Luz
Since the police didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, I decided I’d better try to get in touch with the private detective Mr. Pettigrew had mentioned hiring. I called Mrs. Christopher, who provided the name, Abraham Cratchett, and two phone numbers. Then I called this Cratchett and identified myself as a friend of Carolyn Blue, a person who had been there for her flaming-turkey party and wanted to help with the investigation, having been a police lieutenant.
Cratchett said he was looking at security tapes from Pettigrew’s front door and tradesman’s entrance, and he had copies of the security signin sheets. He figured it might take him a couple of days, since he didn’t know all the Pettigrew people coming and going on the tapes, so if I knew who had been at the party, he could use my help.
“Terrific. I’ll come right over, Cratchett, and I know this kid named DeShawn Brown you could hire part-time. He’s interested in being a cop and—”
“Bring him, too. You’re free help, right? Ten dollars an hour is what I pay for part-time. My office is in Bensonhurst.”
Since I didn’t know Bensonhurst from bratwurst, which is some kind of sausage I’ve heard of but never eaten, I told him where I was, and he gave me his address and directions. Then I called DeShawn’s cell and shouted at him over the traffic noises. Obviously he was out on some street jammed with drivers honking their horns. He thought being a private detective sounded cool and offered to ride his bike to Bensonhurst between twelve and one. Well, that was easy, I thought, and took the subway to my destination, which is in Brooklyn.
Bensonhurst was not much like the New York I’d seen so far. Cratchett’s address turned out to be this old three-story wooden house, painted white ten or twenty years ago with a curved window on the second floor and faded red roofs made of curled-up shingles—a little porch with a pointed roof on the first floor, and three pointed roofs on the third floor: two in front, one lower than the other, and one on the side, with only one little window up there. I wondered who got to sleep in the attic. Tiny Tim? I’d read the book about the Cratchetts by some old, white-guy author. Or maybe I saw the TV show.
A woman with thick glasses and curly gray-black hair answered the door. She was his mother, Rachel Cratchett. Jesus, a private eye who lived with his mother?
“Come in out of the cold and sit down, dear,” she said, giving me a big, welcoming smile. “Abraham will be up in a minute. It’s been a while since he’s invited a girl home to meet me.”
What the hell does that mean? I wondered as I took a seat in an old-fashioned room with crocheted stuff stuck to the chairs and a television that my grandmother would have been embarrassed to own. Ten inches? Probably black-and-white.
“You’re Hispanic? Your last name sounds Hispanic. I don’t suppose you’re Jewish.”
“No, ma’am, Catholic.”
“Well, that’s all right. I married a Catholic, and it’s turned out well. Of course, our Abraham was raised Jewish. He said you were a policewoman. My husband’s a detective with the police here in Brooklyn. I hope you want children. I’d certainly like to have grandchildren.”
Did she think I was her son’s novia? “I’m on the old side for having children, ma’am, late forties going on fifty. Anyway, I’ve never met your son.”
“Well, he’s a fine boy. His father would rather he’d joined the police, but I wouldn’t have that. It’s bad enough worrying about my husband, as you can imagine, your being a policewoman.”
“Retired,” I said hastily.
“Did you and Abraham meet through an Internet dating service?” Mrs. Cratchett chuckled. “My mother met my father through a matchmaker. Grandfather insisted. I suppose it’s not that different. You and Abraham could adopt children if you hit it off.”
“Mrs. Cratchett, I’m here to look at tapes for a case your son’s working on, not to…ah…meet him for a blind date.”
“Well, I might have known,” she said sadly. “No matter how many young ladies I invite to dinner, Abraham’s always too busy with his work to ask them out. Oh, here’s someone else.” She rose to answer the doorbell.
“That’ll be DeShawn. He’s going to help, too.”
She let my subway pal in, somewhat surprised at his size, or maybe it was his color, and her son came up from the basement, after which we had to have lunch because Mrs. Cratchett insisted—matzoh ball soup, which was okay, but no big deal. I’ll take menudo or tlapeno any day over chicken soup with a giant bread ball bobbing around in it. Then we had cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwiches on black bread. They weren’t tacos, but they weren’t bad either. During the soup and sandwiches, Mrs. Cratchett told us how her grandfather bought this house years after emigrating from Russia and kept it in the family even after the Italians moved into Bensonhurst and took over.
Finally she brought in what she called a blintz casserole, apologizing for the fact that she hadn’t made the blintzes herself since she was editing some Jewish manuscript for a publisher and didn’t have the time. The casserole turned out to be dessert, and it was really tasty. When I said so, she insisted on giving me her recipe. Like I was going to make a Jewish dessert—or any dessert, for that matter. I’d give it to Carolyn. Jewish was ethnic, I figured, and should fit right into her new book.
While I was poking at my food, DeShawn was shoveling it in and saying Mrs. C. was “some great cook.” Abraham was describing his computer system, which DeShawn got real excited about, so maybe DeShawn was going to give up his rapper ambitions and take to being a private eye. He said, “You pro’bly thinkin’ I’m just the muscle, but I know computers, too, man. I’m just what you need in the private-eye business—an’ faster on a bike than any mothafu—”
Blintz Casserole
Carolyn Blue,
“Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Brooklyn Intelligencer
“DeShawn, I can see that I’m going to have to reform your vocabulary if you’re going to work with Abraham,” interrupted Mrs. Cratchett. “Won’t you have seconds on dessert? I do like to see a growing boy eat heartily.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said DeShawn, helping himself to another large serving.
While I was visiting a Chinese gentleman in New York and eating a Chinese lunch, a friend was served lunch by a third-generation Jewish lady in Bensonhurst, who gave her this tasty recipe. For those of us who don’t want to spend forever making time-consuming sections of a recipe, much less the whole thing, this dish is both tasty and quicker to prepare than the original must have been.