From Herring to Eternity

by Delia Rosen

  I set the safety pin and the chunk on the felt and looked at the corresponding piece of wood. I couldn’t see anything there so I took the magnifying glass from the desk drawer—the one Uncle Murray had used to read fine print. Between safety pins, the magnifying glass, a deck of cards, and a silver dollar, that drawer was more diverse than Batman’s utility belt.

  There was a very faint indentation in the wood of the lid. I knew at once what it must be and, marking the spot, I closed the lid slowly. That was where the rim of the trumpet bell had pressed up against the lid, which was inwardly warped because its owner was always leaning on it—to eat, to write, to sleep. Maybe Lippy had tucked a piece of paper into what was once a torn-down flap. When the instrument had pressed on it, a trace of wet ink—probably from a felt-tipped pen—had soaked into the porous wood.

  Aware that Grant was on the way, I quickly looked up school paste online. The ingredients of cheap paste were water, corn syrup, white vinegar— “White vinegar?” I said, looking down at the dan-druffy felt. I use it to clean stains from the coffee maker. It also cleans grease . . . and newsprint, when that stuff used to get on everything you touched. My great-grandfather Benny bet the horses and read a half-dozen tabloids when New York still had them. The old Frigidaire was always covered with fingerprints.

  The vinegar in the paste had picked up the impression of writing that had been crushed into the wood, like Silly Putty picking up a comic-strip picture. Switching on the small scanner I rarely used that was buried under catalogues for clothes and accessories I would never buy, I picked up the pin, gently set the bottom of the paste chunk on the scanner, and made a copy. Then I put it back in the case and removed the pin. If the lab guys noticed the hole—then they noticed the hole. Good for them. Another puzzle to solve.

  I used the letter opener to lower the lid so there were no additional fingerprints, then went back to the dining room—just as Grant was entering casually, furtively, so as not to alarm the clientele—if a man holding purple rubber gloves and looking like an OB-GYN on a mission can be called furtive. He acknowledged me with a nod and went to my office. I noticed that neither Leigh nor Fly Saucer was looking at him. Mr. Saucer was focused on his iPad and Leigh was enviously eyeing a vintage Mustang that was parked in the street.

  I followed him into the office as soon as I was finished chopping onions.

  “Worst evidence locker on earth,” he said, bending and looking the case over like a vet examining a sick puppy.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Any smells that might be on the case are drowned by everything else,” he said. “I’ll have to take this back to the lab ASAP—check for prints, ascertain that it was even his.”

  I leaned forward, sniffed. “It was.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lippy spilled grapefruit juice on the case the morning he was killed,” I told him. “I know rotten fruit when I smell it.”

  Grant raised the lid, looked inside, touched the lining here and there. It was badly faded crushed red velvet. “The juice could be how the toxin was introduced. We’ll know when we’ve tested the case. There’s a hard spot here,” he said, jabbing a spot.

  “Meaning?”

  “Possibly glued, repaired.”

  “It’s an old case,” I said. “He could have done that himself. I’m guessing there are no cameras where the mail bag was left.”

  Grant grinned crookedly. “This isn’t exactly New York, Gwen. We don’t have a Ring of Steel.”

  The detective was referring to the combination of public surveillance cameras, private security systems, and radiation detectors that effectively watched every foot of Lower Manhattan for roughly a half-mile in all directions from the Financial District.

  “So Nicolette could have had it there already—or someone could have put it there,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “Your eyes are red,” he said, awkwardly—okay, painfully—looking for a way to show concern.

  “It’s the onions,” I said truthfully—okay, dismissively.

  “I’m going to get an evidence bag,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything else.”

  “I don’t,” he answered honestly. Okay, bitterly.

  I left, then he left; only the tension remained, the only thing we seemed to have in common. Was this another way hate got itself birthed—not from the axe-chop of a divorce but by the blossoming petals of resentment?

  Apparently. That was a new one for me, and even more unpleasant because it was so insidious. It was like the slow, awful awareness of, “Hey—that’s not indigestion. It’s my farshtunken heart!”

  I decided to make myself useful; I went to the dining room to see who else might have poisoned Lippy Montgomery.

  I picked Fly Saucer because I didn’t feel like dealing with the two ladies. I was sufficiently fed up with men that I was afraid I might hit on them. Not really—but maybe. Then again, thinking about the complex relationship I had with Thom, I wondered if I could actually handle another woman’s issues.

  Fly was sitting there in his trademark yellow button-down and white slacks, all bald, five-foot-eight of him. He wore Chamber sunglasses with dark ale lenses and a Rolex Deepsea. I have no idea whether he had ever gone diving in his life; but the watch was big and ostentatious, probably so it could compete with the money-green Jesus face and rosary chain he wore tight around his neck. The Christ had tiny diamonds for eyes and lips made of rubies. He seemed to be smiling. Fly had his iPad and was pecking away as he ate.

  At least the music mogul made the ice breaking easy. As I walked over with my all-access coffeepot, offering refills, he smiled through his goatee and asked, “What’s all the commotion?”

  “You mean the police?” I asked, then added my own lame attempt at mock bonding, “The fuzz?”

  He grinned after a brief hesitation, then slurred in his best blaxploitation drug dealer voice, “Yeah—de fuzz, baby. You so urban.”

  I meant it as a joke; he was biting back. I guess sarcasm doesn’t always work across ethnic lines.

  “I was teasing,” I said.

  He put a fist to his chest, over his heart. “And brotha Fred Williamson and sista Pam Grier be smiling because they are still-hip jargonauts.”

  I didn’t need this. I wasn’t even sure what he’d just said.

  I started to leave but Fly grabbed my left wrist with four big rings that happened to be wearing fingers. “Hold on,” he said. “That was my turn to be tease-alicious.”

  I’ve always had a soft spot for neologists, going back to when my great-relatives from Eastern Europe mangled the local tongue. At least these words had a kind of vitality and ingenuity. Not like the boobs who sent me e-mails about the deli saying our ads had “peaked” their interest or that my food is “kewl.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “So what’s up?” he asked, switching on what apparently was meant to be charm.

  “Something belonging to Lippy Montgomery just showed up,” I told him.

  “Is that good? Is there a break in the case?”

  For a moment, I thought he was referring to the trumpet case. “I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.”

  “Why? Fuzz-heat on ya?”

  He was being sarcastic. “No. I had a soft spot for Lippy.”

  Fly resumed what he was doing—writing music, it seemed. “He was a damn good horn player. I got him a few sessions—sometimes at the studio, sometimes at The Oatmeal Stallion, but he always did himself in.”

  The Oatmeal Stallion was the hot jazz club on Union Street. I didn’t realize Lippy had ever played that upscale. “How so?”

  “He had the soul of a musician, man,” he told me. “In the middle of a vocal, he would go off in his own jazz riff world. I understood it, and he was always trying to make something better, but that’s not what he was hired to do.” There was anger—frustration?—in Fly’s voice.

  “Did anyone ever get mad at hi
m in those sessions?”

  Eerily on cue, Mad Ozenne walked in when I invoked her name. She drifted to the empty table she had occupied the morning of the murder. Her eyes locked on me and stayed with me as she circled wide around the dining room, almost like the moon orbiting the earth. Her expression was equally stony, now that I thought of it. Not angry, just frozen in a blank mask.

  “You couldn’t get mad at Lippy,” Fly said. “Nobody could. He was so sincere and, like I said, it was never about him, about trying to call attention to himself. It was always about the music.” He touched his iPad as I topped off his cup. “I read he got poisoned.” He raised his tablet slightly. “They find out where or how?”

  “Not sure,” I said.

  “What about his sister?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, unsure whether rat poison had been mentioned in any of the news coverage.

  He shook his head slowly. “It’s a serious crime.”

  “Well, yeah. Murder,” I said.

  “No, man. I mean the way folks just ignored his ass.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yo, dude be playing his heart out, nobody giving him a listen. I don’t think he cared, ’cause he was out there for himself. But it just wasn’t right.”

  “Why didn’t you sign him? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “’Cause the other thing about Lippy—he had zero charisma. You got to have that if you’re gonna record, because you also gotta get out there and support your efforts. Y’know? County fairs, local TV, football halftimes. He had no showmanship. You look at the great trumpeters, like Al Hirt, Doc Severinsen—you want to watch them as much as you want to listen to them.”

  I saw his point. Lippy was like a herring without the egg and onion. He lacked a certain zest.

  “Sad,” I said. I leaned in a little. “His sister told me he had some kind of treasure. You ever hear anything about that?”

  Fly’s mouth pinched like he was rolling coffee grounds from his tongue. “Lippy? Treasure? That boy was so naive he would’ve tried to return a gold doubloon to Cortez.”

  That was an unexpectedly literate allusion, I was pleased to note. Maybe the bling boss act was just that.

  Before I could say anything more, Leigh waved me over and pointed at her cup. The grease monkey needed more lube. I smiled at Fly and wished him a good day, not sure if there was anything else I could find out from him about Lippy.

  And then he offered it himself, again.

  “Yo, they oughta talk to that crazy-ass biddy with the teeth tats,” Fly said. “I heard her ask him for the pepper.”

  “Why would she do that when she had some on her own table?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe it was clogged.”

  That didn’t sound right, but I was already hustling over to fill Leigh’s cup—and wondering, with a mind on overload, if there was any socio-ethnic significance to the fact that yo and oy were mirror images of each other.

  “Thank ya, darlin’,” she said in a rolling southern welcome that made her sound like Elvis in Viva Las Vegas but also sounded like a come-on. Maybe I was wrong. She didn’t check me out. I didn’t know whether I was pleased or insulted or both.

  “How are you ladies today?” I asked.

  “Life is good,” said Leigh. She was very slender, kind of concave on top, but her bare, freckled arms showed muscle. She wore a baseball cap on her short, red hair. Jackie was a larger woman who strained her blue bus driver uniform. Her platinum blond buzz cut had green tops, like a strange hybrid asparagus.

  “Is there anything new about Lippy?” Jackie asked. Her voice was even lower than Leigh’s.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Looks like some new evidence turned up.”

  We all fell silent as Grant came by. He stopped beside Nicolette, bent over her. We heard him ask her to step out to the car and give him a statement. They left together without a look or a word.

  The three of us remained uncomfortably silent. I had gotten a dose of freezer burn from the chill. I had no idea whether the two ladies did or didn’t know about me and Grant, but they seemed frozen for a moment.

  “Did you guys know Lippy?” I asked as I went to pour, forgetting that I already had.

  “Except to hear him tooting in the distance, no,” Leigh said.

  “He rode my bus a couple times a week,” Jackie said.

  “Well, there ya go,” Leigh said. “That’s why I wouldn’t’ve known him. PTG—public transport guy. He would have had no need of my services.”

  “Any of them,” Jackie winked.

  “Dawg,” Leigh fake snarled.

  Oy.

  “Y’know, it’s strange about Lippy,” Jackie said, mercifully getting back on point. “He looked lonely but he never acted like he was missing out on anything. He was always busy with something.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Fussing with his instrument, mostly,” she said. “Smiling to himself. Reading a newspaper or magazine he picked up off a seat. He’d spread it out on his trumpet case like it was a feast. He didn’t seem unhappy.” Then she said, “Sometimes he would sit there writing on a yellow legal pad.”

  I came alert, like shtetl dwellers hearing hoof beats. “What did he write?”

  “I don’t know. Writing.”

  “Was he intense or kind of casual?”

  Jackie rolled her shoulders as she swallowed coffee from her refilled mug.

  “How’d you see all that, drivin’?” Leigh asked.

  “I stop at lights, check around,” Jackie said. “I also look back when people make sounds that could mean trouble. My job is more than just steering a wheel.”

  “You’re so capable, you multitasker,” Leigh cooed.

  Meh keyn brechen as Uncle Oskar used to say. You could vomit from this. Public lovebirding of any persuasion is not for me. So was the next thing.

  “But I couldn’t do what poor Tippi could in Cirque de So Laid,” Jackie said soberly.

  I jerked so hard the coffee sloshed in the pot. “What?”

  “Her first adult film,” Leigh said. “We did a minimarathon, watched all three of her movies the other night when we read about her death. That girl could—contort.”

  “Lippy was actually in one of them,” Jackie said.

  “What?” This conversation had seriously stunted my vocabulary.

  “The movie was called Come Blow Your Horny,” Leigh explained. “It was set in the 1950s. Lippy was playin’ horn in a jazz club where Tippi was workin’ as a cigarette girl by night, an exotic hooker by later at night. It was her last picture, according to the AFCACDB.”

  “The AFCA—what?”

  “The Adult Film Cast and Crew Database,” she said. “The other one was called Lifeguard on Judy, in case you want to download them,” Jackie added. “That was more of a period piece, heavy on the—”

  “I get the picture,” I cut her off.

  “It was during her red period,” Leigh snickered.

  “Literally,” Jackie added.

  “Hey, I’ve got to get back to work,” I said, backing away with a sense of urgency.

  I turned to go, Leigh and Jackie tucked back into their breakfasts, and I wondered what Lippy could possibly have written, then torn from a pad and tucked into the ripped flap of his case . . . and whether that could in anyway qualify as a “treasure.” Something that Robert Barron or someone else found out about and would want. Then I remembered what Fly had said about Mad, who happened to be sitting right where I was facing. I looked down at her and she looked up at me and there was a moment of awkward silence. Her expression was still noncommittal, but I had a feeling she wasn’t quite a blank slate. We had unfinished business, and this was another rare morning visit.

  “Hello, Mad,” I said.

  “Not happy,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “The earth can take a number and stand in line. Listen, Mad, I’m truly sorry about what happened at the house and I want to figure out
a way to make things right. But I have to ask you something. On the morning he died, did you ask Lippy Montgomery—he was sitting right there, at the counter—did you ask him for pepper?”

  “I did not,” Mad said with a strange mix of certainty and innocence.

  “Someone says they heard you.”

  “They’re mistaken.”

  “You didn’t speak with him at all?” I asked.

  “I did speak to him,” Mad said.

  “What did you say?” I asked. I would have described this Q&A as “pulling teeth,” only in Mad’s case the metaphor didn’t quite apply.

  “I asked him about the paper,” Mad said.

  I thought back. I didn’t remember a newspaper, but he may have picked one up on the bus. “Did Lippy give you a newspaper? Was there something marked on it? Circled? An ad or something?”

  The Wiccan looked away, stared straight ahead. I couldn’t tell if she was being passively belligerent or was just being her usual, oblivious self.

  “Mad, everything that happened while Lippy was here is important,” I pressed. “Isn’t there anything you can tell me?” And please don’t tell me “the earth isn’t happy,” or I can’t be responsible for what happens to the coffeepot.

  “Yes,” Mad said thoughtfully. “May I order now?”

  Chapter 16

  I left Mad humming some witchly sounding ditty as I left the dining room for the sane, controlled security of my office.

  Putting aside the necessity of making a living, there are many, many reasons why a person goes into a particular profession.

  They might love it—an actor, for example, or a bake shop owner. A journalist, maybe.

  They might be expected to go into it—a family business or a family trade, like the shmatta business—literally the “rag” business but only euphemistically. Your father made shirts, you made shirts. Your father imported bulk cloth from Taiwan, you sold bulk cloth from Taiwan. That didn’t hold true for women in my culture; your father repaired shoes, you married a heart surgeon.

  Some people go into a line of work because they want to serve the public good, they want power, they like a challenge, they want to serve God—the reasons and choices go on and on.