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“If we offer Salim full price,” she says, “he not respect us,” which will have repercussions later.

So Gab offers Salim one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and rather disturbingly, he accepts.

“He what?” I stammer. “Should we have gone even lower? What if the store isn’t even worth one hundred and twenty thousand?” This is not a pleasant feeling at all, but after resisting Kay’s low-ball offer, I can hardly take a position against it now that it’s been accepted.

Salim seems rather pleased. “I like your mother-in-law,” he says. He promises to vacate the store by December 23.

Now the process begins to gather speed, another worrisome development. Gab’s family seems comfortable banging from decision to decision, but I’m more circumspect. I come from an academic family, and we like to think things through—then think about whether the process of thinking them through was as thorough as it could be, then write a book about it. (A book that takes twenty years.)

But maybe it’s better not to reflect. I have a feeling that if I think too long about Salim’s deli, or perhaps much at all, I’ll have second thoughts.

DESPITE THE RUSH, we manage to set up a deal in a more or less orderly fashion. We skimp on things like the observation period, wherein the new owner traditionally sits behind the register with the old one making sure that the business stands up to the owner’s claims. Usually the observation period lasts a week. Kay pronounces herself satisfied after one shift. Half a shift, actually.

It looks, nevertheless, like it’s going to be a smooth transition. Then one day Salim calls and says he wants to modify the deal. He says he wants us to send part of the money we owe him to an associate in Lebanon.

“Ha ha, that’s funny,” I laugh. “You mean like in the Middle East?”

“I’m not kidding,” Salim says. “What do you think I mean, New Lebanon, Pennsylvania?”

Swallowing my amazement—things were going much too well, I realize—I try to picture how I would send thousands of dollars to a country I’ve never visited halfway around the world. Does he mean to a bank? Do they have banks in Lebanon? Would it be to some kind of money changer at a bazaar?

“Western Union will be fine,” says Salim, while assuring us that this is just a normal way of doing business. Part of me knows that it is, but you know what I’m thinking: This couple thought they were buying a convenience store in Brooklyn and ended up laundering money for an international crime ring that sold kidnapped American children into slavery and invested the profits in pornography and heroin. Tonight, Steve Kroft will take you to Auburn state prison in upstate New York and interview the husband, a former literary magazine editor who says he was framed …

And then I feel guilty. Guilty because during all thirty seconds that I have such paranoid thoughts, I am prejudging Salim, am I not? Would I be suspicious if Salim were Swiss and asked me to send money to Switzerland, which is also a country I’ve never been to halfway around the world? Yes, and if he were Swiss and asked me to send all that money there I’d say, You’re out of your mind! But somehow in Salim’s case, because Gab and I don’t want to entertain even the possibility of prejudging him, we say okay, despite the alarm bells going off in our heads.

“Listen, it’s pretty hard for me to imagine Salim involved with anything nefarious,” Gab rationalizes. “Would you spend seventeen hours a day selling Yummykakes if you had the power to be an international crime lord? Besides, he’s too nice a guy. I can’t see it.”

Neither can I. It just doesn’t add up.

Then Salim calls again. He’s changed his mind: instead of sending the money by Western Union, he wants us to send it to the Middle East with his cousin Farouk, who’s going there on business in a few days. Which of course we say yes to, plus a series of other last-minute requests. Things keep changing, taking us out of our comfort zone. Now the money is going with Farouk as a cashier’s check. Now it’s going to Salim’s accountant, a Hasidic Jew