by Delia Rosen
“You know, I didn’t plan to kill Hoppy.”
“Excuse me?”
She started to weep. “I didn’t plan to kill him! I phoned him. I told him I had to talk to him. He said he thought that was a bad idea. I said I’d be at the party and would meet him there, that I only wanted to see him for a few minutes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I wanted an apology,” Poodle said. “That’s all. Just—you know, a ‘Sorry for what I did. It was wrong. I was wrong.’”
“I didn’t see you there that night. The police didn’t know—”
“I told my mother I’d meet her inside. I said I wanted to have a walk around. I knew the grounds. I’ve been there. I even went with my mom to one of their stupid meetings so I could check the place out.”
“So you went up the back where you’d arranged to meet Hoppy.”
She nodded.
“And he didn’t apologize.”
Poodle laughed through her tears. “Apologize? That twisted shit tried to kiss me! He said he still had feelings! I mean, Christ! He backed me against the cabinet and the table with the tool chest and—”
She removed her hand from her pocket. She was holding . . . her car keys. I relaxed slightly as, almost trance-like, she reenacted what she’d done.
“The box was open,” she said. “My hand was on the drill. I had nowhere to go and started to push him back with one hand while I happened to press the trigger with the other. It came on. I remember thinking, ‘Batteries!’ A silly thought at a time like that, right?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her tortured little mind.
“The next thing I remember was Hoppy sort of—gurgling, I guess. There was blood in his mouth. He fell backward. I looked at the drill as he disappeared. I tried to wipe the blood away with my shirt, I just scrubbed the whole thing. Then I ran.”
“Out the back again?”
“Out the back and into the night and back to the car. I drove home and called my mom and told her I hadn’t felt so good. She had someone bring her home.”
“Poodle, I understand all of that—but Lizzie? And why try to frame Gary?”
“When I realized what I had done . . . I’m sorry, I really did try to tell you. But when that didn’t work, I went to Lizzie. I figured if anyone would understand, it would be her.”
“You knew about her and Hoppy and also Gary because he tutored you and told you about himself.”
“Tutored me?” She laughed. “He knows as much about writing as he does about pedigreed dogs, which is minus-nothing! I went there to find out all I could about Father Shit. I thought about blackmailing him, and—”
She stopped. Now she was crying. Hoppy’s legacy: tears all around.
“I told Lizzie what I had done and that I wanted to turn myself in,” Poodle said. “I said I’d do that if she would tell the court or the police or whoever that Hoppy was a cradle robber. She refused. She was going to call the police. I—I. . . .”
Hit her, I thought. And then got scared. And felt okay framing Gary, not because he was a bad writer and worse tutor, but because of the unfinished business with Hoppy. The sins of the father . . .
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
Poodle looked at me with her big eyes. She returned the keys to her pocket with a kind of snake-charmery move. She was gliding forward again. I resumed my own retreat just in case she had something else in there, like a knife or a gun.
The hand came out empty. I stopped. So did she.
Beside the DVD player. Where I’d left the nine-inch kitchen knife when Gary came calling. She picked it up and held it in front of her.
“Everyone deserved what they got,” she said. “You see that, don’t you?”
This was another Grant situation where there was no good answer. Except that the payoff was death, not sex or abstinence.
“I think we need to have some tea,” I said.
“You’re going to turn me in to that cop,” she said.
“I won’t have to,” I said. “He’s going to be here any moment—he’ll figure it out when he sees you with the knife.”
She scowled. “You and my mother—you both think I’ve got my head up my ass. I called my cop friend again before I came in. Said I’d come and visit if he was alone. He said he was. Your loverboy went back to Lizzie’s to look around, then said he was going home.”
“He’s not. He’s coming here.”
“He’s not. At least, not until they find you dead.”
“Poodle, think about this—”
“Why!?”
I was almost at a point where I could make a break for the bathroom and hope to beat her. But then I’d be trapped with nothing to defend myself except a toothbrush and a Lady Schick.
“I am not going to spend my life in prison because of something a corrupt and evil man did to me!”
“There are other options,” I said.
“Oh, you mean like insanity? A straightjacket and padded room? This is self-defense! You people all want to punish me for something I had every right to do, that I had an obligation to do! No! I’m not going to suffer anymore!”
She ran at me then and I had no choice but to meet her. The knife cut diagonally across the back of my forearm. It hurt, but not that fine intense pain of a paper cut; it burned like hell. I fell back over the coffee table, which probably saved my life, since I had grabbed my cut arm and my chest was exposed and her return upward slash would have slit me from waist to shoulder. I screamed as I fell and kicked back with my feet to get away, then kicked at her as she threw the table aside, tossing my laptop and Uncle Murray’s keyboard across the room.
They landed at Grant’s feet as he crashed through the door.
“Hold it, Poodle!” he shouted from behind his beautiful blackened alloy compact police-issue handgun.
She turned on him, snarling.
“Drop the knife and raise your hands!” he said, both hands tight around the weapon. “I will shoot you!”
I hugged the carpet thinking, ridiculously, how much I really hated it. It’s strange where a brain goes in times of danger.
Poodle hesitated.
“Do it!” he yelled.
The knife clattered to the ground. Poodle followed it, falling to her knees and then her side. Grant sidled over and kicked the blade away.
“How bad?” he asked me, nodding to my arm with his chin.
“I think I’m gonna need some sewing up,” I said.
He approached Poodle cautiously but quickly. He told her to put her hands behind her back. She was alternately screaming and crying into the floor and didn’t seem to hear him. Holding the gun in his right hand, he took the little plasticuffs from a belt loop with his left and managed to get them around her wrists. He put the gun in his shoulder holster, called for backup and an ambulance, and went to the kitchen to get a dish cloth.
“I am really, really glad to see you,” I said, choking. The whole thing was catching up to me now.
“I’m glad I’m here,” he said as he put a makeshift tourniquet around my arm, just above the elbow. “I’m glad about something else, too.”
I looked at him inquiringly.
“That you didn’t say where I should get some sleep.”
Chapter 30
I belonged.
For the first time since coming to Nashville I felt like it—the house, the deli, the city—was home.
That wasn’t the result of being part of the murder-solving, though that had its own rewards. It was forcing myself to know the people, to overcome doubt and hard-wiring and to let Gwen Katz through. I had mistakenly seen Nashville as the enemy; it wasn’t. It was my past life that held me prisoner.
Not anymore.
I slept soundly that night, partly from a draining of the adrenaline rush, partly from the painkillers they gave me at the hospital. I was able to drive myself to the deli, but I wasn’t much good there . . . except to delight and worry the staff.
Luke started singing the theme from TV’s Wonder Woman.
Thomasina just kept tsking and casting looks heavenward, alternating praying for God to watch over me and thanking Him for my deliverance.
Grant had called around ten to find out how I was, and tell me he was kind of crushed with paperwork and briefing Deputy Chief Whitman, but would stop by after lunch. He arrived a little after one with a look of concern for me that offset the spring in his step.
I was standing behind the counter, shmoozing with the customers who came by to ask about my wound; the newspaper had carried word of my adventure, which would also explain why we were unusually busy with diners and pointers.
Grant walked to the far end of the counter, to the swinging door. “How are you?” he asked.
“Sensationalism is good for business,” I said. “How are you?”
“Tired but getting things sewn up,” he said—immediately regretting his choice of words as he looked at the sling I was wearing. “I just got finished briefing Deputy Chief Whitman so he can finish his investigation.”
“How’s Mollie?” I asked. “Apart from the obvious.”
“Distraught, of course, and trying to figure out what to do next. They’ve got Poodle in a psych ward at Vanderbilt. Her involvement with Hoppy was obviously quite a shock to her mother, but she confided that it did help to explain a lot of her behavior.”
“What kind of charges do you think Poodle’s facing?”
“Too early to say. She’s probably looking at manslaughter on Hoppy but it’s Lizzie that may put her away for life—if not in jail, then in an institution. I don’t think anyone would argue that she was in her right mind after the party. Your testimony may be crucial there, since you’re the only one she really talked to.”
“Before she came to the house and tried to kill me, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess the real casualty is Gary,” Grant said. “Solly was pretty forthcoming this morning. He said that Anne Miller’s intention is to give all the money from the sale of the shop to Gary. Could net him two or three hundred thousand, maybe more.”
“That’ll be a good start.”
“As long as he doesn’t use it to self-publish,” Grant said.
“I was thinking. I know some book publishers in New York, some professionally, a few socially. I wonder if they’d be interested in a memoir about this whole affair. Could make Gary a lot of money if someone worked with him on it.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” Grant said. “I got the feeling a little of the mist cleared from his mountaintop yesterday. Sounds like all of this was something he had to work through.”
“He definitely didn’t have things easy emotionally. It’s too bad his mother’s not going to try and come to the U.S. to run the chocolate shop,” I said. “That would be good for them both.”
“Maybe, but the BPOL still wants her. If she came here, I’d be obligated to report it. No way around that.”
“Even if you sort of didn’t ‘know’ she was here?”
“I couldn’t. Women should think about stuff like that before they start kidnapping, bombing, and having kids.”
The absurd juxtaposition sounded almost Yiddish. Maybe one day I’d be able to explain the concept to him.
Grant gave me a lingering look. “You did great,” he said. “You’re really something.”
“Thanks. You didn’t do so bad yourself.” I replayed that quickly in my head. Added, “Aren’t so bad yourself.”
“It’s gonna be like this, isn’t it?” he said. “A dance.”
“Pretty much, at least for now,” I said. “Can you handle it?”
“Watch me,” he grinned. “Oh, yeah.” He reached into his shirt pocket. “Remember I told you Clancy owed me a favor? The insurance guy?”
“I do.”
“It’s because I told him I could get the Tennessee Insurance Providers League a way better deal for food than those crooks that catered their last convention,” Grant said. He put a business card on the table. “Call him.”
I smiled. “Gee. Thanks!”
“My pleasure.” He turned to go.
“And by the way, they’re not crooks,” I said.
“How do you know? I didn’t tell you who they were.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “What they are is gonefs.”
“Gawnuffs,” he said. I didn’t correct him. “I’ll remember that.”
“Do that, and if you come around later I’ll teach you some more.”
“I’ll remember that too,” he said with a noncommittal wink that made me burn . . . but just a little.
What was it my grandmother used to say ? “A lung un leber oyf der noz.” Literally, don’t imagine there’s a lung and liver on your nose.
Sound advice. Don’t talk yourself into an illness.
I’d take it all as it came. Life, like the menu at Murray’s, would always be an evolving work-inprogress.
Note: When Murray the Pastrami Swami passed away, hundreds of delectable recipes passed away with him. However, his Uncle Moonish from Romania, who ran his own delicatessen on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (where he hung a sign that said, “Our tongue sandwiches are so delicious, they speak for themselves”) and taught Murray everything he knew, did in fact write down some of his recipes, which we, the authors, found among his other possessions (including a stringless ukulele and a signed photo of Alice Faye) that were stored in his daughter’s attic in Long Island.
We’ve updated the recipes where necessary but here they are, in Uncle Moonish’s own words.
Moonish’s Delancey Street Cole Slaw
Ingredients
3 cups green cabbage, nicely shredded
cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons granulated white sugar
(skip the sugar if you got the diabetes, it’s OK.)
½ teaspoon kosher salt (regular salt if you don’t
have access to kosher salt. I know it’s hard to
find kosher salt at gentile stores.)
½ teaspoon celery seed
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish (Gold’s
Horseradish is best, but get the white one, not
the red one, because the red one has beets in it.)
Directions
Put the shredded cabbage in a big bowl. What, do I have to do everything?
In a smaller bowl you should blend mayonnaise, white wine vinegar, sugar, kosher salt, celery seed and your horseradish until it’s nice and smooth. Pour the whole thing over your shredded cabbage. Mix it nice and you’ll put a smile on your face with my coleslaw. Hey, Lucky Luciano, the racketeer, loved my coleslaw. And if it was good enough for Lucky Luciano, who are you to complain? The man killed people for a living. Come to think of it, as a deli owner, so did I.
Serves six.
Deli-Style Kosher Dill Pickles
Per gallon jar:
8-10 cucumbers Kirby cukes are best
1 large handful fresh dill with flower heads (or
add ¼ teaspoon dill seed if flower heads are missing)
4-6 large cloves of garlic, and make them flat.
Water (what, you were maybe expecting beer?)
½-cup kosher salt or pickling salt
4 teaspoons pickling spice
1-2 large bay leaves
You’re probably wondering why there’s no vinegar in this recipe. For one, did I say to use vinegar? I did not, so don’t. Second, these kinds of pickles get their pickleness from fermenting them, like back in the old country. Who had money for vinegar?
Pack each gallon jar with cucumbers, sprinkling salt between each layer.
Add pickling spice, salt, dill, garlic, and bay leaves.
Fill jar with water but leave two inches of room for brine to form.
Make sure the cucumbers are all under the water. Then cover.
&nb
sp; After two or three days, skim off the scummy mishagoss on top. If there isn’t any, not to worry.
Let them ferment for three more days (and nights) and check for doneness by cutting off a slice of one cucumber. (Try not to slice a finger in the process.)
Once they are fermented to the right stage—they should still be green—transfer the little bubalehs to a glass jar and put them in the refrigerator.
If you like them more sour, leave them out for a couple of days uncapped, and they’ll ferment even more. But not too long—you don’t want they should get soggy. A good pickle should squirt your husband or wife from across the table. And mushy pickles don’t squirt.
Romanian Potato Salad
First, steal 5-6 pounds of potatoes
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
3½ cups of water
¾ cup white vinegar
1¼ cps sugar (A little less sugar
if you got the diabetes. In fact, if you do,
don’t use any sugar.)
¼ cup salt (A little more salt
if you like it saltier, a little less
if you’re watching your blood pressure.)
2 cups mayonnaise
Boil potatoes with skins on until they’re soft. Do not overcook, shmendrick. Poke frequently with a knife because a spoon makes a mess. When fully cooked, place in cold water for about an hour. Peel potatoes and refrigerate for one hour. Cut potatoes into cubes (not too small, not too large. Somewhere in between is nice) and place in large bowl, sprinkle with chopped onion. Set aside.
To prepare brine, in a saucepan, mix together:
3½ cups water
¾ cup white vinegar
1¼ cups sugar (see above)
¼ cup salt
Bring this mixture just to the boil, and immediately pour over the potato/onion mixture in bowl. Let the whole shmear soak for an hour.
Drain brine from potato/onion mixture (large strainer is best for this).