Fry Me a Liver Page 16

  Kane relaxed his grip. “Okay, but to do what, exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I need to be in motion, toward something. I’m beginning to realize that’s how I’ve done everything since I’ve been down here. Everything in New York was structured—the rules governing my work, the activities governing my downtime with my husband, the interaction with my mother that had boundaries designed to keep both of us away from the things that really bothered her. I’m not going to nurse bad juju anymore. I’m going to spread it around like shmear with chives. You coming?”

  “Can we try a measured approach?” he asked.

  “Meaning?”

  “We go in, sit down for dinner, and see what they do before we charge over?” He smiled thinly. “It’s what we in the South call a compromise.”

  That made me laugh.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll go in and just eat.”

  He looked at me skeptically. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Because last night, you warned me we were just going to make out and—”

  “That was different.”

  “I agree, and I liked that result,” he said. “If you create a scene in this place—those guys get to leave Nashville. We have to stay.”

  “I don’t plan to create a scene,” I said a little indignantly. “We’re just poking the hornets’ nest. A compromise, like you said.”

  I opened the door and he got out as well. By the time we entered the restaurant, I was so tired of talking and negotiating that I pretty much forgot what I’d agreed to. Not that it mattered. Benjamin saw us and did not react at all. A moment later, Grace looked over and smiled slightly before returning to her meal. We were shown to a table. There were several empty tables between us. Kane ended up sitting with his back to them. I was just too fast for him.

  “You sure you want to sit there?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Why, Gwen?”

  “If I don’t, I’ll keep turning around and that’ll be worse.”

  He had to concede the logic of that. He didn’t understand the growing emotional storm but I knew that until I had someone to pin the explosion on, these suntanned yutzes were going to be the target of my displeasure.

  We ordered. If you asked what I ordered, I couldn’t have told you. I watched them seeming to have a perfectly fine time while I was not.

  “Relax,” Kane said, taking my hands in his. It was only then that I realized I had shredded my chopstick wrapper into fine little sections.

  “I can’t,” I apologized.

  “You’re not trying. Look at me,” Kane said. “Into my eyes.”

  I made the effort. I looked. Then I looked past him at the happy couple.

  “I’ve got to go over,” I said.

  “Gwen, you promised.”

  “I know. But if I don’t stir things up, I’m going to blow up. Look, a few minutes ago you told me these guys might be bomb makers. I have to know.”

  “I also told you why we can’t be the ones to confront them.”

  It may seem, at this point, that I qualified as totally meshuga. The description would be entirely accurate. I’d had it. Things had piled up from all sides—or, to be fair, I had taken them on—and I was worn out. I had to do something to change that dynamic.

  I started to get up. Kane did not release my hands. He was holding them rather tightly.

  “Let’s get this to go,” he said.

  “Uh-uh. I’m going to tell them we’re on to them.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I won’t say anything more than that, just that they can expect to be hearing from John Law.”

  “You can’t,” he repeated.

  Something about his manner had changed. He was no longer the affable guy who had helped shepherd me through a tough couple of days.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Please sit,” he said.

  I did. But I already knew what he was going to tell me. At least, I had a strong, strong feeling in the kishkes.

  “You planted the receipt,” I said.

  He seemed a little taken aback but not insulted. He lowered his eyes.

  I sat hard. Everything, not just the anger, seemed to seep out of me and sag over the edge of the seat. Our food arrived. I looked at Kane through the steam.

  “Are you going to explain?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I should.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” I said. “But a more important question first. Did you put a cell phone in the room too?”

  “No,” he said. “We were going to find that somewhere else.”

  “So the phone receipt, obviously, is yours.”

  He nodded limply. Captain Health had met his kryptonite for the first time and didn’t know how to handle it.

  “What were you trying to do, impress me?” I asked.

  “Partly that,” he said. “But partly also—I don’t know if I can tell you.”

  “Try. No, do more than try,” I insisted. “Spit it out. I have to know.”

  Kane looked up hopefully. He must have thought he heard something compassionate in my voice but he was wrong. He obviously didn’t find anything helpful in my eyes because after a moment he looked back down again.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I can’t.”

  “Captain Health, powerless in the face of truth.”

  “No,” he said. “In the face of exposure. There’s a reason he wears a mask and a costume.”

  “Spare me the pop psychology. Not in the mood.”

  “Gwen, I—”

  “Stop.” I wasn’t interested in mea culpas and humility. “How did you hope to pull this off?” I asked. “Ultimately, the evidence wouldn’t have supported a legal case, would it? The police would have discovered that the phone you planted didn’t call the number that triggered the explosion.”

  “They would have discovered that I bought the phone so there’d be a number kids could call to get a message to Captain Health,” he said.

  “And an anonymous caller would have assumed that random purchase was used to detonate a phone bomb . . . why?”

  “A store clerk trying to do his or her part? A doctor or nurse who thinks I’m giving false hope to kids? A frustrated banker looking to get some press for the job he really loves? A super villain?”

  It was too soon for him to make jokes; at least, I hoped it was a joke. I felt ill.

  I motioned the waiter over, asked him to wrap up my dinner to go. I reached into my bag and found a twenty.

  “Let me,” he said, taking out his wallet.

  “Go to hell,” I replied.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “They hurt you. I wanted to hurt them.”

  “Mister, did you get that bass ackward,” I said.

  “Not the motives—”

  “Are you insane or just moronically provincial?” I said with admitted bitterness. “Trust is goal number one. Without that, in any undertaking, you’ve got nothing. You, Captain Shlemiel, have nothing.”

  “Fine. You don’t have to be insulting.”

  “Oh, now you’re the wounded half? Jesus.”

  I threw down the twenty, grabbed my sack of food on the way out, and left without looking back at anyone. It was surprisingly easy. I had no feeling inside, bupkes, not even a sense of betrayal. What Kane had done was stupid, my having had any interest in him was stupid and impulsive, and my plan going forward was to forget the whole damn thing—the investigation, Newt collaborating with the enemy, the enemies themselves, and everything else that was presently in my head. Remarkably, I didn’t blame myself for anything that I had done over the last two days. It was post-traumatic stress, I told myself. No one would have been thinking clearly.

  I walked the long walk until I reached my car and I drove until I reached my home. I had been praying quietly that Kane hadn’t gone to his van to catch up to me there. He hadn’t. I fed my two cats, microwaved dinner, and flopped on
my crappy sofa with the Styrofoam container and chopsticks.

  That was when I saw it: a note on the floor. It must have been slipped under the front door and made its way half under the carpet. I went over and picked up the envelope, saw my name handwritten in block letters, and went back to the chair.

  “Fan mail from some flounder?” I wondered. It seemed an appropriate response. If my life wasn’t currently a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, I don’t know what it was.

  I opened the letter with a finger, figuring that if someone were trying to poison me there were easier ways to go about it. It was handwritten in pencil, one side of a large page. The heading at top said Edenist Party in red ink, from a rubber stamp. The spelling was accurate and the thoughts concise:

  Dear Miss Gwen Katz:

  The police have been to my home asking about fertilizer. I assume they are concerned because it can be used to make a bomb. I want to assure you I was not involved in the attack on your deli and would not even know how to manufacture an explosive. I told them I did not believe in my heart that any of the candidates were responsible. What I did not tell them was that someone recently purchased a large supply of fertilizer from me. Before I mention such a thing, I was wondering if I could ride over or if you might stop by tomorrow?

  Sincerely,

  Moss Post

  “I wonder,” I said to the cats, “how you guys would take to having a horse parked in the driveway.”

  I decided not to find out. I had nothing on the calendar and a trip to his place might be a nice change. And who knows? Maybe the whole antitechnology lifestyle would appeal to me. I once went to the Amish country in Pennsylvania and wondered what it would be like effectively living in the nineteenth century. I looked up his address. He was located on Ashland City Highway facing the Cumberland River. It would be a short drive just west of the city, a little over twenty miles and a half hour . . . longer than that on horseback.

  I channel surfed for a bit, checked e-mails, fell asleep in the bathtub, then went to bed for real.

  If I had any dreams, I remembered none of them.

  Which was the appropriate metaphor to end the day.

  Chapter 16

  There are all kinds of beautiful. And this morning, when my psyche was all achy, was the perfect time to be reminded of that.

  When I lived in the city, a beautiful sight was the sun setting behind the Statue of Liberty or snow blowing down a gray, deserted Fifth Avenue or dark, angry skies behind the United Nations Building, which always seemed apt.

  Here, the beauty is pretty much of a piece: virgin hills and timeless waterways. I didn’t know how much of that was due to the fact that it didn’t pay to develop the area or the owners were from old families for whom the land meant more than money. That was an odd reality for me down here. Things like that mattered. It wasn’t just the financial woman who responded to that unfamiliar reality. Jews, who had historically been on the run from oppressors, rarely owned much more than could fit in an ox cart or valise. Land? I couldn’t recall the last Katz who owned any until Uncle Murray moved down here and bought the house and deli.

  And we know how that turned out.

  The other thing that happens down here, relative to this beauty thing, is that as you go from area to area the scents change. It’s not like in New York, where hot tar gives way to a peanut vendor, which gives way to truck fumes, which succumb to Hefty bags of trash. Here, if you drive with your window open, the odors go from a kind of neutral smell in the unpolluted city to what was for me one unidentifiable tree or plant smell to another. Occasionally, you got a whiff of dead wildlife or skunk, but they passed quickly.

  Post dwelt on a bluff overlooking the slate blue river. Only the flat slate roof of the main house was visible from the road, though I could see at least two other cabins scattered around a couple of acres of farmland. The only crop I could identify was corn. Everything else looked like wheat to me, whether it was or wasn’t. Beyond the farmland were groves of various fruit trees running down the gentle slope of the cliff. I assumed they helped prevent erosion; I remembered that much from high school. The stables and compost area were just behind the short, sloping gravel driveway.

  The entire compound looked to me as if the original woodland had been pushed back, everything else dropped in however many scores of years before, and then the surrounding trees allowed to spring back. It was a careful, respectfully constructed homestead.

  A pair of barking German shepherds announced me from the bottom of the driveway. Three cars were parked there; not everyone who came to work for or with Moss would necessarily ride a horse. I waited on the gravel drive until someone came out to take charge of the dogs.Foreign smells assaulted me. No, not exactly foreign; it was like my cats’ litter box writ large. But I didn’t have too much time to consider the multiple sources. Moss himself came to quiet the pooches.

  A Lincolnesque figure in coveralls emerged from the house and ordered the dogs away. They quieted and ran off. I got out, heard horses whinnying, stalks blowing, smelled the compost, felt like I was in Amish country. The bearded man smiled through spiky gray whiskers, raised his hand in greeting, and walked forward.

  “Hark the heralds,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t that be ‘bark’?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Lord, you are right!”

  I offered a hand and he enveloped it in his two huge canvas-skinned paws. He fixed a pair of clear brown eyes on me, framed by deep-crevassed skin. It was protected from the sun by a big, floppy leather hat that sat on gray hair pulled into a long ponytail. It was held in place with what looked like a beaded Native American clasp.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “How can a guy so photogenic fail to capture city hall?”

  “Photogenic is relative,” I pointed out.

  “You mean, like President Taft weighing three hundred and forty pounds in just his moustache.”

  “No, I was thinking of various cultures around the nation, around the world, where tattoos and piercings that were once considered extreme are becoming normal,” I said. “And I hope that what someone looks like isn’t the only thing people vote for.”

  “True, true,” he said. “There’ve been some movie star–lookin’ folks who’ve gone down the chute when they opened their mouths.”

  “Exactly.”

  I was starting to shvitz standing out there and Moss took my arm and walked me toward the small patio surrounded by hanging plants and hardworking bees.

  “They won’t sting,” he assured me as he offered me a lounge in the shade. “Like everyone and everything else around here, they come to work.”

  “By choice,” I said, “which makes it even nicer.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “Our team of farmers and election workers and even our livestock are committed.”

  I smiled and sat. He lowered himself into a wooden chair. It was funny. I’d been around so many older Jewish men all my life, I’d expected him to say “Oy” as he sat. He pulled the chair closer. I think he did that as a little show of intimacy, not security. There was no one outside of this household for miles around.

  “Would you like anything?” he asked. “Fresh milk?”

  “Had my cuppa joe en route, thanks,” I said.

  “Ah, coffee. I gave it up years ago for tea. I once thought of growing my own beans here but coffee can be a stubborn crop, I’m told.”

  “Must be all that caffeine.”

  He grinned. “What about a tour? You might find it a little different from what you’re accustomed to. You don’t look like you get out to farms much.”

  “I look like I don’t? Why?”

  He pointed toward my feet. “City soles. Out here you need something that’ll go an inch or two into muck.”

  “I do not own such a pair,” I admitted. “If it’s okay with you, all I’d like is to know why you sent me that note.”

  “I asked one of my ca
mpaign workers to drop it at your place because I felt you should know.”

  “Yes, but why not the police?”

  “Because anything I say or do is going to be declared ‘political,’” he said. “I don’t work that way. I wanted you to know I am a man of integrity. It’s important.”

  “I see.” I did respect his intentions, which I took to be sincere. Rare, a little odd, but earnest.

  “I am also not implying anything, only presenting the facts,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “So—the person in question?”

  “I sold eight bags to Josephine Young,” he told me.

  “Owner of the Salad Barre,” I said, not terribly surprised. “That Josephine Young?”

  “That’s right.”

  “New client?”

  “Uh huh. She said she believed that several of her organic providers were not providing true organics and intended to start farming her own. I recall there was a competition in which you beat her for some prize—”

  “Best Mid-range Restaurant,” I said.

  “That’s it. I know that she is a competitive lady, that she came from a highly competitive art, and—honestly, I have no reason to doubt her but I also don’t know how far she would go to win this year.”

  It’s funny. Not ha-ha funny but sick funny. I didn’t believe someone would kill to become mayor of Nashville. But I wouldn’t put it past someone who put their heart into a business to go to extremes to make that business a success.

  “Was there anything strange or furtive about the way she bought the fertilizer?” I asked.

  “She’s a kind of strange duck to begin with, but nothing beyond that.”

  “Did she come alone?”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “She had a helper. A guy who did the lugging.”

  “Did you recognize him?”

  Moss shook his head. “It could’ve been someone she knew or who worked for her or someone she hired to help her for an hour.”

  “Right. What did he look like?” Moss obviously didn’t talk to a lot of people, either. Getting information from him was like getting eggs from gefilte fish.

  “Hunky guy, bald, late thirties, I’d say. Rough hands, rough shaven, probably blue collar.”