Fry Me a Liver Page 6

  “I’m all right,” I insisted, and swung my legs over the side. Hands reached for me but my shoulders wriggled defiantly—stupidly, too, since my head was still mushy. When my feet touched asphalt, I made them stay there, rigid, like I was a modern-day golem.

  A medical technician came around and looked me in my defiant little punim. “Ma’am, we need to check—”

  “I wasn’t injured,” I said firmly.

  “You were. There’s blood all over your hands and legs,” the technician said, and began to cut holes in my pants.

  I let her as I looked around. “Where’s my friend? The blond woman?”

  She didn’t answer. I winced as she put some kind of ointment on my knees. My roving eyes settled on a gurney sitting beside an ambulance. I saw a hint of platinum-colored hair poking out from the top of a clutch of medics.

  A.J.’s hair.

  The medics were working fast, chirping instructions and information back and forth. Behind them, at a distance, I saw Luke standing and staring, Dani sobbing under his arm. He must have just been brought from the pit; Dani must have seen a newsflash or someone must have tweeted and she biked over to the deli. Raylene and Newt were behind them, hugging each other. I didn’t see Benjamin but I assumed he was with his girlfriend. Or maybe Candy was with him, making sure he sent the video to her station. I looked back just in time to see Thomasina being raised into an ambulance.

  That was all the motivation I needed to get myself in motion. The medic had finished patching my knees and hands and was dutifully taking my blood pressure. I tore at the Velcro armband and, ignoring her shouts, stumbled toward my staff on uncertain legs and hot, angry knees. Raylene saw me and started to cry. She extended her hands toward me, her fingers wriggling like hungry little birds, and threw her arms around my neck. I let her take some of my weight and grabbed her shoulders and the others joined in. It was a strong, much needed group hug.

  “Our girls are going to be all right,” I whispered hopefully. “They have to be.”

  “Life doesn’t run on wishes,” said Raylene, the pragmatist.

  “No, but trust me on this: negativity makes things worse.”

  Raylene considered that, then nodded. “I’m going to the hospital to be with Thom. Then I have to get home—of all the days for my mother to be coming to town.”

  “You do what you can.”

  “I’m going to call A.J. Two,” Newt said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” I told him. “Absolutely.”

  Newt still seemed a little “off,” understandably. Having something to do would be good for him.

  We held the hug until I heard a familiar voice call to me. I turned and saw Detective Bean. Beyond her I saw the distinctive white truck, with a horizontal blue band fringed with gold, belonging to the Metro Police Bomb Squad. The young African American woman had spotted me and was walking over briskly. The staff dispersed as the detective put a hand on my right arm.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

  “Physically, yeah,” I said. “I can even hear now.”

  “I’m sorry about your waitperson. Does she have a family, someone you’d like me to call?”

  “Why, is there news?” I asked anxiously.

  “No, no, I just thought.”

  “We’ve got that covered, thanks,” I said.

  That had scared me and I felt a little weak. Bean grasped my arms, steadied me. I was okay, but by the time I breathed again, tears were running down from the sides of my eyes. It wasn’t until my skin felt fresh and clean where the tears ran that I realized I was probably covered with grit.

  “Why don’t you sit?” Bean asked.

  “Because then I will lose it,” I said.

  “I understand.”

  “All those things down there . . . ,” I said absently.

  “What things?”

  “The utensils that had been so useful just moments before . . . trash.”

  “Some of it may be salvageable,” Bean said. “It will all be recovered for us to examine, then you can go through it—”

  “Twisted. Broken.” That was all I could think about. That horrid other worldly terrain with a coating of choking dust.

  “Detective Daniels called to ask how you were,” Bean told me. “He wanted to know if you needed anything.”

  “A new deli,” I said. That was harsh and I added more politely, “That was nice of him.”

  I didn’t want to think of Grant now. He was always strong when I needed him to be and strong when I didn’t need him to be. I didn’t want him on my mind or even peripherally back in my life. “What do we know?” I asked.

  “Not much. We can save the official interview until later, but can you give me a once-over from your end?”

  I told her I knew as little as she did since the blast knocked me silly and made my sensory perceptions meaningless. Bean nodded with what seemed to be understanding.

  “Do you think Tootsie Pearl was the target?” I asked. “Is she okay?”

  “Shaken but uninjured.” Bean cocked her head toward a clutch of squad cars up the street. “We’re talking to her now.”

  I looked over. I saw the police talking to witnesses and keeping two layers of people back: journalists and gawkers taking cell phone videos, and people who were just trying to get through or go to their jobs. To her credit or damnation, I wasn’t sure which, Candy Sommerton was among the former, inscrutable and ghoulish, chasing the story. She was trying to talk to the police while other reporters were trying to talk to her, looking at their cell phones—at her video, I suspected. To add to the confusion, reporters were trying to interview the bloodied, limping reporter while she was trying to get to the mayoral candidate. The press refers to such events as a “media circus.” A circus has a ringleader and some sense of order. From where I stood, it looked like the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo.

  “There were no death threats against the candidate that I’m aware of,” Bean confided to me. Her answer to the question confused me at first. I had forgotten what I’d asked. “We’re checking the social media sites now but—I’m told you have a kind of eagle eye on your place. True?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “When I look out at the diner, it’s like a rabbi on the High Holy Days, gratefully spotting worshipers who came every Sabbath, not just once a year, but aware of the rest.”

  She smiled. “So, Rabbi Katz. Did anyone look out of place?”

  “Everyone was eating, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “I got the Homeland Security circular about profiling that was called something else. No one stood out.”

  I had, in fact, dutifully read the document Homeland Security sent every six months. It was a PDF brochure called If You See Something, Say Something and it was sent to all public service institutions. The document said in big red letters that it was wrong to profile people because of their race, religion, nationality, dress, or accent. But, that said, it advised us of behavior to look out for such as patrons being overly protective of property that did not appear to have any obvious value; seeming agitated without any direct cause, such as someone talking loudly nearby; wearing heavy clothing that seemed inappropriate to temperate weather—all the things that anyone with a healthy strain of paranoia should spot without help from the federal government.

  “Who was the person down there with you?” She checked her iPad notes. “Benjamin West?”

  “A restaurateur from Southern California. Said he was sampling local cuisine with his girlfriend.”

  “Anything suspicious about him?”

  “Only his taste in food, Tex-Asian fusion.”

  She noted that in her file and added to that a photo she had taken of the couple sitting off to the side. Bean was probably just a few years younger than her predecessor, but there was a big generational gap in the way they handled technology. Grant was still a notepad-and-pen kinda guy.

  “Any other thoughts?” Bean asked. “Random impressions—anything while it’s still fresh?�
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  I thought for a moment, replayed the experience. “Candy said something about her cell phone being in the diner.”

  “We found her phone and checked for video,” Bean said. “Nada.”

  “Benjamin took cell phone video downstairs—”

  “He told us,” Bean said. “We saw it. Some sensational images but nothing that helps us.”

  “All this technology and an explosion in a major American metropolis can still go uncovered?”

  “That’s the big dirty secret about surveillance,” Bean said. “Not about this situation necessarily, but anyone who is smart and does due diligence can find ways not to be photographed committing a crime.” She paused thoughtfully. “I think that’s it for now.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked. “Any impressions?”

  “Not yet, and I can’t really talk about an ongoing investigation,” Bean said. She added, “You may not know this, but your former boyfriend was disciplined for talking out of turn about cases.”

  “You mean discussing them with me?”

  Bean nodded.

  I felt a little bad for Grant; he probably did that more to involve me in his work, to help the relationship, than to solicit my opinions, however helpful they sometimes were. When I worked on Wall Street, I always thought rules and regulations were probably a good idea. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  Detective Bean folded away her iPad. “If you want anything, water, coffee, a sandwich, there’s a catering truck—”

  “Detective, I have my own—”

  I stopped myself. I looked away from the trucks and the crowd, back in the direction of the deli. No, I told myself. I didn’t. I didn’t have my own coffee machine making premium coffee ordered from my special supplier in New York City. I had a dust-filled diner that was dark and colorless, just like the basement had been. Only it seemed darker because it was so bright and sun-colored outside.

  My brain was at war with itself again. Part of it wanted to grab my remaining staff, have them salvage what they could, and set up a card table on the street to get back in business. Busyness was the best thing to stave off depression and I worried that I was about to get very depressed. But the other part of my mind told me not to do that, not to subject Luke, Newt, Dani, and Raylene to that. They would probably go along with it because I asked, because it was what I needed. It was not what they needed. They needed to tend to their own, to settle their individual souls.

  “Do you have a bottle of water?” I asked Bean.

  “Sure,” she said.

  She walked to a squad car and took a plastic bottle from a compartment inside the door. When she returned, I cracked the cap and poured the contents over my head, washing my face with the other hand. Bean couldn’t see the tears I let flow again but they were there, mingled with the warm water. I did not blame myself for what happened to A.J. or Thomasina. No one could have foreseen it. But for as long as I had been down here, things just went wrong at the deli. I didn’t think the universe was trying to tell me something. God had to have better things to do. Still, there had been way too much pain.

  He managed to make time for Job, and there was a really good man, I thought.

  But Satan had been involved in that mishugas. I don’t think that was the case here, just terrible, terrible fortune. Shlimazel, as my grandmother used to call it, but on a grand scale—like a pogrom.

  Gwen, you’re rambling, that small rational part of my brain said to the rest. You have to focus.

  On what? I asked myself.

  Time to call a truce. Bean went off to talk to her officers and I walked toward the deli, drawn to it like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle. I reached the police tape at the curb, went under, saw Bean from the corner of my eye motion a patrol officer who was moving toward me to back away. I went to the open door where a cloud of dust hung like a theater scrim. I stood there, staring past the cash register to the hallway with my office and into the kitchen. Except for the dust, everything seemed okay there. Beyond, out back near the Dumpster, I saw first responders and firefighters working with portable winches and video monitors. I didn’t know if they were lowering people in or trying to get the van out. It didn’t matter just then. What was important was that everything this side of the kitchen was fine. The fryer, oven, refrigerator, and freezer seemed intact. There was no power—we’d lose all our perishables—but those could be replaced quickly.

  “Don’t think about it now,” someone said beside me.

  I turned. It was Benjamin and his girlfriend. I returned his crooked little smile with a crookeder one, then looked at her. She was about five-three, a very slender blonde whose svelteness was a walking advertisement for Tex-Asian fusion. She had pale blue eyes, long lashes, and a big California girl smile framed by full lips. And there was a slender strand of pearls around her swan-long throat. Despite everything else that was going on, standing next to the girl made me feel ancient, unfit, undesirable, and so ethnic that I felt sure I could pass for a lifelong orthodox Lubavitcher.

  Benjamin’s hair was wet and his face was washed back to the ears. His blue button-down shirt looked blue around the shoulders, pale charcoal below. He’d apparently taken the same Evian shower I had.

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “Because we’d be thinking the same thing,” the young woman said. She offered her hand. “I’m Grace.”

  I shook it. “Gwen Katz.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you and very glad you’re okay. I love your homemade gefilte fish,” she said. “Very delicate, not too fishy.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled. It seemed an odd time for a compliment but I accepted it gratefully. Any port in a . . . “And thanks for using the present tense.”

  It took them both a moment to get my meaning. Grace nodded with understanding; the gefilte would plate again.

  I was looking at the young woman closely. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”

  “Quite sure,” she said. “Never been here.”

  “You look familiar,” I said.

  “With all the faces you see, I’m sure you saw one of my doppelgängers,” she said. “We all have them—people who look just like us.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for crazy. I turned to Benjamin. “So you’re okay?”

  “That’s what the medics say,” he answered. “And I feel fine.”

  Grace clutched her boyfriend’s arm with both hands. “It’s a miracle, right? What a thing to have happen!”

  “What a thing,” I repeated. That was a strange, understated way to describe an explosion in a metropolitan restaurant.

  “Did Candy get her video?” I asked Benjamin.

  “It’s already on the website,” he said.

  “Of course it is.”

  “I’m happy for her,” Grace said. “I’m happy for any woman who works hard and makes it.”

  I didn’t rebut that. I would have been happy too if she hadn’t built her career on exploitation. Of course, my disapproval sounded tinny even to my own ears when I thought of how many women I knew who had built their careers on bad financial programs on Wall Street. And Grant’s honey, Suzi East, probably had made more than a few backroom deals to move her political career forward.

  What kind of payoffs or crow-eating or insurance expediencies would I have to accept to get through this kappora?

  “One of the officers told me you’ve been here before,” Benjamin said.

  “On the outside looking in, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  “Yeah. Someone was shot by a sniper right through my window. I opened for takeout the next day.”

  “That’s horrible!” Grace exclaimed. “Not that you opened, I mean—that something like that happened!”

  “It was kind of a gang thing,” I said. “We did bang-up business as I knew we would—”

  “Because rubberneckers love their morning joe?” Benjamin asked.

  “I guess there was some of that, sure,” I admitted. “The stronger sen
se I got, though, was that people like to support their community in times of trouble.”

  “They like it or feel good about it?” Benjamin asked.

  Oh, I thought. Out in the daylight, he was one of those. A cynic.

  “I can only talk about the results,” I told him. “It made me feel like we were part of a community. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “Of course,” Benjamin said quickly. “I think I gave you the wrong impression. I applaud the people for their support and I applaud you. We both do. In fact, we were just talking—is there any way we can help? After all, we do know the restaurant business and I make to-die-for Hashimoto browns.”

  “Which are?”

  “Hash browns with a wasabi butter coating.”

  “Maybe we could use horseradish instead,” Grace suggested.

  “Not bad,” Benjamin said.

  “Look, both of you—I appreciate it, but a new menu item is the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said. “It’s just a poorly timed suggestion, especially after all you’ve been through—”

  “You went through it too, honey,” Grace reminded him with an edgy little smile before turning back to me. “We just wanted to help. That’s all.”

  “I understand,” I told them. Grace’s apology was actually a little belligerent. Something told me that these two weren’t exactly what they said they were, though I didn’t intend to waste my limited brain power on them.

  “Hey,” Benjamin said suddenly. “We’re staying in town, at a bed and breakfast on Blair Boulevard.”

  “The Owlet?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Famous for its organic pancakes and homemade syrup,” Grace said.

  “I know the owner, Elsie Smith,” I said, once again looking at the young woman. There was something about her.

  “Elsie’s a lifelong Nashvillian, she told us,” Benjamin said.

  “Polite but very reserved,” Grace added.

  “Any interest in joining us for breakfast?” Benjamin asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t think about eating or planning or even moving from this spot.