Twenty

“What do you mean, you don’t know where the tube went? A yard-long bright red tube? Ouch!” Hot bacon grease spattered my arm as I let the flame get too high under the skillet.

“Az der moygen iz leydik der moyekh oykh leydik.” “When the stomach is empty, so is the brain.” That’s another one of the Yiddish sayings my grandmother passed along to my mom. It must be true. I certainly felt lightheaded listening to Roz.

“Calm down,” Roz murmured. My mother used to say that a lot, too, in Yiddish and in English. Not when I was frying bacon. My mother, rest her soul, would have had heart failure if anybody had tried to cook bacon in her kosher kitchen.

Bacon is one of my favorite foods. Anything unkosher is one of my favorite foods. I sometimes wonder if this indicates unacknowledged hostility toward my mother—or just a good set of taste buds.

Lemon, that wise teacher of the martial arts, said nothing.

“It went in,” Roz reported. “Nine forty-two, mailman brought it.”

“And?”

“Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Me and Lemon, we’re both looking for a red tube.”

“Yeah?”

“So some guy comes out with a big box, a real big brown cardboard box. Like for a TV set or something.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“After he drove away, Lemon said something about how the box seemed light, you know, for its size.”

“Right,” I said, spearing bacon slices with a fork, flipping them over.

“I went up to the secretarial-service place and the tube was gone. Guy picked it up twenty minutes ago.”

“Tell me more,” I said.

“Stop waving that fork at me!”

I lowered it. “Well?”

“Well, they’re a mailing service, right?” Roz said defensively. “First off, they don’t want to tell me anything. Then one of the young chicks, maybe a newcomer, says that the guy started out the door with the tube, then turned around and asked if he could buy a carton, something the tube would fit in. He bought their largest size.”

“Smart,” I said. “Too damned smart.”

“Then this frizzy-haired biddy started yelling at the girl, saying, ‘We never discuss the clientele.’ I got bounced.”

I said, “And he just drove away?”

“Pickup truck.” Roz stared at the dirty linoleum. “And we didn’t get the license. We weren’t interested in a guy moving a TV set.”

“You sure it was a guy?”

“Uh, not a hundred percent.”

“What did he or she look like?”

“He wore a cap. I only saw his back. Thin. Sneakers. I’m pretty sure it was a man, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

“Limp?”

“Huh?”

“Did the guy, the girl, whatever, limp? Walk funny?”

Roz looked at Lemon. He stared back at her. “I, uh, don’t think so,” Roz said faintly.

“Damn.” I lowered the flame, broke two eggs directly into the pan, fished out a sliver of shell with a fingertip. My mother used to break each egg separately in a small glass dish, so that if any shell got in the egg or, God-forbid, a rotten or blood-blemished egg appeared, she wouldn’t have to start over again.

I’d been hoping Dunrobie would stroll unthinkingly into the trap and make my list of music bars—my proposed evening’s entertainment—unnecessary.

“I’m real sorry.” Lemon finally said something, shrugging his sloping shoulders. “I won’t even charge you for the time. And believe me, business is bad.”

Lemon’s “business,” besides free-lance karate lessons, involves juggling and passing a hat in Harvard Square. The pass-a-hat line has never been lucrative.

“Going out tonight?” I asked Roz.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” It would have been a shame to waste her outfit on me. She was wearing a Day-Glo lime-green T-shirt that proclaimed: “Sailors get blown offshore.” To complement it, she’d chosen hot-pink spandex tights and orange hightop sneakers. The ensemble went well with her skunk-striped hair.

“Yeah.”

“The Rat?” I inquired, naming one of her favorite Kenmore Square dives, where groups with names like “Slimeball Slugs on Meth” play to audiences dressed in dog chains.

“The Rat, the Roxy, a couple others.”

I said, “Can you ask around for a guitar player named Davey. Six feet, white, skinny. Heavy drinker. Druggie. If you get a hit, see if they know his last name.”

“Which is?”

“Dunrobie. Don’t spread it around.”

“So then I’ll be working for you tonight?”

I raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You want me to pay you?” I couldn’t blame her for asking. The only way I’d go to those places is if somebody else paid. “Forget it,” I said.

“Hey,” she said. “Worth a try. Don’t worry. I’ll ask about the guy. To make up for today, okay?”

I carefully slid the eggs out of the pan, breaking both.

And I forgot to ask about the locks.