Fry Me a Liver (5 page)

Thom didn't respond and that brought things down a little. She was unconscious, breathing softly. A.J. was also unconscious but breathing a little more energetically. I couldn't tell if it was the thin air or whatever injuries they had sustained. I was more anxious about them both than I let on.

“Are those Austrian Crescents you use in the pancakes?” Benjamin asked.

I was impressed. He knew his taters. As I recall, Benjamin ordered matzo ball soup and extra crispy latkes, the lady had our homemade gefilte fish and matzo brei. I didn't ask what he thought about the meal; I knew those were aces so it wouldn't really matter.

“It's a mix of those and Yukon Gold,” I replied. “They're kind of the classic for latke-making, but I add my own little twist.”

“A secret?” he asked.

“Very.”

Candy had put her arm around Washington. She shook her head. “I don't understand how you can talk about potatoes when we're buried in your basement.”

“You know what?” Washington said. “They should keep going. I'm hungry. It's taking my mind off stuff.”

“Are you serious?” Candy asked. “I thought you were really going through something!”

“I didn't eat this morning,” he said. “That could be why I hit my head, why I'm so skittery.”

“I sat here defending a person who was just
hungry
?” she railed.

“Say, I think a tub of chopped liver fell in with us,” Luke said.

“Yeah, I smelled it,” I said.

“You want some, camera guy?” Luke asked solicitously. He jerked a thumb behind him. “It's out there.”

“I'll give it to you at cost,” I joked. Candy didn't hear my jest. She was too busy being embarrassed because Washington was rallying.

“You got rye bread down here?” Washington asked.

“If the bread shelves fell, yeah,” Luke said.

“You're all
crazy
!” Candy screamed. Perhaps coincidentally, chips fell from the ceiling. She dropped her shoulders and lowered her voice. “How can you think of food?”

“You're just frustrated because we can't broadcast from here,” Washington said.

“Yes, Waverly. That
has
got me a little on edge,” she admitted through her teeth. “We may have experienced Nashville's first terrorist attack and I'm sitting on both the story
and
my ass!”

“Language,” Thom cautioned weakly.

I looked over at Thom and smiled. Her eyes were still shut but there was a faint look of disapproval around the mouth. If anything could rouse her from a stupor, it was godlessness.

Candy did not apologize. She just huffed and grabbed her ankles and rocked back and forth on the jacket she had folded under her posterior.

Luke was peering into the area with the hanging van. “It's possible,” he said. “And I'm thinking that some chopped liver might be a good thing to have.”

“Forget it,” I said. “You're not going back in there.”

“The tub wasn't near Sandy's vehicle,” he said.

“Dammit, Luke, we're safer here. I know you always need something to do—but this is the time to just sit.”

“Again, says who?” Washington said. “For all we know, there may be a way out in that direction, behind the van.”

“A van that's hanging by God knows what!” I said. “Maybe the perps don't want to risk disturbing it. Besides, if there were a way out, there would be a draft. There would be smells from the food in the kitchen. There would be
light
.”

“And God spoke,” Candy said.

I ignored her.

“There could just be some light junk lying across it,” Washington said. “Something we could push aside.”

“If that were the case, people up there would have come in through the back door, pushed it aside, and lowered a ladder by now.”

“I think the fire department would have thought of that,” a weak voice agreed.

Our eyes all shot toward A.J. It was good to hear her voice, however weak.

“Hey, how are you, waitstaff person?” I asked, crawling over.

“Achy-breaky,” she replied. “My head feels like it took the back end of a swing for the bleachers.”

“There's no blood,” Benjamin said. “I checked.”

“Who is holding my hand?” A.J. asked.

“I'm Benjamin,” he said. “A tourist in your city.”

“Thank you, tourist Benjamin,” she replied, looking up at him. “Did I hear correctly or did I imagine that you are from Southern California?”

“You heard correctly.”

“I have family in San Bernardino.”

“Same county, not too far,” he said.

“I love it out there. All the mountains and the desert—”

I sat on my knees beside her. “Why don't you lie quietly?”

“Honey boss, that's what I've
been
doing,” she replied. “Like floating on a rubber raft in a pool, kinda daydreaming. I don't want to pass out again. Anybody got any water?”

I looked at the others, their heads shaking. I hadn't seen any water bottles by the van, didn't see one in here. We do not sell them so I wasn't surprised.

“Sorry, no,” I said.

“That's okay,” A.J. said. “I'd probably choke it up.”

“Why?”

“Throat . . . clogged—,” she said, then drifted back into unconsciousness.

I lay a hand on her throat. It felt cold. I had no idea what that meant. The silence returned as we all listened to the sounds from above. They seemed to be coming from the area where Washington had hit his head. It may have been my imagination but they seemed to be a little louder.

Luke looked at me. “Do you think—?”

“That they heard Washington's bang?” I asked. “It's possible.” I got to my feet and tried to calculate where this pipe was. I believed it fed the small sink behind the lunch counter. That was a hollow metal basin; it could have amplified the sound like a bell. Though the deli would have been evacuated and I couldn't imagine anyone was inside, even the fire department, it was possible someone heard it. I took off one of my comfortable Tofino slip-ons, turned the heel toward the pipe, and knocked out a series of three taps. I waited and then did three more. There was silence from above and then my series of raps was returned.

“They heard!” I said.

“Woohoo!” Candy cheered. She was suddenly a new, renewed woman.

I rapped three times again, then slipped my shoe on and sat; I was standing on something wet and hoped a pipe wasn't leaking somewhere. I didn't want to have to move A.J. or Thom again if water came flooding in.

“So I expect they'll be coming in through the deli,” Benjamin said, cocking his head to that side.

I nodded as his cell phone light started to fade.

“Hey, you should probably turn that off and save the battery,” I suggested.

“Whoa, wait!” Candy cried excitedly. “Benjamin, turn that over here!”

“What?”

“Put on the damn camera! I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.”

“You're going to shoot video?” I asked.

“No,” Candy said. “He is.”

Benjamin hesitated.

“I'll
pay
you!” Candy said. “Please! Something like this can go national, or at least viral! Just ten, fifteen seconds. I'm begging you!”

“I never heard her beg,” Washington said. He was looking up, casting around hopefully for a sign of light and life.

The thought of what Candy had asked was abhorrent on one level, using our limited resources to propel her career. But I understood it. I looked at Benjamin who was looking at me.

“Your call,” I said.

“Literally,” Candy added. “I'll need you to send what I record down here as soon as we get out.”

The young man nodded. He raised the cell phone as Candy made herself look as disheveled as possible. She moved toward the rubble wall with the sloping van as a backdrop. I had to give her this: the gal could think in a crisis.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Go,” he said.

And then, as the video rolled—and on cue—the van took his direction and fell into the basement.

I happened to be looking in that direction, not watching Candy but shielding my eyes from the direct beam of the cell phone flashlight. That was how and why I saw everything that happened.

It was as if the van had a ghost driver. The back end, the one facing down, lurched toward us slightly as though someone had shifted gears. It hesitated a moment and then sped down backward at a forty-five degree angle. The rear tires struck the basement floor like the landing gear of a 747 touching down, then the front end of the van dropped hard. Propelled by the fall, the entire vehicle rolled toward the rubble wall. The van was trailing two heavy steel cables that ate into the ceiling above. They were tied to the front axle; it looked as if the FD had been trying to secure the van through the back door of the deli when the floor gave way just enough to drop the vehicle through. The van traversed only three or four yards, but that was just enough for it to ram the wall. The van stopped hard and the wall gave without a struggle. The rubble toppled onto A.J.

She didn't make a sound but Candy did. The newswoman shrieked and threw herself to the side as more debris toppled toward her. Washington reached over and pulled her toward him, across debris that had fallen earlier, to get her out of the way of the van.

There was a long, thick moment of silence. Our eyes all drifted upward. The fall of the vehicle left an opening in the ceiling. The hole and the air around it were filled with a thick gray tester of particulate matter with dim, hazy work lights beyond.

The ceiling seemed to have lost everything it was going to lose. It was time to take chances now if we were going to help A.J.

“Luke, stay wide of the opening but yell at whoever's up there. Tell them we have injured people.”

He acknowledged this as I spun to where A.J. lay buried. I began throwing smaller blocks toward the hole, away from the others. Sandy—who had jumped back and missed the collapse by inches—was already pulling at the rubble with her strong butcher's hands. Benjamin kept the cell phone on us even as the light started to wink out.

“A.J., talk to me,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“Do what your boss says,” Sandy added. “Say something. Anything!”

My fingers became claws and my heart became a locomotive. They worked together, ripping at stone with a ferocity and strength I didn't imagine I possessed. The pile on top of A.J. was nearly a foot deep. Her arms were jutting from the base, the fingers twitching. Candy crept over and pulled stones from her feet. I saw her look over at Benjamin's phone. If the camera was still running, she was probably making sure her face was on it, playing the hero. I didn't have time to be angry. That would come. So would beating the crap out of whoever was responsible for this. And I
would
find out who that was.

By the time we had cleared the mound from A.J.'s chest and face, the only light was from the craterous hole the van had made. My poor gal's head was turned toward the opening, her eyes shut. She was scratched with vivid red gashes but the rest of her was so pale, so cold, so lifeless—

I heard Luke talking softly from somewhere to my left. I didn't have the time or patience for “soft.” If he was talking to himself, he needed to shut up. If he was passing information to us, he needed to speak up.

“Luke, we need help down here!” I screamed. “
Now!
”

I heard Luke say something as he stepped back from the opening. It was drowned out by the sound my heart was making as it rammed against my chest.

Suddenly, on the left, I saw figures were dropping through the opening. I saw them peripherally, as silhouettes blocking the light. They were solid shadows that I knew from the silhouettes were firefighters. They hurried toward me and I slid to the side, on my knees, heedless of my own pain. There were two figures, then three, and they continued to clear rubble away until a rigid, plastic patient mover was lowered on nylon ropes and brought over. One of the figures placed something over A.J.'s head and neck to stabilize her while another hooked something to her arm. Plasma, probably. They also put something over her mouth, then carried her to the opening and hauled her up, steadying the board on all sides with caring, up-reaching arms. I was literally sick when it hit me that it might not matter. A.J.'s skin had looked more mineral than flesh. Except for the twitching in her fingers, nothing had moved. I couldn't process the thought of losing her.

We had just been talking about little things upstairs
. But though they were trivial, they were the things of life, the stuff a day and relationships are made of. How could this be? How could it have
happened
?

I wavered like a reed in a strong wind; I didn't realize I was about to fall until Sandy caught me.

“We better get you out of here,” Sandy said.

“No—Thom first. I'm okay.”

“Your knees and fingers are bleeding.”

“Thom may be bleeding too,” I insisted.

Sandy held up her hands in surrender. As the bottom of A.J.'s stretcher disappeared through the opening, the figures came toward us. Flashlights played through the dim cellar. Floating grit was everywhere. We shied like vampires before the sunlight. I heard muffled voices, realized the new arrivals were wearing protective masks. I felt like I was in one of those post-apocalyptic movies where the military finds people infected with some government-created virus that somehow got loose.

Wait!
I thought urgently.
Maybe it had
,
injected in calves, stored in their livers for dissemination.

Clearly, my head was not working properly. I saw Sandy guide the next wave of rescuers to Thom, saw others coming forward, felt hands on my arm. There were foggy voices in my ear and big, blank, dark faces in my eyes, and then the world started to do cartwheels and I went down on my back. I was semiconscious as the firefighters got to me. One of them raised her mask.

“Do you know your name?” she asked.

“Moe Howard,” I replied.

“Ma'am, you are not—”

“One of the Three Stooges, I know,” I said. I was annoyed that I had fallen and when I get annoyed I get comically sarcastic. I started to get up, felt a stabbing in both eyes, shut them and stayed put.

“How is A.J.?” I asked. “The woman you removed?”

“I do not have that information,” she said.

Why do first responders never use contractions?
I wondered. Do they think it sounds more official? More believable? It failed with me because how could she not know? They all had to be plugged into the same communications units. I just didn't feel like arguing.

I was carried out on another plastic board, raised to the light as if I were ascending to heaven, then transferred to a gurney that was rolled to the street in front of the deli. I pushed the paramedics away as they tried to strap me down.

“I'm all right,” I insisted, and swung my legs over the side. Hands reached for me but my shoulders wriggled defiantly—stupidly, too, since my head was still mushy. When my feet touched asphalt, I made them stay there, rigid, like I was a modern-day golem.

A medical technician came around and looked me in my defiant little
punim
. “Ma'am, we need to check—”

“I wasn't injured,” I said firmly.

“You were. There's blood all over your hands and legs,” the technician said, and began to cut holes in my pants.

I let her as I looked around. “Where's my friend? The blond woman?”

She didn't answer. I winced as she put some kind of ointment on my knees. My roving eyes settled on a gurney sitting beside an ambulance. I saw a hint of platinum-colored hair poking out from the top of a clutch of medics.

A.J.'s hair.

The medics were working fast, chirping instructions and information back and forth. Behind them, at a distance, I saw Luke standing and staring, Dani sobbing under his arm. He must have just been brought from the pit; Dani must have seen a newsflash or someone must have tweeted and she biked over to the deli. Raylene and Newt were behind them, hugging each other. I didn't see Benjamin but I assumed he was with his girlfriend. Or maybe Candy was with him, making sure he sent the video to her station. I looked back just in time to see Thomasina being raised into an ambulance.

That was all the motivation I needed to get myself in motion. The medic had finished patching my knees and hands and was dutifully taking my blood pressure. I tore at the Velcro armband and, ignoring her shouts, stumbled toward my staff on uncertain legs and hot, angry knees. Raylene saw me and started to cry. She extended her hands toward me, her fingers wriggling like hungry little birds, and threw her arms around my neck. I let her take some of my weight and grabbed her shoulders and the others joined in. It was a strong, much needed group hug.

“Our girls are going to be all right,” I whispered hopefully. “They have to be.”

“Life doesn't run on wishes,” said Raylene, the pragmatist.

“No, but trust me on this: negativity makes things worse.”

Raylene considered that, then nodded. “I'm going to the hospital to be with Thom. Then I have to get home—of all the days for my mother to be coming to town.”

“You do what you can.”

“I'm going to call A.J. Two,” Newt said. “Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I told him. “Absolutely.”

Newt still seemed a little “off,” understandably. Having something to do would be good for him.

We held the hug until I heard a familiar voice call to me. I turned and saw Detective Bean. Beyond her I saw the distinctive white truck, with a horizontal blue band fringed with gold, belonging to the Metro Police Bomb Squad. The young African American woman had spotted me and was walking over briskly. The staff dispersed as the detective put a hand on my right arm.

“I'm glad you're all right,” she said.

“Physically, yeah,” I said. “I can even hear now.”

“I'm sorry about your waitperson. Does she have a family, someone you'd like me to call?”

“Why, is there news?” I asked anxiously.

“No, no, I just thought.”

“We've got that covered, thanks,” I said.

That had scared me and I felt a little weak. Bean grasped my arms, steadied me. I was okay, but by the time I breathed again, tears were running down from the sides of my eyes. It wasn't until my skin felt fresh and clean where the tears ran that I realized I was probably covered with grit.

“Why don't you sit?” Bean asked.

“Because then I
will
lose it,” I said.

“I understand.”

“All those things down there . . . ,” I said absently.

“What things?”

“The utensils that had been so useful just moments before . . . trash.”

“Some of it may be salvageable,” Bean said. “It will all be recovered for us to examine, then you can go through it—”

“Twisted. Broken.” That was all I could think about. That horrid other worldly terrain with a coating of choking dust.

“Detective Daniels called to ask how you were,” Bean told me. “He wanted to know if you needed anything.”

“A new deli,” I said. That was harsh and I added more politely, “That was nice of him.”

I didn't want to think of Grant now. He was always strong when I needed him to be and strong when I didn't need him to be. I didn't want him on my mind or even peripherally back in my life. “What do we know?” I asked.

“Not much. We can save the official interview until later, but can you give me a once-over from your end?”

I told her I knew as little as she did since the blast knocked me silly and made my sensory perceptions meaningless. Bean nodded with what seemed to be understanding.

“Do you think Tootsie Pearl was the target?” I asked. “Is she okay?”

“Shaken but uninjured.” Bean cocked her head toward a clutch of squad cars up the street. “We're talking to her now.”

I looked over. I saw the police talking to witnesses and keeping two layers of people back: journalists and gawkers taking cell phone videos, and people who were just trying to get through or go to their jobs. To her credit or damnation, I wasn't sure which, Candy Sommerton was among the former, inscrutable and ghoulish, chasing the story. She was trying to talk to the police while other reporters were trying to talk to her, looking at their cell phones—at her video, I suspected. To add to the confusion, reporters were trying to interview the bloodied, limping reporter while she was trying to get to the mayoral candidate. The press refers to such events as a “media circus.” A circus has a ringleader and some sense of order. From where I stood, it looked like the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo.

“There were no death threats against the candidate that I'm aware of,” Bean confided to me. Her answer to the question confused me at first. I had forgotten what I'd asked. “We're checking the social media sites now but—I'm told you have a kind of eagle eye on your place. True?”

“I guess so,” I said. “When I look out at the diner, it's like a rabbi on the High Holy Days, gratefully spotting worshipers who came every Sabbath, not just once a year, but aware of the rest.”

She smiled. “So, Rabbi Katz. Did anyone look out of place?”

“Everyone was eating, if that's what you mean,” I said. “I got the Homeland Security circular about profiling that was called something else. No one stood out.”

I had, in fact, dutifully read the document Homeland Security sent every six months. It was a PDF brochure called
If You See Something, Say Something
and it was sent to all public service institutions. The document said in big red letters that it was wrong to profile people because of their race, religion, nationality, dress, or accent. But, that said, it advised us of behavior to look out for such as patrons being overly protective of property that did not appear to have any obvious value; seeming agitated without any direct cause, such as someone talking loudly nearby; wearing heavy clothing that seemed inappropriate to temperate weather—all the things that anyone with a healthy strain of paranoia should spot without help from the federal government.