Street Hungry: A Mystery

By Bill Kent

In Street Hungry by Bill Kent, Shep Ladderback, the Philadelphia Press's aged obit writer, mentors the young Andrea (Andy) Cosicki, fledgling journalist and daughter of the late political fixer, Benny the Lunch Cosicki. Ladderback (who knows everything about everyone in the city) wants Andy to cover the death of a street fruit and vegetable salesman, which seems to him to be suspicious.

But Andy has a date for lunch at the Loup Garu, a so-hot-you-can't-get-a-reservation-for-three-months restaurant with a new "culinary concept" (which seems to be horrible food combinations, trumpeted as Transylvanian-Caribbean-fusion) and turns him down. (Ladderback knows that Loup Garu means werewolf; Andy does not.)

But Andy ends up in a big story anyhow, when one of the country's most notable food critics drops dead at her table.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Sep 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781466881822

Bill Kent

Bill Kent is a writer, journalist, critic and author of fiction and non-fiction books, including the novels Street Hungry and Street Fire. His writing has appeared in more than 40 regional and national publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Magazine. He lives in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, with his wife and son.

Book preview

1

dead weight

The name of the man with the vegetables was Wisnitz but everybody who bought from him, and even a few that didn’t, called him Weight. He’d stop his truck in front of a bus stop, a fire hydrant, up on the curb, maybe even in front of somebody’s garage door, and he wouldn’t care, because he knew he was providing a service to the community, and, in the city, if you’re providing a service—if you’re a cop, a plumber, a carpenter, an ambulance driver, a tow truck operator, a delivery man—then you put your vehicle where you have to and you don’t care if the bus can get to the corner or you back up traffic all the way into the next neighborhood.

If you provide a service in a neighborhood, the rules of decorum do not apply.

On that morning, the rush hour had come and gone. The streets were clear of the drivers who will kill you if they are a minute late to work.

The man known as Weight Wisnitz didn’t shave that morning. He simply didn’t feel like it, and, in his line of work, if you don’t feel like doing something, you don’t do it. His father had been boss at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and because of that, or, maybe, because Weight’s father had been born in Poland and was lucky enough to make it in the Land of the Free where you were free to shave every day of the week, Tadieuz Wisnitz shaved every day.

His son was self-employed and when you’re self-employed you are free to shave whenever you want, unless you are meeting the public. The public, of course, has expectations and if you sell produce for cheap, the public doesn’t expect you should be making so much money that you’d be dressing decent and shaving every day.

So, in the land of the free, even unto the second generation, the freedom had more to do with what people thought of you, than what you thought of yourself.

Wisnitz wore shorts and a GO PHILLIES! T-shirt that, long ago, might have been white. The shorts/shirt combo, while affecting a decidedly casual air, made him look scrawnier than a scarecrow. Stuck halfway down his twisted nose were a pair of glasses grimy enough to be portholes on an ocean liner that had already sunk.

Weight did not get out of the truck as much as he swung one leg out, and then another, like a Pony Express rider who has braved the elements and stared down, or outrun, all kinds of nasty types, to be here, at this corner, to perform his service for the four people who now stood on the sidewalk beside the truck.

He went to the open flatbed of his truck, gazed past the jumble of crates and boxes. Then he impulsively plucked a handful of supremely purple plums from a box and, to prove that they were exactly what they appeared to be, bit into one so the juice exploded all over his face. He put the plum in his mouth, holding it between his teeth, and then came around and popped a plum into the hand of the breathtakingly beautiful girl in the running shorts and the T-shirt with BUY ART printed across her chest. He gave her a wink that said, I got what you want.

This did not please the old woman in black next to her. She was wearing the uniform of a professional widow: a shapeless black dress, black sweater, black shoes and shawl. The woman was a little bit miffed that she’d known Weight before this half-naked girl was even born. More than that, this widow had become something of a local celebrity, appearing as an extra in two movies and one TV show (or was it two TV shows and one movie?) shot in South Philly, so that, whenever anybody recognized her on the street, she had to say that fame was not what it was cracked up to be, and that she had to spring for the video upgrade for her alarm system, and that, fame being what it is, the one thing she wanted was to be treated just like a normal person, even if the truth was she was talked into the upgrade by a no-good rip-off artist, and she really and truly enjoyed being treated like a celebrity, that she could get used to being treated like a celebrity.

So instead of treating her as she deserved, Weight Wisnitz gave the plum to the half-naked girl first! This was a low blow.

Behind the widow was a dignified man in a dark sport coat, white shirt, dark tie and black jef cap. His brown brogans gleamed.

For the old man, a peach or a pear or a coconut from Weight Wisnitz was a reason to be on the street, and smell the air and feel the sunlight on your face, and see all the changes in the neighborhood. It was also a chance to talk about everything except what he did for a living.

Weight Wisnitz liked seeing him, but Weight Wisnitz liked seeing just about anyone who would take from him. Talking to the customers Weight Wisnitz met on his route was part of the service he provided. It was a way of keeping in touch.

The man in the jef cap would typically wait until Weight had sold whatever he was selling to the last person, and then they’d talk about people they knew, or once knew. The conversation would frequently turn to the professional types that were coming into some of the neighborhoods and buying all the properties and kicking out the widows and the widowers and then reselling the places to even more professional types who never said hello when you passed them on the street, like the one that was standing next to the girl, trying not to jump all over her.

The man in the cap did not appreciate the professional types moving in, like this fellow who was trying not to stare at the girl in the shorts and T-shirt. You’d think a self-respecting person would keep his eyes to himself, but this young fellow was absolutely entranced with the girl.

The professional type had moved in a few months ago, into the second floor of a subdivided Smartt Street rowhouse. He’d picked the Brideshead section of South Philly to live in because he’d heard that South Philly is the city where you can park a car—even the old, classic BMW that he owned—anywhere you damn well want to—in the middle of the street, on the sidewalk, even—and not get a ticket. Exactly why this was so was never explained to him, but he believed it probably had something to do with South Philly also being the home of The Mob.

He had heard all kinds of things about the neighborhood when he moved in, but when you’re working sixteen-hour days you don’t have time to so much as walk around, but now that he’d been laid off he was sleeping late, and this asshole with the megaphone had to wake him up, telling him that he should eat, like he wasn’t doing enough of that already, and now that he was up, he just had to see who it was who was being such an asshole and that brought him to the window of his apartment where he saw this blonde goddess in the oversized T-shirt and the undersized running shorts and he threw on some clothes and hoped he could get a conversation going and do something other than drink espresso, cruise the net and play computer solitaire, and instead of dropping one of a half-dozen of the lines that had gotten conversations going at bars with high-end microbrews, he found himself standing in front of a dorky geezer with plum slime dripping down his mouth.

Weight winked at the professional type. He stuck the sticky plum in professional type’s hand. Then he removed the plum that he had been holding in his mouth, breathed plum breath at the professional type, winked and said, A plum this good’ll put lead in your pencil.

Right then, right there, the professional type decided that there was no way he was buying a plum from this man.

Weight popped the half-eaten plum back into his mouth and was going back to the truck when he heard the widow say, Feh! which is what old women are supposed to say when the worst that can possibly happen, happens.

Weight turned around and saw that the professional type dropped the plum. He opened his hand and it fell right out, hit the side walk, bounced off the curb and fell into the sewer grate.

The professional type had made a big mistake and he knew it, and his instinct was to pull out some money and buy something, when he stopped. He smelled a scam. The produce seller had put that plum in the professional type’s hand in such a way that it fell right out, and if the professional type was inclined to feel like it was his fault, why, he’d be more likely to buy one of those plums, wouldn’t he?

Sure enough, the produce seller pulled a plastic bag off a rack in the back of his truck, loaded it up with plums, dropped it on the hanging scale so the little arrow spun around like a pressure valve about to blow and then handed the bag to the professional guy, took the plum out of his mouth, and proclaimed, You got weight!

The professional guy didn’t take the bag. He just stood there and said, How much for the tomatoes?

At this point, it would have been convenient if somebody standing next to him would have mentioned why people called Weight Wisnitz Weight instead of whatever his first name was: because, when you bought from Wisnitz, the plum he gave you to taste may not have been even remotely similar to those that went into the bag, but when Weight Wisnitz handed you pocked, bruised, squishy-on-one-side plums that had been sitting in his truck a little too long, that came from cases marked DIT (damaged in transit) from the Food Distribution Center down in South Philadelphia, he’d tell you that you got weight, as if to say that a pound of squishy plums may not look great or taste great, but they weighed every bit as much as a pound of plums should, if not maybe a little bit more.

If you watched what went into your bag, and watched even more carefully what went into the bags of some of Weight’s regulars, you’d see that the man not only played favorites, but he had a way of slipping in all kinds of things.

The one thing you’re not supposed to do, though, was talk price. Weight told you his price on the megaphone, and it didn’t matter that the echoing buildings had turned it all to a garbled, incomprehensible mess of words. Just by standing there, you indicated your need for the service he was providing. What the hell else would you be doing on a street corner at 10:16 A.M.?

Weight Wisnitz had a rule about comparison shoppers, and the rule was, you don’t say a thing to them. You pretend you don’t hear and you stick something in your mouth so you can’t talk, and you start filling another bag and then you hand it to them, take their money and hope they go away.

So Wisnitz clamped down on the plum with the few teeth he had left, tossed the bag of plums back in the truck, swaggered around to the flat bed where the produce lay in open cases under the September sun. He winked at the girl, and nodded at the old man and the widow.

Then he put both hands on the wad of plastic bags hanging from the rack by the truck’s scale. Weight Wisnitz ripped one of those bags off the rack like a real man, a man with experience, a man who knows how to do things right.

He began filling the bag with Jersey beefsteaks, tossing them in such a way the professional guy would not see the tomatoes with bruises, the cracks, the blotches and green spots.

The professional-type guy became nervous, and it didn’t help that he was at a loss for a conversational opening with the brilliantly blond woman. Though only in his mid-20s, he had learned how to work those insanely long hours that indicate that you’re on the fast track, even if you’re not. And he became an expert at the kind of women who would have absolutely nothing to do with him. This female next to him could go either way. She clearly kept herself in top physical condition, with that thin elastic skin stretched tight over the muscles, and he knew that women who keep themselves in shape don’t always go for guys who keep themselves in shape because women who keep themselves in shape spend a lot of time in gyms and the guys who spend a lot of time in gyms are gay or unemployed, usually both. While it wasn’t yet obvious that he was unemployed, the last time he had been in a gym was to find a payphone because he forgot to charge the battery on his cell phone and it had died and he needed to find out if the work on his BMW was done.

He told himself he could at least pretend that she might nevertheless be intrigued by a single, highly educated, formerly well-paid professional who, as a relatively new resident of the neighborhood, had a passionate commitment to urban pleasures, used but still functional BMWs, and the various lifestyle upgrades to which he considered himself entitled. Even if he personally hated exercise, he knew his way around imported beers and was proud of his intuitive grasp of inventory control software, though he hadn’t been keeping up with the latest developments since he’d been laid off.

As he watched Weight fill the flimsy plastic bag with tomatoes, he imagined—no, he prayed—that this female goddess see through his unremarkable exterior and would use, as a pretext, a rather large collection of vegetables to begin a relationship that might …

Then he saw that one of the tomatoes tumbling into the bag was bruised. Those better not be for me, he said.

Weight Wisnitz wasn’t stupid. He could tell a guy who wanted to buy tomatoes from a guy who was trying to prevent himself from getting wall-eyed over a girl. For a moment, Weight Wisnitz wished he had his flask with him, but, somehow, a swig of cheap bourbon wasn’t fitting on a day like today, with that girl looking at him. Here he was, 62 years old, but a girl in teeny-tiny shorts would still look his way.

As for the guy, well, Weight Wisnitz sold to many like him on his route, most of them stumbling out of their rowhouses, blinking and yawning, some of them in their overpriced pajamas and none of them happy, but all of them with money in their hands, in their pockets, in those stupid zipper bags they wore on a belt.

They’d come out complaining about spending the whole night awake, working on this or that, and here they were, sleeping until Weight came by, blasting them out of bed with his megaphone. They’d ask him if he had a permit for that megaphone, but then they’d check out his prices and they’d spend money because everybody wants to get a deal, and if nobody gave them a deal in their entire lives, Weight would give them a deal.

Such deals, you wouldn’t believe them: three heads of iceberg lettuce for the price of two (he tried to unload iceberg fast because it wilts in the sun and gets gray and dirty after a few hours in the back of the truck with all the crud and dust blowing around). And then, they got that look in their eyes and they were pulling out the money, that’s when he’d jack up the prices on the asparagus and endive and those shit-ta-tacky mushrooms because these professionals figured that the only stuff that’s worth having is what costs too much.

I’d still like to hear a price for those tomatoes, the professional guy said, glancing at the girl as if to show he was being reasonable. He had to show her that he was reasonable, that he had to make sure that he wasn’t being ripped off. Because, when he wasn’t laid off, he worked insanely long hours in air-conditioned buildings where the delivery boys would try to rip him off, when they brought up the lattes and the pannini sandwiches, by pretending not to understand English, or to not have enough change in their pockets, hoping that he’d just hand over a $20 and say, Keep it.

He didn’t let the delivery boys rip him off, and he wasn’t going to let this human bean pole rip him off, either. The guy said, Excuse me, but I didn’t hear the price.

Weight kept loading up the tomatoes. Then he dropped them briefly on the scale, let the arm of the scale flap wildly about, then turned to the professional guy, and said, through the half-eaten plum between his teeth, I old oo, oo cot ate.

The widow translated: He’s saying ‘I told you, you got weight.’

The widow pitied the professional guy because the professional guy was holding a $20 in his hand like he was trying to get the attention of a hot dog vendor at a Phillies game. You don’t do that with Weight Wisnitz. Weight Wisnitz was no hot dog vendor, selling the same damn thing to the same damn people as fast as possible.

No, Weight had been a part of her life before she became a widow. For upwards of thirty years, she saw him twice a week, and maybe a third time if he came around on the Friday before a holiday. And though she didn’t buy as much now that her husband was dead, she still watched every damned thing Weight put in a bag because, now that she was a little bit famous, you’d think Weight would give her the better selection but, no, he was sticking her more and more with the worst, as if she was just some no-name nobody. If she wanted the no-name nobody treatment, she could go to the Italian Market, which wasn’t even Italian anymore, with all the Vietnamese taking it over, selling bags of mushrooms and eggplants and not even with a thank you.

The way she saw it, when you were getting charged the same price for good vegetables as bad, and there were only so many perfect vegetables to go around, you either had to demand perfection, which never worked with Weight (he’d just load up a bag with banged-up peppers and tell her, You got perfect!), or you had to let him turn his back and, while he was pretending not to notice, take what he should’ve given you in the first place.

So last week she took some corn and, what should happen, but she got it back to her kitchen and the ears were wormy. Now she was waiting for the guy with the $20 to finish his business so she could give Weight hell for the wormy corn.

What’s that mean, I got weight? the professional guy growled, as if she was making a crack about how heavy he was.

Then Weight did something stupid. He reached for the $20.

The guy whipped the bill back, like he was teasing a dog, and you could tell that it made Weight very, very angry. His eyes got round, his sunburned skin became even redder and, with the plum in his mouth leaking juice down his chin, he snapped the money out of the guy’s hand, stuffed the bill in his pocket where he kept his change.

Then, after one of those long pauses that is only a few seconds but might as well be forever, Weight Wisnitz keeled over and died.

The older man stepped forward, dropped into a crouch and touched the side of Wisnitz’s neck. There’s no need to call an ambulance, he said, standing up again. He glared at the professional guy, as if to say that Weight died for his sins. He’s left us.

The widow went to the side of the truck and peered at the vegetables. She said, They don’t know how to drive, those ambulances. They honk their horns and they run you over. They’re always coming through here with their sirens on, and, you want to know the truth, and they don’t need the sirens on, but they put them on, because making a big noise, they think they’re important.

The professional guy waited a few seconds. Then he squatted down, grabbed Weight’s sweaty GO PHILLIES! T-shirt, and shook him.

Weight flopped around but his eyes stayed open and his mouth started to leak blood. He didn’t make any move like he was going to get up. Worst than that, Weight let go with a torrent of beer-colored urine that ran rudely out Weight’s sawed-off shorts and down his legs.

The guy jumped back. He looked at Weight’s mouth, at the plum in Weight’s mouth, and saw that there was plenty of room around Weight’s lips for the blood to come out and the air to get through. He caught a whiff of Weight’s breath, and it smelled pretty close to disgusting.

The guy decided right then that there was no way in hell he was going to pull that plum out and give artificial respiration, even if it might make him a hero with that girl in the running shorts. He didn’t want to be a hero. Then he remembered what the older guy had said, how there was no need for an ambulance. There was something strange about the older guy, the way he touched Wisnitz’s neck just so, as if that older guy knew his way around dead people.

So the professional guy made a professional decision: this was not his affair. His knees made a crunching sound as he wobbled back up. He turned around and looked at the other people who had been waiting on Weight, and said, I don’t think he’s going to get up.

The widow craned her neck. His tomatoes actually look decent, for a change.

The professional guy said, Really? but he was thinking about the $20 bill that was in Weight’s pocket.

Some days, the widow went on, pulling a plastic bag off the rack, he comes out here, he’s got nothing worth taking. Now today, some of those tomatoes, and that cabbage over there, if somebody don’t watch this, those creeps’ll come in and they’ll just take it. Around here, anything decent, if it ain’t nailed down, it walks away.

The girl said, Eating cabbage burns calories.

The widow handed her one, and the professional guy glanced at the cabbages with new respect. He decided that she was the type that would appreciate openness, honesty, and a willingness to share. He said, I’ve always had an urge to … to know vegetables. I saw this truck and I figured I’d try him out, so he’s got my $20 and what am I going to do?

The older man couldn’t take his eyes off Weight’s emaciated face. He said, What’s done this to you? Oh my God, what’s made you into such a tragedy? He scrutinized Weight’s hands, paying specific attention to the knuckles that bulged out from under the skin. His eyes went back to the face, seeing what looked like collapsed blood vessels under the skin. The half-eaten plum, its pit visible in the pink fruit, was clamped tightly in place by the few teeth Weight had left. Was that blood or plum juice dripping down?

Aren’t we supposed to call the cops first? the professional guy asked. You’re not going to believe this, but I was actually a Boy Scout once—I dropped out because I could never tie those knots and I hated camping out. It’s like, it’s dirty, you know? So we had to memorize this list of things to do in an emergency.

He pulled out his cell phone and saw that the battery had died.

The older man took off his jef cap and held it over his heart. There’s no emergency. There’s no bringing him back. We should show some consideration for him before the police arrive.

Feh! The only thing the cops are going to do is ask a lot of questions, the widow said. They ask questions because it’s how they boss you around and poke into your business. They keep asking questions until you say something they don’t like, and then they take you in. What they don’t know, they don’t have to know.

Then, right out of the blue, the professional guy’s most earnest prayer was answered. The woman in the exercise shorts, this fitness goddess, put her arm in his, pulled him toward the truck, positioned him so he was standing over a case of brussels sprouts. She stuck a claw-like hand into the case while saying in a tone that salespeople use to immediately put people at ease, Do you think any of this is organic?

Just as she pulled something out of the case that may or may not have been a brussel sprout she smiled at him and it was like the touch of a balmy breeze across his face.

I don’t think so, the guy said, only slightly annoyed that she would think that he was in the produce business. I have no idea what half of this stuff is, or if it’s good or whatever.

You go by the feel, the widow told her. She reached into the open flatbed of the truck and pulled up a dark purple head of cabbage. Then you look for where it’s brown. This one has a few places but… she put it under her arm. It’s not bad.

The widow reached for the roll of tear-off plastic bags that were mounted on a rack next to the scale. She pulled down a bag, put the cabbage in it, and began loading the bag with plums. You feel the skin, she went on. If it has a spring to it.

I don’t think those are yours, the professional guy said.

The widow jabbed her finger, hard, into the soft spot just under his rib cage. Weight run out of change the last time he came through and he said he’d owe me.

The man with his hat over his heart sadly shook his head.

The widow said, I’m taking nothing that he wouldn’t’ve given me. She turned to the girl. Some of this, what I’m taking, it looks bad so he couldn’t sell it, so he’d eat it himself.

She pulled down a bag and handed it to the girl. Then she began loading up a bag. I used to tell him, the widow said, it was bad for people to see him eating all the time, and I should know because appearances matter in my line of work. Yours, too, right, Glen?

The man replaced his cap.

I told him he didn’t want to be eating all the time, the woman continued. Weight said he couldn’t help himself but he was going to do something about it. Thirty years he’s been coming through, I never seen him looking this bad. Look at him. He’s just a bunch of skin and bones.

The professional guy glanced hungrily at the woman in the exercise shorts, who was also mostly skin and bones, but such very nice skin, young skin, tanned from being outdoors, or maybe from being under a tanning light. Who could tell?

The girl put whatever was in her hand in the bag and moved toward other cases. Her running shoe touched the bag of tomatoes that Weight still held. She looked at Weight for a few seconds as if she were contemplating what effect acknowledging his existence, or lack of existence, might have on the plans she had made for that morning. Then she said, Do these tomatoes belong to anyone?

They belong to his estate, the man in the hat said. If he left a will. If he didn’t, it belongs to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

They belong to me, the professional guy said, squatting again to pry the bag out of Weight’s hand. He picked them out and put them in and was about to make change when he … went down.

The man in the hat said, We should leave everything where it is. The police might want to know what killed him.

What killed him is drinking and eating so much rotten junk, the woman said, scowling. She filled up another bag.

The man in the hat sadly shook his head as he dialed his cell phone. To see these people robbing the dead filled him with regret. He called the Philadelphia Press, where there was a fellow named Ladderback who did the obituaries. He got Ladderback’s I cannot answer your call because I’m on another call voice-mail message. He said, This is Owen Glendower. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. I’m reporting that Sid Wisnitz has just died not fifty paces from where he grew up. He’s sold fruits and vegetables in the city all his life. He’s not famous and some people wouldn’t consider him any more than an ordinary guy, but, seeing as how you give the ordinary people a write-up when they die, you might want to give him a write-up, because he provided a service, and he died unnatural. Do right by his family, Mr. Ladderback, and write the truth about him. Then he broke the connection, shook his head one final time to the harpies picking over Weight’s things, and sadly walked off.

The older woman handed a pale white onion to the girl. You’ll want one of these, she said. It’s a Vidalia. You roast it with a chicken and it tastes very sweet.

The girl threw back her head to show off the tight, lithe muscles of her neck and shoulders. I don’t eat meat.

The widow picked out some peaches. He had better peaches last week.

The professional guy opened the bag he’d just taken from Weight’s hand. He exchanged some tomatoes that had been crushed in the fall for those in the cardboard boxes in the truck. He thought he saw something at the bottom of one of those boxes that didn’t look like a vegetable, but he decided he’d rather look at the girl. I’ve thought of being a vegetarian, he said, but seven days a week of beans and Brussels sprouts? When you work the kind of hours I put in, I just go back to the apartment, put on some music, and grab at whatever is around.

The girl pulled off another bag and gave him a sexy look that said, I’ll bet you do. She followed it with, We all have our obsessions.

Their eyes met, and the professional guy decided that he was obsessed with getting this woman into his apartment. He noticed her T-shirt and said, You know, I’ve always thought about buying art.

Then I will sell you some, she said, dropping a business card into his bag, soon.

Before he could wonder where the hell she’d kept that card before she dropped it in his bag, she was off, tossing her hair in a spring strut, across Tenth to Smartt Street. Why, they were practically neighbors!

She turned around to give him one last smile. He felt the temperature of the air around him rise.

Then he saw the widow looking at him, waiting for him to offer to carry the five bags of vegetables piled beside her. He let her wait.

She hoisted them up and said she was going home to call the cops.

He watched her go. He looked at the stuff in the back of Weight’s truck and didn’t want any of it. He tossed the bag of tomatoes back in the truck. What he wanted was the