To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (8 page)

“It isn’t really,” I told him. “The foliage is grouped close together there, pretty easy to count.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Fine. I’ll meet you out front so you don’t have to sit in the lobby,” he said.

“Why? Maybe I could make a few bucks.”

Banko wasn’t sure whether or not I was kidding. I assured him I was. I think. When you marry or date men who think that all women should be geishas, handmaidens, or mute, when you hang around after those first warning signs and let your self-esteem erode, the aftershocks continue to be destructive, not constructive. Even after the ties are broken. You want to burn off your own skin, keep the pain close, reinforce how low this man made you feel so you don’t do it again.

And then you stupidly date the same man or another one just like him, at least several more times.

I left the hotel to return to the martial arts school. Maybe I had been distracted or a little numb or just worn out by the day’s events, but as I walked along the street something alarming occurred to me.

What if Banko was the person who had been casing out the deli?

I was taking him to a remote area assuming that he meant me no harm. But what if he was some kind of loon who went from town to town doing etheric
and
ethnic cleansing? Maybe I should—

What, call Grant to come with? Didn’t you just decry women who do stupid things with men ? You might as well just paint yourself as a plastic sex doll without a voice box and ride in the backseat for when he needs you.

What about Detective Bean or Agent Bowe-Pitt?

No. Southern bad guys, who have a tradition of running moonshine, lynching people, and making city boys squeal like pigs, have a sixth sense for John Law.

What about calling the whole thing off and doing what law enforcement suggested, just vegging out at the deli?

I snorted at that. Since leaving New York, my life had been about taking chances. Some of them were major but reasonable, like leaving the city in the first place; some were insane, like this. But they all lit fires in me, and there was no denying they were all part of the Gwen Katz drumbeat now, for better or worse, richer or poorer, alive or dead.

I had just turned the corner onto 5th Avenue N and was admitting to myself that I was a little bit excited about the nuttiness of trying to find a killer with bug-hair sensors, when I was distracted by movement to my right and what seemed like a bird flying into my face. It was followed by a strange smell, amber-colored swirls, and my knees turning to mush before I went unconscious.

I came to in a vehicle. I knew it was a vehicle because I was moving, not because I could see. My baseball cap was pulled way low over my eyes so that the brim rested on my nose. My hands were cuffed behind me. They hurt, a lot, because whoever had abducted me had thoughtfully secured me with the seat belt. That left the small of my back pressed against the metal cuffs. I could feel my cell phone in my back pocket. I shifted a little. The one time I
wanted
to butt-dial, I couldn’t.

Which I realized, as I came around, was probably the least of my worries. I was dizzy with a wicked headache. I didn’t feel nauseous, and that was too bad. I really wanted to puke on whoever had jumped out at me with a handkerchief—which was probably the “bird” I saw—and drugged me.

I recalled the dead girlfriend of the African-American cop. Yet, oddly, I wasn’t afraid. There was no one to ransom me to, and if someone wanted to kill me I probably wouldn’t be alive now.

“I’m really not comfortable,” I announced.

Someone, a woman, said something that sounded Asian. Someone answered. I was against the driver’s side door. The woman was sitting to my right. The second man was in front, driving. The woman spoke again, this time in English.

“I am sorry that this was necessary,” she told me.

“Fine. Can you just remove the seat belt? I won’t try to get out the door. My hands are cuffed.”

“We will let you leave when you tell us what Chan said to you.”

“He said he wanted one of our standard platters.”

“Were there any special requests?”

“Such as?”

“
Any?
”

“No.”

“No special food?”

“None.”

“Did he indicate he was going to buy anything else to serve?”

“Like what? Dessert?”

“
Anything,
” the interrogator said, more harshly.

“Nothing.”

“Did he carry anything from any other restaurant or market?”

“No!” I said, wondering how many ways they could come at this. “He was carrying nothing whatsoever.”

“Tell us everything he said. He called you first.”

I didn’t know if that was a question or a statement. If it were a statement, then someone knew he called; these people could have been from his school. Perhaps they overheard him. Or someone at the school called someone else. If it were a question, then it could still be someone at the school—just someone who wasn’t there at eight-thirty in the morning.

“Sifu Chan called and told me he was having belt promotions,” I said. “I thought he was talking about belts that hold your pants up, and he corrected me. I asked if I could talk to him after the breakfast rush. He said he would stop by at ten-thirty. That was the entirety of our conversation on the phone.”

“You called him
sifu.
Had you known him before?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“It’s the
truth,
” I said, exasperated.

“All right. After the call?”

“He stopped by at ten-thirty. I had the cook prepare some food samples. He made his selection in about a minute. Then we talked about how he had a school in Manhattan, in Chinatown, and that he left because he didn’t want to train gang members—”

“Did he mention any names?”

“No.”

“Any affiliations in New York?”

“No!”

“All right. Go on.”

“He said he had been here six months, that he came to Nashville because he liked the music. We discussed his favorite Johnny Horton song, “The Battle of New Orleans,” and then he was dead.”

The two resumed speaking in whatever language they were speaking. I felt like I was a kid again, listening to my grand-relatives speaking Yiddish. Of course, I wasn’t cuffed and blindfolded back then, just ignored. Oddly, it felt surprisingly similar, the Old World attitude that under no circumstances did children need to know the business of their elders. As if I would have understood, at seven or eight, whatever the hell they were talking about. But I guess their parents did it to them, on and on back through history. When your own children are considered outsiders, imagine what outsiders are considered. Maybe I was facing a little of that circling of the wagons here. These might be nothing more than Asian restaurateurs
hockin me a chinick
because I was an outsider who was suddenly a threat to their core clientele.

I didn’t really think that, but in a world where a matzo ball is shot from the end of a fork anything is possible.

“Why did you go to the school this afternoon ?” the woman asked.

I got my brain back in the game. I said I went to pay a sympathy call, told her who I spoke with, who I laid eyes on, what I said, and everything else that had happened in the space of that four or five minutes. I even mentioned the police officer. I wondered if that surprised them. Or if they had been watching the school. Or if he had been reporting to them. I had plenty of facts but shockingly little information.

“He placed an order with you,” the voice said. “How was it paid for?”

“Credit card.”

“Signed how?”

“With a pen—”

“
In what language
?
With what name?

“Jesus, I honestly don’t know!”

“Who has the receipts?”

“The police,” I said. “They took them all.”

I felt something like a beesting under my chin. The stinger didn’t go away. It was the point of a very, very sharp knife. My Ginsu crack had come back to haunt me.

“What are you not telling us?” the woman asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I have no dog in this fight. I don’t know anything about Mr. Chan’s past or his connections or his school or his family. Nothing!”

I managed to get that out just before my heart kicked up the pace and my arms began to wobble like water-filled balloons. Was this their parting Hail Mary maneuver, or was this phase two of what would prove a long, painful, disfiguring interrogation?

The knife punctured flesh and twisted slightly. That hurt.

“There is always more,” the woman told me. “Think.”

“Take that out of my throat and I’ll try.”

She pushed it a little harder. So much for that tactic. My mind quickly grew sharper than the blade.

“The napkin holder,” I said.

“What?”

“In the deli, before the gunshot, I think he stared at the napkin holder. For about a second or two.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“
Why?
”

Another twist of that blade, the pain way out of proportion with its size. Nasty electric waves shot up and down my jaw all the way to my ears. I whimpered. I had been attacked by a guy with a knife, once, and cut. But that was sudden. This pain, coming on top of the previous pain, was sharper. My vulnerability was greater, the reality of death so close I felt I could say
shalom
to my mother and Uncle Murray.

The woman wanted me to speculate. Okay. I could do that.

“Look, at first I thought he was staring at the matzo ball. He had just inverted this little shrimp fork with some kind of finger maneuver, he stabbed the matzo ball he had been looking at, and then he picked it up and kept looking at it. When his eyes didn’t move I thought that maybe he
wasn’t
looking at the matzo ball but at the polished side of the dispenser, seeing something behind him. I could be wrong about both of those things. He might have been daydreaming. Maybe he had gas from the food he had eaten before that. It can happen if you’re not used to it. Or he could have been looking at the plate, savoring the aroma of the food, thinking of something he should ask me. He could have been wondering if he locked the door at home. I don’t know. I swear,
I don’t know.
”

“You said he had been coming from home.”

“Yes—I mean, I think so. He called from a cell phone, not a landline. The name on my caller ID was May Wong.”

“Auntie May?”

“I don’t know. The only Aunt May I know is in the Spider-Man movies. He said he would stop by on his way to the school. I assumed he was at home. That’s it. That’s
all
I remember.”

The knife relaxed slightly. I didn’t. My calf muscles were so tight I thought my skin would burst. I was pushing up from the floor, relaxing the pressure on my hands, raising my throat from the blade.

The knife remained where it was, except when the car went over bumps in what was apparently now a dirt road. I got repeated pricks, each one accompanied by a painful spark in my chin.

“One more time,” the woman said. “How did he sign the receipt? Was it in English or Chinese?”

I was starting to get angry or panic. Probably both. I replayed that moment with Ken Chan on the back of my eyelids. No difference. No revelation.

“I. Don’t. Know,” I told her.

More non-English was spoken. The knife point was removed from my throat. The seat belt was undone. Something was pressed into my left hand. The car stopped. The door opened. I was helped out. I stood there half-waiting for someone to come up behind me and cut my throat. That wasn’t an idle fear: I was so afraid, based on the zero concern the woman had demonstrated for my comfort or pain, that I had difficulty standing. It was only after I realized they had left me with the key to the handcuffs that I calmed down a little—only then I had other problems. How was I going to put it in the slot? I was terrified of dropping it in what felt like ankle-high grass. With the blindfold still on, I’d really be screwed.

I listened for traffic. There wasn’t any. Then I remembered the cell phone in my pocket. I managed to hook it out with the index finger of my right hand. I got it from my pocket. And dropped it. I swore.

I felt around for it with my foot. I found it. I lightly stepped on it, then dropped to my knees on hard ground. It hurt, though I was quickly distracted by the wrenching pain in my wrists and the trickle of blood running down my throat into my bra.

A tinny, tiny voice came from the phone. “Hello?”

“This is Gwen Katz,” I shouted.

“I know—I saw your name on my—”

“Who is this?”

“Huh?”

“I was abducted. I’m tied up. Who did I just call?”

“It’s me, Banko. What do you mean you were abducted?”

“Someone kidnapped me outside your hotel,” I shouted. “I need help.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know. Listen, I’m going to try and get the blindfold off. Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“Sure. Of course.”

The easiest thing would have been to lean forward and rub my forehead on the ground to try and tug the thing off. But if I fell, if I couldn’t push up off my forehead, I wouldn’t be able to get up. Instead, I walked around, taking tentative steps forward, hoping to bump into a post or a tree. I found the latter and put my face up against it. The cloth snagged on a broken-off branch, and I was able to work it down around my nose. A few head shakes and it fell to my throat. I looked around.

I was in the yard of a foreclosed house in the middle of nowhere. I walked over to the mailbox. The address was faded but legible. Knight Drive Extension, Number 917. I strode back to the phone and told Banko.

“Would you do me a favor and call that in directly to Detective Jill Bean?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m hanging up now so I can call.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

He clicked off, and I stepped on the phone to disconnect. Who knew that cell phones were step-sensitive. Could be a selling point.

It was dusk, but it was still bright enough for me to see cats moving in the grasses. The good thing about that was they’d keep the field mice away. I fidgeted with the key and tried to put it into the lock, but that wasn’t happening. I used my chin to try to stuff the blindfold into my wounded throat, but that was also going nowhere. Still groggy from the chloroform, I leaned against the tree, listening to the wind, not sure I wanted someone to come along before the police arrived. There was my very strong desire for freedom versus the loss of dignity inherent in my helplessness. There was the idea of someone fussing over me, which I hate, along with the possibility that it could be some redneck who’d decide that this was the perfect time and place to court a bound Jewish chick. In short, there were no scenarios that really made me happy right now.

I distracted myself by pre-answering the questions I thought Detective Bean might ask.

Do you have any idea who did this?
No.

Would you recognize any of the voices if you heard them again?
Possibly.

Can you describe anything about the car?
I thought about that one. No air freshener. No music. Engine sounded well-tuned. So apart from the shoulder-strap seat belt and the auto-lock that I heard open all the doors at once, no.

Did you hear or smell anything that might give us a clue
—
any food, perfume?
No. I had the smell of chloroform in my nose, along with the odor of whatever fabric softener was used on the handkerchief—which, I noticed as I looked down, was soaking up more blood than I wanted to see outside my body. I wondered if I should be lying down instead of standing. Upright, wasn’t my heart working harder to push blood to my brain?

I didn’t know. I had this sudden, weird vision of dying as a properly prepared kosher victim. That gave me a strangely comforting feeling as I felt the damp, sticky cloth growing damper and stickier against my collarbone. And there was probably some justice to it, I told myself, after all the glatt meals I’d served since coming here.

My light-headed reverie ended as I heard sirens and saw a pair of flashing lights descending on the site. Detective Bean wasn’t coming alone. One of the red strobes punctuating the twilight seemed a little higher than the other. I hoped an ambulance was part of the little convoy.

It was. The police car, which was in front, went off-road and directed the ambulance to do the same.

Right,
I thought.
Tire tracks in the dirt
.

I walked groggily toward my phone so I wouldn’t forget it. I dropped back to my knees where I saw the battery light glowing, intending to pick it up with my teeth. In retrospect, that was a stupid idea—but then, I wasn’t thinking too clearly about anything. Instead, as I bent toward it, the dark grasses spun, the lights of the ambulance twirled a bit, and I landed on my face, unconscious.