by Delia Rosen
I wanted to comment that this was ironic, given that just before I had been concerned about calling her too late. But I held that thought.
“Of course.” I heard something new in her voice. It was not a question but a demand, the vocal equivalent of a bloodhound suddenly tugging back on the leash.
“There was a big plastic trash can in the kitchen,” she said. “Where was it?”
“We keep—kept—that next to the food prep table,” I told her. “All the food discards go in there. You know, when you slam down the head of lettuce and pull out the heart? That goes in. Cucumber peels. Carrot scrapings. Potato skins.” “Any caffeinated beverages?”
“Never,” I said. “I don’t—didn’t—allow coffee or soda in the prep area. Why?”
“I’d rather not get into that just now,” she said.
“Why?” I pressed. I hadn’t said “why” twice like that since I was ten or so.
“You know the answer to that,” she said. “This is a police matter—”
“About my deli!”
“—and we want to look into this on our own.”
“Detective, I have a reputation for quality deli. You may not know this, but I apply that standard to every facet of my life.”
“That’s not what they call it here,” she said.
No, I had to admit. They called it meddling. I hated the word, especially since I wasn’t limited by due process and I got results.
“All right,” I said, affecting acquiescence. “But for my peace of mind, can you at least tell me if you think this was directed at me or at the politicians.”
“I cannot give out that information.”
“Because you don’t have it?”
“Because I don’t want anything interfering with our investigation, which I must get back to now,” the detective said. “Thank you for your help.”
“But I may have information that—”
“If I need anything else, I’ll call,” she said curtly. “I promise.”
The detective hung up. I stood by the end table brooding. I almost missed Grant, who, for all his flaws, often whispered sweet privileged information in my ear. But I quickly got a grip. Still, for all the joy and nachas I felt at the partial return of my beloved coworkers—my family—the truth was I had no idea who had attacked my real home or why. That not only rankled, it frightened me. Paranoia about hate crimes is only paranoia when there’s no foundation for one’s fears.
I paced the living room until I realized I was hungry, then went and had some gherkins and put the coffeepot on. The cats wandered in as they invariably did when I went into the kitchen. I saw that their bowls still had the dregs of kibble.
“Finish what’s there,” I commanded. “Kittens are starving in Brooklyn alleyways.”
I considered the situation and what little information I had, as the cats rubbed my legs.
“I survived the explosion,” I said. “If someone were after me, they would still be after me. I would have heard from them, gotten some kind of warning, like whitefish wrapped with a warning that I’d end up in the lake.”
That hadn’t happened and my gut told me I wasn’t the target. I went to the computer and checked the schedules of the mayoral candidates. None of the three had altered their schedules. There was an item about amped-up security, but that was to be expected after a bombing regardless of the target. There were no news items about threats to any of the campaigns.
“What about Benjamin and Grace?” I asked myself. Would they have blown my place up so they could swoop in and buy the site for a proverbial song—specifically, something from the old Barbra Streisand show I Can Get It for You Wholesale?
That was possible . . . except for the fact that Benjamin had been in the basement.
“Unless your gal-pal wanted you dead,” I thought aloud. Except that she was in the dining area and could just as easily have been hurt or killed if the floor gave way. She would have had no way of knowing exactly what would happen.
Which left me with bupkes.
I sat at the kitchen table with my special McNulty’s coffee. In the handful of puzzles that had come my way, none had ever been so empty of clues.
I sipped.
“That’s not true,” I mumbled. Detective Bean knew something that she wasn’t sharing. From the sound of it, there was a remnant of a coffee or tea container in the debris. It couldn’t belong to my staff since we ate and drank in the dining section. My homeless Dumpster visitor didn’t come around with a beverage. And—I thought back—Sandy kept a thermos in the cab of her van. I remembered because we usually filled it.
Unless—
I sat up.
Unless that wasn’t what Detective Bean meant.
I thought back. I sipped. I slumped toward my coffee mug and thought some more. I sipped. And then something suddenly didn’t fit. I sat upright.
“Is it possible?” I asked myself.
My brain was racing. Something didn’t fit, then two things didn’t fit, then suddenly a bunch of things did fit.
If I was right, I was going to need some help.
I made a call. Then I made another. Then I got a good night’s sleep before I made just one more.
Chapter 21
“Boy, am I glad to hear from you!”
Kane Iger sounded genuinely thrilled when he picked up the phone.
“You’re sure it’s not too early?” I asked apologetically.
“It’s never too early to seek the aid of Captain Health,” he said. He laughed. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist. It really is good to hear from you, Gwen. How are you?”
“Eh,” I answered. “Listen, strange as it may seem, I sort of do need the assistance of Captain Health,” I told him.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” I could practically see the childlike smile on his big, open face. “I have a feeling I know who attacked my deli and I want to do some checking—but I don’t want to do it alone.”
“You’ve come to the right man,” he said. “Who and where?”
“Would you mind coming here before work? I have some things I want to pull together. Then we can go together.”
“It’s a deal,” he said. “Gee, I’m so glad you’re not angry at me.”
“I didn’t say that, Kane. Benjamin is a skunk, but what you wanted to do was pretty wrong.”
“Like you said, the man is no good,” Kane said. “One way or another, I wanted to see justice done.”
“We can discuss your tactics later,” I told him. “Right now, I need someone strong to give me a hand. Just promise you won’t go off half-cocked.”
“You have the word of Kane Iger and Captain Health,” he said.
I gave him my address and he said he’d be there in a half hour.
“See you then,” I told him.
I went to my laptop and pulled up all the information I could find on the life and times of Josephine Young, all the articles on her restaurant, and printed them out. I got a yellow marker and started highlighting specific sections, making notes. I spread them on the coffee table, stacked some of them on the floor, then grabbed a few online ads from Gar McQueen. I read those over, added a few yellow lines, put them in a separate pile.
Exactly thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. I raised the shade of the window beside it, looked out, saw Kane Iger standing there. He waved at me through the window.
“A woman can never be too cautious,” he said as I opened the door.
He stood on the threshold a moment, towering over me like the statue of Atlas at Rockefeller Center. He looked at me with a sweet, satisfied little smile.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just happy,” he said. “Happy you asked me over.”
“So—you gonna come in?”
The big man entered, hands cupped in front of himself, waiting for directions. I gestured toward the sofa.
“Wow. Someone’s been doing some homework.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am even more determined to find the
putz who put a hole in my floor.”
“You seem to have some ideas,” he said.
“One,” I told him.
He eased his large frame around the coffee table. “The dancer,” he said. “What makes you think it was her . . . or,” he added as he saw the second pile, “the landscaper? Or both?”
“Hey, before we get into all that, you want anything?”
“What’ve you got?”
“The usual beverages plus decaf in a can, though I can’t imagine you’d be able to endure that.”
“I’ll take a club soda if you have one,” he said.
I left to get a Canada Dry. “You didn’t bring your thermos?” I called from the kitchen.
“Only when I’ve made it fresh, and there wasn’t time,” he said.
I poured and went back to the living room. “It’s probably kinda flat, but them’s the breaks.”
“That would make it just plain water, which is fine,” he said charitably.
I handed it to him and looked down at the documents I’d printed out. “Hey, I hear you met a friend of mine at the hospital the other day.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Bonnie Potts.”
“Poor kid with the compound fracture? Yes . . . what a sweetheart. She really took a hit. How do you know her?”
“Her grandfather is my butcher,” I said.
“I see. So, are you going to show me what you have?”
“Well, it’s sort of along the lines of what you had on Benjamin and Grace,” I said. “Just a big, fat hunch.”
“Hunches are usually good starting points,” he said.
I gestured toward the sofa and he flopped down. I remained standing, my arms folded as I glanced at this man who helped kids through some of the worst times of their lives. “I have a question, first.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“How did you know how I take my coffee?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “What do you mean? I didn’t know.”
“The other day in the van. You poured almond milk for yourself but gave me mine black, no sugar. Most of the people I know at least take some kind of sweetener.”
“Huh. I guess I figured you’d ask for it if you wanted it.”
“Is that what it was?” I inquired.
“Sure. What else?”
“I was sitting here thinking that maybe you knew how I took it.”
“How would I know that? Why would I know that?”
“Damn good question, Kane. How and why. Did you maybe come to the deli and see me pour one of my bottomless cups of coffee as I worked the counter or went back and forth to my office?”
“I’ve been to your deli once,” he said. There was a little squeak in his voice, the kind you hear when someone is trying to get through a lie.
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. A couple of months ago. Say, what is this? An interrogation? Are you going to read me my Miranda rights next?”
“Maybe someone should,” I said. “What this is, Kane, is me wanting to know if you cased my place before you went to Alex Storm’s butcher shop,” I said. “I called Bonnie’s mother. You went there to drop off a signed photo for her. A photo she hadn’t asked for. Oh, and my guess is also to put a homemade bomb in a container of chopped liver.”
Kane rose. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?” I backed away. “You went to the shop, not Bonnie’s home, not to the hospital. You went when there were two days of protests going on and Alex was distracted.”
“You think that’s my fault too?”
“Not too,” I said. “It was just convenient, one of the reasons you selected me as a target.”
“Why would I do that? I help people, remember?”
“I do, which is why I kept wondering why you were not only willing to frame Benjamin and Grace, you were eager to do so. Why?”
“Because they’re stinkers,” he said without hesitation.
“That’s true, but they’re not the stinkers who blew up my deli. You did.” I looked into those innocent eyes, which suddenly seemed more belligerent than heroic. “You used the fertilizer from your little organic farm to do that, didn’t you?”
“That is the dumbest thing you’ve said yet, and you’ve said some pretty stupid things.”
“Uh-uh. Here’s my theory, Kane, the unified theory of Kane Iger. You take this hero thing seriously, which is all well and good when you’re dealing with kids. But I’m thinking you want to be a hero so bad you’re willing to commit crimes in order to solve them—blaming someone else, of course.”
“You’re ridiculous. And you’re a liar.” He swatted the papers on the coffee table. “You never suspected the dancer. These are props.”
“Good deduction, Captain.”
“You did this to entrap me.”
“Don’t try and put this on me, Kane. You planned the whole thing pretty carefully. Hell, you probably knew I was going to be at the hospital to see my workers and hung out till I showed up. Or maybe you watched me when you got off work, followed me there. You wanted to know who I suspected, who the police suspected, so you could finish the job by planting evidence. Evidence which would have been really credible since it was the exact same stuff you used to make your damn bomb!”
I saw a struggle going on in his brain, the battle between wanting to do right and wanting to choke the life from me.
“You have no proof,” he said, finally moving from around the coffee table, “just your own stupid theories. I have a theory. You blew up your own deli to collect the insurance. You were willing to sacrifice your own workers, your own customers, just to make money. I see it all the time in the bank, greedy people, hungry people, wanting to destroy in order to make their own lives more comfortable. You’re no different from them.”
“That’s not going to stick,” I said.
“Yes it will,” Kane said. “They’ll find you here with bomb-making material. You were jealous of Josephine Young. Even our moron local police will see that. You were tired of competing, you just wanted out.”
“That isn’t going to work, Kane,” I said.
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because there was coffee bean residue in the bomb debris,” I told him. “As we speak, those ‘moron local police’ are analyzing something I pulled from my hamper.”
“Gwen’s dirty laundry,” he said. “How fitting. What are they analyzing?”
“Jeans I spilled some of your coffee on.”
Kane stopped, rigid, as if he’d been hit by a freeze ray. His expression seemed suddenly far off. Someone was threatening his Bat Cave. He looked like he wanted to rush there now. His eyes roamed the nonexistent horizon for a moment before settling back on me.
“You,” he said accusingly. “You are evil. From the moment we met, you were jealous because of how I helped children. Children are your kryptonite because you don’t have any. They are the reason you’re bad.”
Turning things I’d said against me, that was both low and clever. I didn’t bother to answer.
“I’m going to solve a crime,” he said, backing me toward the front door. “This crime. The crime of who beat your brains out.”
I tried to slip off to the side, toward the kitchen. He adjusted his approach. I was scared. My legs were liquefying. I often wondered how people got backed into corners. Now I knew: they did it to themselves from fear.
“It was Gar McQueen,” Kane went on. “He was working on behalf of Josephine Young. You suspected this might happen and they knew it. I’ll testify to that.”
“Don’t do this,” I said. “Think of all the kids you’re going to disappoint.”
“You’re going to rat me out anyway, Katzwoman, Mistress of the Wicked. I have to silence you.”
“You don’t,” I pleaded. “You’re only making it worse.”
He laughed. He probably didn’t realize it, but it was a good villainous mwah-ha-ha. “How can I make things worse?”
“You can take
a bullet in the backside,” a voice said from the kitchen.
Kane spun as Detective Bean walked into the living room, steady and resolute behind her firearm. One of the calls I’d made was to Bonnie Potts; one of the calls I’d made was to Kane; and one of the calls I’d made was to the police. She’d parked around the corner on Adamwood Drive, with backup, and arrived a few minutes before Kane did.
The big man froze.
“Put your hands on top of your head,” Bean said.
Two other officers emerged behind her. One was holding a Taser, the other had plastic hand restraints.
Kane hesitated. I could see it in his flaring nostrils and rapid breathing, he was thinking of going down fighting, like Captain Health would want.
“You don’t need to die,” I said softly to him. “You need to get help.”
“Captain Health gives help, he doesn’t accept it.”
“Hey, even those little kids in the hospital know when they need some care,” I reminded him. “Surely Captain Health is as smart as they are.”
His expression changed faster than a speeding bullet. Tears piled up in his eyes.
“Captain Health is invulnerable,” he said, his lower lip shaking.
“You’re not in costume,” I said. “We got you in your civilian identity.”
He remained where he was and began to sob. “That wasn’t fair.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “I guess you’ll just have to wait for the sequel to make things right.”
He submitted quietly, peaceably to the restraints. One of the officers radioed for backup to swing around the block. Within moments, sirens cracked the early morning. They escorted him out while Bean holstered her weapon.
“Nicely done,” she said to me. “Very nicely done.”
“How much of it will be admissible in court?” I asked.
“None of this, except the charges you’re going to file for attempted assault,” she said. “But the jeans and your testimony will give us enough to get a search warrant. His garden will do the rest.”
I looked out the open door at unfamiliar faces appearing in windows I rarely looked at. I suddenly missed New York, where I knew everyone on the floor of my apartment building.
Bean made sure I was okay before following her team back to book the Bank Bomber—as I was sure Candy Sommerton and her colleagues would dub him. I felt profound sadness as they pulled away. I’d not only helped to bring down a hero to some local kids, I’d lost a guy who was a pretty attentive date.