hugging his well-protected computer to his chest and bending over it. “Jesus. What was that about?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “They were itchy about something. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Banko nodded enthusiastically. I turned and jumped back, nearly knocking my companion over. Someone was approaching from around the tennis courts. A man with a trench coat and an umbrella. I stood where I was, water pulling my hair along my neck and soaking my bandage.

“Care to get under?” the man said, as he came forward. It was Grant.

I stayed where I was. “Dammit, did you follow me?”

“The NPD has a murder to solve,” he said. “We’re not convinced you weren’t the target.”

“So the answer is yes.”

“You’re getting drenched—”

“It’s just water,” I said. “I can just wipe that off.”