Losing Joe's Place (13 page)

“We have a complaint against a line in this building — 555-9679.”

I gulped. Joe's number.

“Apparently someone named Ron, or Don, has been harassing another of our customers, calling at all hours, and demanding to speak to a ‘Kiki.' Now, we traced the calls, and contacted 555-9679 this afternoon. I spoke to a Mr. —” he consulted a notebook, “ — Rootbeer? He was not very cooperative.” His penetrating eyes raked my face, which must have been chalk-white. “I see this situation is familiar to you.”

“Well,” I stammered, “I'm in charge of the restaurant. I don't really have anything to do with the apartments.” So I live in one. So what? This could mean trouble for Don. Not to mention that my brother Joe wouldn't be too happy to come home from Europe and find that his telephone had been confiscated.

Mr. Nevin was no dummy. “We insist that this must stop, or we'll have to take appropriate action. I'm sure you'll know whom to speak to.”

I mumbled, “I really don't uh — have no idea — doesn't ring a bell —”

He gave me a look that not only said that
he
knew that
I
knew, but also that he was deeply disappointed in me for it. Then, thank God, he left.

I practically threw the last few customers out the door in my anxiety to get upstairs.

Ferguson, Don, and Jessica sat cross-legged in front of the television, playing Nintendo. Jessica's careful bookkeeping system had broken down, and she had scheduled a date with both. An evening at home in my brother's video playground was the compromise.

As for Rootbeer, he had pawned the rock polisher and pushed about eight tons of shiny stones onto the discard pile in the corner. Now he was sprawled out in the midst of a giant deluxe chemistry set, turning clear liquids colored, and performing experiments from a little blue booklet.

“Don,” I said, “I've got to talk to you.”

“What?” he said absently, manipulating the joystick. On the screen, two video adventurers were wandering through a labyrinth, vigorously decapitating goblins and demons with lightning swordplay.

“I have to see you privately.” For his sake, I couldn't very well talk about Kiki in front of Jessica.

“In a minute.” His eyes never left the screen.

“It's important,” I insisted.

“Give me a break! I'm finally going to beat Peachfuzz. I'm up three beheadings.”

I grabbed him by the arm. “Come on!”

Don threw down the joystick in disgust. “Now look what you made me do! I got stepped on by a dragon! Peachfuzz, this game doesn't count!”

I dragged him bodily into the bathroom, and Jessica took over his place.

Don was in a lousy mood. “How the heck did Peachfuzz get so good at video games?”

“Because he's been programming his own since he was three. Shut up and listen. We just got visited by an inspector from the phone company. You can't call Kiki any more. The guy complained, they traced the calls, and we're in big, big trouble!”

Don put his hand to his mouth in horror. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“I just called, while Jessica was in the bathroom! Maybe ten minutes ago! I told the guy if he didn't let me talk to his daughter, I'd resort to desperate measures!”

I gulped. “They wouldn't know that I hadn't warned you yet! It sounds like you're threatening them!”

Don looked anxious. “What can we do?”

I racked my brain. “Maybe if you phone up right now and admit the whole thing —” My breath caught in my throat as I glanced out the window. Pitt Street was swarming with police cruisers. “Oh, my God!”

Uniformed officers were piling out of five squad cars. We squinted at the streetlit scene. They were all holding rifles! I watched, transfixed, as the SWAT team surrounded the building.

“Wow!” breathed Don. “Can you imagine what Plotnick would do if we told him there were rifles trained on his precious property?”

I stared at him in horror and, seeing my face, it hit him, too. “You don't think this has anything to do with —?”

“The telephone company!” I shrieked.

“But they don't carry guns!” cried Don.

I was hysterical. “They called the cops on us! We have to talk to them! We have to
explain!
” I began to work frantically to open the window. It was stuck.

“Hey, guys,” called Rootbeer from the living room. “Come watch my experiment.”

I heaved at the window with all my might. It wouldn't budge. Desperately I hurled myself against the air conditioner in an attempt to push it out onto the fire escape.

“Don! Help me!”

The two of us put our backs to it, throwing ourselves painfully against the metal casing. I felt it give a little.

“Last chance,” called Rootbeer. “It's going to be amazing.”

“Lie down!” yelled Don.

“Lie down!? What are you —
crazy?”

“We can kick it out!”

We got down on our backs, legs poised in the air, ready to pound the air conditioner with our feet.

Tired of waiting for us, Rootbeer proceeded with his experiment. “Okay, here goes.”

“Together!” I commanded. “One — two —!”

“Oops,” came Rootbeer's mildly annoyed voice.

“ —
three
!”

Boom!
Rootbeer's experiment blew up with a deafening roar just as Don and I brought our legs forward. We were so shocked by the explosion that our four feet jerked away from our bodies and dealt the air conditioner a tremendous wallop.

It burst out of the window, skittered across the fire escape, and disappeared under the railing. A split second later, there was the sound of a ten thousand BTU cooling system smashing through the roof of a police cruiser.

And then another sound — sharp — terrifying —

Gunfire!

Yes, they shot up the building, and no, it wasn't the telephone company.

The Chief of Police himself came to explain it to us and to the rest of the tenants, except God's Grandmother, who slept through the whole thing. It had all begun the last time a computer operator had attempted to take the Camaro off the stolen list. He hit the wrong button so, instead of deleting the entry, he bumped it up to
Vehicles Connected With Dangerous Felons
.

“So it's pretty straightforward,” the chief said cheerfully. “When our cruiser did a routine check of your license plate, he got a ‘Dangerous Felon' flag. He called for backup. That's standard procedure. And during routine deployment of personnel, there was an explosion, and one of our cars was taken out by an
unidentified weapon
.”

“It was an air conditioner!” I wailed.

“Our guys didn't know that. They were going strictly by the book. Anyway, don't worry, folks. It was our mistake, except for the air conditioner.”

“We're really sorry about that,” quavered Don. “It was an accident. We were just trying to get the window open so we could explain about the phone calls.”

The chief grinned. “Oh, yeah, the phone calls. We don't send the SWAT team to check out crank calls. The phone company uses the Air Force.” And he walked away, laughing.

Ours was the only apartment that had sustained any damage. The police offered to set us up at a hotel, but since only our bathroom had been hit, we decided to stay put. Unbelievably, the air conditioner was still in great shape, but we didn't have a window to put it in.

Eventually the other tenants tired of the excitement and went back to bed. We followed them upstairs to find Rootbeer scrapping his chemistry set.

“I'm disappointed,” was his only comment.

Sleep would not come, so we lay awake, listening to the Phantom raving into the phone about the night's events. Hearing about bombing the police with an air conditioner was even more ridiculous than actually doing it. If it hadn't been us, I would have recommended that the perpetrators be locked in a rubber room.

We went down again to watch the sun rise over the rubble. As the first rays glinted off the shards of broken glass that lay in front of 1 Pitt Street, we saw the full extent of the damage. Stray bullets had bitten pieces out of the ancient brick and shattered the brand-new show window of the deli.

Don covered his eyes. “If my mom calls,” he moaned, “tell her she's got the wrong number. There's no way I could fake a good mood today.”

* * *

God's Grandmother went out for her morning jog, but the nearsighted old lady still hadn't noticed that anything was out of place at 1 Pitt Street. She just muttered something about poor streetcleaning as her sneakers crunched over the broken glass.

I stood forlornly in the wreckage of my restaurant. With my meat fork, I absently pried a bullet out of the torpedo salami. It had once proudly hung in the show window, center of interest of the string of prepared meats.

“They shot my salami,” I said to no one. The telephone rang, so I put down the carcass and went to answer it.

“So, Mr. Cardone, how's my restaurant?”

“Kind of slow this morning,” I managed. A better answer would have been “What restaurant?” but how could I tell this poor, sick, old man that he'd been right all along? He was out of business.

“Slow? How slow? Your gorilla friend is chasing away my customers?”

“Don't worry,” I said. “Last night it was really hectic.” Understatement.

“You're a good boy, Mr. Cardone.”

That hurt more than an insult. It was the first civil word he'd ever said to me, and the first time I hadn't deserved it. I hung up feeling even lower than before.

Don pulled by, turned, and parked the Camaro, carefully avoiding the broken glass. He got out carrying a large bag from a twenty-four-hour drugstore. “Soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and toilet paper,” he announced. “All the stuff they shot.”

I could hear him perfectly. Only air separated the deli and the street. “I thought I told you to push that car over a cliff,” I said bitterly.

Don shrugged. “I couldn't find one high enough.” He and Ferguson were united for the first time all summer in the effort to cheer me up. I doubted that even the magic of Ferguson Peach, super-genius, could accomplish that.

Don came over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Forget it,” he said comfortingly. “At least nobody got hurt. That's pretty amazing.”

“I guess,” I mumbled. “But we put the guy in the hospital, blew up his building, and now we have to walk out on him because there's nothing else we can do.”

“Sure there is,” said Don. “We can clean this up no sweat.”

I looked at him in disgust. “There are times when being an optimist is just plain stupid. Look at this place! I wouldn't even know where to start!”

Rootbeer entered, carefully opening and closing the door even though there was no glass in it. “Coffee,” he ordered, as though this were an ordinary morning, and flopped down in our regular booth. Weakened by the wildly ricocheting bullets, the frame collapsed under his weight, and Rootbeer disappeared below seat level, his huge legs jackknifing into the air.

“Well,” he sighed, “no sense keeping these around.” He got up and, with one grunt, wrenched the entire line of booths from their moorings, and heaved the whole mess — twelve benches and six tables — out the gaping window and onto the sidewalk.

I stared. There! It was that easy! Where the booths had been lay bare floor, nice and clean. All it took was a little brute strength. I looked at Rootbeer and almost smiled. A lot of brute strength.

Just then the Peach's voice came from inside Plotnick's apartment behind the deli. “Hey, guys, you'd better come in here.”

I couldn't stand the suspense. “Just break it to me. Will his insurance cover it?”

“You have to see it to believe it!”

Don and I joined Ferguson in Plotnick's living room. The Peach was standing by a two-drawer filing cabinet that stood amidst the overstuffed Victorian furniture. The grin on his face was pure unholy delight. He showed us a file folder three inches thick. On the top was scrawled
Insurance
.

“He's covered?” I barely whispered.

Ferguson laughed. “Enough to rebuild ten delis. What do you want to bet he makes a profit?”

That was it for me. The smile hit, my first since Mr. Nevin from the phone company had walked up to me twelve hours, or a hundred and fifty thousand years, ago.

* * *

Ferguson and Don both took the day off work and, with Rootbeer's help, we completely emptied the deli. The sooner we got the work done, the less chance there was of word getting back to Plotnick that he'd had a disaster. There had been nothing in the papers, and the police were hoping to keep it that way. The whole business didn't reflect very well on them.

The insurance adjustor arrived, and was so happy not to have to deal with Plotnick that we settled on the spot. As part of the big cover-up, the Police Department was paying in full, so all we had to do was clean, fix, and replace, and have the bills sent to the insurance company.

“It's a pleasure working with you guys!” exclaimed the adjustor in a surprised, pleased tone. “Mr. Plotnick is lucky to have you to look after his interests.”

“Now, we don't want him informed about this,” said Ferguson. “His health is very delicate.”

“Hey,” said the man, “no crying, no screaming, no begging, no groveling — I'll do anything you say.”

“Okay,” said the Peach as the adjustor drove off. “I guess now we go buy Plotnick his stuff back.”

“Not exactly,” I said. I can't describe the expression I was pretty sure I was wearing. Suffice it to say I was very, very excited about the rest of the summer.

“What do you mean, not exactly?” asked Don suspiciously. “Get that look off your face, Jason. You're making me nervous.”

My leer must have deepened, because now they were both scared.

“Remember,” warned Ferguson, “this is Plotnick's money. If you do something screwy with it, he'll track you to the end of the universe with bloodhounds!”

I laughed. “Trust me.”

From
The Toronto Star
, Thursday, August 16, 1990:

I bombed out in plastics, I was useless at finding a job. All I had was my A in home ec, and now I was going to take my one talent and run with it.

The deli was dotted with tiny tables with checkered cloths, and seated well over a hundred now that all the booths were gone. So were the salamis and all of the old decorations, especially the hubcap playpen and Plotnick's monthly extermination certificate. Everything was painted white, and from the ceiling hung dozens of lush green plants. On the walls were framed posters of any European city whose consulate was giving them out for free.

The menu, written in fluorescent chalk on a large black slate over the counter, was much more limited than the Olympiad's had been. The Chocolate Memory had turned into about forty desserts, depending on what combination of ice cream, biscuit, fruit, and topping was used. For instance, with vanilla ice cream and cherries, it was Chocolate Memory Jubilee; with chocolate ice cream and crushed chocolate cookies and fudge sauce, it was Chocolate Memory Mississippi Mud Pie. And so on, right up to Chocolate Memory Rootbeer Racinette, which had everything, and would rival the Moontrix Mountain, the drink that had brought Jessica into all our lives.

We also served a few store-bought pastries and muffins, on the off-chance that someone didn't like Chocolate Memory. For dinner, we had deli sandwiches, period. It was the only thing Plotnick had really done well. And as a tribute to our injured landlord, I raised the prices of everything. Naturally people would expect to pay more in such a snazzy dessert spot. Your basic Chocolate Memory started at $3.50; the Rootbeer Racinette version was over seven bucks.

The former deli lay in readiness for tomorrow night's big opening, but there were still a few finishing touches to be put on the bathroom of apartment 2C. So I left Rootbeer in charge, and went to visit Plotnick at the hospital. My motive was not exactly social and compassionate. I wanted to make sure that our landlord's daily paper didn't include the ad for the opening of Chocolate Memories. All summer I'd never seen Plotnick so much as glancing at a newspaper, but I couldn't be too careful. Now, with nothing to do all day, he might have taken an interest in current events.

The nurse hadn't brought in his
Toronto Star
yet, so it was just sitting outside the door. I slipped out the Entertainment section and tossed it down the laundry chute. Then I put on my most cheerful face, and brought him the rest of his paper.

He took one look at me and screamed, “What are you doing here, Mr. Cardone? Who's minding the restaurant?”

“I closed up for an hour so I could come and visit you.”

“Fine! You visited me! Go back! There could be a thousand-dollar catering job banging on my door right now!”

“Don't worry,” I assured him. “I told Rootbeer to keep an eye on the place.”

I didn't know the word “Oy” could have eighteen syllables.

“I brought you your paper,” I said, placing it on the table beside him.

He glanced at it. “It's short one section. Those crooks.”

I stared at him. “You read it?”

“Of course not!” he snapped. “I should waste my time reading a newspaper put out by crooks? Get out of here, Mr. Cardone! My business is going down the drain!”

I headed for the door, then paused. “Have any of the other tenants been in to visit you?”

Plotnick looked haughty. “My relationship with them is strictly business.”

Translation: He was rotten to them, so they hated him just like we did. Good. That meant there was no danger of any of our neighbors telling Plotnick what was going on at 1 Pitt Street.

* * *

Opening night. I shouldn't have been nervous. My Chocolate Memory fans showed up in force, and only the Ugly Man missed the old menu. I guess it's hard to be nostalgic about all that grease. The place was never actually jam-packed, but it was probably the same number of people that had made the deli look like a sardine can last week. And I'm pretty sure I made more money than Plotnick had ever seen in an evening at the Olympiad. The customers seemed happy, which was the whole point.

Since it didn't count as a repair, I had taken out the newspaper ad with my own cash, and one night's tips had almost made up for it. I was still in the hole for my outfit — black pants, white shirt, black bow tie — but with luck, tomorrow would more than pay that off. I think I looked pretty sharp, and God's Grandmother said I was “all the crack,” whatever that meant. Of course, none of my customers could know that I was much more than a mere waiter — that I was the mastermind behind Chocolate Memories. With a little bit of help from the D-Lishus Corporation.