The early evening menu at Schmear’s Deli in Campus Martius doesn’t vary much from the lunch menu. That being said, you can find a few special dishes that resemble dinner more than lunch. Like the porcini risotto with smoked chicken. Or calamari in saffron rice with diced plum tomatoes, roasted garlic and parsley. Or the lemon and garlic linguini with chopped hot pastrami (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it).

“How’s the linguini tonight?” I asked Ben Breitler, second-generation owner of Schmear’s.

He gave a theatrical shrug. “Good if you’re used to disappointment.”

“I’ll have the risotto and calamari.”

“Both?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And how ’bout three fingers of that Buffalo Trace rye you keep in your office?”

“Big night ahead?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Big night.”

15

15

After a contentious phone call, which included amalgamations of profanity that shocked even my cavalier sensibilities, I made my way down to Eastern Market’s Shed 3. The last vendor had probably left two hours earlier, leaving me alone inside the ghostly lit twenty-nine-thousand-square-foot structure.

A two-man security team in a tricked-out Ford Escape SUV would slowly patrol the expanse of Eastern Market—south on Riopelle, turning west onto Adelaide, then north on Russell. But on a cold late-November night with more snow expected, they would probably stay in their patrol car, listen to 92.3 FM and warm themselves with a thermos of spiked coffee or cocoa.

I was about an hour and a half early for my date with the Jersey boys, giving me plenty of time to tactically assess the shadows and run a few if-I-were-going-to-kill-me scenarios.

At 11:40, an eastside shed door creaked open.

A rush of subzero air.

Whispers.

Wrapped in the velvety shadows draping the shed’s large announcement platform, I said a quiet Hail Mary and watched as three figures slowly spread out with one on point. They held weapons at the ready; I recognized one in silhouette as an Uzi with a suppressor.

“I don’t like this,” one of the shadowed figures whispered.

“Shut the fuck up!” another answered harshly.

Using just a touch of reverb, I said, “Red rum! Red rum!” into a mic connected to the PA system.

One of the men screamed, spun to face the bandstand and put three slugs into a pair of two-thousand-watt speakers.

One of the speakers was dead.

I wasn’t.

“See, here’s the thing,” I said through the microphone. “If you’re gonna tell somebody to show up at eleven-thirty so you can kill ’em, you need to be here by eleven. That’s what a professional would do.”

“Come on out, mothafucka, so we can show you what a professional would do.”

“Fair enough,” I said.