Free Big Silence by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page A

comfortable.”

CHAPTER 4
    “B ESS CALLED,” MAISH SAID , standing by the booth at the T&L where Abe sat.
    The T&L on Devon wasn’t exactly packed but it was busy. The short-order cook, known to all as Terrell, an ex-con whom Abe had gotten his brother to hire a dozen years ago, was a genius with Jewish food, a black culinary genius. Jerome Terrell had learned to cook in prison and had quickly developed a passion for Jewish cooking after Maish hired him. He loved the smells, the taste, the lack of concern about what the ingredients might do to the human body. He cooked by taste and smell, never used measuring spoons or cups.
    “She wants me to call?” Lieberman asked in answer to his brother’s statement.
    “She wants me to be sure you eat right when you come here,” said Maish.
    Maish wore his ever-present white apron, his ever-present sour look on his sagging face, and a few more pounds than he should have been carrying for the sake of his own health, but owning a deli wasn’t the way to stay slim and whatever little care Maish had taken of himself had vanished with the murder of his son David by muggers less than two years earlier.
    “Then give me something that’s right,” said Abe. “A magical something that tastes great and doesn’t send cartoon cells scurrying to block my arteries with cholesterol like the slaves scurried with blocks of stone to build the pyramids.”
    “The Jews who were slaves in Egypt didn’t know from cholesterol,” called Herschel Rosen from the reserved table of the Alter Cockers, the old men who gathered every day at the T&L. The members of the group who might appear at any time of the day. The time changed depending on their schedules, but you could always count on at least a few of them when you came in for a meal or a nosh at the T&L. The Alter Cockers were all old Jews except for Howie Chen, a full-fledged member who had owned a Chinese restaurant one block away before his retirement. Howie had lived and worked in the neighborhood for fifty years. He spoke better Yiddish than most of the Alter Cockers, some of whom couldn’t speak Yiddish at all. A few of the members could actually speak Hebrew, not well, but they had picked up enough in pilgrimages to Israel over the years.
    “It’s a bad analogy,” Rosen continued emphatically. “Pyramids, cholesterol.”
    Howie was at the table. So was Sy Weintraub. Sy, at eighty, was the group’s athlete. He walked at least five miles a day, rain or shine. When the weather was really bad, Sy could be found at the Jewish Community Center on Touhy not far from Abe’s house. Sy walked resolutely around the basketball court softly humming till he did his five miles. Sy could hold his own in the table banter, but it was the company he savored, not the conversation. He would have been content to sit at the table near the window with the other old men and simply listen. This information on Sy Weintraub had been given to Abe by Maish, Nothing-Bothers Maish, except lots of things bothered Maish, more since David died. Maish just didn’t show it.
    “I’ll live with the bad analogy,” Abe called back. “It should only be my biggest faux pas of the day.”
    “Faux pas, again,” said Herschel. “You and Bess planning a trip to gay Paree or something or are you just showing off?”
    “I’ve decided to emulate the eloquent repartee of the great French lovers of history,” said Abe, straight-faced. “I’ve launched a personal campaign to woo my wife with poetry in French and Romanian. So I’m practicing French words at every opportunity.”
    “Romanian?” asked Herschel. “Romanian poetry?”
    “Great Romanian poetry,” said Abe.
    “Joking again,” said Herschel looking at the others at his table. “Another Myron Cohen we’ve got here.”
    “Where’s Al Bloombach?” asked Abe.
    “Bloombach and his wife are on a cruise,” said Herschel with some disdain. “My wife, alevai shalom, may she rest in peace, went on a cruise