Spoiled Rotten (18 page)

I
closed the office door behind me, whistled nonchalantly past a couple of ghouls loitering under the exit sign, and then bolted down the stairs into the restaurant. I had mixed feelings about Louise. She said she was on her way back home and I agreed to meet her there before Winn and his posse could take her in for questioning.

It was only midnight, but everyone had gone. Years ago, when smoking was permitted, we often stayed open until one or two in the morning. Drink orders flew from the bar, one more drink, one more cigarette, one more cigarette, one more drink. No one wanted to leave. The waiters were kept busy lighting cigarettes, exchanging brimming ashtrays, and providing endless change for the cigarette machine downstairs. At closing time, stubborn customers had to be pried from the booths, and the waiters were often forced to don their coats and turn off all the lights before the squatters took the hint.

Rick left one night, pretending to lock the customers in by mistake. He went back ten minutes later, just as they were pressing their faces against the glass, trying to catch a lone passerby's attention. Ah, the good ol' smoking days. As a business person, the loss of income was bad; as a health-conscious mother, I dealt with it.

I checked that the tables were set up for tomorrow, the bar wiped down, and the beer fridge restocked. I tried the front door. It was secure, the door alarm set.

The kitchen was empty, too. The pots and pans had been washed and put away, the floors mopped, and the stainless-steel counters sprayed with disinfectant. Rick would make sure the refrigerator doors were closed, the gas knobs were turned off tightly on the Garlands, and the lids on the flour and sugar bins were secure. I saw that the push-bar on the back door was chained and the side window's cage was locked in place. I was ready to leave.

Just as I was walking back toward the front dining room, past the stairwell, I heard a loud crash come from the basement.

I hollered from the top of the stairs, “Rick is that you? What are you doing down there?”

Kitty answered with a loud mew.

Darn. It sounded like glass. She must have knocked something off a shelf. I should clean it up before she stepped in it or insects and other various vermin were attracted to the contents. While I was down there I'd have a look at the new tail Rick said she had acquired. The growing collection of animal tails had begun to weigh on my mind.

The stairs led down into a vestibule where the public washrooms were located.
EMPLOYEES ONLY
marked a door that opened into the basement. Two of the foundation walls in the small lobby were the original limestone rock. The wall had suffered little from the flood, but the drywall surrounding the bathrooms had dissolved and had to be completely rebuilt. After it took two cement trucks to fill in the gaping hole where the water main had broken under the street and terrified our dishwasher, Abdul. The professional opinion of the building inspector was the foundation would still be standing for another hundred years.

When I first took over the restoration of the restaurant I decided to leave the stone walls exposed. I'm glad I did.

Rick's briefcase was sitting outside the men's washroom door, indicating he hadn't left after all. The tail could wait another day. Louise was waiting at home for me.

“Rick, are you in the washroom? I thought I heard you down here. I think Kitty broke something, but if you've got it covered I'm going to leave, okay?”

He didn't answer. I pushed the bathroom door open a little. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by the smell.

“Rick?”

I knew he wasn't in there; I couldn't see his feet under the stall door. I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside, holding my nose. The urinal drain was plugged by one of the melted deodorant pucks, leaving an inch of yellow liquid pooling in its porcelain bowl. I would have to remind myself to fish out the shrunken slivers from the drain tomorrow. Someday I'll make a reality video and send it to all the naive students in schools around the world seeking glamour and fortune in the hospitality business.

I opened the basement fire door. I couldn't see anything broken and decided I was probably mistaken about the source of the crash. The hundred-year-old pipes rattled and pinged, the ancient wooden beams creaked, echoing throughout the building.

After the flood receded, and I mean that quite literally, the ground had absorbed so much water that three feet of silt and slimy mud was left behind. The smell of oil permeated the spot where the two furnace tanks had been ripped out and smashed against one another. Except for the eight-by-ten, room-sized refrigerator, everything had to be rebuilt or replaced. We had to disinfect the walk-in and the compressor was replaced, but the unit was solidly built and had withstood the flood. Everything else was ruined. Hard to believe water damage is so irreparable. Water covers everything, seeping into the smallest crevice.

“Hey Rick, are you in here?” I heard a muffled sound. I went in and stood quietly. I spotted a broken mason jar on the floor. A few old rusty nails had spilled out and I picked them up one by one in case Kitty stepped on one. A wrench was leaning against the wall. It looked like it belonged to Bill, our young, tattooed repairman. He probably dropped it last week when he fixed the compressor and didn't notice. I put it on the shelf beside the nails.

Two brand-new gas furnaces at the far end of the basement kept the upstairs tenants warmer last winter, but in the process burned over a thousand dollars of fuel a month. Kitty had made a cozy hideaway behind one of the new furnaces and I decided to head for her box of tails. I bent down a little to get a better look. The lights went out. The box quickly disappeared as did everything else, including my hands, which I was holding up in front of me to see how dark it was. It was bloody dark. And I wasn't alone. Someone was in the basement with me. I was getting tired of this. If Rick jumped out and scared me, I was going to kill him.

“Cut it out, Rick. Rick? Is that you?” Whether he scared me or not, I really hoped it was.

“Hello, my friend.”

“Louise?”

“Can I get you anything, my friend, perhaps another free sample?”

I could barely hear her. Her voice was raspy, almost a whisper.

“Is that you, Louise? It doesn't sound like you. I thought we agreed to meet at your apartment.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You wanted my help? I promise to put in a good word for you with the police.”

“It's too late for that.”

“Don't try anything funny, I know kung fu.”

I heard a muffled laugh. I would have laughed along with her, but was afraid of peeing myself. She was slowly moving closer. She would have to be careful in the dark. The dark, it was the one thing that might save me.

A tiny rebuilt staff washroom with a separate change room attached, where the kitchen people could change into their whites, was on my right. A floor-to-ceiling shelving unit holding all manner of linen and shelves containing dried goods was on my left. Paper supplies were stacked in cartons beside a small collection of lumber remnants, and pails of industrial cleaners and cans of paint resided in one corner. I could find my out blindfolded. I've had the lights turned off on me so many times either as a joke or by mistake that I'm used to the dark. I admit I broke a toe trying to find my way out of the staff washroom one night after Manuel, thinking everyone had left, had turned out the lights. He said he never heard such obscenities and knew it was me. “How flattering,” I told him. The point was that I've had to feel my way from one end to the other of the debris-filled cellar numerous times.

The only difference this time was the exit sign over the door was out, too. The fire code requires the sign to be on a separate circuit in case there is an emergency. That meant Louise had planned this meeting ahead of time. She could have slipped in here during a busy lunch-hour rush and no one would have noticed. We don't lock the door to the basement anymore. Rick and I have had to remove the door from its hinges so many times after someone inadvertently locked and lost the key that we thought it was in our best interest to remove the lock altogether. Consequently, we told no one to leave any valuables down here. Even shoes are brought upstairs and hidden behind the bar. Thieves steal shoes if there's nothing else to take, especially expensive athletic shoes. Easy, pull the old ones off, put the new ones on, and walk out.

“I knew it was you Louise. I told Detective Winn how I figured it out.”

“I'm sure you did. Too bad your boyfriend is going to find your body when he gets here.”

“Why kill me? I didn't do anything. I like you. I thought we were friends.” I was stalling for time, slowly moving toward the corner where we kept bits of lumber. I was hoping to find something with which to protect myself.

“Stop moving. I'm going to find you, I've just been playing. I found a flashlight upstairs in your kitchen. Handy, I never thought of bringing one along myself.”

She turned on the flashlight and aimed it directly in my face. I felt like a deer trapped in the headlights.

“I'm going to tell you a little story and then I have to go. I was that sick bastard's whore long before his pretty new wife came along. Tony dangled the mortgage over my head, telling me as long as I slept with him I could keep the store for a reduced rent. My own father's store, can you believe that bastard?”

“But you said you grew to like him.”

“Shut up. When the bank foreclosed on the mortgage after my father died, and my husband became ill, they let him have it. I almost died of shame. I thought of moving, but where would I go? I'm fifty-seven now. After my husband passed away, I was alone. My friends are the market sellers. I've lived over the store my whole life.”

“Of course, if Tony sold his properties for condos, then you would be forced to leave.”

“Correct. The councillor turned out to be as evil as him, bringing in rats and protecting the crackheads' legal right to squat. What about my rights? Two of a kind, they were. Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘Dogs smell their own dirt'? Well, they were rolling in it. They deserved to die.”

I thought she laughed again, but quickly realized she was wheezing. Then, in a croaking whisper, which was getting creepier by the second, she continued, “The market needed revitalization. It can work, but they both saw to it that didn't happen. I taught them a lesson.”

“Tony bequeathed you the store. Now you own it again. Don't make this worse.”

“Too late, I told you.”

“What about Maria? How did she figure in?”

“Missy got too greedy. She was blackmailing me for a bigger cut of the profit and getting sloppy. I needed that money to fund my own land-buying scheme.”

I listened, thinking that Louise must suffer from multiple-personality disorder. She was extremely agitated and losing focus because of it — I hoped. The light from the flashlight was wavering. I had to make a move while she was rambling.

“I provide a necessary service to immigrants. Without a card how can they work? I should have realized that Inez woman was an investigating immigration officer, but I've been little preoccupied with losing my store. I saw her poking around the market a few times in the last few months and recognized her at the dance club one night while I was watching Maria. My whole operation would have been discovered and shut down soon.”

“I'm not part of any of this, why come after me? I'm on your side.”

“You know too much and you keep getting involved. I thought I'd hit you hard enough and by the time you were discovered in the Dumpster, you would have bled to death or wound up in a coma. I should have cut you up like I did Tony, only there wasn't time. I've been trying to frame your chef, but you keep interrupting my best efforts.”

I slid my foot along the ground behind me and took a step.

She was moving swiftly toward me. “That's enough chatter.”

The light was blinding me. I tried backing up farther, and stumbled over a box, throwing me off balance. Instantly, she pushed me to the ground and scrambled on top, straddling my chest. I couldn't get my breath. Then she started hitting me with the flashlight as hard as she could. I was waving my arms around, deflecting the blows, when one landed on the back of my head on the same tender spot I was hurt before. A trickle of wet ran down my shirt. I was losing consciousness fast, but with every ounce of strength left in my body, I kicked out one last time, jolting the flashlight out of her hand. I rolled across the cement floor, grabbed the flashlight and pointed it directly in her face. That's when I blacked out.

I touched my scalp gingerly. My fingers made contact with a circle of crusty blood that had congealed around the base of a throbbing lump of flesh. My new wound was perched on top of the old wound and it ached mercilessly. I brought my hand down to my face to check for blood. I couldn't see any, of course, because I couldn't see my hand. It was still pitch black. Apparently my brain couldn't keep up with the situation.

Wherever I was, it was freezing. I heard a moan behind me, sending goosebumps along my arms. I sat up straight and felt a cold, wooden floor under me, then heard another moan. I got up on my knees and brushed against a cardboard box. Feeling inside, I touched tall, waxy cartons. They were cold, too. I crawled ahead a couple of feet and touched something soft. My hands groped about until I realized it was a pair of legs.

“Welcome.”

“Rick!” I squealed.

“Liz!”

I sat down beside him. “What are you doing in here?”

“Where are we?”

“The basement walk-in.”

“If I'd known, I would have sprung for a room. Ow!”

“Rick, are you hurt?” My eyes were adjusting to a faint glimmer of light. I helped him to sit upright, propping him against one of the lower shelves.