Shot in the Dark Read online

  “The girl and I hooked up two or three weeks ago—through Cinder. We had a few laughs, went back to my place. I sent her packing the next morning, shook her loose, end of story—except she kept bugging me, so I told her she was a gold-digging whore, and I blocked her from my account.”

  Franco raised an eyebrow. “You called her a gold-digging whore?”

  “Sure. I’ve got to be honest, right? A lot of these bitches see bags of money when they look at a guy like me, so I’ve got to be harsh to shake them off.”

  “But you didn’t shake her off, because it didn’t end there, did it?”

  “It should have,” Crest said. “But she started stalking me, ruining my new hookups . . .”

  Holy cow, I thought. In this guy’s view, a “relationship” has a shorter shelf life than latte milk.

  On the other hand, I had to admit, our society didn’t exactly discourage his way of thinking. God help the “so-five-minutes-ago” product, idea, news stories, or health food trend. Sometimes it felt as if half the population was mentally swiping, on a mad mission to continually discard a perfectly decent thing in favor of something else—and not necessarily better, just different, and seemingly newer. Seemingly because, once you’d taken enough laps around the sun, you knew there was very little new under it.

  After Franco listened to Crest’s statements, he scratched his shaved head. “You’ll have to explain something to me. If you were trying to discourage Ms. Kendall’s interest in you, why did you agree to meet here tonight?”

  “Well, duh! She obviously tricked me. I didn’t come to meet her. I thought I was meeting a twenty-two-year-old model, but all I got was that skank and a gun in my face!”

  The interview went downhill from there. Franco finished the victim’s statement, had the man sign it, and sent him into the night.

  Franco sat back down and motioned me and Matt over.

  “To be fair,” I began, “she only shot at the ceiling and made a lot of threats. I don’t think she meant to hurt him, or anyone.”

  “That’s a safe bet,” Franco replied, “since the gun is a showbiz prop.”

  “What do you mean prop?”

  “The gun was loaded with blanks.”

  Matt smirked. “I knew I should have tackled her.”

  “Which begs the question . . .” Franco eyed him. “What were you doing while Joy’s mother was heroically disarming the shooter?”

  “Backup,” Matt said flatly.

  “How far?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake! I was acting as her backup. And if you don’t know what ‘backup’ means, you ought to watch a few TV police shows. You know, for some advanced training.”

  Franco opened his mouth. But before he could say something our daughter would regret, I cut between them. “Are you sure they were blanks? Those shots were so loud. So realistic.”

  “That’s the point,” Franco said. “Guns loaded with blanks are packed with more powder to give a louder bang for the camera or the audience.”

  “How did she even get a weapon like that?”

  “Carol Lynn Kendall had several IDs on her, including a union card for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and a temporary pass for the film studios in Astoria, Queens.”

  That certainly explained her friendliness with my assistant manager, Tucker. The thespian connection brought another thought, too . . .

  “During tonight’s incident, I got the impression Ms. Kendall was playing to the phone cameras in the room. Do you think this was some kind of publicity stunt?”

  “Not according to the victim. But I would like to hear your side of the story—from the beginning. No theories, please. Only what you saw and heard.”

  “Just the facts?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, Sergeant Friday, I’ll do my best . . .”

  I recounted everything, from the moment I heard the shots until I disarmed the shooter. I even repeated the crude remark made by one of the men as he was leaving the scene.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t see who he was . . .”

  I paused, waiting for Franco to catch up with his note-taking. My requisite serving of “just the facts” was complete, but I couldn’t stop myself from adding a tiny side of speculation.

  “That man I mentioned with the nasty remark? I can’t help wondering if he’d been goading the young woman on before I got up there. Maybe he was involved somehow, because I have a hunch what Ms. Kendall did here tonight was performance art. For reasons of her own, she was playing to those phones.”

  “We’ll review any footage we find, but I wouldn’t put much stock in that theory. At every suicide attempt or hostage situation, you’ll find some bonehead yelling for the poor slob to jump or pull the trigger.” He shrugged the shrug of a New York street cop. “Human nature.”

  With that, Franco closed his notebook.

  “Nice work tonight, Coffee Lady. No harm done, except to that poor girl’s record. If she’s lucky, a sharp attorney will get the felony charge pleaded down.”

  He cleared his throat. “One more thing. There’s a news hound from the Post who’s been haunting our stationhouse. If he gets wind of this, it’s going to hit the paper.”

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t get wind of it,” I said.

  Franco studied me. “You’re worried about bad publicity?”

  “I’d hate to lose customers over safety concerns.”

  “What about the mobile phone footage you mentioned?”

  I waved away that worry. “This world is an ocean of motion. With millions of people continually uploading videos, I doubt tonight’s little incident will make a ripple.”

  Four

  “TIME to stress eat!” Esther announced an hour later.

  By now, the police were gone, and I’d made an executive decision to close early. We locked the doors, cleaned the tables, and replenished supplies for the morning.

  We also loaded most of our leftover pastries into the City Harvest van for New York’s food banks and soup kitchens. I say “most” because after our rough evening, Esther, Dante, and Matt all wanted to nosh.

  My own appetite had vanished with an adrenaline rush that was still making me manic. So instead of food, I steamed up a latte with a heavy dose of our Homemade Caramel Apple Cider Syrup, a comfort drink remedy for one stupendously uncomfortable night.

  I insisted our snacking be done in the second-floor lounge—an earnest attempt to exorcise the evening’s negative energy by eating with joy. And then I heard it—

  Tinker-Tinker!

  After all the drama, Matt was swiping again.

  I wanted to scream. Instead, I gritted my teeth and civilly asked—

  “What will it take for you to give your inner Peter Pan a rest?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a syndrome. You can look it up on your smartphone—later.”

  As Matt waved me off and mumbled something about “just a quick check,” Esther pursed her dark purple lips. “It’s useless, boss. He’s become hooked on the idea of hookups. And there are plenty of fish in that sea, which, come to think of it, is the theme of another of those shop-and-drop apps . . .”

  As Matt’s thumbs continued roving madly across his phone screen, Esther noticed my distress and elbowed the man.

  “Be careful,” she told him. “Or we’ll think you’re phubbing.”

  Matt’s brow furrowed. “Phubbing?”

  “An abbreviation for partner phone snubbing.” Her thick black glasses slipped down her nose, and she peered over them like a goth psychoanalyst. “I should also point out that ignoring the people around you to check your phone isn’t just rude. It’s the first sign of cyber addiction.”

  My ex, who was (ironically enough) seated in Richard Crest’s favorite high-back chair, flashed a smug smile.

 
“Okay, I’ll shut mine off, if you all do the same.”

  When Esther and Dante quickly agreed, Matt’s jaw dropped. He didn’t expect two young baristas to welcome a phone-free break. But I’d shared enough shifts with them to know they were as tired as I was of Manhattan Phone Zombies.

  Forced to go along with his own dare, Matt squinted with annoyance as he shut down his device and tucked it into his pocket.

  Esther shot me a triumphant glance before pondering more important matters: whether to go for a melt-in-your-mouth Chocolate Soufflé Cupcake, one of our famous Banana Bread Muffins with Maple-Crunch Frosting, or another Birthday Cake Biscotti (long golden cookies baked with rainbow sprinkles and dipped in vanilla glaze with more sprinkles).

  The decision was made for her when Dante grabbed the remaining two Birthday Cake Biscotti and Matt reached for the last Banana Bread Muffin.

  With a shrug, Esther picked up a Chocolate Soufflé Cupcake. And since those beautifully airy treats were a light bite, she also grabbed a rustic wedge of our buttery, crumbly Espresso Shortbread before plopping into an overstuffed armchair.

  “This evening made me feel really old,” she announced, dunking her shortbread into her flat white.

  “Old?” Matt responded. “You’re not even thirty.”

  “Yes, but I can’t get into this mobile phone culture,” she said between satisfying chews. “I prefer the way it used to be—when people hooked up by chance at concerts, clubs, or poetry slams—which is where I met my Boris.”

  “Don’t forget art galleries,” Dante added, brushing confetti-laced crumbs from his T-shirt. “And museums, and sculpture parks, and street fairs.”

  “Sure, and bars, buses, and subways!” Esther said. “But my point is that people did things out in the world that interested them, where they’d be open to the magic of organic meetings. Now everything is techno-polluted. It’s all phones and texts and swipes. It’s not dating—it’s shopping. You’re a product. And you’re judged, not by the depths of your soul, but by the artifice of Instagram appeal, job description, and some sort of cutesy ironic copy.”

  “It’s true.” Dante nodded. “You have a few seconds to capture interest. Like a human pop-up ad. Only you’re selling yourself instead of an energy drink or cellular plan. It’s no wonder so many of the connections are lacking in . . . you know—”

  “Ubuntu,” Matt finished for him, licking his fingers clean of Maple-Crunch Frosting.

  Dante and Esther blinked. “What?”

  “Ubuntu. It’s an African term. Bantu, actually.”

  “But what does it mean?” Esther asked with her goth-eyed stare.

  Matt tipped his head in my direction. “Ask Clare. She’s an expert.”

  Now my two baristas were staring at me.

  Five

  MY ex-husband surprised me. I wasn’t the global coffee hunter, he was. The man had trekked across Africa more times than I’d been to Brooklyn.

  “You’re the one who taught me the term,” I told him.

  “But you put ubuntu into practice more than anyone I know—outside of the Nguni, anyway.”

  Esther threw up her hands. “So what does it mean?”

  “It means humanity,” I said.

  “More than that . . .” Matt leaned forward. “Ubuntu is a deep-seated belief that humanity is something we owe to one another. How I act toward you is what defines me. Not what I have or what I wear—but how I treat you, how I interact with you.”

  “In Africa, it’s also about sharing,” I pointed out. “Generosity of spirit and community. An awareness that we’re all interconnected.”

  “That’s right,” Matt said. “And that’s why I actually like the dating apps—” He sat back, put his hands behind his head, and grinned. “I can connect with much more ease and frequency.”

  Esther snorted. “Too bad everyone swiping doesn’t believe in ubuntu!”

  “Forget humanity,” Dante griped. “I’d settle for simple civility. Some of these girls are so arrogant. Right to your face, they start ticking off every single thing that’s ‘wrong’ with you! Like you offended them by showing up and being less than their ideal. And then there’s the potential danger of the instant hookup.”

  I frowned. “Danger?”

  Dante nodded. “I swiped right on this one girl. She had a great smile and was lots of fun from the start—bubbly, flirty, totally into me. She asked to come back to my place, and I thought I was about to have the greatest night. We started kissing, and then . . .”

  Matt’s eyes widened. “And then?”

  “She broke off the kiss and ran down a price list.”

  “A what?!” I was certain I’d misheard him, but he repeated—

  “A price list.”

  “Yeah,” Matt said, waving his hand. “That’s happened to me.”

  Esther faced Dante. “So what did you do, Baldini? Bite the bullet and pay for it?”

  “I told her to leave. That’s when she freaked out and threatened me. Said if I didn’t pay, she’d have her pimp work me over.”

  “I hope you called the police!” I said.

  Dante shrugged. “At first I didn’t want to—the situation was totally embarrassing. So I tried to reason with her, told her to leave or I’d call the cops. She had a kind of tantrum, kicked the furniture, damaged a painting I was working on . . . so I finally phoned 911. That’s when she ran.” He shook his head. “I thought it was going to be the best night. It was the worst.”

  Esther tapped her chin. “You know what, Baldini? I think you just gave me the subject of our next poetry slam.”

  “What? How I dodged a pimp beatdown?”

  “No! Hookup Horrors. You know, Dating App Disasters.”

  Dante grunted. “Yeah, I can see it. Catfishing for Fun and Profit.”

  “Catfishing?” I frowned. “I don’t suppose you’re talking about the thing you do with a pole near a well-stocked river.”

  “Catfishing is luring someone into a relationship using a fake identity.”

  The confounded look on my face spurred Esther into gleefully defining an entire list of terms from the dating app culture. There was—

  Breadcrumbing: “When you send flirty messages (crumbs) to keep a person interested without committing to an actual date—the digital age’s version of leading someone on.”

  Ghosting: “You end a relationship not by telling the person up front but by killing all contact. You ignore their texts and voice mails, block them from your social media pages, and expect them to ‘get the hint.’”

  Benching: “From the sports term, meaning being put on the bench. When a current love interest keeps texting and flirting with you to keep you around, just in case other ‘better’ prospects don’t pan out.”

  More terms ensued: Catch and Release, Cushioning, Haunting, Love Bombing, Slow Fade, and Thot, aka “That hoe over there.”

  “Goodness.” I shuddered. “We’ve come a long way from ubuntu!”

  Shaking my head, I studied Matt, hoping he’d learned something from this conversation, but after decades tramping through the most dangerous coffee-growing regions of the world, he didn’t scare so easily. Instead, he looked distracted and was fidgeting in place—not unlike an addict who needed his fix.

  “You know, Matt, after what happened to Richard Crest, you might consider giving swipe-right dating a rest for a while.”

  “Richard Crest?!” Matt cried. “How could you imply I have anything in common with that walking, talking asshole of a human being?”

  “I only meant—”

  “Mr. Boss is right.” Esther shook her finger at me. “He’s nothing like Crest. Last week the guy crushed an NYU grad student at the coffee bar, left the poor girl trembling and in tears. She was in such bad shape, Nancy brought her upstairs to calm her down.”

  “You saw this?”


  Esther nodded. “Another time, he left a date so upset she threw her latte at his back.”

  “You hear that, Clare?” Matt pressed. “That’s not me. I love women. All women. I treat them with respect and affection. The women I meet walk away on a cloud!”

  “I know you have a good heart,” I said. “But from what I’ve seen, you’re swiping your screen like mad. You’re tearing through women.”

  “I’m not tearing through women any more than they’re tearing through me! I use swipe-to-meet apps, sure—to meet like-minded, sophisticated ladies of legal age who want to hook up, have a good time, and move on.”

  “And that sort of casual date makes you feel good?”

  “It makes us both feel good. None of the women I’ve met has ever complained, and plenty want a repeat performance. He leaned back and crossed his arms. If I’m not mistaken, one of them is in this very room . . .”

  “Oh, please!” I said and changed the subject. (Matt had many shortcomings, and I knew from experience “performance” wasn’t one of them, but his prowess in the bedroom wasn’t the point.) “What do you even talk about on a Cinder date?”

  “Food, wine, movies, our drinks, the waiter’s mustache. It doesn’t matter because the conversations never last long.”

  “And afterward?”

  “We kiss good-bye and go on with our lives.”

  “No sharing of thoughts? No baring of souls? No intimacy?”

  “Intimacy?” Matt laughed. “They don’t want to know I’m twice divorced or live in a warehouse on the crap end of Brooklyn any more than I want to know about their skinflint boss or their backstabbing coworkers. That’s not why we connected.”

  “Connected?” What a word! “How can two people truly connect without intimacy? Be honest, Matt, with your second marriage over, isn’t this swipe-to-meet obsession your way of coping with loneliness?”

  “Not everyone is looking for intimacy, Clare. People can enjoy one another’s company without getting too personal, too invasive. Whether you like it or not, Cyndi Lauper’s ’80s manifesto is still true. Sometimes girls just wanna have fun. I’m happy to help them.”