Fry Me a Liver Page 5

  “My cameraman is always superfocused on what’s in front of him, not above,” she said charitably.

  “Ow,” he said belatedly.

  Luke and Benjamin actually laughed at that. So did Washington. It was a nice relief, but the gloom settled again quickly. Washington sat and brooded, breathing slowly to try and calm himself. We all sat still now, listening. Now that we were quiet and in a smaller area than before, with less echo, we could hear muted voices from above.

  “Can anyone make anything out?” Benjamin asked.

  “No,” Luke said. “It’s like trying to hear stuff when the water’s running. Thank God the boss yells all the time.”

  I held up my hand to hush everyone. “I recognize Detective Bean’s voice,” I said. The policewoman had a very deep, distinctive tone, even when it was muffled. I felt better knowing that she was on-site.

  “Sounds like she’s giving orders,” Luke said.

  “That’s a good thing,” I remarked. “She knows what she’s doing.”

  Silence settled on the group again, except for the heightened breathing of Washington.

  “I got trapped in a cave when I was a kid,” Benjamin said. “It was up in Santa Barbara, the painted caves. I found Chumash art that had been hidden for centuries. There was a rock fall. I had to light a fire or they’d never have seen me. Talk about bad air. The cave had an opening, a chimney, that sucked all the smoke toward me.”

  My eyes drifted toward the tourist, who was a metallic white head floating in the glow of the phone. I wanted to get our minds off the situation; quiet conversation seemed like a good idea.

  “Is that where you’re from?” I asked. “Santa Barbara?”

  “Originally, yes. Now I live farther south in California—a town called Temecula, about ninety minutes inland from San Diego.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Candy said, getting into the spirit of things. “Near Murrieta Hot Springs.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you do there?” I asked.

  “I run a restaurant with Grace—my girlfriend.”

  “So you’re a competitor!”

  “Not really. We do Tex-Asian fusion.”

  “Let me guess,” Luke said. “Your place is called TAF. No, wait. TAFFY. Tex-Asian Fusion For You.”

  “Actually, it’s called GAB—Grace and Benjamin.”

  “Not even in the ballpark,” Luke grumbled.

  “You weren’t even in the parking lot,” I said. “So what’s the menu like, Benjamin?”

  “BBQ rib sushi, nacho pad Thai, hot and sour taco soup—that sort of thing,” he said. “We came up with the idea when we were both students at the Tustin Institute of Culinary Invention.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “It is, and after two years we were finally doing well enough to take our first vacation.”

  “And you came here,” Candy said, her newswoman’s ears moving like a cat’s.

  “That’s right. We love food and music so here we are.”

  “I’m still waiting to take a vacation,” I said.

  “You should come and visit us,” Benjamin said.

  “We keep telling her to go somewhere, anywhere,” Luke said. “We even offered to take up a collection. Thom ran things before she got down here.”

  Thom didn’t respond and that brought things down a little. She was unconscious, breathing softly. A.J. was also unconscious but breathing a little more energetically. I couldn’t tell if it was the thin air or whatever injuries they had sustained. I was more anxious about them both than I let on.

  “Are those Austrian Crescents you use in the pancakes?” Benjamin asked.

  I was impressed. He knew his taters. As I recall, Benjamin ordered matzo ball soup and extra crispy latkes, the lady had our homemade gefilte fish and matzo brei. I didn’t ask what he thought about the meal; I knew those were aces so it wouldn’t really matter.

  “It’s a mix of those and Yukon Gold,” I replied. “They’re kind of the classic for latke-making, but I add my own little twist.”

  “A secret?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  Candy had put her arm around Washington. She shook her head. “I don’t understand how you can talk about potatoes when we’re buried in your basement.”

  “You know what?” Washington said. “They should keep going. I’m hungry. It’s taking my mind off stuff.”

  “Are you serious?” Candy asked. “I thought you were really going through something!”

  “I didn’t eat this morning,” he said. “That could be why I hit my head, why I’m so skittery.”

  “I sat here defending a person who was just hungry?” she railed.

  “Say, I think a tub of chopped liver fell in with us,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, I smelled it,” I said.

  “You want some, camera guy?” Luke asked solicitously. He jerked a thumb behind him. “It’s out there.”

  “I’ll give it to you at cost,” I joked. Candy didn’t hear my jest. She was too busy being embarrassed because Washington was rallying.

  “You got rye bread down here?” Washington asked.

  “If the bread shelves fell, yeah,” Luke said.

  “You’re all crazy!” Candy screamed. Perhaps coincidentally, chips fell from the ceiling. She dropped her shoulders and lowered her voice. “How can you think of food?”

  “You’re just frustrated because we can’t broadcast from here,” Washington said.

  “Yes, Waverly. That has got me a little on edge,” she admitted through her teeth. “We may have experienced Nashville’s first terrorist attack and I’m sitting on both the story and my ass!”

  “Language,” Thom cautioned weakly.

  I looked over at Thom and smiled. Her eyes were still shut but there was a faint look of disapproval around the mouth. If anything could rouse her from a stupor, it was godlessness.

  Candy did not apologize. She just huffed and grabbed her ankles and rocked back and forth on the jacket she had folded under her posterior.

  Luke was peering into the area with the hanging van. “It’s possible,” he said. “And I’m thinking that some chopped liver might be a good thing to have.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You’re not going back in there.”

  “The tub wasn’t near Sandy’s vehicle,” he said.

  “Dammit, Luke, we’re safer here. I know you always need something to do—but this is the time to just sit.”

  “Again, says who?” Washington said. “For all we know, there may be a way out in that direction, behind the van.”

  “A van that’s hanging by God knows what!” I said. “Maybe the perps don’t want to risk disturbing it. Besides, if there were a way out, there would be a draft. There would be smells from the food in the kitchen. There would be light.”

  “And God spoke,” Candy said.

  I ignored her.

  “There could just be some light junk lying across it,” Washington said. “Something we could push aside.”

  “If that were the case, people up there would have come in through the back door, pushed it aside, and lowered a ladder by now.”

  “I think the fire department would have thought of that,” a weak voice agreed.

  Our eyes all shot toward A.J. It was good to hear her voice, however weak.

  “Hey, how are you, waitstaff person?” I asked, crawling over.

  “Achy-breaky,” she replied. “My head feels like it took the back end of a swing for the bleachers.”

  “There’s no blood,” Benjamin said. “I checked.”

  “Who is holding my hand?” A.J. asked.

  “I’m Benjamin,” he said. “A tourist in your city.”

  “Thank you, tourist Benjamin,” she replied, looking up at him. “Did I hear correctly or did I imagine that you are from Southern California?”

  “You heard correctly.”

  “I have family in San Bernardino.”

  “Same county, not too far,” he
said.

  “I love it out there. All the mountains and the desert—”

  I sat on my knees beside her. “Why don’t you lie quietly?”

  “Honey boss, that’s what I’ve been doing,” she replied. “Like floating on a rubber raft in a pool, kinda daydreaming. I don’t want to pass out again. Anybody got any water?”

  I looked at the others, their heads shaking. I hadn’t seen any water bottles by the van, didn’t see one in here. We do not sell them so I wasn’t surprised.

  “Sorry, no,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” A.J. said. “I’d probably choke it up.”

  “Why?”

  “Throat . . . clogged—,” she said, then drifted back into unconsciousness.

  I lay a hand on her throat. It felt cold. I had no idea what that meant. The silence returned as we all listened to the sounds from above. They seemed to be coming from the area where Washington had hit his head. It may have been my imagination but they seemed to be a little louder.

  Luke looked at me. “Do you think—?”

  “That they heard Washington’s bang?” I asked. “It’s possible.” I got to my feet and tried to calculate where this pipe was. I believed it fed the small sink behind the lunch counter. That was a hollow metal basin; it could have amplified the sound like a bell. Though the deli would have been evacuated and I couldn’t imagine anyone was inside, even the fire department, it was possible someone heard it. I took off one of my comfortable Tofino slip-ons, turned the heel toward the pipe, and knocked out a series of three taps. I waited and then did three more. There was silence from above and then my series of raps was returned.

  “They heard!” I said.

  “Woohoo!” Candy cheered. She was suddenly a new, renewed woman.

  I rapped three times again, then slipped my shoe on and sat; I was standing on something wet and hoped a pipe wasn’t leaking somewhere. I didn’t want to have to move A.J. or Thom again if water came flooding in.

  “So I expect they’ll be coming in through the deli,” Benjamin said, cocking his head to that side.

  I nodded as his cell phone light started to fade.

  “Hey, you should probably turn that off and save the battery,” I suggested.

  “Whoa, wait!” Candy cried excitedly. “Benjamin, turn that over here!”

  “What?”

  “Put on the damn camera! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.”

  “You’re going to shoot video?” I asked.

  “No,” Candy said. “He is.”

  Benjamin hesitated.

  “I’ll pay you!” Candy said. “Please! Something like this can go national, or at least viral! Just ten, fifteen seconds. I’m begging you!”

  “I never heard her beg,” Washington said. He was looking up, casting around hopefully for a sign of light and life.

  The thought of what Candy had asked was abhorrent on one level, using our limited resources to propel her career. But I understood it. I looked at Benjamin who was looking at me.

  “Your call,” I said.

  “Literally,” Candy added. “I’ll need you to send what I record down here as soon as we get out.”

  The young man nodded. He raised the cell phone as Candy made herself look as disheveled as possible. She moved toward the rubble wall with the sloping van as a backdrop. I had to give her this: the gal could think in a crisis.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Go,” he said.

  And then, as the video rolled—and on cue—the van took his direction and fell into the basement.

  Chapter 5

  I happened to be looking in that direction, not watching Candy but shielding my eyes from the direct beam of the cell phone flashlight. That was how and why I saw everything that happened.

  It was as if the van had a ghost driver. The back end, the one facing down, lurched toward us slightly as though someone had shifted gears. It hesitated a moment and then sped down backward at a forty-five degree angle. The rear tires struck the basement floor like the landing gear of a 747 touching down, then the front end of the van dropped hard. Propelled by the fall, the entire vehicle rolled toward the rubble wall. The van was trailing two heavy steel cables that ate into the ceiling above. They were tied to the front axle; it looked as if the FD had been trying to secure the van through the back door of the deli when the floor gave way just enough to drop the vehicle through. The van traversed only three or four yards, but that was just enough for it to ram the wall. The van stopped hard and the wall gave without a struggle. The rubble toppled onto A.J.

  She didn’t make a sound but Candy did. The newswoman shrieked and threw herself to the side as more debris toppled toward her. Washington reached over and pulled her toward him, across debris that had fallen earlier, to get her out of the way of the van.

  There was a long, thick moment of silence. Our eyes all drifted upward. The fall of the vehicle left an opening in the ceiling. The hole and the air around it were filled with a thick gray tester of particulate matter with dim, hazy work lights beyond.

  The ceiling seemed to have lost everything it was going to lose. It was time to take chances now if we were going to help A.J.

  “Luke, stay wide of the opening but yell at whoever’s up there. Tell them we have injured people.”

  He acknowledged this as I spun to where A.J. lay buried. I began throwing smaller blocks toward the hole, away from the others. Sandy—who had jumped back and missed the collapse by inches—was already pulling at the rubble with her strong butcher’s hands. Benjamin kept the cell phone on us even as the light started to wink out.

  “A.J., talk to me,” I said, more to myself than to her.

  “Do what your boss says,” Sandy added. “Say something. Anything!”

  My fingers became claws and my heart became a locomotive. They worked together, ripping at stone with a ferocity and strength I didn’t imagine I possessed. The pile on top of A.J. was nearly a foot deep. Her arms were jutting from the base, the fingers twitching. Candy crept over and pulled stones from her feet. I saw her look over at Benjamin’s phone. If the camera was still running, she was probably making sure her face was on it, playing the hero. I didn’t have time to be angry. That would come. So would beating the crap out of whoever was responsible for this. And I would find out who that was.

  By the time we had cleared the mound from A.J.’s chest and face, the only light was from the craterous hole the van had made. My poor gal’s head was turned toward the opening, her eyes shut. She was scratched with vivid red gashes but the rest of her was so pale, so cold, so lifeless—

  I heard Luke talking softly from somewhere to my left. I didn’t have the time or patience for “soft.” If he was talking to himself, he needed to shut up. If he was passing information to us, he needed to speak up.

  “Luke, we need help down here!” I screamed. “Now!”

  I heard Luke say something as he stepped back from the opening. It was drowned out by the sound my heart was making as it rammed against my chest.

  Suddenly, on the left, I saw figures were dropping through the opening. I saw them peripherally, as silhouettes blocking the light. They were solid shadows that I knew from the silhouettes were firefighters. They hurried toward me and I slid to the side, on my knees, heedless of my own pain. There were two figures, then three, and they continued to clear rubble away until a rigid, plastic patient mover was lowered on nylon ropes and brought over. One of the figures placed something over A.J.’s head and neck to stabilize her while another hooked something to her arm. Plasma, probably. They also put something over her mouth, then carried her to the opening and hauled her up, steadying the board on all sides with caring, up-reaching arms. I was literally sick when it hit me that it might not matter. A.J.’s skin had looked more mineral than flesh. Except for the twitching in her fingers, nothing had moved. I couldn’t process the thought of losing her.

  We had just been talking about little things upstairs. But though they were triv
ial, they were the things of life, the stuff a day and relationships are made of. How could this be? How could it have happened?

  I wavered like a reed in a strong wind; I didn’t realize I was about to fall until Sandy caught me.

  “We better get you out of here,” Sandy said.

  “No—Thom first. I’m okay.”

  “Your knees and fingers are bleeding.”

  “Thom may be bleeding too,” I insisted.

  Sandy held up her hands in surrender. As the bottom of A.J.’s stretcher disappeared through the opening, the figures came toward us. Flashlights played through the dim cellar. Floating grit was everywhere. We shied like vampires before the sunlight. I heard muffled voices, realized the new arrivals were wearing protective masks. I felt like I was in one of those post-apocalyptic movies where the military finds people infected with some government-created virus that somehow got loose.

  Wait! I thought urgently. Maybe it had, injected in calves, stored in their livers for dissemination.

  Clearly, my head was not working properly. I saw Sandy guide the next wave of rescuers to Thom, saw others coming forward, felt hands on my arm. There were foggy voices in my ear and big, blank, dark faces in my eyes, and then the world started to do cartwheels and I went down on my back. I was semiconscious as the firefighters got to me. One of them raised her mask.

  “Do you know your name?” she asked.

  “Moe Howard,” I replied.

  “Ma’am, you are not—”

  “One of the Three Stooges, I know,” I said. I was annoyed that I had fallen and when I get annoyed I get comically sarcastic. I started to get up, felt a stabbing in both eyes, shut them and stayed put.

  “How is A.J.?” I asked. “The woman you removed?”

  “I do not have that information,” she said.

  Why do first responders never use contractions? I wondered. Do they think it sounds more official? More believable? It failed with me because how could she not know? They all had to be plugged into the same communications units. I just didn’t feel like arguing.

  I was carried out on another plastic board, raised to the light as if I were ascending to heaven, then transferred to a gurney that was rolled to the street in front of the deli. I pushed the paramedics away as they tried to strap me down.