To Kill a Matzo Ball (A Deadly Deli Mystery) (5 page)

The last thing I needed was another visitor.

I had just been outside in the fenced-in area out back, at the drain in the center of the asphalt. Pouring the contents of the bucket down a storm drain seemed more fitting than spilling it down the sink. For one thing, I wasn’t sure I could lift the filled bucket. More important, it was closer to the earth, more like a burial. So that’s where Mr. Chan went.

The task was a little lighter by then. Under the early afternoon sun, I found myself remembering his expressions as he sat at the table. It was strange how I’d cycled through the entire mourning process in about a half hour.

By two
PM
a truck had arrived from Umberto Professional Repairs. Like so many people down here, Umberto Delmonico and his son Vittorio had been friends of my Uncle Murray.

“He fed me on days when I went solo and couldn’t pay him,” the older man said. “I’m glad I can be here for his niece.”

I had heard that before from people, but under the circumstances, it propped me up no less than he did with the big piece of plywood in my front window frame. Umberto and his rugged young son braced it with a thin steel crossbeam on the inside.

“Nothing’s getting through that,” Umberto said when they were finished. Then he threw a muscular hand around him. “Don’t let the darkness get you down. It will pass.”

I tried to hold on to that as I put the furniture back in place, though the arrival of Lawrence Bowe-Pitt changed that.

I was in my office, answering e-mails from friends who had learned about the attack on the news. I heard the front door open and rolled my chair into the hall. A hulking white man stood just inside. He looked like the Michelin Man. He flipped out a little leather cardholder. There was a badge on top; he moved it to catch the light so I could see it from where I sat.

“Good afternoon. I’m Resident Agent Lawrence Bowe-Pitt of the FBI field office in Nashville,” he said. “Are you Ms. Katz?”

“Yes.”

“May I speak with you?”

I didn’t bother pointing out that he already was. “Sure.”

He had a voice like butter melting in the southern sun. Dressed in a charcoal-gray suit and thin black tie, the man mountain made his way toward me. I knew we’d never fit comfortably in the office—if he fit at all—so I went back into the kitchen.

I once met Bill Bradley, the former New York Knicks forward and senator, who ended up with an investment banking firm. Bradley stood six-five and seemed very, very tall. This man was about the same size but seemed even bigger than that because he had shoulders like an ox and a head that seemed a little too small for his massive frame.

I wasn’t staring, but as he neared there was hardly a place you could turn where he wasn’t. I had kept the coffee on and offered him a cup.

“No thank you,” he said, in a voice that seemed to echo within that cavernous form, rolling around a few times before emerging from his thin-lipped mouth.

I went behind the counter and got some for myself. He followed me out.

“Don’t you people usually travel in pairs?” I asked.

“Budget reductions do not always make that possible,” he said. “And this is not, strictly speaking, an investigative visit.”

“No? What is it?” I asked. I poured, sipped the coffee bitter and black, stayed where I was, and looked back at him. I wanted to be where the cop at the door could see me. I didn’t know why, but I did.

He came around the counter, his back to the door. There was no way the cop could see me now. If this guy wasn’t the real deal, I was in serious trouble. I had no reason to believe he was a fake other than my own post-traumatic jitters, inherent mistrust, and doubt that this man could have worn even the extra-largest standard-issue FBI gear.

“We have been keeping an eye on all of the businesses like yours in Nashville,” Agent Bowe-Pitt went on. “Nothing intrusive—just drive-bys several times a week.”

“Why is that?” I asked, though I pretty much knew what he was going to say. “Like yours” was about as transparent a euphemism as one could use. He meant that some mouth-breather out there had it in for Jews.

“While it’s possible that someone knew Mr. Chan would be here, that’s a little too fluid a situation for me.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Someone would have to have been tracking him,” the agent said. “Given how often he was probably alone at his school, tailing him here doesn’t seem to make the best sense. It’s not impossible, of course, and there
are
some stupid killers out there, but it’s not the best working theory.”

“What is your best theory?”

“We’ve been tracking a well-funded group of radical white supremacists, the SSS,” he said. “It stands for Shock, Shoot, and Slaughter. Mr. Chan, being of Asian descent, a foreigner, new in the city—that would have been something to attract their attention.”

My first reaction? I didn’t think that a bunch of homicidal rednecks would have had the wit or creativity to conceive of a mash-up between the SS and the KKK. Maybe they had hired an image consultant. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an opportunity there—rebranding hate. Legitimizing the illegitimate, the way nations did.

“You heard about the cop who was shot off-road two weeks ago?” he asked.

I nodded. It was big news for several days. Marcuz Frank, an off-duty police officer, had taken his date to a romantic spot off Briley Parkway. It wasn’t really romantic; it was isolated and located in a woody depression not visible from the road. The gal was abducted, and the cop was fatally shot in the head. She was found later, strangled, in a rusting, abandoned truck.

“We believe that was the work of this group,” he said. “The officer was African-American. The woman was not. The first flyers were found the next morning, not far from there.”

“Had the couple been seen around town?” I asked. “How did they know?”

“We don’t know,” Bowe-Pitt said.

“I assume you know who these people are?” I asked. “Some of them, at least?”

“We don’t,” Bowe-Pitt admitted.

“Then how do you know they’re well-financed?” I asked. “A bunch of fliers pinned to trees isn’t exactly high overhead.”

“No, but invisibility is,” he said. “These guys leave no data fingerprints anywhere. Either there are no cell phone or Internet communications, which isn’t likely, or they are using highly sophisticated hardware and software. That costs.”

True enough. It wouldn’t be possible for a bunch of killer hillbillies to hide for very long without help.

“They’ve also been schooled in up-to-date security practices,” he went on. “We have a flyer they posted. None of the word groups or letter sequences show up in any of our searches. And we don’t know that they’re remote country inhabitants, which I presume is what you meant by the hillbilly reference. For all we know they may be local business owners. Restaurateurs, perhaps.”

Well, he sure put me in my place—making a point of using the slightly French-inflected word
restaurateurs
. Maybe I deserved it. I probably seemed like a snotty intellectual feminist to him, which I sort of was.

“What about the money? Any idea where it’s coming from?” I asked.

“Cash doesn’t leave a paper trail,” he said. “You know the local economy. We’re looking into businesses where cash can be skimmed.”

There was a thoughtful silence, and I flinched as he slid a beefy paw into his jacket. I was prepared to hurl hot coffee in his face. But he didn’t produce a shiv or garrote. He was holding a five-by-seven photograph of a flyer. He handed it to me. The original document was yellow and pinned to a tree. It said in a bold inkjet typeface:

“I assume the typos are mistakes,” I said.

He looked at me as if to ask “What typos?”

“I mean, unless it’s a creative flourish,” I added quickly, turning the photo so he could see and pointing. “‘Heard’ as in audio, ‘herd’ as in a bunch of cattle. It could be a metaphor. And maybe ‘slawter’ is a service mark. I know. You can use it in commerce and see who sues. Then you’ve got them.”

He continued to stare with practiced patience. I didn’t imagine he met very many normal or well-composed people during his investigations: either they were bad guys or victims. I was anxious and babbling, but I couldn’t help myself. As much as you hear about people hating, as much as your relatives pounded it into your skull, it’s different when it’s in your backyard—and potentially in your storefront. It turns your knees and bowels to water. You just want to run. Or flow, whichever gets you away best under the radar.

“I sincerely do not know about any of that,” Bowe-Pitt remarked. “We found eleven of these flyers two weeks ago—”

“Eleven? Isn’t that the number of states in the Confederacy?”

“It’s also the number of trees located in Hadley Park, out of view of security cameras,” Bowe-Pitt told me.

Okay,
I thought.
I will say nothing more.

“We have no leads on who might have put those up, other than a strand of thread that was attached to one of the nailheads,” he went on. “We believe it’s from a workman’s glove, cotton with a trace of plastic coating. Electrical worker, perhaps. We’re looking into it.”

“That’s a pretty impressive deduction from a piece of thread.”

“We have a real good lab in Memphis,” he said. “Of course, it could also mean a Nashville Electric worker pulled over to relieve himself and happened to lean on the tree. We’re looking at gloves from workers on this afternoon’s assignment sheet as well.”

“You ought to wear gloves while you check
those
gloves,” I said.

The agent ignored my quip.

“I checked with the NPD,” he went on. “They will be leaving an officer posted outside tonight. I suggest, if it’s possible, that you sleep here. Your home property is invasible.”

My home property is invasible? What the hell kind of inflated thought process came up with that? Probably the same linguistic moron who told weather forecasters to refer to the afternoon as “afternoon hours” and humidity as “humidity values,” as well as turning signs to “signage” and minutes to “minutage” and other idiotic neologisms.

Now I was babbling inside instead of out. I shut my brain up and listened.

“All right,” I said.

“None of this is to say that we know for certain you were the target,” he went on.

That’s what “knowing” is, I mentally corrected him. Being “certain.”
I told my mind, again, to put a ball-gag in it.

He plucked a business card from that little leather wallet, which seemed lost in his fleshy hand. He laid it on the counter, beside the photograph of the flyer, and gave it two taps of his finger. He probably would have handed it to me if I weren’t standing so far back that I burned my
tuchas
twice on the coffee machine.

“Call if you need me or if you hear or see anything,” he told me.

“This hasn’t exactly been reassuring,” I told him.

“Sorry. We deal with information. Those are the facts and the suppositions.”

“Fine. But before you go and before I stay, do you have any reason to
suspect
that my home may be a target?”

“We have to assume it may be.”

There were enough qualifiers in that to make me feel like I was talking to the Duchess of Wonderland. “What I mean is, I have to go back and get my cats, some clothes, and I’d like to take a shower. That should be safe enough, right? In and out?”

He considered that. “I was planning to go out and have a look around your neighborhood, at the neighbors,” he said. “If you can leave now—”

So the answer was
no,
it’s not safe. I took another slug of coffee. “Let me just get my keys. You can follow me.”

“I’ll go on ahead,” he said. “I’d like to be in the area when you get there.”

“All right,” I said.

He nodded a good-bye, then left. Watching him was like watching a low, solid storm cloud move across the city. The door opened and shut quietly, letting in a flash of sunshine that was like lightning. Then I was alone in the dark, dealing with the fear that had suddenly replaced my sorrow. With that feeling came a renewed sense of
What the hell am I doing down here?
I loved my staff, but they were culturally foreign to me and still employees. I enjoyed my customers, but they didn’t know pastrami from corned beef. Ex-pats? Whenever I met them, I clung like they were the Messiah. That should tell me something. I didn’t belong. I didn’t want to be here. I
shouldn’t
be here. I wasn’t having fun.

You aren’t beholden to anyone,
I reminded myself.
Why don’t you sell the place and leave?
But I knew the answer even as I asked the question.
Because you don’t really have anywhere to go, anything or anyone to go to.

I looked at Agent Bowe-Pitt’s card. It listed a landline, a fax, and his cell phone under his name. It seemed official. If he was trying to lure me to my house to kill me, he’d gone to a lot of trouble. Especially when he could have just busted into my “invasible” home.

I decided that this was not the time to make impulsive decisions. Instead, I would take the time to figure out which of my
bubbe
Jennie’s grandmotherly sayings applied:
A shlekhter sholem iz beser vi a guter krig
or
Kolzman es rirt zich an aiver, klert men nit fun kaiver.

A bad peace is better than a good war
or
As long as one limb stirs, one does not think of the grave.

I put Bowe-Pitt’s business card on my desk, beside that of Banko Juarez, then I took a turn around my wounded but cleaned-up deli. The air was heavy with Lysol. Except for that, without the staff, without the customers, without the daylight or the city intruding, the deli was very much me. It was my hard work that made it grow from just above break-even to solid profitability. It was my personality in the design of the menu, the place mats, the local paint-by-number flea market paintings on the walls, the improvements and changes and decorations I had brought to it over the past fourteen months.