To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (12 page)

I didn’t sleep so well.

The air mattress leaked and was flat within an hour. I slept on the floppy vinyl and swore I could feel every edge of every tile. My cats, who had gone from the office to a place behind the counter, decided to show their anxiety by rubbing my face or crossing my belly just after I started to doze. I finally had to get up and put them back in the office with the door closed, where they occasionally mewed their discontent.

More than that, though, my brain kept me awake. I kept pulling “what ifs . . .” from Bowe-Pitt’s parting comment. So he had a guy in the park, which meant he had been following me from some point: probably after the abduction, since that would have justified calling in extra eyes.

He could have parked, got out with the pooch, kept an eye on things. That would mean it wasn’t his etheric line that was in the deli. That would make it one of the security guards. Which didn’t mean they were the ones behind the shooting—but it sure put them in the running. My question was, what did the other FBI guy do after the shot was fired? Did he see a flash? Did he run toward it? I didn’t even know what direction it had come from. I didn’t know if Grant had any idea.

Worst of all, when I thought about it, that
pisher
Bowe-Pitt hadn’t told Grant that the guy in the park was his man. I guess if he even remotely suspected Grant of being a crazy person that made sense; still, it seemed a little counterproductive. The NPD was going to spend a certain number of person hours looking for a guy who didn’t live in the neighborhood.

That tactic—or game playing, which it partly was—troubled me. Along with what we didn’t know, this situation was more frightening than anything I had experienced in any of my criminal escapades down here.

So I was up, with coffee made—and half consumed—by the time the staff arrived for work. I gave Luke stacks of menus to pass out on the street to let people know we were open for takeout. The gunfire in the park had made the morning news but not the target, so other than what-in-the-Lord’s-name-is-happening-to-this-city lamentations from Thom, no one knew I was the possible target.

The police didn’t let reporters in, so Candy Sommerton and Robert Reid and other media linchpins who put in a personal appearance did not get in. I ignored their calls. It was only day-old soup, and they were still keeping it warm.

The caller who surprised me, and whom I told Luke to bring in, was the short, round-faced woman I had seen at the martial arts school the day before. She was now dressed in a more traditionally western black skirt, black blouse, and black jacket. There was a small black-and-white photograph of Ken Chan in a black plastic brooch she wore on her left lapel, over her heart.

She approached with the same delicate steps as the day before. I had been cutting pastrami on the slicer when she arrived. I wiped my greasy hands on my apron, took it off out of respect for her mourning, and walked over to greet her. She stopped a few paces from me, her hands at her sides.

“I am May Wong, called Auntie May,” she said.

“Aha! Ken Chan used your phone to call me.”

“Possibly,” she said. “We had the same type of phone. He must have called you before we realized we had switched them by accident,” she said. “That is not important, and it is not why I am here, Ms. Katz. Last night, when you did not return to the school, I realized that I had made you feel unwelcome. I am here to apologize. That was not my intention.”

I wanted to believe she was sincere. Yet for all I knew I was abducted by others at her school—possibly by Auntie May herself.

“Would you care to sit down, have some orange juice or tea?”

“Coffee, black, would be nice,” she admitted. “I did not rest very well. Nor you, it seems.” Her eyes settled on the kitchen. I hadn’t bothered to move the deflated mattress.

“I had a restless time. Tell me, Auntie May, do you work at the school?”

“I am an accountant,” she said. “I do their books.”

“Really? I was an accountant once, sort of,” I said. “At least, that’s one of my two useless degrees. Did you have an office in New York?”

“Yes, on East Broadway.”

“I knew a broker who lived there, off Grand Street. Sammo Biau. Ever hear of him?”

“No,” she replied, with a pinched, embarrassed smile. “I didn’t move in those speculative circles. I enjoy the orderliness of books and ledgers.”

“I prefer the orderliness of recipes,” I replied. “Less chance of ruining someone’s life or retirement.”

She didn’t seem to be listening. She sat at the table where I’d placed the coffee. Thom looked at us both with surprise. Without realizing it, my groggy brain had put the cups at the same table where I’d been seated with Ken Chan. I decided not to move and said so in my return look at Thom. There was no reason to make things even more uncomfortable for Auntie May.

“May I ask where my nephew died?”

I froze with the cup at my lips. Thom made an I-told-you-so face.

“We were on the floor,” I said. I set the cup down, rose slowly, and stood on the spot. It was at the farthest reach from the table, where my head was lying, about five feet away. She looked at it a moment, then put her steepled hands together beneath her chin, bowed to it very slightly, and began drinking the coffee I had poured.

“I wish to invite you personally to the wake,” May said.

“I appreciate that, and I would like to honor your nephew, but I have a feeling I’d be intruding.”

“A loss such as this needs to be filled, and not by hate or blame. My family knows this, and I believe you will fill it with something positive.”

That was an enlightened view, I had to admit. It was nothing like my upbringing, where funerals brought out the absolutely most covetous, uncensored worst in everyone. Still, somebody in this clan or one affiliated with it had abducted me. If I went, I’d feel like I was walking around with a target on my chest.

On the other hand, if the persons who kidnapped me were there, I might actually get a sense of who they are.

Did I want to reenter that situation after the caller told me to stay out?

“You did not know my nephew before yesterday ?” Auntie May asked.

She wasn’t just making conversation; she was probing. All of a sudden the invite seemed like a pretense. The tone and questions of my abductor came rushing back. Like her, Auntie May was asking for information simply by inflection, not with a “how?” or “why?” or “did you?” The tone chilled the small of my back.

“Sadly, I did not.”

“Sadly, you say? Did you like him?”

“Very much,” I said to her.

She smiled thinly. “Women did.”

“I’m not surprised. He had a sweetness, honesty, gentleness.” I was making myself sad, eulogizing him like that. I stopped. “Anyway, we hit it off. I size people up pretty quickly, and he struck me as a good man. Certainly his deeds speak for themselves.”

“They do,” she added, looking into her cup as she drank. “They do indeed.”

Was she being sarcastic? Strangely, it sounded that way. “When and where should I be?” I asked. “For the wake.”

“Come back to the school any time today,” she said.

“Are you absolutely sure? I won’t feel slighted, I understand—”

“Please. Come.”

I looked at her and smiled a little smile. She could be inviting me to my own funeral, for all I knew. But if they wanted to work some kind of
meshugass,
they could just as easily do it here. Plus, if the guarded looks of my staff were any indication, the police would know who to question if I disappeared—again.

“I’ll be there,” I assured her.

She drank more coffee, and we sat in awkward silence for a moment. It was uncomfortable for me, at least; Auntie May was pretty inscrutable.

“There was a shooting in Hadley Park last night,” she said at last. “You have heard of this?”

“I have,” I answered guardedly.

“Might they be related?”

“I don’t know.”

She was holding the cup near her face, her eyes on the rim. Then those small, black-marble eyes snapped to me. There seemed to be another question on her lips. Her mouth made the smallest kissing motion several times in succession. Then the lips, and she, relaxed. But not the mood. That stayed tense.

The strained silence returned. So did her little smile. I was less interested in whether Auntie May knew I was being evasive than in why she wanted to know. There was only one way to find out.

“Why are you asking me about the park?” I inquired. She couldn’t—shouldn’t—have known I was there.

“The two attacks seemed to have similarities,” she replied. “It is a reasonable assumption that they are related. Our family, our school, is obviously interested in knowing if it might be the same person who killed our
sifu.
”

“I understand,” I told her.

“It is not to be vengeful,” she assured me. “That would go against the
sifu
’s teaching.”

“Great teachers are like that,” I said. “Peaceful.” Though, in fact, the only two one who came to mind were Socrates and Jesus. And things didn’t end well for them either. It was a good argument for militancy. “Look, I promise to let you know anything that the police are inclined to let
me
know.”

“That is most kind,” she replied. She set the cup in the saucer and stood. “I have taken up too much of your time. You are preparing to reopen?”

“Only takeout,” I said. “We have had experience with people coming in and gawking.”

“Thank you for that,” Auntie May said. “You bring dignity to this tragedy. I will see you later, then?”

“Yes.”

The woman smiled again, nodded at Thomasina, who was staring straight at us from behind the cash register, then made her way to the door.

“That was like watching Peter and the maid,” my religious manager said.

“I’m an Old Testament girl, remember? Peter and who?”

“The maid. Peter’s mantra to her and the others: deny that he knew Jesus.”

“Oh yeah. I’m familiar with
that
story.”

Thom’s hands came down flat and hard on the countertop. “You were at the park, weren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you skipped around it when she asked, and you didn’t deny it when I just asked. So you were there?”

I nodded like a little girl.

“Meaning somebody took a shot at
you.
”

“Possibly,” I said.

“Possibly? A rifle was used here, a rifle was used there, according to the news—”

“Okay, conceivably.”

“
Lawsy,
my soul whispered to me that was the case, but I didn’t want to hear it,
I did not want to hear!
” Thom said that with her tendency toward the dramatic, teeing up with an exclamation whose meaning still wasn’t clear to me. I assumed it was some kind of variation of “Lordy,” but it never seemed the right moment to ask. And this wasn’t it. Her face was an iron mask of disapproval.

“I’m being more careful now, and both the NPD and the FBI are covering my
tush.
”

“You gonna tell them you’re going to the Chinese wake?”

“I don’t think I’ll have to,” I said. “The FBI has been following me.”

“That’s a relief,” Thom said. “Glad somebody got some common sense.”

“Are we ready to open?” I asked, knowing we weren’t.

“I will be. You
know
I will be.”

I don’t know how many employers would put up with the kind of back talk I got from Thom—only I know it came from a place of love and deep concern. I knew that, and the love and concern were mutual.

People started lining up at eight, and while Luke maintained the line, A.J. and Raylene took the orders. They ran them to Thom, who brought them to me and Newt in the kitchen. I caught glimpses of the customers as they came in to pay and walked away with their orders. Most were regulars, and I appreciated their support. A few were clearly rubberneckers who wanted to lay eyes on the death spot. One was a crime blogger, Marcel Carney, whom I recognized from when our bread man had died out back. He came in, shot a video while pretending to talk on his phone, and left just as I flung a wet washcloth at a surprised Thom with instructions to scrub the counter. I came within a few inches of hitting him.

Unlike most days, when there’s a breakfast and lunch rush with a lull between, the flow of customers was constant. I didn’t get to check e-mails or answer the phone. Part of the crush of patrons was due to a slight backup caused by having to make everything to go. It takes a little more time to wrap and bag food items than it does to slap them on a plate. We ran out of to-go packing several times, which necessitated digging into the supplies in the basement for more paper, more bags, more Styrofoam containers. Some of them still had a smiling caricature of my uncle on them.

By late afternoon I was kaput. As soon as Dani came in I checked out. Thom handed me my messages, I went to my office, shut the door, shut the phone, and lay back in my chair. A surprisingly uninterrupted hour-long nap took the hard edge off my exhaustion, after which I helped with the busier-than-normal late-afternoon crowd, which included Candy Sommerton buying bagels and trying to convince Thomasina to let her see me. I was surprised the blond newscaster did not leave wearing the
schmear
in an unseemly spot. To my outsider’s eyes and politically incorrect brain, it was more than just Thom looking out for me. It was the War Between the States being played out in reverse. A century and a half ago, what I was witnessing would have been unthinkable. Thom would be beaten to or nearly to death.

Which brings me to a few words about our bagels.

After the death of our McCoy’s Bakery bread delivery man, whose firm had decent bagels—thanks to Uncle Murray sharing his recipe—I decided it was time to home-grow our own. Not just because our customers deserve the best I can give them, but because working on Wall Street taught me the value of individual enterprise : job creation. If banks are the backbone, then small business is the circulatory system of our economy. I found a baker who had been laid off by McCoy’s, Louis Radich, and set him up with an oven in a former machine shop he picked up at foreclosure. He was free to bake for whoever he wanted as long as he made my bagels first—by which he was paying off the interest-free loan for the forty-thousand-dollar stonehearth deck oven. I bring this up because it’s necessary to put some perspective on my own not exactly paranoia, but guardedness.