Fic: Everybody Comes to Pooja's, Part II

[blacktop50]

Mr. Lee

The package of laundered shirts, habitually delivered by Mr. Lee on Friday mornings, did not arrive as usual.

Reese was miffed, but not worried.  He carefully monitored his supply of white shirts and had several set aside for days when he needed to change more than once.   So he was covered through the weekend.

But this disruption in his well-regulated domestic universe was definitely unwelcome.

The neat packet, wrapped in smooth brown paper and tied in pale twine, finally arrived on Sunday at mid-afternoon, brought into the restaurant by a disheveled Mr. Lee himself.  The sparse wisps of white hair stood up straight on his glistening head and his face had a fine sheen of perspiration whose drips had already made a damp triangle at the neckline of his dingy undershirt.

Reese was sitting in his usual booth at the back of the room and as the crowd of lunch patrons had departed, he could easily overhear Mrs. Soni’s remonstrance to Mr. Lee.

“This is not acceptable, Mr. Lee.”

She was formidable in her towering anger.  Reese was sure he would never deliberately cross her if he could avoid it.

“You know that my tenant counts on you for these shirts.  He needs them for his work.  I rely on you to deliver high quality laundry service in a timely fashion, Mr. Lee.  That is what I pay you for.”

“But Mrs. Soni!”  The little man was properly cowed, but not utterly defeated yet.

“You don’t actually pay me for these shirts, you know.  I include them in the price for the table cloths and napkins and aprons I launder for you every week.  I throw the shirts in for free.  Sort of a kindness between neighbors, O.K?”

“If you want me to take my restaurant business elsewhere, I will do it, Mr. Lee.  You are not the only laundry in this borough, you know.”

She would do it, Reese was certain.

“O.K., Mrs. Soni, you are right.  Never again, O.K.”

Conciliatory now, Mrs. Soni gestured toward a square table in the middle of the room and indicated Mr. Lee should join her.  The tea was already laid out on the pristine white cloth and gauzy steam floated above the cup she had set aside when he entered her restaurant.

As she poured out a cup for him, Mrs. Soni studied the old man closely.

“What is troubling you, Mr. Lee?”

Her interrogation techniques were models of simplicity and effectiveness, Reese marveled.  First bully the subject with threatened anger, then dive in for the kill, softly.

“You do not look well at all.”

“Mrs. Soni, you are right, I am not well.  My eldest daughter, Lydia, told me two days ago that she was going to marry in three weeks.  To a white man.”

He paused to let the gravity of the situation sink in.

“She is going to marry a white man, some stranger she says she met at a poetry reading just before Christmas last year.”

“Ah, Mr. Lee.  I see that this sudden news has vexed you.  But you know, this is how young people are these days.  They meet people their parents don’t know, decide to marry them without proper permission, and then make their own families in a terrific rush.”

“That is why I was late with the shirts on Friday. Mrs. Soni.   I apologize for my error, O.K.”

“Oh, don’t worry yourself about that Mr. Lee.  What does your wife say about the situation?”

“She says she is as upset as I am.”

He paused to take another sip from his cup.

“But you know, Mrs. Soni, I’m not sure.  In fact, I lay all the blame for this situation on my wife.  It is she who gave me three daughters in the first place, instead of sons.   She who raised them with foreign American ways, and let them make up their own rules and follow their own ideas.  This is where the disaster came from.”

“As I recall, Mr. Lee, it is also your wife who made sure that your daughters were raised to be perfectly bilingual.  She encouraged them to do well in school, and taught them beautiful manners, and made sure they understood how to run your business.

“There are no more lovely people on this block than your three daughters, Mr. Lee.”

The old man bowed his head to acknowledge the compliment.

“And if I may say, Mr. Lee, your wife is also completely responsible for the beautiful faces and virtuous temperaments of your daughters.  Many times I have heard people comment in just this way about the charming Lydia, Lucinda, and Linda.”

Reese was sure Mrs. Soni was laying it on a bit thick.  He had seen the Lee girls on several occasions and was not overly impressed.

But the father of these paragons seemed mollified.  Relieved of some great burden he had carried when he entered the restaurant, Mr. Lee drained his cup of tea.  He rose and patted the package of shirts that lay on the table between them.

“O.K., Mrs. Soni. Have a good day.  And please give my apologies to your tenant for the delay.  He will have his shirts on time this week and every week from now on.  I give you my word, O.K.”

Well done, Mrs. Soni, Reese thought.

Well done.

+++++

Attachment

Almost a week had elapsed since his last overnight stay at Pooja’s.  Reese had found himself on the side of town nearest to his fleabag hotel and, under pressure to stick close to the latest number, he had chosen to sleep a few hours each night at the dive rather than trek back to the restaurant.

So when he finally was able to return to his room above Pooja’s, it seemed an especially welcome respite.  The number was safe at last, on a plane to another state to start a new life.

Though elated by their success, Finch had looked exhausted, the stains of pale purple under his eyes more pronounced, the stiffness in his neck more evident.  Reese wondered if Finch had a place to go where he could escape the numbers, find solace or oblivion even, for an hour or two.

These were questions Reese would not ask the older man just yet, though he was determined to find a way eventually.

But Reese found that just the mere fact that Pooja’s existed, the knowing that he could come back here when he wanted to, relieved the relentless ordeal of their work.

He needed Pooja’s in a way he had not anticipated when he signed up with Mrs. Soni so many months previously.  When he was away from his familiar square room for too long, he grew restless and touchy.  He found that even the day’s minor irritants could rub his nerves raw when he hadn’t slept at Pooja’s for a while.

The frantic pursuit of safety and resolution for the number always obscured his own thought processes for the duration of a case.  But when, at the end of a case, he paused to think again, the flash of insight into his own desires startled him.

This attachment to such a place, any place really, was unsettling.

But he wanted more.

+++++

Mr. Burdette

Hari was never wrong in his silent reports.

The little boy’s ability to mimic the body language and gait of a surveillance subject was uncanny, Reese had found.

And so, when the evening’s report began with Hari’s jerking, listing gallop across the floor in front of the booth where the handler reviewed his child agents, Reese knew who had been spotted.

Harold Finch.

Following Hari’s performance, Leena produced the busboy Pascal from the kitchen to embody the man they had seen limping back and forth in front of Pooja’s that afternoon.

Five foot nine, about one hundred and fifty pounds.

Yes, Finch.

Bijal and Avani described in detail the man’s smart suit (cocoa brown with a windowpane plaid in burnt orange) and tie (green figured with a tiny yellow and brown paisley) as well as the coordinating shoes and socks.  The ever vigilant Avani assured Reese that the man in question was not carrying a concealed gun or knife.

So Finch had traced Reese back to Pooja’s at last.

Reese had anticipated his employer would succeed in tracking him down eventually.  He was in fact a little surprised that the first time Fusco tailed him to the restaurant had not resulted in a confrontation earlier.

Maybe Fusco had not given up Reese’s location all those months ago.

That man was as surprising an ally as he was smart as a cop.

Reese wasted no time in inviting Finch to dinner at Pooja’s.   The excuse of making good on a lost bet was enough to get the older man to agree to meet him the following Saturday for an evening out.

Reese debated whether to tell Mrs. Soni anything about Finch but decided to say only that he was bringing his employer to the restaurant for dinner.  He was sure that with that prompt, she would go all out for the occasion.

Which she did, offering a sumptuous meal of many courses and glorious variety.  The two men ate and ate and talked more freely than they had ever done before.

Reese was pleased to find Finch grow less prickly as the evening progressed, even without the lubricant of alcohol.   The man’s usual acerbic asides, parenthetical jabs, and brittle word play were discarded in favor of amusing stories and finally reminiscences of people Finch had met in gentler lives before this one.  These were obviously people whom Finch missed, whose welfare he wondered about, whose influence he still felt.  The presence of these ghostly figures seemed to warm the desperate loneliness of this gifted man.  Reese wished he had met them -- met Finch -- in a time before this borrowed and hectic one they shared now.

“Thank you for inviting me here, John.”  Finch sounded wistful in a way that Reese found unexpectedly touching.

“You didn’t have to do it.  I would have respected your privacy, you know.”

“I know that, Harold.  I wanted to have you here.”

Finch hesitated for a moment.

“Has Detective Carter visited Pooja’s?”

“Yes, she has.”  Reese let that hang between them for a long interval.

They drank their fragrant tea in companionable silence, not needing to say more for several minutes.

When Mrs. Soni, resplendent in a rich amber colored sari flecked with golden embroidery, approached their booth at the end of the evening, Reese assumed it was to formally greet his boss and nothing more.

He was wrong.

Mrs. Soni gestured to a waiter who immediately pulled a chair to the booth.  She took her place at the head of the table and sat silently while a different waiter brought a tray with three silver bowls of ice cream and three heavy silver spoons.  Oscillating her gaze between the two men, she waited while yet another attendant poured steaming water to warm the pot of tea and placed a third cup in front of her.

“Mr. Burdette, welcome to Pooja’s Restaurant.”

Reese started at the use of that name.  He had told her nothing at all about Finch.

“John has told me much about you.  I trust that you have enjoyed your dinner here.  One that I hope will be the first of many.”

“Mrs. Soni, I have definitely enjoyed the dinner.  When he invited me here,  John assured me this was among the finest Indian restaurants in the city.”

Mrs. Soni bowed her head toward Finch.

“And now I have to expand that observation to say that this is truly one of the finest dining establishments in the city. Period.”

“Oh, Mr. Burdette, you flatter my little restaurant too much.”

Prompted by Finch’s questions, Mrs. Soni described in considerable detail how she and her husband had established Pooja’s many years ago and how her sons now ran the business under her watchful eye.

“You never can really stop overseeing your businesses, can you, Mr. Burdette?”

The soft gaze she had turned on Finch seemed to harden.

“My cousin, Vijay Gupta, owns one of the largest auditing firms here in the city and from time to time he sends one of his accountants to help out my third son with our books.  Simple accounts for a very simple little business, really.  But I find it is quite helpful to get Vijay’s advice and guidance in these complicated matters.  He understands so much about finance and banking and he tells me things that I couldn’t possible comprehend on my own.  Vijay is so very helpful in explaining it all to me.”

During this last speech, Reese was alarmed at the way that Finch’s face drained of color.  The man looked pasty and slick under the glare of the restaurant’s overhead lights.

Mrs. Soni continued her story, brown eyes trained on Finch’s milky blue ones.

“You know, Mr. Burdette.  Family connections are so useful, I find.  Take Vijay for example.  I call him my cousin, but really that is only because my grandfather and his great-grandfather came from the same small village in India.  We are not actually blood relatives you see, but we look out for each other whenever we can here in New York.  The place is so big and confusing that it is pleasant and useful to keep track of those thousand tiny connections which can make it work more smoothly, don’t you think?”

“I am sure you are quite right.”  Finch was mumbling so that Reese had to lean forward in his seat to catch the words.

“Having a wide network of contacts is always helpful to an astute business person such as yourself, Mrs. Soni.”

“So true, Mr. Burdette.  In fact, just the other day, my cousin invited me to his apartment, a beautiful old flat with a breathtaking view of Central Park, for a dinner with family friends. The meal was not as good as ours here at Pooja’s, of course, but as a guest one cannot complain.  After the others had departed, Vijay happened to mention an old client whose financial records he had maintained for many years.  The accounts of Mr. Peacock -- that was his client’s name, Mr. Peacock -- had recently come under IRS scrutiny and Vijay had to work many weeks of overtime to reconcile the records and cover the numerous discrepancies which arose in those complicated files.  I didn’t understand it at all -- so many names, so many numbers -- but it was very pleasant to listen all evening to my cousin chatter on like that.

“He is a very smart man, Mr. Burdette”

“Yes, I‘m sure he is, Mrs. Soni.”  Finch’s fingers fidgeted with the hem of the white napkin crumpled on the table.

Reese knew he did not catch all the meaning of this exchange; the contending parties were too subtle for that.  But from the tension crackling around the table he knew he needed to end the evening before things got completely out of hand.

This convoluted web spinning by two spymasters in a confined arena was as unnerving as anything he had experienced in years of intelligence work.

He couldn’t bear it.

“Mrs. Soni, Mr. Burdette, I can see you want to sit up all night chatting.  But I need my beauty sleep.  This has been a long week.”

Reese slid out from the booth and Finch quickly followed his lead.  In turn the men bent over their hostess’ hand and thanked her again for the lovely evening.

“Instructive,” was the sole word Finch uttered as he clambered into the back seat of the limousine parked outside the restaurant.

Reese remained on the sidewalk in front of Pooja’s luminous picture window and watched the dark car glide away into the shadows.

The lights inside the restaurant went dark then and the square of gold he had been standing on disappeared.

+++++

Negotiations

The house rules were easy enough to follow.  Until he wanted to change them.

Mrs. Soni had restated them several times during the first month of his tenure at Pooja’s just to make sure Reese understood: No visitors, no alcohol, no smoking, no women, no outside food.

The food from the restaurant kitchen was more than adequate; he had no visitors, didn’t smoke, and could get drunk at his fleabag hotel when he wanted to.

“I need to re-negotiate the terms of my lease, Mrs. Soni.”

“You want to have someone else do your laundry?  Mr. Lee’s work is no longer satisfactory?”

“No, Mrs. Soni.  I’m fine with Mr. Lee’s work.  My shirts are whiter than white.  I could do a TV commercial for him.”

“You want to have three meals a day, instead of two?”

“You know I don’t even usually eat the two that I get now.  So, no that isn’t it.”

“You want your towels and sheets changed on Tuesdays instead of Thursday?”

“No, Mrs. Soni, that’s not it.”

He sighed.  This was going to be harder than he had anticipated.

“I want to re-negotiate the ban on visitors, alcohol, smoking, and women.”

“You want to bring alcohol here, John?  You know how I feel about that!

“Or is it the smoking?”

The exasperating woman was determined to drive him over the edge.

Or get a straight answer out of him.

“Don’t start again with me, Mrs. Soni.”

“Well then, what is it?”

Reese hesitated and was poised to drop the subject altogether.

“I can’t read your mind, you know.”

“I want to be able to bring women to my room.”

“Women?  Many women?  Frequent women?   Or just occasional women?”

She was smirking.

“No, Mrs. Soni. ”  He sighed again.

“One particular woman.  Why are you teasing me like this?”

“Oh, let an old woman have her little pleasures, John!  I just like seeing you blush.”

She paused to admire her work, raking her eyes up and down his face.

With a huge smile creasing her own, she drove straight to the point.

“So you would like to break my house rules so that you can entertain Detective Carter in your room?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have to think about it.  I will let you know my decision later.”

“When?”

“Later.”

She would not be budged.  And the evening’s conversation ended there.

Reese waited for one week.  Then a second week.  As the third week began, he realized that there was method behind Mrs. Soni’s maddening silence.

She was testing him.  She wanted to know if his desire to change the house rules was an impetuous fancy, a passing whim only.

He refused to play her game.  He refused to ask again.

He gambled that she would bend under the pressure of her curiosity, or her compassion, or both.

Bend she did.

Mrs. Soni finally caught him late one night as he was half way up the flight of stairs to his room.

She launched directly from the point at which their negotiation had been suspended several weeks prior.

“John, you only spend a few nights a week here.  So, unless you sleep on park benches, I assume that you have other flats around the city.”

He nodded but refused to give her the satisfaction of a spoken answer until she made her question explicit.

“So you could entertain Detective Carter in one of your other places.”

“You’re right, I could.”

It was important to him that she understand this point clearly.

“But I don’t want to, Mrs. Soni.”

“You choose to bring her here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Thank you, John.  Thank you for that.”

He was several steps above her on the stairs, but he could see the tears glistening through her black eyelashes.

“Bring her here whenever you wish.”

After a brief silence, he spoke to lighten the mood.

“I hope it won’t take me as long to convince Detective Carter as it did you, Mrs. Soni.  This negotiation was exhausting.”

“It won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Don’t you realize, John?

“She had made up her mind by the end of her first dinner here at Pooja’s.”

+++++