From Herring to Eternity

by Delia Rosen

  The only thing that was really mine here was the laptop. And the memories.

  Most recently, there had been the discovery that my father had a mistress down here, Lydia Knight. The crazy lady was in prison now, but she had put a pair of scissors into my arm right here, in this little room. What Mad said Robert Barron had done to the earth? That’s what Lydia had done to this office. She’d made it an unhappy place. If not for the quick action of her daughter Stacie, the stab would have done more than five stitches’ worth of damage.

  I looked around. “Oh, Uncle Murray—you’re here less and less every day,” I said wistfully.

  No sooner had I sat down to go over the inventory than I got a call from Stacie, Lydia’s daughter. She had come to work here briefly after her mother was arrested, but the memories of the confrontation got to her worse than they did me. Plus, there were other people Stacie didn’t want to see again. She’d decided to relocate to Southern California with her fiancé, Scott, who was recovering from injuries suffered at the hands of bikers. I had leaned on one of my old Wall Street connections to get her a job as a teller.

  “How’s San Diego?” I asked.

  “It’s got a lot of ocean,” she said. “I’m driving to work, looking at it now.”

  “Nice. I’m looking at a stapler.”

  “Then come out here! I’d love to show you around. Thomasina can run things for a few days.”

  “True, but cruel. My conscience would give me tics.”

  “You’re strange.”

  “I know. How are Scott’s relatives treating you?”

  “Couldn’t be nicer,” she said. “They live about forty minutes from Mexico. I’m learning Spanish just by working at the bank.”

  “Just don’t mistake dollars for pesos,” I cautioned. “What are they worth, about eight cents?”

  “Seven point three,” she answered without hesitation. “I check the exchange rates while I’m having my coffee.”

  I smiled. This kid was going to be all right.

  I was about to order potatoes—for some reason, our latkes had been selling like hotcakes—when there was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Nash? We got a situation,” Thom said.

  Thom’s mouth had the wide, rippling aspect of a volcanic caldera. If she were calling for backup, it had to be serious.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It is in the bathroom,” she said. “It wants to see you when it gets out.”

  I went and opened the door, wondering what the hell could have gone haywire in—what, five minutes? Less? Thom was already charging back to the dining room. I followed quickly. As I did, I noticed Mad sitting at her table, wiping her egg bowl with toast. She was still looking ahead but raised her left hand, pointed her index finger toward me, and sketched an arc in the air, points downward.

  An unsmiley face.

  The earth is not happy.

  There was a man en route from the bathroom. He was about five-six, bald, African American, and wearing a thick, tan camel-hair coat. He stopped at the cash register where he immediately began drumming the little spoon on the bowl of mints. He carried a thin Italian leather briefcase, also tan. My guess: a lawyer.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  She passed two halves of a business card over her shoulder. The first half of the card said:

  ANDREW A.

  ATTORNEY-AT

  The second half said:

  DICKSON III

  -LAW

  I put the card pieces in the back pocket of my jeans. “So, who is he?”

  “The evictor,” she hissed as we reached him.

  He put down the mint spoon, offered his hand, and smiled. “Andy Dickson, and I’m hardly that.”

  “You’re hardly human!” she snapped, fixing her dark eyes on him. “Someone needs eminent domaining done? He’s your hatchet man. You want some prehistoric bones that rightfully belong to my brother ’cause they’re under his gas station? This Mayflower Man will relocate you.”

  That explained it. This was personal. “Why don’t you take a break,” I told her.

  “No, I want to hear this,” she said, her eyes still pinned to him like gun sights. “You ain’t here to rip up the street for a new water main, are you?”

  “May we speak in your office, Ms. Katz?” the attorney said.

  “I’m not sure your coat will fit,” Thom said.

  “Out here is fine,” I said. “Besides, I may need my advocate.”

  “As you wish,” he said.

  Oh, this was an “as you wish” visit, not a shrug and an “okay.” That meant he was here to present me with a fait accompli. I had no idea what this was about, but I was ready. Hot, molten New York steel poured down my spinal column and hardened instantly.

  “Actually, Ms. Jackson, you might find yourself in support of this project,” he said as he removed a folder from the leather satchel.

  “Anything you’re for, I’m against.”

  “Ms. Katz, I do a lot of work for historic recovery enterprises, not just locally but nationally,” he said. “You may be aware that I began discussions with your uncle two years ago regarding the possibility that his home on Bonerwood was atop a suspected historical site of what is called significant importance.”

  “That’s news to me,” I said.

  “I see.” He snapped the case shut but did not hand over the folder. “Perhaps you’re familiar with our local historical landmark, Fort Negley?”

  “I’ve been meaning to take the tour,” I said truthfully. That was something my former beau, Detective Grant Daniels, had suggested. It was about two miles from the center of Nashville; that was the entirety of what I knew about the place.

  “The fort was built during the War Between the States, the largest inland fortification constructed during the war,” he said with the practiced tone of a tour guide. “It was built in large part with the skilled hands and able backs of African American laborers. A diary discovered in 2003 suggests that these Nashvillians camped on what is now your property. Your uncle was alerted to that fact. He seemed quite pleased. At the recent Thirty-second Nashville Conference on African American History, sponsored by the Metropolitan Historical Commission and Tennessee State University, papers were presented with new research to support this claim. As a result, the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency has agreed to grant Professor Reynold Sterne access to your property.”

  “You’re going to dig up my backyard?”

  “No.” He handed me the folder. “Your basement den.”

  My own eyeball crosshairs fixed on his nose. I didn’t open the manila folder. I knew what it would contain: neatly filled-out forms, documents with embossed stamps and legal writing, letterhead with a curt, impersonal order supporting what I’d just been informed of.

  “We’re gonna fight this, you hamstringer,” Thom said.

  “You will find, among the documents, an agreement signed by Mr. Murray Katz agreeing to allow authorized personnel reasonable access to the property for a period of no longer than one year if the time should come that excavation was desirable.”

  “What a mouthful of marbles!” Thom barked.

  “So you’re saying this is a done deal?” I asked him. “No public hearing?”

  “A citizens’ forum was held on February seventh, 2010,” Andrew said. “That was where Mr. Katz agreed to the terms of the document. He even provided floor plans to the home, if you care to look.”

  “There was nothing about this in Uncle Murray’s papers,” I said.

  “That is between you and Mr. Dag Stoltenberg, who I believe is represented as the attorney-of-record in the relevant line of the appropriate form.”

  “You say a lot to say nothing,” Thom brooded.

  I started going through the papers.

  “I warned your uncle he needed a full-time lawyer, not a semiretired one,” Thom went on.

  “It wouldn’t have altered anything,” Andrew pointed out.
/>   “Lawsy, I’m gonna alter you,” she said. “You let them take my baby brother’s fillin’ station!”

  “Voice down, please,” I said. I didn’t need to lose customers along with my den.

  “Ms. Jackson—until two years ago, only five dinosaur bones had been discovered in all of Tennessee. Three tail bones, a foot bone, and a lower leg bone. The hadrosaurs found under your brother’s concrete slab increased that number fourfold. And your brother got a fair price for his property, not to mention the attorney general agreeing to drop the investigation into price gouging—”

  “Ralph was no gouger, you rat!” Thom said. “He was being overcharged and he passed that cost along!”

  “Sadly, his costs were not the consumers’ problem,” Andrew said.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I interrupted, “but there isn’t anything in here that says I have to sell or relocate. Only that I have to provide access.”

  “That’s true,” the attorney said. “However, you will note that structural integrity of the premises cannot be guaranteed due to drilling, so there is a stipend for you to move into a—”

  “Not moving,” I said.

  “You’re what?” he said.

  “She said ‘not moving.’” Thomasina folded her arms.

  Andrew looked from one of the defiant women to the other. “Very well. I’ll inform TSU of your decision and let you know if they require an indemnification in the event that you are injured.”

  A customer came over to pay. Thom took it.

  “I didn’t see anything in those documents that required me to cover their asses,” I told him.

  “You will.” Andrew looked at me with a benign smile. “You are new to Nashville, Ms. Katz. You may not understand the importance of the university or the African American community whose heritage they have embraced and protect. Let me advise you that those are voices you do not wish to have raised against you.”

  “I got an African American voice, too,” Thom warned as the customer hurried away.

  “It will echo sadly in an empty deli,” the attorney said, looking around. “That is, if you are able to hear it over the pickets outside.” His dark eyes stopped on me. “Be wise, Ms. Katz. This is not a battle you can win. And that’s coming from a man who’s giving up dozens of billable hours if you take his advice. You should appreciate that.”

  I didn’t like that remark. “Why should I appreciate that?”

  “Because you’re a businesswoman,” he said.

  There had been nothing that even hinted of intolerance in my year down here. I told myself I was just being overly sensitive to this man. I hoped so.

  “Perry Mason, you want takeout?” Thom asked.

  “Thank you, no. I’ve already—”

  “Then why’re you still here?”

  The man smiled sweetly at her. He looked at me, still smiling, then turned and left.

  “God help me, that man fills my good soul with evil purpose,” Thom said.

  “It comes with his job description,” I said.

  “What’re you gonna do?” Thom asked.

  I thought for a moment. “Give this Professor Sterne a call, I think. First, though, I have something to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  I replied, “Order potatoes.”

  Chapter 2

  I hate to say this, but I wasn’t really attached to my home. Not in the way that one should be.

  I’d lived in apartments my entire life, and a couple of personalized rooms off a common hallway never got to be more than a place to hang my handbag. It’s different for the bubbes and zaydes who lived in the same Brooklyn or Queens apartments their entire lives, with the same neighbors they’d always had. Homes are built by memories. When you live in a big city and don’t spend a lot of time at home, the city itself tends to be your home. So the prospect of having the finished basement of my uncle’s half-century-old house disrupted during the daytime—when I wasn’t there—didn’t exactly rock my rowboat. I wasn’t even concerned about ownership, since what would I do with old glass bottles and discarded poultry bones except turn them over to a museum or historical society anyway?

  But the steamroller nature of the thing ticked me off. You don’t come up to a person you never met and give them an edict followed by a threat followed by a possible insult. I planned to raise a stink about that, maybe cost Mr. Dickson some future billable hours.

  I ordered my potatoes from Chris Hunter, the Veg-o-Tater, an organic vendor who sold primarily to the growing vegan community and abhorred, with a flaming passion, the kind of greasy foods I serve.

  “I hate what you turn these spuds into,” he said again—good-naturedly, but not.

  “You might as well just have that printed on my invoices,” I said.

  “It’s not just you,” he said. “Most of the city entombs flavor in clouds of boiling oil.”

  “Canola oil,” I pointed out. “My grandmother used to use lard.”

  He shuddered audibly and hung up.

  I was about to get the university’s telephone number online when I heard noise from the dining room. There were shouts, tables and chairs scraping, dishes and silverware banging.

  “What is this, tsimes day?”

  Mad’s comment about the unhappy planet echoed in my brain.

  The commotion out front couldn’t be Homeless Elijah. He always smelled very ripe and was occasionally belligerent, depending on what he’d been drinking, but he always came to the back door for handouts. I guessed it was either a mouse or Andrew had come back and Thom was beating him to death. I hurried out.

  Thom, A.J., and Raylene were in the open doorway and a small crowd was looking down the street. At least the uproar wasn’t about anything happening in the restaurant. Thom turned before I got there. She had an eerie sensitivity about movement in the restaurant, almost like she was a Lutz in Amityville.

  “Someone said Karen Kerr got into a fight with Lippy Montgomery,” she said.

  “K-Two?” I said. “The mountain-size mixed martial arts fighter who has horseradish with everything?”

  A.J. nodded. “She’s one deadly beyatch. I’ve seen her compete.”

  “You have?” I said.

  “My daughter wanted to go so I took her,” A.J. said.

  “Why would anyone want to fight with Lippy?” Thom said. “He’s a pussycat.”

  “I’ve got pussycats,” I said. “I kick them just because.”

  Thom looked at me crossly.

  “Kidding,” I said.

  A.J. was standing on her tiptoes, trying to see. “Too many people in the way—can’t tell what’s going on,” she said as she went back to work at the counter.

  “Well, whatever happened, it doesn’t concern us,” I pointed out as a pair of sirens converged on the street.

  “Nash, this is our community,” Raylene said portentously. “Everything should concern us.”

  “You’re just nosey,” I said.

  “That, too,” she admitted.

  As I turned to go back to the office, I heard someone in the street shout, “My God, he’s dead!”

  That sent Raylene and Thom out into the street. I hesitated, not because I planned to join them, but, because—if it were true—that’s what you do when someone you know dies. You pause and reflect on who they were and try again, in vain, to grasp the elusive reality of “here one second, gone the next.” Lippy was a weird egg but a good one.

  I noticed, then, that Mad was still there. The table had been cleared and she was just sitting, staring. It wasn’t as if she were in a self-induced trance, because she moved a finger and blinked and smiled now and then. It was more like she was watching a movie play out in her head.

  And then she turned—not toward me, but to the door. I followed her gaze and a moment later, someone entered. It was a woman I had never seen, about three hundred pounds worth, with puffy green hair and a pair of wide-open eyes tattooed on her temples and on her left eye. She wore a patch over her right eye and w
as wearing a long, black skirt with purple moon symbols and a matching cotton cloak. This was not a woman who went anywhere anonymously.

  She came through the restaurant like a slow-moving squall, oblivious to the unoccupied tables she nudged aside by her passage. She pulled back the seat across from Mad, sat, turned toward A.J., and raised her hand.

  A.J. was behind the counter filling sugar containers. She looked at me. It wasn’t an imploring look, it was a “this is yours, honey” look.

  I went over with pen and pad at the ready.

  “Raisin Bran, please, with extra raisins,” the woman said before I had arrived. “And ham and eggs and coffee. White bread toast, extra butter on the side.”

  “Will that be all?” I asked.

  I wasn’t being facetious and hoped the woman didn’t take it that way. I asked that of every customer.

  She didn’t seem to take the remark ironically. “Yes, thank you,” she said with a little wink of her tattooed eye. Unlike someone who could wiggle their ears, this was a skill the woman had to have trained for. And not, I suspected, for secular showboating in public places.

  The rest of my staff was coming back inside as I handed the order to Luke. Even he—who ate too much of every bad thing—scowled at this one. I stayed behind the counter to stack the clean coffee cups.

  “It’s true,” Thom said gravely. “Lippy’s dead, poor guy. K-Two has been taken into custody.”

  “I heard her tell the cops she didn’t hit him hard enough to do killin’ damage,” Raylene said. “She said he blew his horn in her ear as she passed and she just reacted.”

  “Maybe he hit his head,” Thom suggested—just as she turned and saw Mad’s companion. “Ginnifer?”

  The big woman looked over. “Thomasina?”

  Thom hurried over and threw her arms around the upper half of the new arrival, who had made a heroic effort to stand but ultimately remained seated. “Ginnifer, what are you doing back in Nashville?”