Through the Grinder (12 page)

When I closed the door, I turned to find Matt leaning against the dining room door frame, nut-brown forearms folded across his chest.

He shook his head. “When did you start dating plumbers?”

L
IKE
a desert wind, Sahara McNeil burst out of her apartment building and moved quickly toward the SoHo gallery where she plied her trade. Her flaming red hair caught an icy gust as she ate up the sidewalk on red leather boots with four-inch heels.

Best of all, the woman was fiddling with her portable CD player, totally oblivious to her all too familiar surroundings. She was so oblivious, in fact, that the Genius matched her quick steps directly behind without the woman even noticing.

This morning’s mission was supposed to have been a dry run for the real event, which would occur when every aspect of the planning had been thought out. But the weather was getting unpredictable, and this moment felt too perfect.

All the planning in the world added up to nothing without the boldness required to carry it out, and the Genius believed any set goals could never be achieved without a certain amount of risk. Even Napoleon said he would rather have a lucky general than a smart one.

As if on cue, a dirty white New York City Sanitation Department truck came rumbling down West Tenth Street. Two men sat in the cab, talking, not looking at the road even as the vehicle rolled forward toward the empty intersection.

No one else was walking on this part of the block, which was predominantly residential—the only place of business was a retro bar called the Blue Lounge, and it was dark at this early hour.

No witnesses,
thought the Genius.

Absent mindedly, Sahara halted at the end of the block to wait for the truck to pass before she crossed. She did not look up. Instead she popped open the CD player and fumbled in her bag for a new disk.

The truck continued forward. The workers continued chatting distractedly.

A push. Timed just right. One simple push.

Then Sahara would never again bother him.

“God, what is it about this place and death?!”

Esther Best had made her typical existential outburst earlier than usual, and loud enough for everyone in the Blend to hear. It was just after noon on Friday, a busy time for us. Customers’ noses lifted out of books, their eyes peered over laptops and newspapers. Esther stood in the Blend’s open doorway, her gloved hand on the old brass handle, a blast of icy November drizzle sweeping in behind her black overcoat.

“Close the door, Esther,” I said. “You’re letting in the cold.”

She did. Then she trudged over to the coffee bar.

Most of the customers returned to their business. All except Kira Kirk, who was sitting close to the counter, still looking up from her crossword puzzle.

“And where exactly is ‘this place’?” she asked Esther, peering over the tops of her horn-rimmed reading glasses. “I mean as it pertains to death? This coffeehouse? The West Village? New York City? Or are we talking the universe itself? You must be more specific.”

Esther gave Kira a sidelong glance through her own black-rimmed glasses. Then she pulled off her gloves. I was working behind the pastry case, refilling the empty muffin baskets with blueberry, apple spice, pumpkin carrot, and banana walnut. She sidled over to speak to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” she snapped, her tone not exactly apologetic. “A woman got killed across the street from my new apartment. Hit by a garbage truck. Police everywhere.”

Tucker made a face, not unlike the one my superstitious grandmother used to make after she’d heard someone speak ill of the dead and before a hasty sign of the cross.

At a table near Kira’s, Winnie, the tall, raven-haired Shearling Lady lawyer, who’d arrived an hour before, looked back up from her book, interested. Martha, a young editor from nearby Berk and Lee publishers, glanced up from a manuscript, too.

Esther carted her coat to the back pantry, then came out again, looped a blue apron over her neck, and tied it.

“I’ll work late to make up the time,” she said, still averting her eyes. Then Esther tied back her wild dark hair, grabbed a cloth, and began dusting the shelf of our one-pound House Blend bags until the labels threatened to peel away.

Obviously, the accident had upset her. Not that I blamed her. Expiring under the wheels of a New York City Sanitation truck was just a wrong way to die. Not that there was a right way.

“Did the victim live in your building?” Tucker asked.

In New York City, a question like that was akin to “did the victim live in your neighborhood,” because in New York, most apartment buildings had the population equivalent of a small town street, if not an entire block, which often made your co-op board (if you had one) the equivalent of your neighborhood block association, the repository for rules about such things as the proper disposal of garbage, leashing of pets, and hours to have a party.

Esther stopped dusting.

“I didn’t see her face. Just her legs. They were sticking out from under the truck, you know?” She shuddered. “A couple of cops went over to the big co-op building on the corner. One of them was carrying her bag. Expensive one, too. Coach.”

“How do you fall in front of a garbage truck?” Tucker asked.

“When your number’s up, it’s up,” said Winnie.

“Probably she slipped,” said Kira. “People slip and fall all the time. Some even die in their own homes.”

Myself, I was thinking “pushed,” but maybe that’s because the last slip and fall I encountered (my late assistant manager Anabelle) turned out to be premeditated murder. Or maybe it was Quinn’s influence. That man’s dark vision of the universe sometimes rivaled Schopenhauer’s.

“She probably just killed herself,” stated Esther.

Or Esther Best’s,
I amended.

Esther was facing us now, her eyes brightening at the reaction her words elicited.

Now
that
was the Esther I knew. I was fond of the girl, don’t get me wrong—and I felt bad for what she’d had to witness this morning—but most of the time, Esther wasn’t exactly Sister Mary Sunshine. As Tucker put it, while some folks saw the silver lining in a dark cloud, Esther would search compulsively for the lightening strike. And then endlessly wallow in the painful disappointment of this discovery via free-form verse at a St. Mark’s Street poetry reading.

“Now, Esther, why would you think it was suicide?” Kira asked.

“I guess I was thinking of that Valerie girl in the subway, and Inga Berg, too. It’s like there’s some epidemic of suicides in the New York air or something. It’s like these girls got up one morning and went out and just killed themselves for no reason—on a whim, even though they had everything to live for.”

“Suicide is not an act of whim. Nor is it contagious,” said Tucker.

“It can be a fad, though, Tucker,” Kira noted brightly as she drained the last of her cappuccino.

Kira had been in exceptionally good moods since the last Cappuccino Connection night. I’d noticed she’d started to wear makeup regularly again, and I assumed Mr. Moviefone/Crossword Puzzle Man was the reason. Still, I couldn’t let a morbid remark like that go unchallenged.

“What do you mean suicide can be a fad?” I blurted. “Like the hulahoop or skinny neckties?”

“Or maybe mass Macarena-style masochism?” quipped Winnie, sharing a glance with me.

I shook my head.

“A
literary
fad,” Kira clarified. “The Werther epidemic is a case in point.”

“Don’t know that one,” said Esther.

“Rings a bell,” said Winnie.

“When the German poet Goethe published his novel
The Sorrows of Young Werther,
it became an overnight sensation. Napoleon told Goethe he’d read it seven times. But Goethe’s biggest influence was on middle-and upper-class youths. Some were so influenced by the tragic love story of Werther and Lotte that a number of them actually emulated the hero and committed suicide. It became the fashion in Germany, France, Holland, and Scandinavia for unrequited lovers to kill themselves dressed like Werther, with a copy of the novel lying open nearby, marking a favorite page or passage. It got so bad that clergymen denounced the novel from their pulpits.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I gave Kira a doubtful look.

“Where did you learn that?” asked Tucker. “And for heaven’s sake,
why?
”

Kira laughed. “I told you before, I’m a genius.”

Tucker and I exchanged a look that said,
join the club.
In our experience, a formidable fraction of people sitting in New York City coffeehouses thought they were prodigies—primarily because their mothers told them so.

“Actually, I read the Penguin edition of Goethe’s novel,” admitted Kira. “As for why…A few years ago a
Times
crossword question was ‘before Faust was damned, this protagonist committed suicide.’ The right answer was ‘Werther’ but I didn’t get it. When that happens, I learn all I can about the subject so it never happens again.”

“See what I mean?” said Esther. “Tragedy and death are under the surface of everything. It’s part of our entertainment, our popular culture. I mean, violent movies, violent music, suicide in a crossword puzzle? And look at us! Everyone here is obsessed with suicide. Somebody mentions the subject and that’s all anyone can talk about.”

Tucker’s face pruned up. “But, Esther, you’re the one who mentioned—”

I laid my hand on Tucker’s arm, silencing him. “Nobody who really has it all commits suicide,” I told Esther. “And I doubt—the Werther epidemic notwithstanding—that one human being can influence others enough to drive them to suicide.”

“You forget Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid-drinking followers,” pointed out Winnie.

“And suicide bombers,” Tucker added. “Someone’s putting the idea in their heads to strap on explosives and visit the Middle Eastern version of mini-malls.”

“Okay, those are exceptions. But most people have deeply personal reasons for ending their lives. Reasons that have nothing to do with fanaticism, religious or otherwise.”

“There has to be a screw loose,” said Winnie. “Healthy, self-actualized people turn their aggressions outward, not inward.”

“You’d think a healthy person wouldn’t have any aggressions,” said Kira.

Winnie gave her a look that said,
don’t be so naive.

“It’s just really hard for me to believe that Inga Berg actually committed suicide,” said Esther. “Life was her oyster. Especially in this town. At least, she gave us all the impression it was.”

“It was all those damned decafs,” said Tucker. “A couple of weeks ago Inga Berg started ordering decaffeinated coffee in the evenings. Said she was having trouble sleeping. I think she should have stuck to regular. Might have saved her life.”

“Maybe that was it—lack of sleep. Maybe she wasn’t in her right mind because she was so tired,” said Esther.

“No. You’re not getting my point. People who drink caffeinated coffee are actually less likely to kill themselves. I saw a news story on it a few years ago.”

Esther rolled her eyes with skepticism, but I spoke up.

“Tucker’s right. I wrote a piece on it for a trade magazine. A Harvard study concluded that women who drank more than three cups of coffee a day were at one-third the risk of suicide compared to those who didn’t imbibe.”

“What about us men?” said Tucker.

“The study wasn’t done on men. It was done over a ten-year period with female nurses. I think because they roughly paralleled the general population in rates of depression, smoking, obesity, drug abuse, and other bad habits. Sorry.”

“Good for the goose, good for the gander,” said Tucker, refilling his empty cup with our freshly made Breakfast Blend.

“Whip me up another one, Mr. Barista,” said Kira, waving her own empty cup. “Nice to know my addiction will keep me from slashing my wrists.”

Esther wasn’t convinced yet. “Valerie and Inga were both coffee drinkers, and they both killed themselves.”

“The study said one-third less likely to commit suicide, not one hundred percent,” noted Winnie. “Nothing is one hundred percent in life. Except that more than half the women who come to this town looking for fulfillment through a man or a career will end up disappointed.”

Winnie was starting to sound like Esther now—whose philosophy could probably be summed up in one phrase: Expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed.

As the tide of conversation in the Blend was getting more and more grim, I actually welcomed the fresh blast of cold air that heralded the arrival of a new customer.

I looked up to see Mike Quinn standing at my counter. It was good to see him there. It had been so long, I was starting to give up hope of ever seeing him again.

The police detective had obviously been on hard duty for quite a while. He looked haggard, his iron jaw displaying the stubble of a dark blonde beard that was substantially more than a five o’clock shadow. His lean cheeks looked wind burned and his overcoat appeared in need of a good cleaning.

“Can I speak to you?” Quinn asked in a voice of dry ice.

“Sure,” I said, turning to fix his usual latte. I figured we could chat while I whipped it up.

When he said, “NOW,” I froze.

Quinn wasn’t the most charming guy I’d ever met, but he was usually polite—at the very least, civil. Obviously, the man’s nerves were raw.

I turned back to face him. “Go ahead. I’m listening,” I said.

He glanced from me to Esther and Tucker, whose gazes were now glued to him.

“We need to speak somewhere more private,” he said, his voice suddenly calmer.

I nodded. “My office. Just give me a minute.”

I crossed to the coffee urn and filled two grande-size paper cups with piping hot Breakfast Blend.

I felt Esther’s and Tucker’s eyes on my back, and Kira’s and Winnie’s, too. Mercifully, the other customers were either seated too far away to have heard Quinn’s remark or simply had no interest.