April 16, 2021

The Deli

Zakarian had been murdered and, so far, I was the only guy with a motive. There was much work to do but we couldn’t do it on an empty stomach. The rain which had started a few days earlier, had not let up, so Goldfarb and I were sitting at my pool waiting for Lewberg.

We were starving.

It was 3:00pm already and Lewberg had not gotten back from Schwartzman’s. Schwartzman’s was a deli up in Pompano which specialized in Montreal style smoked meat sandwiches made famous by the Montreal restaurant whose name they had pretty much ripped off. The NY style pastrami and corned beef which abounded in South Florida could not hold a candle to the smoked meat we had grown up on and the quality at Schwartzman’s quite honestly was as close to Schwartz’s as was its name.

Anyway, Lewberg had lost rock, paper, scissors and had been sent for the pickup.

“Lewberg went for a drink,” muttered Goldfarb. “Keep those chips away from me.” We had retrieved bags of salt and vinegar chips from Lewberg’s golf bag and had been snacking on them.

Goldfarb was likely right. Schwartzman’s was located in a shopping plaza right next to a gentleman’s club called The Pleasure Dome. Truth be told, Lewberg wasn’t a big fan of those sorts of establishments but the bar stocked Ketel vodka so he put aside whatever philosophical objections he had in favor of a strong drink.

I was about to curse him too but then he walked into the house. I didn’t hear him or see him but I could smell the delicious combination of smoked meat, coleslaw, and potato salad.

“About time,” said Goldfarb.

“I got some extra karnatzle,” said Lewberg. “Plus I emptied their fridge out of cream soda.”

“Oh baby!” Exclaimed Goldfarb who had already forgiven Lewberg for his tardiness.

Then Lewberg said “The weirdest thing just happened,” he said as he laid out his bounty.

“I went into the bar to grab a quick Ketel and cran…”

Goldfarb turned to me and said “What did I tell you!”

Lewberg, ignoring the interruption ploughed on “so the bartender pours me a drink and I raise my glass and make my normal toast.”

“Fucking Zakarian,” I say.

“Yeah. Fucking Zakarian,” Lewberg repeats “and then the bartender says ‘You knew Zakarian?’”

“No way!” I exclaim.

“So I say, ‘knew him? I’m best friends with the prime suspect in his murder.’”

“Did you really say that?” Asked Goldfarb.

“Nah. But would have been funny right?”

“So what was the story?” I asked.

“Turns out he was a regular,” continued Lewberg, “until a couple of weeks ago when he got thrown out and banned for getting into a fight with some other customer.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah. But it gets better. It was some fight over a dancer. The guy said he was going to kill Zakarian for dating his girlfriend.”

“Who is the guy?” I asked.

“Don’t know. But the bartender said the night manager would know. He’s the one who broke up the fight.”

“Well boys,” I said “looks like we are taking a road trip.”

“Have to go where the evidence leads us,” said Lewberg.

“What is it,” asked Lewberg, wiping a dollop of stray mustard from his mouth, “full on nudity?”

“As far as the eye can see,” said Lewberg.

“I’ll bring my glasses,” I said.

“I’ll bring the twenties,” said Lewberg.

“I’ll bring the hand sanitizer,” said Goldfarb.

That evening, we squeezed into Lewberg’s convertible, with me driving, at around 6:30 and headed to Pompano. Lewberg said there would be no action at that time and Goldfarb said he didn’t want any action. The three of us had all put on long pants for the occasion. Goldfarb had exchanged his usual slides for a pair of sneakers and one of us, I won’t say who, might have even been wearing cologne. We parked across from Schwartzman’s and walked to the Pleasure Dome. The doorman, who was marking up a program for the nearby Pompano dog track, asked, without looking up, for $2 for parking. Goldfarb, showing remarkable restraint, pulled out two dollar bills and handed them to the doorman without making an argument about having to pay for free parking.

“Do you remember a guy getting thrown out of the club a few weeks back?”

“Buddy, somebody gets thrown out of this club every night.”

“This would have been a few weeks back,” I pulled out a crumbled copy of the club newsletter out of my back pocket. It had a picture of Zakarian taken from the club championship. I was standing next to him. I showed the doorman the picture. “This is the guy.”

The doorman, without even looking at the picture, said “I don’t think I remember.”

Then Lewberg, in a move so deft it was hard not to assume he had performed it dozens of times before, snatched the bills right out of the doorman’s hand and replaced them with a twenty.

“I can’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday,” he said with a smile.

“I like this dog in the seventh,” said the doorman. “Same name as my first wife, Mildred. She could run like the wind.” He circled the name on the program then looked up and said “Yeah, that’s the guy. Got thrown out.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “I just told you that. Anything else?”

“Nope. But you can ask Goldfarb.”

“I can ask Goldfarb?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would I ask Goldfarb?”

“He was there. He was the one who broke up the fight.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The doorman pointed to a Coupe de Ville parked in the VIP parking. The green Florida state plates were personalized. They said Goldfarb.

“Goldfarb?” I said, looking at our own Goldfarb who had lost some color.

“Oscar Goldfarb,” said the doorman “He’s the night manager.” He opened the door and ushered us in “Have fun gentlemen.”

“This case,” I said to Goldfarb as I dragged him through the door, “keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

The Dome was very dark, very smoky, and was playing very loud music I suspected was also used on Guantanamo Bay prisoners. It had a long bar and a buffet set up in the back. There was nobody on the stage and, save for two women I presumed to be dancers sitting at the bar who were busy on their phones and sharing what looked to be a plate of nachos, we were the only people in the entire place. The dancers looked up, I want to say briefly, but it was even shorter than that, when we walked in but then went back to their phones and nachos. In other words, pretty much like any other bar we had ever been in.

The waitress, who already looked like she was counting the hours remaining in her shift, came and took our orders. Goldfarb had his diet coke. Lewberg his Ketel and cran. And I, knowing better than to order a Guinness in a place like this, ordered a Bud Light I knew I would not drink.

When she came back with our orders, I asked if we could see the manager.

She said “Hey, I don’t make the prices. But I don’t blame you, $15 for a freakin’ Bud.”

I said “No, no, the prices are fine. We just wanted to ask him a few questions about his car.”

“Oh, ok hon.”

Two minutes later a man came out. I’m not sure what we were expecting but he was tall and lanky with a full moustache. He was wearing a vest with a huge Lonestar state belt buckle. He looked a little, actually a lot, like the actor Sam Elliot who, amongst other things, played a cowboy in The Big Lebowski. Later, in the car ride back, we would all agree he looked like a cowboy. What he did not look like was a Goldfarb.

But, that is who he was. Oscar Goldfarb. Those were the first words out of his mouth when he came to our table and shook our hands.

The second words were “I’ll take $50,000 for the car and I’ll throw in my Waylon Jennings Greatest Hits CD.” Then he winked and said “Truth is, that sonabitch has been stuck in there for two weeks.”

I said “Actually, we wanted to ask you about a little fracas which happened in this establishment a few weeks ago.” Again I pulled out the club newsletter.

Oscar Goldfarb pushed the paper away. “I can't help you. At this club we value discretion above everything else.”

Then Goldfarb, who had finally come back to earth, said “Discretion is the Goldfarb credo.”

“That’s right,” said Oscar Goldfarb “it is the Goldfarb credo.”

Goldfarb said “I know from what you speak.” He took out his wallet from his pocket and removed his driver’s license. “You see,” he handed Oscar Goldfarb his license, “my name is Harold Goldfarb.”

And Oscar Goldfarb said “No shit. Look at that , we are mishpocha,” which was maybe the way Jews from Texas pronounced it.

“Yes,” answered Goldfarb, “and as mishpocha,” Goldfarb delicately pronouncing it, “I wonder if you could do me a favor.”

“Anything for a landsman,” said Oscar Goldfarb.

“Well,” continued Goldfarb, “my buddy here has a bit of a problem. Couple of weeks ago, he told a guy,” he took the newsletter from my hand and pointed to Zakarian “that he wished he would drop dead. Yesterday, the guy did drop dead. The cops think my buddy did it.”

“Oy,” said Oscar Goldfarb. Then turning to me “you didn’t?

“ No,” I said.

“Sounds like you have some tsures.” He pronounced it in a way no Jew had ever pronounced it in 3000 years.

“We heard he got into a scuffle here. Someone threatened to kill him.”

“Thirty dancers here on any given night and Zakarian is fixated on Roxy. Pays her just to drink with him. Her boyfriend didn’t like that. Told Zakarian to beat it. The two went at it. I kicked them both out and banned them. Roxy hasn’t been back since.”

“I don’t get it,” I said “his girlfriend is a dancer but he didn’t want her to dance?”

“Dancing he was fine, with” said Oscar Goldfarb “but talking and making a connection he wasn’t so crazy about.”

“Any chance you have a name?”

“Joe, I don’t know his last name.”

“Any idea where we might find him?”

“He’s a poker dealer at the Indian casino off Alligator Alley.”

“And Roxy?”

“You find Joe. You’ll find Roxy.”

“Ok thanks Oscar. I appreciate it,” said Goldfarb.

“My pleasure. I hope it works out. Can I get you boys a little entertainment? It’s a little slow but I’m sure I can scare up some talent.”

“Thanks Oscar, raincheck,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Lewberg “besides, I just ate. You know what they say, no lapdancing 30 minutes after you eat.”

We walked out of the casino and it was still light. The doorman had taken off his shirt and was catching the last of the setting sun.

“Great,” said Goldfarb “first time in a strip club in 30 years and this is what I see.”

“C’mon Harold,” I said, “don’t despair. The night is still young.”

And with that we got back into the car and drove to an Indian casino in the middle of the everglades in the hope of finding a jealous boyfriend poker dealer who may have already killed a man.

I was pretty sure we were going to need another bottle of hand sanitizer.

The end.