The Bialy Pimps (46 page)

The noise was deafening. “Yeah,” said Philip.

Roger furrowed his brow. The device was locked somehow, and was proving troublesome to open. He explored the thing with his fingers, being careful to remain stealthy so as not to be discovered. He tried a new approach and frowned, frustrated.

It was just a matter of finding the release for the locking mechanism. He would find it. He was a patient, even-tempered man.

The noise from the bathroom had turned into a wail. It sounded like someone was having some sort of a fit, beating on the walls and shrieking.

“I wonder what Roger does in there,” Philip pondered.

“EEEEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAAA!” shrieked the voice from the bathroom.

“Maybe he’s constipated,” said Mike

Philip took a sip of coffee. “I
swear
it sounds like that riot’s coming from the women’s room.”

“Dunno,” said Mike. “Is there anyone in there?”

“Maybe it
is
Roger. In the wrong restroom for some reason.”

“Sounds too girlish,” said Mike. “It’s probably a chick I didn’t see. Look – the women’s room key is gone.”

“And this chick is having a baby? A huge, violent baby?”

Mike, who didn’t give the scantest of fucks, shrugged.

“Think I should go check?”

Mike shrugged. “Nah.”

“OOOOOOOWEEE!” the voice wailed. A crashing noise followed, as if something had been shattered to bits.

“Did you catch the eleven o’clock movie last night?” Philip asked Mike.

There was no time to congratulate himself on skillfully unlocking the air freshener cage. He had to finish this job and get out quickly, before anyone discovered what he’d done.

Roger peered inside the open box, pushing aside a piece that had broken off. So this was it? The camera was so tiny. It looked to Roger as if it were pointing in the wrong direction, though. A small wire with a bit of glass on the end that pretty much had to be the lens wasn’t pointing into the restroom. It was pointing through a hole drilled in the wall, which would mean it was looking into the lobby.
 

It didn’t matter. He’d heard what the man at the other deli had said, and what had to be done was being done. Roger shrugged – a sublimely cool and stylish gesture – and pocketed the device. The dirty man would not watch his girls anymore.

He checked himself in the mirror for the briefest of moments, then exited the restroom as quietly as he had come.
 

He casually took his drink from the counter, returned the restroom key, and walked out. He couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. James Bond couldn’t have done it better.

It took forever for Roger to come out of the bathroom, even after all of the noise had stopped. After almost a full half-hour (par for the course for Roger), the tall black man emerged and shot by like a bullet, reaching out a spiderlike arm to snag his drink before sprinting through the door.

Roger had not paid for his drink, but Philip didn’t care. After all these years, the crazy old bird had earned one on the house.

Beckie was the only one behind the front counter when Ray Sapperstein, AKA Super Ass, returned. It was to Beckie that Ray told the bad news.
 

December had come, and the weather had turned cold. There had even been a bit of snow. The deli’s fame and popularity continued to roll along unabated. The customer base was still growing, but the new arrivals were celebrity whores who came armed with a new and more pungent breed of obnoxiousness. Nobody wanted to deal with them, even if “dealing with them” meant punching them in the face.

Maybe it was the coming of the gray Ohio winter, but the staff found themselves dipping from time to time into a quasi-malaise regarding their duties. Sometimes they didn’t have the energy to be violent and abusive. There were even brief periods wherein the best revenge seemed to be to take the customers’ money, make their food, and then send them on their way.
 

Beckie was contributing her part to the grim atmosphere. Despite all efforts to cheer her up, she still constantly mourned Army Ted’s superhero persona and sagged under the burden of her own part in destroying it. Ted was doing nothing to help her forget her misdeeds, either. He kept coming in a few times a week to tell his tales of top-secret contacts and how they were all working together to keep the police and lawyers off of Bingham’s back.
 

Tracy, still convinced that Ted was the magical math tutor, tried to restart the dying Ted engine, supposing anew whether this or that caper might turn out to be true.
 

“Whatever,” was Beckie’s comment on the subject.

She was beyond caring. The Ted mystery had proven to be a huge disappointment. She wished that she had never stalked him in the first place. Ted was still pleasant and giggly when he came in, sure, and he could be a friend if Beckie would do her part and let him. But things had changed. He was now just another nut, really no different from Roger or Little Johnny Redbeard.

“I believe in nothing,” she said.

The Anarchist consoled her. “There there,” he said.

“Oh, Ted!” she wailed with the tortured passion of a discarded lover.

“There there.”

“Do you think he’s the tutor?” she asked, her eyes wide and wet.

“I’ll just be happy if he isn’t breaking into my bedroom at night,” answered the Anarchist.
 

The customers were being especially annoying today. The line was out the door. Bricker had taken the day off, and the store was filled to capacity. The chatter was deafening. Beckie wanted quiet.

“Do you want me to get the sloth down for you?” he asked her.

“Nah.”

“Maybe we could build a nest for Swannie. What d’ya say?”

“No, I really don’t feel like it.”

It was distressing to see Beckie so despondent. Ted had meant a lot to her, and he had let her down.
She
had let
him
down.
 

The Anarchist patted her shoulder. “Should we bring out the monkeys?” he asked her.

“Yeah, sure.”

The Anarchist went around the corner and let the twenty newly-delivered chimpanzees out of their cages and into the store. Most were dressed as court jesters, complete with tri-peaked, belled hats. They covered the counters and began to dance and juggle. It was like a giant monkey carnival.

Beckie clapped along gleefully. “Yay!” she screeched.

“I don’t think those monkeys are sanitary,” a customer said to Rich.

“Monkeys are funny,” Rich replied.

Beckie had one on her shoulders now, spinning with him like a child playing piggy-back. She waved at the sloth, who, hanging from the rafters, looked as curious as always.

“Eee! Eee!” said Beckie’s monkey.

“Schluup?” asked the sloth. He turned his attention to an appetizing stick.

Rich changed the CD. The stereo began playing carnival music, and the monkeys began dancing to it. Beckie’s funk seemed to have evaporated.

“Hey!” yelled a middle-aged customer with a mullet haircut. “How about some service?”

Yes, the customers were annoying today. Top-level annoying. The vocal intrusion snapped Beckie’s mood, and the Anarchist could see a new frown forming.

“I miss the old Ted,” she whined.

The Anarchist patted her shoulder. “Should we have the monkeys attack?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

The Anarchist shouted an order to the chimps. Something clicked inside of them, and within seconds, most were clinging to customers’ faces and beating them about the head with their fists. The Anarchist had required that they be trained in this exact way on the grounds that this specific kind of attack was the most entertaining to watch.

The monkeys were having a ball. While most clung to the faces of their victims like the creature in
Alien,
some took up weapons stations. Most of them were trained with bolas – groups of heavy balls tied to each of three strings, a weapon originally used by ranchers to entangle the legs of fleeing cattle. The monkeys aimed for the legs of the customers and tripped them, causing many untidy face-plants. The more playful chimps aimed at people’s necks. Each time they landed a throw, there was a
Thock!
as the balls met each other, after the strings had wound completely around their targets’ necks. Whenever this happened, all of the chimps in the store who heard the noise would stop what they were doing, grin toothily, and begin springing backflips.

“Monkeys are funny,” Rich repeated. His eyes were huge beneath his thick lenses.

“Technically, chimps aren’t monkeys,” said the Anarchist.

“Primates are funny,” said Rich, who had a zoology minor.

Super Ass’s timing was lucky. The Anarchist had just shouted the commands “Dance, monkeys, dance!” and then “Flee, monkeys, flee!” moments before the ex-Law School Posse alpha arrived. Ray entered not into a monkey melee, but into a post-monkey melee. The store was almost deserted, and there was monkey feces everywhere.
 

“
Primate
feces,” said the Anarchist when Beckie lamented its abundant presence.

“Feces is funny,” said Rich.

The Anarchist and Rich had solved their parts in the feces cleanup process by retreating to the back room just before Ray arrived. Beckie, who remained out front, had gotten the sloth down from the rafters and was attempting to teach it sign language. The sloth was either a very laid-back student or unconscious.
 

“I’m not sure if you remember me,” said Ray as he approached Beckie and the sloth, “but I used to come in here all the time. Not that any of that matters. But I have to give you this.”
 

He handed Beckie a piece of paper.
 

Ray had graduated at the end of the summer quarter and had immediately gone to work for Rowen & McCoy, which was the only firm that had shown interest in him. And that was fine, because Rowen & McCoy was the best firm in the city, and everyone knew it. One of the partners had even co-authored a textbook that was used right here at OSU.
 

“It’s just a preliminary notice,” he said. “My firm has been hired by a customer of yours who says that employees of this deli harassed him. Specifically, he says that he was trapped under your front gate, doused in mayonnaise, and that you kicked him in the face using a machine.”

“That’s a common misconception,” said Beckie, “but the way the machine works is that the face-kicking subject himself is the one who...”
 

“Off the record, I find this lawsuit surprising,” said Ray. “I’ve been coming here for years myself, and aside from the place being a little low-brow, I’ve never found it to be particularly bothersome. Just good clean fun.” And at this, Beckie remembered that it was Ray who’d cleaned all of the boogers from under the tables at the threat of a condiment dousing. Yet he found the lawsuit frivolous. Even lawyers were stupid.

“But I’m the low man on the totem pole at the firm, so here I am. We’re right down the street. They asked me to give you that notice, so you could make sure that your manager – Philip Martin? – is here tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll bring over the formal papers. He’ll need to be here to receive them.”
 

Ray cocked a toothsome smile at Beckie, probably shooting for apologetic charm. Beckie knew that Super Ass had always liked her. She’d been fighting off his creepy, overconfident advances for a year now.
 

Beckie said nothing. She couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t open, and she felt faint. But this shouldn’t be surprising, should it? It had always only been a matter of time before what had gone around came around.
 

Philip flew into a fit when Beckie told him the news. His ass was grass. All of their asses were grass except for Wally and Bingham, whose asses were going to be confetti.
 

“It was bound to happen eventually,” Beckie told him.

“No!” he hissed.

“It
had
to happen. You can’t get away with what we’re doing forever. It’s criminal. Who knows why people have left us alone for
this
long?”

“Because people are stupid!”

“Luck. It was just luck, and our luck has finally run out. And well past time, I might add.”

Philip threw his hands into the air. “I am so fucked. I am soooo fucked. Who is it? Who’s suing?”

“Some guy who got pinned under the gate. I’m not sure who exactly.”

“This doesn’t make sense.” He was pacing the tiny floor of his office, looking for a solution that wasn’t there.

“None of it ever made sense,” said Beckie. She was thinking of the sloth, who would be out of a job.

Philip looked intense, focused. “Think. Think! What’s changed?”

“What’s changed?”

“What’s different now? Anyone could have come in here, gotten abused, and gone to the lawyers. It’s been over three months since we started pulling out the stops. We’ve been on
60 Minutes
and God knows how many other shows. We’re national sensations. Our customers can’t be
this
stupid, and even if they are, other non-stupid but greedy people could have come down here, taken some token abuse, documented it, and then sued us. Something or someone has been keeping the lawyers off of our backs.”

Beckie nodded. “I see. Who? Ted?”

“Maybe. Maybe Ted
does
have connections. He’s been claiming responsibility for our luck, after all. Maybe he’s serious.”

Beckie shook her head. “Ted is just some old man with a loose wire in his head. Tracy even checked him out a few nights ago, because Artie is still sure that he’s the 292-5040 tutor. Do you know what he spent his night doing? Bowling. He went bowling with a bunch of other old men. Oh yeah, he’s Mister Excitement.”

Philip was looking down, his hands knitted together behind his back. He was still trying to find the missing piece of the puzzle. “But that doesn’t prove he’s not the tutor.”

“The tutor is irrelevant. And he’s
not
the tutor, because we ripped a bunch of fliers down and then Tracy started to follow Ted. Tracy watched him all night long, and the fliers reappeared without his help.”