by Joel Deutsch
Marvin Rothko’s mouth is still forming the long I of the five in his countdown when the rumpled-looking middle-aged white man and the younger Latino who’ve been drinking coffee across the aisle are out of their booth and behind the brothers, reaching forward over their shoulders and grabbing their wrists.
“Police,” snaps the Anglo, loud, as if calling across a greater distance or addressing the hard of hearing. Marvin’s phone hits the Formica table with a dull plastic thud. Manny’s launches itself and comes down in Sasha’s empty plate.
Four cops in blue mesh-top baseball caps and blue LAPD windbreakers burst out of the kitchen doors, their guns drawn. One cop’s jacket is partly unzipped, revealing a bulletproof vest. Kevlar, Sasha thinks, this remembered from CNN segments about U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq.
“don’t touch it,” the cop closest to Sasha warns him, gesturing at Manny’s still-open cell with his gun. “Keep your hands on the table where I can see them.” he’s white, as are two of his buddies. The other one is Latino, like the second plainclothes. Sasha notes one full beard, one pointy goatee without a mustache, and several ear and facial piercings displaying gold and silver ornamentation.
Sasha and the Rothkos are hustled off the maroon leatherette banquettes and directed to lie face down along the aisle, fingers interlaced behind their necks, Sasha first, then Marvin, then Manny. Sasha, his right cheek pressed against the floor, a trace of faded ammonia in his nostrils, sees feet and legs scurrying out of other booths and disappearing. He feels someone kneel astride him, frisk him from shoulders to calves and pluck the wallet from his back pocket.
“Alex ,” says the man atop him. “that your name? Alex Shteynberg?”
“yes,” says Sasha. he’s shivering. “Yes,” he repeats. “That’s my name.”
“hey, you got paper on this guy?” the man he’s pinned underneath asks someone. Sasha sees his left hand lift the open wallet beyond his field of view.
“No,” says the voice of the older Anglo cop. “Guess you could call him a person of interest.”
“So that’s what we’re calling him?” the man on top of Sasha asks?”
“yeah,” comes the answer. “Guess so.”
Sasha’s wallet is pushed back into his pocket. “Listen, Alex,” says his captor. “You’re not under arrest. Is that clear?”
“yes,” says Sasha.
“good. But before I let you get up, you gotta promise me something. You gotta promise me that you’ll come up to the station with us and have a little conversation with these two nice detectives.”
“do I have to?” Sasha asks, imagining himself home.
“Technically, no,” says the cop. “Technically you don’t have to. But realistically, yes. It’s the right thing to do. Of course unless you want to put yourself under suspicion.
“suspicion?” asks Sasha. “For what?”
“I’m sure that’s part of what the detectives will want to talk to you about. So, what’s it gonna be?”
“Okay,” says Sasha. “okay. I’ll come.”
The cop gets off him, helps him up, and passes him his black suit jacket, which he puts on. Both Rothkos are already standing, handcuffed with their arms behind them and hemmed in closely by the other three windbreakers. The Anglo detective, wearing thin rubber surgical gloves, is sealing the cell phones, the drinking glasses, the beer and soda bottles and Sasha’s teacup into plastic evidence bags.
“Wondered when you guys were finally gonna come out of there,” he says, nodding toward the kitchen doors, which are swinging inward as a busboy pushes them open with the prow of a cart loaded with things bound for the trash and the dishwasher.
“We were watching through those portholes, Harry,” says the cop who was holding Sasha down. “We were just waiting for you and Maldonado to make your move.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I was starting to think you maybe got sidetracked by the food or something.”
The detective called Maldonado has produced a large roll of yellow tape and is holding it up. “Harry, think we oughta tape the booth?”
“Nah. If they can’t get good prints off that stuff in the bag, I doubt if it’s gonna do them much good to dust the table for latents or something like that mustard dispenser, considering how many people must have touched it since the last time it was washed. Besides, we can’t treat this like a crime scene. Imagine what that would do to their business.”
“Just the booth, I meant,” qualifies Maldonado. “Not the whole goddam place.”
“Forget it,” says his partner, folding the top of the sack closed and picking it up. “let’s just get out of here.”
“Excuse me, officers,” calls out the man behind the cash register as the group passes. He’s fortyish, tall, wearing a salmon-colored Hawaiian print shirt featuring tropical trees and flowers. “Who’s taking care of the gentlemen’s’ check?”
“hang on,” the detective called Harry tells Maldonado, who snatches Sasha’s elbow to hold him back. “What do they owe?” he asks.
“let’s see,” says the man, looking at the slip of paper. “We’ve got three hot pastrami, one beer, one soda, one tea. Your coffees are on the house.”
Harry reaches for his wallet, takes out two twenties and drops them onto the stippled rubber mat on the counter.
“That cover it?” he asks.
Not quite,” says the man. “And a tip would be nice, too. Considering.”
“used to be cheaper,” says Harry. It must be at least five or six years since he came into the place with a hangover for breakfast one morning, around the time his former wife disappeared with their baby daughter, to Seattle as it turned out.
“Like everything,” the man says.
Harry produces a ten dollar bill and drops it on top of the two twenties.
“how’s that?” he asks. Everyone except for Harry, Maldonado and Sasha are out on the sidewalk now. Sasha can see them through the front window and the glass doors, waiting.
“Fine,” the man says.
“Thanks for the hospitality,” says harry with a straight face, putting away his wallet.
The man eyes the holstered Beretta that’s revealed before the opened flap of harry’s sport coat falls back into place, looks up again.
“You have a good night,” he says.
“Sure thing,” says Harry. “You, too.”
The assault team has come in two unmarked Ford Fairlanes, two cops each. They push Marv Rothko into the back of one and Manny into the other. Sasha seats himself behind the detectives in Harry’s black SUV. All three drivers slap emergency lights onto their roofs, switch them on and hit their sirens. Then, one after another, they pull out of their parking spaces, make tight U-turns and head north up the avenue. In his makeshift nest behind the concrete planter across the street, Jo-Jo half opens his eyes when the yelps of the sirens puncture his drunken sleep, sees blue light flash in the synagogue’s front window. Then the flashes stop, the sirens fade out, and he sinks back into unconsciousness.
To be continued…