The Man in the Microwave Oven

by Susan Cox

  I went with Gavin to the coffee shop for his first morning shift and my last day as a barista. Nat had already given me my pink slip and told me to get some more rest. I stayed long enough to realize that I wasn’t needed. Gavin seemed less clumsy, or maybe just more cautious. He and Nat got along well together, and he willingly did everything asked of him, up to and including using a glass jar to capture a spider and release it into the alley. Nat was afraid of spiders, and I didn’t like them much either, so we were usually reduced to playing rock-paper-scissors. The spider escaped twice, and its eventual liberation involved a spatula, a box of coffee stirrers, and two of Nat’s customers, one of whom was apparently a member of PETA and who took it upon himself to assure the spider’s comfort during its ordeal.

  I left Nat and Gavin reading PETA brochures and walked back to Aromas feeling more cheerful than I had in weeks. The spider was free. The lawsuit was off my plate. Business at Aromas was good. The recent neighborhood association meeting had been remarkably harmonious without Katrina’s spiky presence. I hadn’t noticed anyone following me for a couple of days. I’d even managed to take a few photos for the calendar. True, Katrina’s killer was still at large, and Ben was still potentially in danger somewhere overseas, but the other side of the ledger was looking pretty good.

  Two hours later, I was straightening a rack of kimonos when Nat clattered through the door, so winded he almost couldn’t talk, as if he’d run from The Coffee on a single breath. He bent over at the waist and tried to gulp in some air. I went over and patted his back, and he gasped out the problem. Nat has this smooth-as-honey Texas accent which, if you have a clipped English accent like mine, rests in the ear like music. He was saying something that sounded like “Hand. Bleedin’.” I smothered a snort. Nat fainted at the sight of a paper cut, so I thought he’d cut himself trying to make a sandwich or something. Then I realized he was actually shaking, and thought maybe it wasn’t so simple.

  He stood up straight and tried again, his face ashen and his eyes frantic. “Theo! You’ve gotta come.”

  He hustled me out of the store without giving me a chance to lock up, down the block, into the coffee shop, where a microwave oven sat on his counter in a nest of bubble wrap. Gavin was sitting at a table with his head in his hands. He looked up when we arrived and passed a hand over his face with trembling fingers. Nat waved a hand at the microwave. I approached it warily and opened the door.

  A bloody hand was sitting on an equally bloody and crumpled cloth. It looked like some sort of nightmarish flower, sitting upright with the fingers twisted and pointing in different directions. I frowned, trying to figure out why it looked so misshapen, because obviously that was the important thing, when I heard a sort of retching noise and half-turned to see Nat give up the struggle and collapse in a graceless faint against the wall.

  I took some of his weight and lowered his head gently to the floor, knowing from experience that he’d come around by himself in a couple of minutes. I waved Gavin over. Frankly, he looked green, but I thought taking care of Nat might focus his mind. He flicked a cloth off his shoulder and held it under the cold water tap, then folded the cloth into a pad. He crouched down and pressed it onto Nat’s forehead and the back of his neck with surprising competence. With none of his usual dithering, he looked up at me and said, “You should call the police.”

  “Yes. Right. I’ll do that.” Then I hesitated. I understood Nat’s impulse to find a friend to help him with—I looked quickly at the hand again and then wished I hadn’t. Inspector Lichlyter wasn’t exactly a friend, but at least I knew her and she knew me. She’d know she didn’t need to go digging any further into my past as part of a new investigation.

  She must have had caller ID because I was still trying to frame my first sentence when she said, “Miss … Bogart. What’s happened now?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “The police took my microwave,” Nat said mournfully over a glass of wine that evening. “It was a good microwave. Good and big, and it was cheap, too.”

  “They’ll bring it back.”

  He looked revolted.

  “Or you can get another one,” I added hastily. “Did the police tell you anything?”

  “I can’t get another one for the price I paid for that one. I bought it at the sale of Katrina’s stuff. I only picked it up yesterday. And no, I don’t know anythin’ more than I knew this morning, which is basically nothin’.”

  “Was it—empty when you bought it?”

  He gave me a look. “No, English, it came with a bonus gift.”

  “I just thought—”

  He leaned over and patted my knee. “I don’t know. It was all done up in bubble wrap. I didn’t open it up until this mornin’ and found … all wrapped up in that kitchen towel thing, and when I unwrapped it…” He was looking a little sketchy, so I didn’t press him, but the microwave being Katrina’s—that was significant, wasn’t it?

  “How did you come to get the microwave?”

  “It was handled by an estate liquidators south of Market. I was needin’ a microwave, and I remembered Katrina’s kitchen had this almost-new one from when she did the reno a few months ago, so I put in a bid.” He shuddered.

  “And it came from the liquidators already in the bubble wrap?”

  “Yeah.” He took another gulp of wine.

  “Was it an auction? Was there a preview day or anything?”

  “Yeah. The girl had taste, I’ll say that for her. I saw a couple of decorators there eyein’ her stuff. What are you thinkin’?”

  I swirled the wine in my glass and then shrugged. “It feels, I don’t know, significant. But if anyone had access to the microwave, I guess not. So the hand—”

  “It wasn’t a hand, ’pparently.”

  “It was a hand; I saw it. Sort of deformed, I thought.”

  “That’s ’cause it was parts of two hands sorta wrapped together. God, how awful is that?”

  “Pretty awful,” I agreed, feeling a little sick. “So someone is—”

  “—wanderin’ around with a finger and thumb missin’ on both hands. It’s gonna make it hard to—forget it; I can’t think of anythin’ that isn’t disgustin’.” He looked miserable.

  “Will you keep The Coffee open?”

  “I’m closed while the cops go over the place with a flea comb, but it doesn’t look like it was the scene of the crime, I guess. I may leave it an extra day to air the place out.”

  By the time I saw him the next day, he’d cheered up a little and it was clear from his airy disregard for the happenings of the previous day that, for the moment at least, it was a closed topic. Nat said he’d decided to do without a microwave; it would be seen as a positive by people who wanted to avoid things like GMOs, high tension power lines, and cell phone radiation. I helped him put back a couple of tables the crime scene people had moved out of place while Gavin cleaned fingerprint powder off the bathroom fixtures.

  “I don’t think microwaves have anything to do with GMOs.” Science wasn’t one of my best subjects in school, but I was almost sure I was right about that.

  “No, but I can put a sign in the window that says No GMOs. No Microwaves; appeals to the same demographic.”

  “Listen to you, all business-speak.”

  He grinned. “What else? What about peanuts, maybe? Everyone’s allergic to those. Remember when you could eat peanuts on planes? Okay, No GMOs, No Microwaves, No Peanuts. Anythin’ else?”

  “You’re serving free trade coffee.”

  “’Course I am; d’you think I could get away with anythin’ else?”

  “And organic, non-antibiotic milk,” Gavin said as he passed by on his way into the kitchen with a cleaning tote. He and Nat high-fived.

  “And one hundred percent post-consumer recycled paper napkins,” I added. “I suppose you’ll need another list of the things you do have, and add the free Wi-Fi.”

  Gavin came back and held out a plastic spray bottle. “Did you know this glass cl
eaner is organic?” He looked befuddled and sniffed the nozzle gingerly. “How can glass cleaner be organic? It smells like vinegar.”

  “Huh. I’m gonna need a bigger sign.” We both giggled.

  “What’s funny?” Gavin was still inspecting the glass cleaner bottle.

  I left Nat to explain as I headed back home.

  Haruto and Davo were handling things in Aromas, and instead of going inside when I reached it, I waved and kept walking. Matthew was missing again, and it worried me. I was also thinking about the other homeless men who’d been living on Polk Street recently. I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, just because they were basically strangers. They might not be guilty of anything, but maybe they’d seen something. And then I wondered if any of them were missing fingers.

  Once the idea occurred to me, I couldn’t get to St. Christopher’s fast enough. The shelter was open every evening and, unlike most shelters that opened only at night, there was a day room with a few tables and chairs. Volunteers ran the place, and I gathered they served a hot evening meal, and let people take a shower. Once a month, someone gave haircuts and a volunteer was there to answer questions or help them fill in applications for ID cards or get Social Security benefits. Too many of them were former military veterans, fallen on hard times, and they couldn’t get things they were entitled to, like disability benefits, unless they had an address to receive mail, or a bank account to transfer funds.

  The church had a residence attached to it at the back, facing onto an alley. It was fairly civilized, no dumpsters or nasty smells, although it could have used some tubs of flowers to replace the torn black plastic and chunks of pine bark in the spaces on either side of the entrance. The rectory mimicked the Mission Revival architecture of the church, with decorative wrought-iron bars across the lower windows which, given everything, was probably a good idea. A grand curved staircase of shallow steps had a bronze handrail full of cavorting, fleshy nymphs leading up to the front door. Nat told me once that the congregation insisted they were angels. He said the railing had been rescued from the 1906 fire, and the owner’s wife considered it too racy to install on their rebuilt mansion. Why she and her philanthropist husband thought it would be appropriate for a church, I have no idea. Maybe that’s why it was hidden away in the alley. I rang the doorbell, which produced several bars of the “Ode to Joy,” and turned to look in the window at the side. It was open, but all I could see through the gauzy curtains was a ketchup bottle on a table pulled up to the window.

  “What is it?”

  I was so startled by the barked demand and the sudden appearance of the good-looking priest from Katrina’s memorial that I took a half step backward and nearly fell down the stairs, arms windmilling until I was able to get my balance. By which time the door had been slammed shut. Nice.

  I gathered myself together and rang the doorbell again. This time I was prepared when the door flew open. He was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved black shirt with a stiff Roman collar. I could see him preparing to slam the door again.

  “Er … Father?”

  He narrowed his eyes, as if he knew the form of address didn’t come naturally to me. He’d be right—I even called my own father by his first name. “What is it?”

  “My name is Theo Bogart,” I said. “The owner of the soap store? I’m a friend of Gavin Melnik’s,” I added finally, since nothing else brought about any appreciable hint of recognition.

  He turned and strode down the hallway, leaving me to follow, or not. I closed the door behind me and followed him into a small room crowded with dark furniture. He threw himself into a cracked leather armchair I was pretty sure I’d seen on the sidewalk a few months before. He didn’t ask me to sit down.

  None of this seemed like very priestlike behavior, somehow. The elderly prelate who occasionally played chess with my grandfather in England was almost my only in-depth experience with members of the clergy. He was courtly and gracious, with a tendency to tell jokes with Latin and Greek punch lines. Seriously, could this fellow really be a priest or was he just another one of the local homeless guys with more enterprise than most, squatting in the rectory? I perched on the edge of a hard-backed chair opposite him.

  He frowned at me, and I nearly stood up again. “I’m sorry, who are you again?”

  “My name is Theo Bogart. I own Aromas, on the next block. You might have seen me at Katrina Dermody’s memorial service.”

  “Right. Sorry about…” The apology seemed to cover his greeting at the door. He extended a hand. I half rose from my uncomfortable roost to shake it, but he just leaned over to slam shut a drawer in the small table at the side of his chair. I sat back, feeling awkward.

  Since he said nothing else, and in fact was inclined to stare out of the window, I said, “I was wondering if the police had asked you about the men you shelter here, if any of them had gone missing, or—well, suffered an injury lately.”

  He dragged his eyes from the window and made an obvious effort to pay attention. “What?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “I’ve been away on a retreat. I came back to the city for Ms. Dermody’s funeral and then went back to the gold country.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, unsure what a retreat was except in a military sense, and this priest didn’t look as if he’d back down for anyone. “Well, my friend Nat found a hand in his coffee shop, you know the new one down the block on Polk?” He nodded. “Well, there.”

  “Eeuuw,” he said unexpectedly. “No, I haven’t heard anything. And one of the volunteers would have told me if any of our guys has gone missing. If they don’t show up for a few days, we go looking for them. They usually drift into the same underpass or park or wherever.”

  I nodded glumly. “Well, it was just a thought. I suppose you’d notice if anyone was missing some fingers.”

  “I thought you said it was a hand.”

  “I thought it was at first, but it turned out to be parts of two hands.”

  He went still and his face lost color.

  “Does that mean something?” I asked. “Is it something done by some local tong or a street gang or whatever?”

  He said, as if reluctantly, “Was it the part of the hands with the thumbs and index fingers?”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about this.” He frowned and I hurried on. “Yes, it was.”

  He put one hand up to his face and then dragged it through his thick blonde hair. “It could be a priest,” he said heavily. “I saw it in … South America. A drug cartel in Colombia wanted to get rid of local priests without killing them because the locals wouldn’t stand for it. So they kidnapped them and tortured them and then cut off the index finger and thumb of both hands. Then they dropped them back into their villages.”

  “Gross and cruel. But why? Was it a—a signature, so everyone would know who had done it?”

  “More than that.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His face was very pale. “When a priest is ordained, there’s a special blessing given to the index finger and thumb. It’s how he holds the Host—the wafer—as it’s consecrated during the Mass. Without that part of his hand, he can no longer say Mass. It’s an intensely cruel mutilation.”

  “But who would do that here? I mean, what the hell? Heck, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I can almost guarantee your fingers came from a priest who did something to piss someone off, probably connected to South American gangs.”

  If this was a coincidence, it was a weird one. Grandfather’s friend Sergei was a priest with South American connections. Grandfather and I hadn’t spoken since our lunch at The Palace. We’d both left a couple of messages for each other, but somehow hadn’t connected, and I wasn’t sure if he’d met with Sergei as he’d planned, or if it was all a forbidden subject between us. I’d been prepared to wait for our fortnightly visit to open the conversation again. I was still trying to absorb the information he’d shared about his murky past and our family bus
iness, not sure how I felt about him keeping something so important from me for my entire life.

  “You should call the police inspector in charge of the case,” I said. “I don’t think they know anything about who the fingers belong to, and that might help. Her name is Lichlyter.”

  “Yes. I’ll do that.”

  He stood and ushered me down the hallway toward the front door. As he reached above my head to open it, I hesitated and then grasped the nettle. “Why did you take the photo from Katrina’s photo album?”

  “I don’t know what the hell—or heck if you prefer—you’re talking about,” he growled. The door slammed in my face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  So Katrina was dead. My grandfather was a spy. Someone was mutilating priests. Or one priest, anyway. People were following me. And yet, the mundane continued to be important, too, which became all too clear when I took Lucy down to the garden to do her business and followed her around with a plastic bag at the ready as she chose and then discarded a number of potential spots. It always took her a while because the property behind all the buildings on this block had been combined into a private pocket park about a hundred years ago. The result was surprisingly large—bigger than two American football fields—with the buildings taking up about a third of that around the perimeter. It formed a green and leafy refuge, with pine bark pathways, a couple of neatly shaved lawns with untidy groups of Adirondack chairs, a lush, raised-bed vegetable garden, lots of trees, a few of which were over a hundred years old, a koi pond, and even a ruthlessly trimmed knot garden. There was a playground with swings, a firepit for cool evenings—which was just about every evening—and a ramshackle little wooden shed where the volunteer gardeners kept their tools. On sunny days I sometimes brought a sandwich out here and sat in an Adirondack chair while Lucy lay down at my feet, panting and vigilant, ready to harass the nearest rosebush if it turned into a threat. She’d once been witness to a fairly frightening scene out here, and she’d never quite let down her guard since. I liked to think she was protective of me, but it’s more likely she just enjoyed intimidating the shrubbery.