Roast Mortem (4 page)

“Okay! That's all I wanted to hear!” Lucia finally looked relieved. “I'll see you on Sunday, Papa. C'mon, Glenn. Don't forget my bag.” She pointed to a Pullman in the corner as her gilded gladiators clicked toward the front door.

“Sorry, Mr. T,” Glenn shrugged again, grabbed the Pullman's handle. “Maybe next time. Nice to meet you, ladies.”

A moment later the door shut, and we heard Lucia struggling to throw the old lock. Silence hovered. Finally, Madame cleared her throat.

“Mr. Duffy seems like a nice young man . . .”

Enzo let out a breath. “He's nice enough,
sì.
And he has a good job working on cars. That is how he met my daughter. Car trouble. Mr. Fix-it comes to the rescue, but Lucia, she is pushing too hard . . .”

He shook his head with that exasperated parent shake (one I knew
oh
so well). “For years, she had offers to marry—plenty. None of them were good enough. Now she is finally feeling the hands of life's clock spinning faster. But Glenn is still a boy. Time passes slower for the young. He is in no hurry. That's why there is no ring!”

Madame and I exchanged glances.
What do you say to that?

“Well,” Madame finally replied, “Lucia wasn't wrong about our tardiness. If you have someplace else to go, perhaps we can reschedule—”

“Nonsense! Sit down!”

We did, taking seats at one of the marble-topped caffè tables.

“I have no intention of playing bocce tonight,” he said as he slipped behind the counter and prepared our espressos. “I fibbed to my daughter to send her on her way. Meeting up with that
donna pazzesca,
Mrs. Quadrelli? That's Lucia's idea, not mine.”

Donna pazzesca?
My eyebrows rose.
Crazy woman?
I mouthed to Madame.

“She's trying to fix you up?” Madame asked, obviously curious.

“I take her to dinner a few times. Nothing special. A movie once or twice. Now the woman stalks me at my game every Thursday, and how she talks my ear off!
Madonna mia!
”

Madame sent me an amused look.

“Knows all the gossip in the neighborhood, that one! And she's always complaining—the daughter-in-law, the store clerk, the upstairs neighbor, eh! Enough already! I told her last week, as clear as I could, that my business was taking too much of my time so she should leave me
alone
.”

Enzo crossed the room with a small tray, set the espressos in front of us. “I don't want to hear complaining tonight.” He lifted his demitasse and made a toast. “Tonight I am visiting with my ravishing Blanche and her Clare . . .”

 

 

TWO
hours later, Enzo and Madame were reliving their past via an illustrated narrative of old photo albums. They'd continued toasting, too, only now they'd moved on to grappa.

“It's so quiet down here,” Madame declared (because we'd also moved on to the caffè's basement). She proffered her drained glass for a refill.

“I'll put on some records,” Enzo said. “Good stuff, too. Not that crap kids listen to today.”

He rose, a little wobbly, and crossed to an ancient machine with an actual diamond needle. I checked my watch. Being the designated driver, I'd declined the Italian brandy—no big sacrifice since I was still drying out from last night's green beer—and I was beginning to wonder when this visit was going to end.

As Madame and Enzo fox-trotted around stacks of clutter, I felt my jeans vibrating. Assuming a certain NYPD detective was the reason once more, I dug into my pocket with relish. (Watching these two old friends reflame their affections had me aching for my own man.) But it wasn't Mike on the line. The cell call came from Dante Silva, one of my baristas.

“Hey, boss. Did you get it? The Blend's old roaster?”

In fact, the vintage German Probat was standing right in front of me. It was about the girth of a small washing machine (only taller) and tarnished with age and neglect—nothing I couldn't remedy with a lot of polish and elbow grease. (Seeing Glenn's restoration job was sufficiently inspiring.)

Of course, I wasn't enough of a mechanic to get the thing up and running again, but that was never my intention. I wanted the antique for display purposes.

“How did you know about the Probat?” I asked Dante, raising my voice over Tony Bennett's dulcet crooning. “You didn't have a shift today.”

“I called in to check my schedule and Tuck told me about it. And since I was here in Queens anyway, I thought I'd snap a few pics.”

“You're in Queens now? Where?”

“Here. On the sidewalk out in front of Caffè Lucia,” he said. “Unless I'm at the wrong Caffè Lucia. The lights are off and the place looks closed.”

“We're in the basement. I'll be right up to let you in.”

Topside, I spotted Dante's form hovering near the picture window, his trendy chin stubble a textural contrast to the clean geometry of his shaved head. A distressed leather jacket covered the self-designed tattoos on his ropy arms, and around his neck hung a digital camera, which he used for artistic studies, capturing the play of light on urban images from dawn till dusk.

He waved at me as I emerged from the back of the shop. The door's old lock was gluey as Marshmallow Fluff, but I managed to throw the bolt. Then my young, talented barista breezed in, full of beer and good cheer.

“Is that knockwurst on your breath?”

“And sauerkraut. But mostly hops, boss. Lots of hops.”

“Where were you, anyway?”

Dante grinned, glassy-eyed. “I helped a buddy install his exhibit at the Socrates Sculpture Park; then I hung at the Bohemian Hall Beer Garden with a bunch of aspiring Jasper Johns.”

I almost laughed. Not so long ago someone as terminally hip as Dante Silva wouldn't have been caught dead at an outer-borough beer hall. But that was before the Great Recession completely flipped New York's social scene. These days, slick neon bars with velvet ropes were out. Keggers and kielbasa were in.

Then again, every few years I'd notice my collegiate coffeehouse customers celebrating some kind of music, clothing, food, or art form that had become so outdated and square it went all the way around the wheel to come up hip again: bowling, bacon, sliders, cupcakes, hip-hugger jeans, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond . . . I dreaded the day preground coffee in a can made a comeback.

“So where's this roaster?” Dante asked.

“Let me lock this door and I'll show you.”

“Whoa, boss,” Dante murmured.

He'd stopped in the middle of the room to stare at Enzo's mural. I walked up to join him. “What do you think?”

“Freakin' awesome.”

“That's what I thought.”

In a phrase, looking at Enzo's mural was like taking a visual journey through the movements of modern art. The narrative began with impressionism, moved to expressionism, fauvism, cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. Layered in among it all were touches of Iberian art, as well as Japonism and primitivism—all of which influenced twentieth-century artistic developments.

Paul Gauguin's fascination with Polynesian culture and Oceanic art was represented, as well as Parisian fascination with African fetish sculptures. The postmodern movement was explored, with its blurring of high and low cultural lines; the vibrant pop images of spoof and irony were also here, along with the (often misunderstood) reframing of common objects by those visual poets who helped us see with new eyes our cans of soup and boxes of Brillo pads.

Enzo's work served it all up in one continuous masterpiece that felt (like Pollack's best) as if it would go on and on, and yet, this fresco was more than a succession of finely wrought forgeries. He'd stirred the ingredients into an epic stew of modernism, simmering iconic ideas to form a wholly new dish, and while some areas of the mural were no more than well-executed servings of familiar flavors, other sections displayed expressions of color, texture, and imagery that I'd never seen before.

“I've got to get some snaps of this.”

“Take your time.”

I turned on the lights and Dante clicked away, capturing every foot of the expansive wall art. Then I returned to secure the front door. Unfortunately, the lock started giving me real agita. I jiggled the key several times. No luck. I half opened the door and knelt down to see if I could fix the thing.

“You need help, boss?” Dante turned, took a few steps toward me.

That's when the bomb went off.

FIRST
came the sound, a monumental
whoosh
followed by a hissing roar. Then the white-hot concussion rippled through the air, the caffè's front window exploded outward and the blast washed over me.

My eyes were at keyhole level while I worked the stupid, stubborn lock, and the force of the firebomb knocked me right through the doorway.

Sprawled on my back on the debris-strewn sidewalk, I turned my head, stared at the carpet of glass shards. Blood started pumping through my system so fast I could barely recognize voices yelling, a car horn beeping. I was unhurt. Small scratches maybe, a few bruises, a little bleeding—
big deal—
I was okay otherwise, and I focused on throwing off the shock.

Smoke rolled out of the caffè, the noxious fog billowing upward in a succession of black, misshapen balloons. Wheezing and coughing, I got back on my feet and scanned the sidewalk for my beer-filled barista.

“Dante!” I shouted, rushing to the caffè entrance. “Dante!”

Flames were repainting the caffè's walls, spilling their colors onto its tables. The searing light in the urban night would have been beautiful if it weren't so deadly.

“Dante!
Answer
me!”

Smoke stung my eyes. I gritted my teeth, swiped at my cheeks, peered harder into the chaos.

Up front, the heavy marble espresso-bar counter appeared undamaged. But in the rear of the shop, the embroidered fabric that had masked the utility room was a raging curtain of flame. There was no other way out of the cellar. Madame and Enzo were trapped.

I opened my mouth to call out to them but hesitated. The fire door blocking the stairs was so heavy I doubted they could hear me through it
. But will that door be strong enough to keep them safe with an inferno raging above their heads?

Shoving away the unthinkable, I refocused on Dante and finally spotted him—or, rather, his big black Diesel boots—sticking out amid a cluster of overturned tables. Their heavy marble tops had formed a kind of fortress, shielding him from the dragon, but I knew the protection was only temporary.

Taking a deep breath (and praying to God it wouldn't be my last), I went in. Choking smoke hovered between floor and ceiling, so I dropped to all fours. The bumpy mosaic tiles bruised my hands and knees; the smoke and heat stung my eyes, but I kept on crawling, half feeling, half guessing my way over to Dante's inert form.

I tried to revive him by shaking his shoulders; then I saw the bloody gouge in his head and realized he'd been knocked unconscious by flying debris.

Was he breathing? I couldn't tell. The fire was sucking the oxygen out of the room, replacing it with toxic gasses, and the heat was unbearable. If we didn't get out of this oven, we were going to be baked alive.

I couldn't lift my barista, so I grabbed both of his wrists under his scorched leather jacket and dragged his limp form across the floor. I don't even know where I found the strength, but I was soon hauling him through the narrow doorway and spilling him out onto the sidewalk.

The cold concrete and fresh night air felt like a sweet arctic kiss, but I couldn't enjoy it. I knelt beside Dante, preparing to give him CPR—and saw that I didn't need to. He was breathing on his own.

I noticed the sparse crowd then, gathering a few feet away: younger versions of Lucia Testa wearing micro miniskirts, older males behind them with more of that ubiquitous chin scruff, their expressions ranging from blank confusion to morbid excitement—yet no one lifted a spiked heel or overpriced basketball shoe to help!

They're from the Red Mirage,
I realized, but I didn't see the owner among them.
Where is that club jerk now? Mr. Guardian of Happy Hour Parking? Isn't he at least worried about his club burning, too? It's right next door!

Two minutes, maybe three, had passed since the initial blast. It felt like hours. I fumbled for my cell, impatient with my shaking hands and pressed a nine, a one—screaming sirens interrupted me. Flashing lights, nearly the same hues as the caffè's inferno illuminated the shadowy street. The lead fire truck was massive, like a rolling T. rex. One basso blast from its reverberating horn sent tricked-out vans and giant SUVs scampering for the curb.

Seconds later the cavalry pulled up, men bailing out before their ride even stopped. This was an engine, the kind of truck that carried endless canvas hoses folded in its rear. Behind it was a ladder truck, just as big with men leaping off just as quickly. Three police cars and an ambulance rounded out the first responder parade.

With the FDNY here, there was nothing else to do but turn my focus back on the fire and literally begin to pray.

Behind me I was vaguely aware of boots hitting the ground, doors slamming, men yelling, police pushing back onlookers. I stayed on the hard concrete, cradling Dante's head, my eyes fixed on blazing agony.

“Ma'am, are you all right?” (The first person to ask.)

“My friends are trapped!” I pointed, my focus still on those flames. I was shaking pretty badly now and I couldn't keep the hysteria out of my voice—