To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (18 page)

Woe betide the wayward son.
And they say Jews are preoccupied with money and schemes. Auntie May had us beat. She was not only tight, she was the queen of the
ligners,
a liar whose fantastic narrative ranked with other classic
bubbe meises
.

“Let me ask you this, then,” I said. “How would the Muis possibly have benefited by kidnapping me?”

“That’s the main reason I wanted to see you,” she said. “When Lung signed the receipt, did he sign in English or Chinese letters?”

“My abductor asked me that.”

“Of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Maggie told me. “What did you say?”

“I said I couldn’t remember, and I don’t. Most signatures are illegible, so I don’t bother to look too closely. Anyway, the police have them now. I don’t know when I’ll get them back. Why does it matter?”

“Because the Muis threatened to forge letters of commitment to Chingmy if he did not honor his obligation,” Maggie said.

“That doesn’t seem honorable.”

“Dishonor in the support of a greater honor is not deemed wrong,” she said.

There was a curious logic to that, I had to admit.

“Lung Wong never signed receipts at the school,” Maggie said. “Auntie May did that. He did not sign certificates of promotion. We used a rubber stamp of my husband’s signature, for obvious reasons. If the Muis were to obtain a sample of Lung’s writing to forge such letters, they would accidentally have discovered that he was not Ken Chan.”

“And if that became common knowledge, the gangsters might hear of it,” I said.

“Yes. Do not forget: it is Lung Wong who disappeared, not Ken Chan. As far as the world is concerned, Ken Chan moved to Nashville.”

“You really think the Muis would risk a kidnapping charge and a couple of decades in prison just to get Lung’s autograph?”

“In matters of face, especially that of a daughter who is an unwed mother, there
is
no other consideration.”

That made sense, I guess. Their Asian brethren in Japan cut their bellies open as a point of honor.

“Back at the school you asked me about the wedding ring,” I said. “Why did that matter to you?”

“Wearing it, treasuring it, displaying it would have been an uncharacteristic but tangible expression that his wife—me—was number one, not his mistress.”

“So Lung was aware this problem was coming and looking to protect the family finances.”

“Yes.”

“I see,” I said. Then something else occurred to me. “Hold on. Lung, posing as your husband, judged that competition in Atlanta. Wouldn’t the gangsters have noticed he wasn’t Sifu Chan? “

“It was a risk we had to take,” Maggie said. “When our students became finalists, there was no way for Lung to avoid serving as a judge. The region’s top-ranked
sifus
are required to do so. Fortunately, the competition received very little coverage outside the Southeast and the martial arts community—”

“Those clippings on the wall of the office.”

“That’s right. And, again, the gangsters were searching for Lung, not my husband. They would not have paid attention to reports about Ken Chan at a regional competition. We made sure he did not appear in photographs, or that he appeared with his head in motion or turned away. It annoyed the picture-takers but protected us.”

“Which makes me wonder, why
didn’t
the triads come down here looking for Lung? If they know the school is here, wouldn’t that be the logical place to look?”

“Yes, which is why my husband agreed to help the NYPD keep them very, very busy up north,” she said. “Ken has been watching them carefully. He knows the people, the streets, how to hide in plain sight. He has been living in one of the massage parlors, coming out only at night. It has been hard on him.”

“Yes. A man living in a massage parlor. Awful.”

That hurt her, and I was sorry. I said so. My tragic experiences with men have their own life and will, which I cannot always control.

“There have been arrests,” she went on. “We speak once a day on a special telephone. He believes they are making real progress.”

“But the triads are not yet broken.”

“No. For the last six months they have been cautious, but that may have changed this past week.”

“The shooting.”

She nodded. “Perhaps someone finally identified my husband in Chinatown, realized he is not the one who claims to be Ken Chan down here. The triads may have sent someone to check. They may have driven past the school and recognized Lung. Worse for me and my daughter, they may be seeking further retribution—not just for Lung, but now for the arrests in Chinatown.”

“Which is the reason for the police car. And maybe the gunfire last night.”

She nodded again.

“You’ve got to be terribly worried—”

“Every minute of every day.”

I was going to comfort her with a pat on the arm, but remembered what Auntie May had done to my hand. I refrained.

I drove Maggie back to the school, and we parted with smiles and silence. We both had a lot on our minds. I was trying to process all the new information and see which parts of it impacted me directly. Except that a bunch of people thought Lung Wong, alias Ken Chan, may have said something important to me, or that I might have Lung’s John Hancock—which put me at risk of abduction or death—the details didn’t seem to matter. Not that those weren’t big things, mind you; it’s just there was nothing I could do about any of it. That was the job of the FBI and the NPD.

I will say this much: my crash course in Chinese culture was fascinating. Their society and codes of conduct had more layers than a
kugel,
and it was as orderly as any of my uncle’s recipes. Culturally, emotionally, and socially, Jews are all over the place. I wasn’t used to a tradition of such severe logic and absolute results. I remember one of my uncles and another man, Shmuely, haggling over the price of a rack of dresses on Broadway and 26th Street; the argument escalated to the point that my uncle actually put together a group of investors to approach Shmuely’s partner and buy his share, just to harass him. In retaliation, Shmuely sold his share to my uncle, went to Taiwan, started a rival dressmaking firm, and ended up putting my uncle out of business. Jewish life is fluid like that.

That said, the parry and riposte and counterthrusts of the Chinese were enough to make your head spin. I longed for my home, my bed, my couch . . . not the office and sleeping on the floor.

Of course, that’s not where I ended up. Instead, I went where I needed to be for my own safety, back under the toaster whose crumb catcher I still had not cleaned.

I was awakened by a commotion at the back door.

“. . . not here.”

“Officer, I know she is. At least, her phone is. I just called it.”

It was Banko. I had been so out of it I hadn’t heard the ring tone; my pal pulled the same trick I had without knowing I had pulled it.

I rolled my head to the side and looked at the clock over the kitchen door. It was three
AM
.

“Look, I just got back into town and I need to—”

“It’s okay!” I shouted, rising from my rumpled bag like a wraith from the grave. “I’m coming!”

The uproar ceased, and I threw the bolt. The officer had her hand on her gun butt. Either Banko hadn’t noticed or he was so obsessed he didn’t care. My guess was both. The etherical pioneer looked tired and disheveled, as though—well, as though he’d just taken a long journey and had come here without showering or changing his clothes.

He came in uninvited, his laptop case thrown over his shoulder. I left the door open and mouthed a “thank you” at the officer. We went to the dining room, me following Banko.

“That kinship reading from the other morning has been bugging me,” he said without a howdy-do. And, apparently, those semi-matching readings he got now had an official name. “You know why? Because it was fainter than the others. Not by much, but by enough to make it stand out. Or stand down, really.”

“Meaning what?”

I was asking that a lot, I realized. Having Banko or Auntie May or Maggie or the hypnotist clarify things. Life was easier, if less entertaining, when the only thing anyone talked about was finance. I ran from it, but I wondered if maybe that predictability was a good thing for my need to control stuff.

Banko opened his laptop and booted it to illustrate. I wouldn’t know what I was looking at, but it made him feel better. Of course, I still had the issue of pimping to discuss with him, but that could wait.

“Normally, the readings directly behind me are as strong as those in front or to the sides,” he said. “Even though they have to go through sinew and organs, my tissues act as an amplifier. That would not be the case for someone who was moving quickly through the field.”

“Like one of my waitstaff.”

“Exactly, exactly. But look at this line.” He brought up the mass of squiggles and isolated one, dimming the others. “It’s about seventy percent as strong as the rest. That tells me someone was probably outside, out front.”

“So? They could have been waiting for someone to pick them up.”

“That’s right!
Or
they could have been standing there as a target for someone to line up a rifle shot,” he said.

I looked over at the plywood window, tried to imagine someone out there. “That’s a big leap,” I pointed out. “A mighty big leap.”

“But not impossible.”

“No.”

“Good,” he said. “So we have kinship readings at two shootings. There’s more.” He sounded like one of those TV salespeople who howls, “
But wait! If you order now . . .
” Standing hunched over his keyboard, bringing up data I still wasn’t convinced had a scintilla of validity, he showed me a reading he had taken the day before the shooting of Lung Wong. It matched the one that was taken allegedly outside my deli. “Someone was a bad boy. And look,” he said, pointing proudly. “A time stamp. We know when he was at the hotel.”

I had been hunched beside him and straightened. If the readings
were
accurate, it meant that our mystery person, who was related to another mystery person at the park, had also paid for sex.

“If we can get the concierge at the hotel to tell us who was there at that time, we’ll know who was outside your deli,” Banko said proudly.

“How are we going to do that?” I asked. “Do you, y’know, happen to have any suction there?”

“Suction? Yes. I room there often.”

“Nothing stronger than that?”

His lids lowered as he suddenly recalled our previous conversation. “That’s the second time you’ve asked about my ties to that place. What’s going on?”

“It’s a fancy brothel.”

“Not entirely, but so what? I told you why I stay there.”

“For the readings,” I said.

“For the readings. It’s like Jane Goodall living with chimps. That doesn’t make her a monkey.”

It would if she were animal finding companions for Jungle Jim,
my tired mind thought before I could stop it. I decided to give round two a rest. There were more important matters at hand than busting Banko Juarez.

“I’m sorry, I’m just tired,” I told him, doing my best to pretend I was wrong, had crossed a line. “I’m not used to this. We move in different social circles.”

“It’s no great honor being ahead of the curve,” Banko said immodestly and in earnest—a nauseating combination. I would’ve barfed, but I had neglected to have dinner.

“Lay on, Macduff,” I said, grabbing my keys and a bag of oyster crackers sitting on a shelf by the back door as we headed out. Both police officers, fore and aft, expressed concern about my leaving; I assured them I was in good hands. I wasn’t sure of that, of course, and I kept an eye trained on the rooftops across the street as we emerged from the alley.

I was expecting to drive, but I found that Banko had a car sitting by the curb.

“I thought you took a train to Clarksville,” I said.

He grinned. “That was a joke. I’m a big Monkees fan. I couldn’t resist.”

“So—you lied to me.”

“Not lied,” he said. “Had some fun is what I did.”

A joke in the midst of murder, attempted murder, and kidnapping. I had to give the guy credit for being able to compartmentalize.

As we drove to the hotel, I realized that this was the first time since I’d been down here that I felt that events were more or less completely out of my control. In the other matters, bad things had happened to people I didn’t know or people I barely knew. I could dip my toe in, get out, then go back in. Even when I had gotten tangled up with the wiccans, that had been a choice I made, albeit with unexpected results.

In this case, things were happening
to
me. And not just on one front but on two. For all I knew, something else could happen at any moment.

“It really should be legal anyway,” I said, as we neared the hotel. “Our bodies, ourselves.”

“Huh?”

“Prostitution.”

Banko scowled. “Do you ever think of anything else?”

“Not when I’m headed to a house of ill repute,” I said. “Which isn’t often, mind you. In fact, this is just the third time that I’m aware of.”

“Do what I do, think of it as just a laboratory,” he said. “You’ll find the experience a lot more productive.”

Once again, he seemed sincere. I had to wonder if Richard Richards had lied to me; but if so, why? After the way Auntie May and Maggie had knocked my brain around, and given the fact that it was ridiculously early in the morning, the soil was ripe for conspiracy theories. Was Richards, in fact, planting that evidence on Banko’s computer? Was
he
a pimp or taking protection money from the hotel or a member of the frequent fornicators club? Hopefully, some answers lay down the street. And no, the pun wasn’t intentional . . . but I’ll take it.

There was a big doorman looking the other way as we hurried past. It was quiet at this time of night, with more people leaving quickly, behind scarves or high collars, than were mingling at the bar. We walked over to the desk. The night clerk recognized me and gave me a sly little grin.

“It’s a little late for the sexual healer,” she said with a wink. “Her hours are nine to six. Or are you going for another round with this New Age fruit?”

It took me a second to get her meaning. She was talking about the third member of the therapy trifecta.

“Neither,” I replied. “Mr. Juarez and I are here to find someone who may be an accessory to homicide.”

The woman’s smirk vanished like steam from chicken soup. It set off tiny alarm bells in my newly sensitized brain.

“Banko, why don’t you sit somewhere and do things on your computer,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“Just go. Check your graphs or something. Make new ones. I just want a few moments alone with Bananas.”

I hoped he got my meaning. He didn’t seem to, making a disgusted sound as he walked to one of the love seats in the center of the lobby.

I turned back to the woman. “I need to know more about Banko Juarez, that man I was with,” I said. “How well do you know him?”

“You law enforcement?” she asked.

“No. God, no. I don’t even like dating cops.”

That seemed to relax her a little. “He comes and goes, like most people here,” she said. “Except for some of the ladies.”

“He isn’t . . . he doesn’t manage any of them, does he?”

“Honey, I see him around. He pays his bills. I don’t ask about his business arrangements.”

“That’s fair,” I said.

“Why are you interested in homicide?” she asked. “Friend of yours get hurt?”

“In that deli shooting the other day,” I said.

“The martial arts guy?”

I nodded.

“I heard about it. Sad, sad thing,” she said.

I nodded again.

She nodded now, this time toward Banko. “You think he had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He was there that morning, asking a lot of questions, casing the place out. The whole thing was very suspicious.”

“I assume you told the cops?”

“Sure. They checked him out, couldn’t find anything. Except that maybe he was involved with illegal operations.” I shrugged. “Maybe someone was trying to send
him
a message. I don’t know.”

“Yeah. So why are you hanging out with him?”

“You know what they say,” I said.

“Keep your enemies close?”

“No,” I replied. “
Az me ken nit ariber, gait men arunter.
”

“Excuse me?”

“It means,
If you can’t go over, go under,
” I told her. “It’s Yiddish, the language of a group of European Jews.”

Bananas smiled sweetly. “How cute that you know it. But I still don’t get what you mean by what you just said.”

“I was referring to the different ways of getting things done. Some people prefer taking a path of less resistance. Others are more aggressive. They prefer violence. Shock, shooting, slaughter, that kind of thing.”

The smile folded in on itself.

We stared at each other for a moment longer, after which I left with a little smile and walked to the love seat where Banko was working on his computer. His hands were cupped alongside his little gadget. He was focused on the screen, which I couldn’t see because of the angle.

“That was further than I intended to go,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I guess I was angrier than I thought. Or more tired. What’ve you got?”

“You’re brilliant,” he said, still without looking up.

That was something I liked to hear. I leaned in. The screen was split, top and bottom. On top were the three lines he was trying to match. Below it were new lines. “It scares me,” I told him.

“What does?”

“That I know what I’m looking at.”

I did, too. There were five people in the lobby:

Banko, me, a guest, a bartender, and our friend Bananas. Three of the lines matched the three lines on top.

“Are you sure there’s no one making squiggly lines from the outside, upstairs, anything like that?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

Just then, the guest left and his line winked out. That left four lines and three matches. The bartender moved away. One line got a little smaller. Clearly, it wasn’t his line that Banko had recorded the other day.

“So I was right,” I said, with a little bit of ice running up my backbone. “Bananas was outside the deli.”

“There’s no other explanation,” Banko said.

Well, there was. The software could be flawed, Banko could be nuts, or both. But my exchange with Bananas confirmed that she was a least a little bit hostile. Maybe not enough to be an accessory to murder, but worrisome enough.

I considered that as I looked back at her. Bananas was staring at us. And not with her normally bemused look but with something pointy and dangerous. She did not turn away when I caught her staring. Our eyes remained locked. That gave me an even bigger chill. She picked up the phone. My spine was now below freezing.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” I said, “and can I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“You probably shouldn’t stay here tonight,” I said.

“Why?” He regarded me with what seemed to be a genuinely confused little boy look, like I’d told him he couldn’t go outside and play.

“Because I think Bananas is getting ready to live up to her namesake.”

Banko shut his computer after saving the data. As we rose, a door to the left of the front desk opened, and two men came out. They were big, beefy white men—security types. We started toward the door, quickly.

Unfortunately, we did not make it outside.