Fry Me a Liver (6 page)

“Who was the person down there with you?” She checked her iPad notes. “Benjamin West?”

“A restaurateur from Southern California. Said he was sampling local cuisine with his girlfriend.”

“Anything suspicious about him?”

“Only his taste in food, Tex-Asian fusion.”

She noted that in her file and added to that a photo she had taken of the couple sitting off to the side. Bean was probably just a few years younger than her predecessor, but there was a big generational gap in the way they handled technology. Grant was still a notepad-and-pen kinda guy.

“Any other thoughts?” Bean asked. “Random impressions—anything while it's still fresh?”

I thought for a moment, replayed the experience. “Candy said something about her cell phone being in the diner.”

“We found her phone and checked for video,” Bean said. “Nada.”

“Benjamin took cell phone video downstairs—”

“He told us,” Bean said. “We saw it. Some sensational images but nothing that helps us.”

“All this technology and an explosion in a major American metropolis can still go uncovered?”

“That's the big dirty secret about surveillance,” Bean said. “Not about this situation necessarily, but anyone who is smart and does due diligence can find ways not to be photographed committing a crime.” She paused thoughtfully. “I think that's it for now.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked. “Any impressions?”

“Not yet, and I can't really talk about an ongoing investigation,” Bean said. She added, “You may not know this, but your former boyfriend was disciplined for talking out of turn about cases.”

“You mean discussing them with me?”

Bean nodded.

I felt a little bad for Grant; he probably did that more to involve me in his work, to help the relationship, than to solicit my opinions, however helpful they sometimes were. When I worked on Wall Street, I always thought rules and regulations were probably a good idea. Now, I wasn't so sure.

Detective Bean folded away her iPad. “If you want anything, water, coffee, a sandwich, there's a catering truck—”

“Detective, I have my own—”

I stopped myself. I looked away from the trucks and the crowd, back in the direction of the deli.
No
, I told myself.
I didn't
. I didn't have my own coffee machine making premium coffee ordered from my special supplier in New York City. I had a dust-filled diner that was dark and colorless, just like the basement had been. Only it seemed darker because it was so bright and sun-colored outside.

My brain was at war with itself again. Part of it wanted to grab my remaining staff, have them salvage what they could, and set up a card table on the street to get back in business. Busyness was the best thing to stave off depression and I worried that I was about to get very depressed. But the other part of my mind told me not to do that, not to subject Luke, Newt, Dani, and Raylene to that. They would probably go along with it because I asked, because it was what I needed. It was not what they needed. They needed to tend to their own, to settle their individual souls.

“Do you have a bottle of water?” I asked Bean.

“Sure,” she said.

She walked to a squad car and took a plastic bottle from a compartment inside the door. When she returned, I cracked the cap and poured the contents over my head, washing my face with the other hand. Bean couldn't see the tears I let flow again but they were there, mingled with the warm water. I did not blame myself for what happened to A.J. or Thomasina. No one could have foreseen it. But for as long as I had been down here, things just went wrong at the deli. I didn't think the universe was trying to tell me something. God had to have better things to do. Still, there had been way too much pain.

He managed to make time for Job, and
there
was a really good man
, I thought.

But Satan had been involved in that
mishugas
. I don't think that was the case here, just terrible, terrible fortune.
Shlimazel
, as my grandmother used to call it, but on a grand scale—like a pogrom.

Gwen, you're rambling
, that small rational part of my brain said to the rest.
You have to focus.

On what?
I asked myself.

Time to call a truce. Bean went off to talk to her officers and I walked toward the deli, drawn to it like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle. I reached the police tape at the curb, went under, saw Bean from the corner of my eye motion a patrol officer who was moving toward me to back away. I went to the open door where a cloud of dust hung like a theater scrim. I stood there, staring past the cash register to the hallway with my office and into the kitchen. Except for the dust, everything seemed okay there. Beyond, out back near the Dumpster, I saw first responders and firefighters working with portable winches and video monitors. I didn't know if they were lowering people in or trying to get the van out. It didn't matter just then. What was important was that everything this side of the kitchen was fine. The fryer, oven, refrigerator, and freezer seemed intact. There was no power—we'd lose all our perishables—but those could be replaced quickly.

“Don't think about it now,” someone said beside me.

I turned. It was Benjamin and his girlfriend. I returned his crooked little smile with a crookeder one, then looked at her. She was about five-three, a very slender blonde whose svelteness was a walking advertisement for Tex-Asian fusion. She had pale blue eyes, long lashes, and a big California girl smile framed by full lips. And there was a slender strand of pearls around her swan-long throat. Despite everything else that was going on, standing next to the girl made me feel ancient, unfit, undesirable, and so ethnic that I felt sure I could pass for a lifelong orthodox Lubavitcher.

Benjamin's hair was wet and his face was washed back to the ears. His blue button-down shirt looked blue around the shoulders, pale charcoal below. He'd apparently taken the same Evian shower I had.

“How do you know what I'm thinking?” I asked.

“Because we'd be thinking the same thing,” the young woman said. She offered her hand. “I'm Grace.”

I shook it. “Gwen Katz.”

“I'm pleased to meet you and very glad you're okay. I love your homemade gefilte fish,” she said. “Very delicate, not too fishy.”

“Thanks.” I smiled. It seemed an odd time for a compliment but I accepted it gratefully. Any port in a . . . “And thanks for using the present tense.”

It took them both a moment to get my meaning. Grace nodded with understanding; the gefilte would plate again.

I was looking at the young woman closely. “Are you sure we haven't met?”

“Quite sure,” she said. “Never been here.”

“You look familiar,” I said.

“With all the faces you see, I'm sure you saw one of my doppelgängers,” she said. “We all have them—people who look just like us.”

I wasn't in the mood for crazy. I turned to Benjamin. “So you're okay?”

“That's what the medics say,” he answered. “And I feel fine.”

Grace clutched her boyfriend's arm with both hands. “It's a miracle, right? What a thing to have happen!”

“What a thing,” I repeated. That was a strange, understated way to describe an explosion in a metropolitan restaurant.

“Did Candy get her video?” I asked Benjamin.

“It's already on the website,” he said.

“Of course it is.”

“I'm happy for her,” Grace said. “I'm happy for any woman who works hard and makes it.”

I didn't rebut that. I would have been happy too if she hadn't built her career on exploitation. Of course, my disapproval sounded tinny even to my own ears when I thought of how many women I knew who had built their careers on bad financial programs on Wall Street. And Grant's honey, Suzi East, probably had made more than a few backroom deals to move her political career forward.

What kind of payoffs or crow-eating or insurance expediencies would I have to accept to get through this
kappora
?

“One of the officers told me you've been here before,” Benjamin said.

“On the outside looking in, you mean?”

He nodded.

“Yeah. Someone was shot by a sniper right through my window. I opened for takeout the next day.”

“That's horrible!” Grace exclaimed. “Not that you opened, I mean—that something like that happened!”

“It was kind of a gang thing,” I said. “We did bang-up business as I knew we would—”

“Because rubberneckers love their morning joe?” Benjamin asked.

“I guess there was some of that, sure,” I admitted. “The stronger sense I got, though, was that people like to support their community in times of trouble.”

“They like it or feel good about it?” Benjamin asked.

Oh
, I thought.
Out in the daylight, he was one of those. A cynic.

“I can only talk about the results,” I told him. “It made me feel like we were part of a community. That's all that matters to me.”

“Of course,” Benjamin said quickly. “I think I gave you the wrong impression. I applaud the people for their support and I applaud you. We both do. In fact, we were just talking—is there any way we can help? After all, we do know the restaurant business and I make to-die-for Hashimoto browns.”

“Which are?”

“Hash browns with a wasabi butter coating.”

“Maybe we could use horseradish instead,” Grace suggested.

“Not bad,” Benjamin said.

“Look, both of you—I appreciate it, but a new menu item is the last thing on my mind right now.”

“Of course, of course,” he said. “It's just a poorly timed suggestion, especially after all you've been through—”

“You went through it too, honey,” Grace reminded him with an edgy little smile before turning back to me. “We just wanted to help. That's all.”

“I understand,” I told them. Grace's apology was actually a little belligerent. Something told me that these two weren't exactly what they said they were, though I didn't intend to waste my limited brain power on them.

“Hey,” Benjamin said suddenly. “We're staying in town, at a bed and breakfast on Blair Boulevard.”

“The Owlet?”

“That's the one.”

“Famous for its organic pancakes and homemade syrup,” Grace said.

“I know the owner, Elsie Smith,” I said, once again looking at the young woman. There was
something
about her.

“Elsie's a lifelong Nashvillian, she told us,” Benjamin said.

“Polite but very reserved,” Grace added.

“Any interest in joining us for breakfast?” Benjamin asked.

“I don't know,” I said. I couldn't think about eating or planning or even moving from this spot.

“Forgive me, Gwen, but the worst thing you can do right now is withdraw,” Benjamin told me.

“I appreciate the concern and it isn't that,” I said. “I'm just not sure what I'll be doing a minute from now, let alone tomorrow.”

He smiled sweetly and slipped me a card. “Understood. Please call if you feel up to it, or if you need anything.”

I didn't look at the card. People were always handing me business cards in the diner, mostly exterminators and food service providers. I just tucked it where I tucked everything, in my
tuchas
pocket.

The young couple departed; the police didn't need anything more from them, as far as I could tell. They were odd ducks but I didn't give them any more thought. I went back to where my staff was texting, probably letting family and friends know they were okay. A.J.'s ambulance was gone, Thomasina had been taken away, so it was just us, we few, we who should be happy to be alive.

I
was
grateful, though as the terrible reality of what had happened settled in, I found myself doing what I usually did in stressful situations. I was getting riled up and eager to
do
something.

And, as always, I didn't have to do much. Something new soon tapped
me
on the shoulder.

My staff went to the Baptist Hospital where both A.J. and Thomasina were taken. I did not go; they needed time alone. And, frankly, so did I.

I'm not sure my manager's prayers had anything to do with the selection of that hospital, or the fact that Thomasina was a passionate Baptist. But it was a fitting destination that, I was later informed, received a “Hallelujah, Lord!” when she arrived. I envied Thom the faith which events like these could not dislodge. I didn't understand it; I was, as I'd just demonstrated, more comfortable thinking things through and waiting for help than praying to God to free me. Though I have to admit, I wondered about the value of doing both. Because there went Thom, to the hospital of her choice, while I stood outside my dusty diner unable to serve customers, with nothing to do and with two employees injured, one of them seriously.

Who is the shmuck?
I asked myself.

And who, I also asked myself, was the masochist. I watched from just within the police tape. Sometimes I looked inside—more was visible in the kitchen area as the sun passed overhead and came through the back door—and sometimes I looked over at Detective Bean. She talked to Sandy briefly. She spoke with people who had been in the dining area. I wondered if they would ever return. Sandy's father, Alex the butcher, arrived shortly after the ambulances left. He was in a van that was the twin of the one destroyed in whatever it was that had happened. Even before he stepped out, I heard Detective Bean ask if he wouldn't mind staying since she wanted to talk to him. He nodded.

Alex was right out of Sholem Aleichem, a.k.a. Solomon Rabinovich, a.k.a. the author of the Tevye the Milkman stories, which became
Fiddler on the Roof
, among other tales of Jewish life in the
shtetls
—the poor villages of eighteenth century eastern Europe. He was stocky, about five-nine, with monster arms, an unkempt salt-and-pepper beard, big, wild eyes, and a full white apron he hadn't bothered to remove. There were smears of blood on it. In any other circumstance, a police detective would have taken him into custody for something.

Alex Storm wasn't even Jewish. He was from New Orleans. But my uncle had called him an honorary Jew since Alex had shared his family recipe for chopped liver—though he called it Creole p'lâté . . . the
l
standing for liver. Alex did that with all the viscera pastes he made. That included p'tâté for tongue, p'bâté for brain. I liked it. Quirky charm always got to me.

As soon as Bean finished, the butcher jumped out, embraced his daughter, then looked around to find me. He hurried over, big arms in ungainly motion like a charging orangutan on the Discovery Channel. That, too, was seriously endearing.

I ducked back under the tape to greet him, my arms stiff at my sides to protect me from his big bear hug. Standing several steps back, Sandy winked at me. She knew exactly what I was doing.

“Dear Lawd, how are you, hunny bunny?” he asked with more than a hint of the Deep South in his voice.

“Relatively undamaged,” I told him. His endearments were always beautifully sincere.

“Thank God, thank God. Sandy all right, you all right—I feel blessed. I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner.” He broke the hug. “Forgive me?”

“Of course! Is everything all right?”

“Oh sure, sure. I was in the meat locker, ignoring the vegan activist group, and didn't hear my phone,” he said. He hugged me again. This time I wasn't prepared. “I'm so glad you're all right!”

“I was.”

“What?”

“I think you're breaking some ribs,” I said.

He laughed self-consciously and released me. “You're sweating,” I said, looking him over.

He waved dismissively. “The protestors already had me agitated and I drove like a muleteer to get here.”

“Run any of them down?”

“Huh? No. I just put a curse on them using feathers, candle wax, and spit.” He looked back at Sandy who was texting someone. “I swear, Gwen, I was never so worried in my life. I couldn't reach Sandy till I was in the neighborhood. We didn't have hills in Louisiana. Sandy cleared it with the law to let me in.”

“I think that's because the law wants to talk to you,” I said.

“Yes, so the law informed me,” he said.

I was looking past him at Detective Bean. She and her iPad were approaching from the alley beside the deli. Her expression was grim.

“She doesn't look happy,” I said. “That's not a good sign.”

“Why?” Sandy asked, coming closer.

“Because she likes me a lot.”

The detective motioned with her head. Alex pointed to himself with a questioning look and she used her index fingers to jab toward all of us. We met her at the front of a police car. The sun was warm and bounced sharply from the trunk. Alex squinted in the glare and perspired even more.

“Anything wrong?” Bean asked him.

“My friend's restaurant blew up!” he said.

“Is that why you're perspiring?”

“What? Oh, no—I'm just hot,” he replied.

That must have passed muster, because Bean didn't take an iPad photo. Though she also seemed to have something else on her mind.

“The bomb squad just informed me that the explosion was not an accident,” the detective said. “Preliminary analysis suggests that a sizeable improvised explosive device went off inside a white container that, as best as we can ascertain from a badly charred section, was labeled ‘plate.'”

I felt a chill. “That's p'lâté,” I informed her.

“Spell it,” she said, and raised her iPad.

I did, adding, “It's chopped liver, one of our biggest sellers. We had removed two out of three tubs from the truck.”

“And placed them where?”

“There was one on the table to fill orders and one was in the walk-in cooler.”

“Where was the third?” Bean asked.

“The third was still in the van,” Sandy said. “It was a different blend, with curry, headed for one of our other clients.”

“It was so labeled?”

“Curry, yes, but not with the address. I knew where to take it.”

“Do you have any idea which one exploded?” I asked.

“The one in the refrigerator,” she said. “The van is intact, so that rules out the curry. And you're not dead, which eliminates the other.”

Duh
. Bean gave me a crooked smile that let me know it was okay; it
had
been a rough morning. The detective took me by the arm and ushered me aside, motioning for Alex to give us privacy.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I don't want the rest of this information being tossed around, even by well-meaning folks,” she said. “I only got to see the cooler from the doorway, but it is a pretty sturdy-looking unit. Do you happen to know the specs?”

“It's all stainless steel—I don't know what gauge or anything like that. But it was, I don't know, about two, three inches thick? And the floor has an added covering of a nonslip rubber compound. The thing is, it may have been open.”

“Why? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose—”

“During the meal rushes, we're always going in and out so we don't always close the door tight. It may have been open a crack.”

“I see,” Bean said. “That actually makes sense, because it looks like the unit was turned slightly by the blast so that the right front edge was thrust downward like a wedge, cracking the floor by the back door, causing that side of the kitchen to slope inward, and that's what made the van roll up against the back door. The van picked up just enough momentum to go through the rift created by the walk-in. Most of the damage was caused by the weight of the van, not the explosion.”

“So whoever did this may not have expected this level of destruction,” I said.

“Perhaps, or they know how you work and had a good idea exactly what would happen,” Bean replied.

“You really think they could have anticipated the van?”

“Anticipated? No. But perhaps someone was watching with a detonator and seized the moment.”

Great
. Then there was a possibility we were being targeted. All those feelings of being an outsider, the ones I'd tamped down, came whirling back.

“What about access, Gwen?” Bean asked.

“To what? The kitchen?”

She nodded.

“Someone's in the kitchen at all times, more or less. Bathroom break is the only exception.”

“Anybody outside that you noticed?”

“There was a homeless man picking up one of the containers of food I leave out there,” I told her. Before she could ask, I said, “I didn't see his face. I don't know his name. He was wearing an old red blazer, blue jeans, and he had long gray hair worn loose under a black baseball cap.”

“Had you seen him before?”

“I don't know. It's possible. These folks change clothes when they find something new, less torn.”

“Do you ever talk to them?”

“If they talk to me first.”

“Ever exchange harsh words with any of them?”

“There's no reason,” I said. “They only come to me for food. I've probably spoken kinder to them than I do to most of the men I know.”

She studied me for a moment. “You seem to pay pretty close attention to the people around your place.”

“Closer than to the men I date,” I said.

“This'll go faster without the levity,” Bean pointed out.

I nodded. Mentioning Grant brought out the worst in me. “I'm a New Yorker,” I said. “We have personal proximity alerts that work better than a fighter jet.”

Bean laughed at that. I didn't even realize I was being amusing. My head was still trying to figure out exactly what was happening.

The detective asked for a list of everyone else I could remember seeing there that morning: full names, staff included. I provided them all. This wasn't the House Un-American Activities Committee. I did not mind naming names since I believed that everyone I knew was innocent.

And if they aren't, they deserve to be in prison
.

I thought back through the morning from the moment I unlocked the door. I saw the faces in my head. I also saw my beloved little deli, intact and whole. You'd think I would be used to us being knocked on our collective
tuchases
by now—dead diners, dead catering customers, dead street musicians, dead deliverymen. I wasn't. It's like New York City. Big as it is, old as it is, that doesn't stop it from flinching. Every trauma, whether it's an attack on the city or a person, a storm, a financial collapse, each one hits a new nerve, leaves a new wound that takes time to heal. As much as traumas seem the same, they are not. The people around us are not. The dynamics are different every time.

As my grandmother used to say,
Ain sheitel holts macht nit varem dem oiven. A single log doesn't warm the fireplace.
And a single experience, no matter how brightly it burns for that moment, doesn't provide lasting illumination.

I was pretty thorough—all those years of remembering numbers had paid off. Bean used the car to radio my information or descriptions to whomever one radioed information and descriptions to. After dating a detective for twice as long as I should have, you'd think I would have learned something about police procedures. I hadn't. Another indication that I was with the wrong guy: I hadn't been listening.

I wasn't ready to go so I continued to hang around in the protective bosom of the police cordon after Alex and Sandy had left in his van. They had waved good-bye while I was talking to Bean. I watched the forensics team scour the diner. Not that there was much to watch; they were as still as archaeologists fussing over an ancient tomb. Bean was gone. I knew from past experience that we did not have very many security cameras on the street, but I was sure she had gone off to check whatever was there.

The afternoon settled into late afternoon, with the changing sunlight, a little chill, and more and more traffic being allowed down the street. I went up to the deli window and looked inside. I also watched the reflection of pedestrians across the street and the single line of cars moving behind me. Now that I was alone, it was time and calm for me to wonder: who and why?

I truly did not think—did not
want
to think—this was a war against me, so the logical conclusion was that someone was after Tootsie Pearl
or
was trying to give Tootsie some airtime. Would someone risk killing people to make their candidate mayor of Nashville? I did not know, but it was certainly possible. I couldn't come up with a possibility B.

That was a bust
, I thought.

I stood there because I wasn't sure what to do next. I didn't want to go home because I'd be doing the same thinking only with a real sense of being alone. And what would I do there, play with the cats and watch TV? Clean? This place was my life.

“I have seen it before.”

I turned to the bass cello voice on my left. Oh, joy. It was Big Jefferson D. Harkins, a college hoop sensation, a black kid who broke his wrist rollerblading and never got his foul shot back. The Memphis-born onetime rising star was now a field agent for the Department of Codes and Building Safety. I had met him months earlier, when a sniper took out my window. He wore a tailored black suit, sunglasses, and a loud tie with a picture of his namesake, Jefferson Davis. He carried a digital camera in one hand and a tablet in the other. I thought of all those crappy little offices in New York that made the parts for clipboards, the wooden backs, the metal clasps, the springs, and wondered what would become of them.