Sole Survivor

salad-prep area. Two white-uniformed men, artfully and rapidly arranging plates of greenery, never even glanced at him.
        Beyond, in the main kitchen, the heavy-set black woman in the voluminous muumuu was waiting for him. Even her bright dress and the cascades of glittering jewellery could not disguise her anxiety. Her big-mama, jazz-singer face was pretty and lively and made for mirth, but there was no song or laughter in her now.
        “My name's Mahalia. Real sorry I couldn't have dinner with you, Presentable Joe. That would've been a treat.” Her sexy-smoky voice pegged her as the woman whom he had named Demi. “But there's been a change of plans. Follow me, honey.”
        With the formidable majesty of a great ship leaving its dock, Mahalia set out across the busy and immaculate kitchen crowded with chefs, cooks, and assistants, past cooktops and ovens and griddles and grills, through steam and meat smoke and the eye-watering fragrance of sautéing onions.
        Hurrying after her, Joe said, “Then you know about them?”
        “Sure do. Been on the TV news today. The news people show you stuff to curl your hair, then try to sell you Fritos. This awful business changes everythin'.”
        He put an arm on her shoulder, halted her. “TV news?”
        “Some people been murdered after she talks to them.”
        Even with the large culinary staff in white flurries of activity around them, they were afforded privacy for their conversation by the masking clang of pots, rattle of skillets, whir of mixers, swish of whisks, clatter of dishes, buzz, clink, tink, ping, pop, scrape, chop, sizzle.
        “They call it somethin' else on the news,” Mahalia said, “but it's murder sure enough.”
        “That's not what I mean,” he said. “I'm talking about the men in the restaurant.”
        She frowned. “What men?”
        “Two of them. Black slacks, white silk shirts, black leather jackets-”
        “I walked 'em to their table.”
        “You did, yeah. I just recognized them a minute ago.”
        “Bad folks?”
        “The worst.”
        Baffled, she shook her head. “But, sugar, we know you weren't followed.”
        “I wasn't, but maybe you were. Or maybe someone else who's protecting Rose was followed.”
        “Devil himself would have a hard time finding Rose if he had to depend on getting to her through us.”
        “But somehow they've figured out who's been hiding her for a year, and now they're closing in.”
        Glowering, wrapped by bulletproof confidence, Mahalia said, “Nobody's gonna lay one little finger on Rosie.”
        “Is she here?”
        “Waitin' for you.”
        A cold tide washed through his heart. “You don't understand the two in the restaurant won't have come alone. There's sure to be more outside. Maybe a small army of them.”
        “Yeah, maybe, but they don't know what they're dealin' with, honey.” Thunderheads of resolve massed in her dark face. “We're Baptists.”
        Certain that he could not have heard the woman correctly, Joe hurried after her as she continued through the kitchen.
        At the far end of the big room, they went through an open door into a sparkling scullery where fruits and vegetables were cleaned and trimmed before being sent in to the main cookery. This late in the restaurant's day, no one was at work here.
        Beyond the scullery was a concrete-floored receiving room that smelled of raw celery and peppers, damp wood and damp cardboard. On pallets along the right-hand wall, empty fruit and vegetable crates, boxes, and cases of empty beer bottles were stacked almost to the low ceiling.
        Directly ahead, under a red Exit sign was a wide, steel exterior door, closed now, beyond which suppliers' trucks evidently parked to make deliveries. To the left was an elevator.
        “Rose is down below.” Mahalia pressed the call button, and the elevator doors slid open at once.
        “What's under us?”
        “Well, one time, this was the service elevator to a banquet room and deck, where you could have big parties right on the beach, but we can't use it like the joint did before us. Coastal Commission put a hard rule on us. Now it's just a storeroom. Once you go down, I'll have some boys come move the pallets and empty crates to this wall. We'll cover the elevator real nice. Nobody'll know it's even here.”
        Uneasy about being cornered, Joe said, “Yeah, but