Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite (30 page)

“You’ve got a point there. Okay, I’m willing to sacrifice myself and give it a taste.”
Well, now we were getting somewhere.
“Tell you what, the next time you make it, bring some to work.”

I didn’t mean to linger so long at dinner, but as the evening progressed, Lou got more and more revved up. By the time we dug into Danny’s wonderful cheesecake, he was recounting one amusing story after another. I began to get a little sleepy around ten o’clock, but it’s not easy to break away when you’re with someone you care about. Besides, a second cup of coffee supplied the jolt I needed to remain conscious.

Driving back to Manhattan, I was certainly alert enough. Maybe because the events of the last couple of days kept racing around in my head.

I hadn’t accomplished a thing with Lou—insofar as our relationship, I’m talking about. His response to my veal piccata offer could only be interpreted in two ways. Either he wasn’t at all interested in taking things further or he was just plain stupid. I had my fingers crossed that the man was stupid.

But in any case,
that
seemed to be that. Well . . . for the present.

It occurred to me at this point that my lack of success there could be some kind of punishment from on high for my treatment of Al. (It flitted through my brain that I was sounding a bit like Eric Raphael, only in reverse.) Almost immediately, though, I shrugged off the notion that I’d been anything but fair with Al. I had to be honest with him, didn’t I? And you can’t help the way you feel about a person, can you? But retribution or not, I was sad that Al and I hadn’t worked out. Very sad.

I moved on to some of the other subjects that were gnawing away at me.

Take the Eric Raphael thing. I’d been positively ecstatic over his information. And it had wound up being a dead end. A bust.

Then again, maybe I was jumping the gun. I had yet to talk to the three other Breeze Inn employees. Maybe one of them would remember Sheila and her lover. After all, it was very possible the happy couple had also availed themselves of the Inn’s facilities at night or on a weekend. And besides, there were all these other motels in the area, too. We’d barely scratched the surface yet, for heaven’s sake.

Uh-uh. Not so fast. Let’s say I did find someone who was able to ID Sheila and the mystery man. It wouldn’t be considered proof (by anyone but me, I mean) that the woman was a killer. Merely your everyday, garden-variety adulteress.

But I quickly decided that once we identified Sheila’s honeybunch, there was really no telling where this would lead us. Maybe even to the sort of evidence that would induce the two to turn on each other.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, forget the motels for a minute. What about the mob angle? We still had a number of those guys to question. And it was conceivable one of them knew something and would—

I rolled my eyes. Da Silva’s boys were just falling all over themselves to cooperate with us, weren’t they?

And now I began to giggle.
You know what, Shapiro?
I announced.
You are well on the way to becoming a genuine, certifiable manic-depressive.

It was past midnight when I dropped my Chevy at the garage and set out on the block-and-a-half trek to my apartment.

Getting there, however, was to take a lot longer than I could have imagined.

Automatically, I glanced up and down the street. It appeared to be completely deserted tonight, and normally in this neighborhood you’re likely to find at least a couple of people coming or going at almost any hour. I reminded myself that the residents of East Eighty-first Street had no doubt joined countless other New Yorkers in the mass holiday exodus from the city.

But was it darker around here than usual? I wondered. No, it was only that I seemed to have some perverse little creature inside my head who was bent on scaring me to death.

Nevertheless, I was uneasy. And cold. Icy cold. Frequent and merciless gusts of wind stung my cheeks and ears and numbed my fingers, then crept brazenly inside my coat collar to attack the rest of me.

I walked faster. But as eager as I was to get home, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from slowing down every couple of seconds to peer anxiously over my shoulder. (Well, I never claimed to be your heroic, prototypical TV-type PI, did I?)

About eight feet from the corner, I decided to cross diagonally to the uptown side of the street, the direction in which I was heading. Stepping into the gutter, I checked for oncoming traffic. Bright lights alerted me to a car parked more than halfway up the block that was just now pulling away from the curb. I started across anyway. Before it even got close, I’d certainly make it to the other side.

Moments later, I looked again. The car was traveling more rapidly than I’d anticipated, so I took longer strides. Still, it was quickly shortening the distance between us.

But even then I wasn’t fully aware that it was bearing down on me. Not until a split second before the impact.

I spent Friday and part of Saturday availing myself of the hospitality of New York Hospital.

The hit-and-run had left me with a broken right leg, a head swathed in bandages, and a really colorful torso—my entire right side having turned a gorgeous shade of purple. Initially, the doctors also suspected a concussion, but of course, they couldn’t possibly know how hardheaded I am. Eventually they determined that a very large lump and a couple of smaller ones, along with some minor contusions, were the extent of my injuries in this area.

All in all, I considered myself extremely lucky. While there were a lot of places I would have preferred to spend a holiday weekend, one thing was for sure: A bed here had it all over a slab in the morgue.

I didn’t contact Lou until Saturday morning. I just hadn’t felt up to it earlier.

I reached him at the station house about eleven-thirty, and he reacted to my voice with relief, accompanied by a fair amount of annoyance.

“Are you okay?”

“More or less.”

“I’ve been trying to get you. I thought we were supposed to be working yesterday. Where have you been, anyhow?”

“I’ve been exactly where I am now—in New York Hospital.”

“My God! What’s wrong?”

“I was hit by a car.”

It seemed to take a couple of seconds for this to sink in. Then Lou asked in a hushed voice, “Were you badly hurt?”

“Well, I have a broken leg and a whole collection of bumps and bruises. But I’m grateful it wasn’t worse.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“That I’ll be fine. And after so many tests and X-rays, they should know.”

“Are you in much pain?”

Now, the truth was, every time the medication began to wear off, my leg hurt like hell. And sometimes my head throbbed so much that my teeth ached. The realization that somebody wanted me dead hadn’t left my nerves in such great shape, either. But if you’re out to get a man romantically interested in you, kvetching is not likely to help the cause. Which is why my answer was more heroic than factual. “Most of the time the pain’s pretty well under control—they keep giving me stuff. Although I don’t think I’m ready to go dancing yet, so you’d better hold off on the invite.”

“When did this happen?”

“On Thursday—around midnight. Right after I got back to the city.”

“Jesus. Look, are you up to company yet?”

“Sure.”

“Good. I’ll be over tonight.”

“Thanks, I’d like that. Before you come, though, you’d better check and make certain I’m still here. I’m hoping to be released this afternoon.”

“In that case I’ll see you at home. Listen, if you
do
go home, is there any chance of your preparing some of that veal piccata you bragged about at dinner Thursday? In time for my visit, I mean.”

“Oh, absolutely. No problem. And I’ll bake you a pie for dessert.”

Lou chuckled. “I knew I could count on you.”

After we said our good-byes, I hugged the receiver to me for a moment. I was slightly giddy. In spite of his kidding around like that, Lou had sounded really worried about me. Of course, this might have been because somewhere along the line we’d evolved into pretty good buddies. But I refused to take it that way. His concern, I told myself, was a very positive sign.

 

I could have gotten in touch with a friend—maybe a friend in my own building—to pick me up at the hospital on Saturday. But it was just as easy to call a car service, so why impose on anyone?

At any rate, I was back in my apartment by three o’clock.

Glancing around, I felt as though I’d been away for a year, and suddenly the place looked quite wonderful to me. It’s remarkable what a forced absence—or maybe it was those lumps on the head—can do to your perspective. For the only time that I can remember, I regarded my much-too-cramped living quarters as cozy. Cute, almost.

Putting aside my crutches—which I feared I would never get the hang of (and thank goodness the limo driver had taken pity on me and helped me upstairs)—I struggled out of my coat. Then I retrieved the messages on the answering machine.

The first call was from Ellen.

“I hope you’re not working today. It’s
Thanksgiving,
for heaven’s sake. I just wanted to tell you how much I wish you could be with us. Everything’s going great, too, Aunt Dez. The whole family loves Mike, and they’re all
thrilled
about the engagement. You wouldn’t believe how excited my mother is.”

Oh, yes, I would,
I muttered snidely to the machine. Until Mike Lynton happened along, my sister-in-law Margot had been adamant about Ellen’s marrying within her religion. And not only Ellen, either. Years ago Margot had all but grabbed for the smelling salts when her brother told her he was tying the knot with a Catholic girl (me!). Mike, however, had the one attribute needed to override my sister-in-law’s objection to interfaith unions: his medical degree.

The second call was from Lou, asking me to get back to him. “Weren’t you supposed to be coming in this morning?”

The third call was another from Ellen.

“It looks like I’m out of luck today, too. I guess you’ve left for work already. Hope everything’s all right. I’ll talk to you when we get home Sunday.”

Finally it was Lou’s turn again. This time he was clearly rattled.

“Where are you? You’ve got me worried. Let me know what’s going on, will you?” And then, as an afterthought: “Oh, it’s Saturday—ten-forty-five a.m.”

The instant I’d finished accessing my messages, I deposited myself on the sofa, completely exhausted from what had been less than a fifteen-minute trip from the hospital. I was sitting there fretting about being so totally inept at handling these damn crutches I was saddled with now—I mean, how was I even going to be able to fix my meals?—when, at that moment, the phone rang. I reached for the portable telephone on the coffee table.

“Suppose I get to your place around seven tonight. Would that be okay?” Lou wanted to know.

“Absolutely,” I told him.

“I figured I’d pick up some supper for us. How do you feel about Chinese food?”

I silently blessed him. “I love it.”

“Good. See you soon.”

 

At six o’clock I awoke from my nap, took a couple of pain killers, and laid out my least ratty bathrobe. Then for well over a half-hour I worked feverishly to make the topmost portion of me not as likely to have an adverse effect on small children and skittish animals. I don’t think I was entirely successful, however, because when Lou arrived, he stood at the door for a few moments, checking me out from head to foot. After which he shook his head. “Geez, Dez, you look like hell.”

About two minutes later we were in the kitchen, unpacking the four-bags’-worth of food he’d purchased at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. I could hardly believe the procession of aluminum tins and plastic containers and paper cartons and cellophane packets that came out of those bags. I mean, it was endless. “How much did you
buy
?”

Lou was sheepish. “I don’t know what you like. Besides, I wanted you to get at least another couple of meals out of this.”

Well, I doubted that would be a problem. For appetizers, there were spring rolls, dim sum, scallion pancakes, and two orders of spareribs. There was a choice of soup: won-ton and hot and sour. And the entrees consisted of Peking duck, shrimp in honey walnut sauce, sweet and pungent pork, lobster Cantonese, and moo shoo chicken.

We had just stuffed ourselves silly on the first course and I was looking forward to making a sizable dent in the second (if anything, my injuries appeared to have heightened my appreciation of food), when I received three telephone calls, one on the heels of the other.

A semihysterical Jackie led the parade.

“I just spoke to the hospital. They told me you were released this afternoon. Are you okay? Were you badly hurt? And why didn’t you let me know? Why did I have to read about this in the
New York Post
?” But before allowing me to respond, she couldn’t resist adding, “I
warned
you about accepting a case from that gangster, didn’t I?”