It was a small kitchen to begin with, way too small for what it had become. A stainless-steel prep table stood at the entrance, topped by dual steel shelves. The top shelf was lipped; live tickets were fitted into the lip in the order in which they came in. Beyond the prep table were two workstations, each capped by a steel refrigerator. The dishwashing station was located along the back wall of the room. On the shelf over the grill sat an Amana commercial microwave with a door that never closed on the first attempt. Over the sandwich bar sat the most important and most fought over component of any restaurant kitchen: the house boom box. Beside it, a Rudy Ray Moore poster, now gray with grease, had been taped to the wall.
Maria Juarez worked the cold end of the menu and James Posten, the grill man, worked hots. Their stations were on opposite walls, so that Maria and James’s backs were to each other while they worked lunch.
Darnell, the bar’s career dishwasher, had previously handled the lunch business himself, preparing the one daily special and placing orders on the reach-through, from which the day tender or the waitress would retrieve and serve them. In those couple of hours, Ramon would bus the trays in and wash dishes when he was able. But when the owner of the place, a smallish bespectacled man named Phil Saylor, had decided to expand the menu, he had hired Maria and James and made Darnell the expediter – the person who called out the orders, garnished the plates, and moved the lunches onto the reach-through. Since Ramon would be occupied out in the dining room with the extra table turnover, Phil had suggested they hire a new dishwasher, but Darnell, who had been washing dishes at the Spot since serving out an armed-robbery sentence at Lorton years earlier, wouldn’t hear of it. He took a small raise and told Phil he’d get to the dishes after the lunch rush was through. The popularity of the new menu had surprised everyone, though – it was previously assumed that the Spot’s regulars would not care to consume any substance that required chewing – and the three-hat arrangement with Darnell wasn’t exactly working out as planned. Since the new system had been put in place, there was often high confusion in the kitchen during the rush, and the dining room had run out of plates and silver more than once.
“A little late, aren’t you?” said Phil Saylor with halfhearted force, noticing Stefanos by the door. It was about as tough as the mellow Saylor got with his employees.
“I had an appointment,” said Stefanos, his eyes staying on Saylor’s, letting him know with his overly serious look that the appointment had to do with his “other” life. Saylor was an ex-cop, which explained the high percentage of plainclothesmen and uniforms among the Spot’s clientele. Phil was retired, but the profession had never entirely left his blood. Invoking his investigative gigs was a cheap way for Stefanos to reach Saylor, but it worked.
“Try to make it on time,” mumbled Saylor.
“I will.”
“Nick,” said James Posten, who sported a fox-head fur stole draped over his uniform shirt. “How you doin’, man?”
James wore eye shadow and carried a walking stick with an amber stone glued in its head. He went six-four, two eighty, and most of it was hard.
“James.”
“Ni,” said Maria Juarez. Her reddish lipstick clashed with the rinse in her shoulder-length hair. She was on the short and curvy side, with the worn, aging-before-her-time look of many working-class immigrant women across the city. When she smiled her lovely smile, the hard life and age lines on her face seemed to fall away.
“Hey, baby.”
“Check this out,” she said, pulling a locket away from her chest and opening it up for Stefanos to see. He went to her, looked at the photograph of her gorgeous five-year-old daughter, Rosita, cut to fit the locket’s oval shape.
“She’s beautiful,” said Stefanos, noticing the patch of discol-oration on Maria’s temple.
“She doing good in school,” said Maria. “The teacher say she smart.”
“How could she not be,” said Stefanos, “with a mother like you?”
“Ah, Ni!” she said, making a wave of her hand, then wiping her hands dry on her apron as she returned, blushing, to her salads.
Darnell removed his leather kufi and wiped sweat from his forehead. The knife scar running across his neck was pink against his deep brown skin. “You got business in here, Nick? ’Cause we’re trying to prepare for lunch.”
“Just, you know, stopped in to brighten everyone’s day.”
“Yeah, well we gotta get this place set up, man.”
“What’re the specials?”
“Chef’s salad,” said Maria.
“Got a nice grilled chicken breast today,” said James, raising his spatula in the air, affecting the manner of a school-taught chef. “Marinated it overnight in teriyaki, some herbs and shit. I’m not lyin’, man, that bird is so tender you could fuck it – excuse me, Maria.”
“Is okay,” said Maria.
“Wouldn’t want to lie about that,” said Stefanos.
“Tell the truth,” said James, “and shame the devil.”
“Thought you were gone,” said Darnell, trying to get around Stefanos.
“I’m goin’,” said Stefanos, shaking Darnell’s hand as he passed, then putting pressure on the fleshy, tender spot between Darnell’s thumb and forefinger.
Darnell smiled, caught a grip on Stefanos’s other hand, pushed down so that it bent unnaturally forward at the wrist. They stood toe-to-toe, grunting, until Stefanos yanked his hand free.
“All right, man,” said Darnell, clapping Stefanos on the shoulder.
Stefanos said, “All right.”
“You guys through playing?” said Saylor.
“Yeah,” said Stefanos.
“So what are you still standing here for?”
“I was wondering, Phil,” said Stefanos. “Could I have a word with you, out in the bar?”
“So how well do you know this guy?” said Saylor.
Stefanos folded a dry bar rag into a neat rectangle, tucked it behind the belt line of his jeans so it rested against his hip. “Old family friend.”
“How old?”
“His old man worked for my grandfather in the forties, when my grandfather had his grill over on Fourteenth and S.”
“Okay, but how well do you know him?”
“I’ve run into him a couple of times in the last twenty years.”
“Uh-huh.” Saylor scratched his chin. “If his father worked for your granddaddy, then he must be pretty old.”
“I’d say he’s cruising up on fifty.”
“He must be a real go-getter. Fifty years old and he wants to work in the kitchen of a joint like this.”
“I don’t even know if he does want to work here. A mutual friend of ours suggested it. You remember the Pizza Parlor Murders a couple of years back?”
“I remember it. So what?”
“Dimitri Karras’s son was the kid who got run down by the getaway car.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. This guy’s no loser. The bottom fell out on him, is what it is. He’s trying to put it together, and I thought we could help.” Stefanos locked eyes with Saylor. “Look, Phil, the setup we got right now isn’t exactly working out. Darnell hasn’t caught a grip on the expediter position, and Ramon can’t bus tables and wash the load of dishes we got with the business we’re doing. Put Darnell back at the sink and bring Karras in to expedite for two hours a day. He’s not desperate for money, so it’s not a case of how much you pay him. It would do the guy good to just go somewhere every day. Get into the flow of normal life again, you know?”
Saylor pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You think he can do it? I mean, I feel sorry for the guy about his kid and all that, but I don’t want to bring someone with emotional problems in here who’s gonna screw up my business.”
“Karras was some kind of college instructor if I remember right. And he used to run a multistore retail operation. So I gotta think he can handle this.”