by Peter King
“What did you find when you came into Gambrinus’s office?”
“Must have been exactly the same you found; you were only a couple of minutes after me. I had time to see him, realize he was dead. I looked over his desk to see if the book was there. I couldn’t see it, then I heard the door—that must have been you.”
It sounded reasonable and I had been telling the truth when I said I didn’t think she had done the shooting. Television personalities are not above murder but she didn’t seem likely to kill for a book. Unless there was something else. That called for another question.
“Did you know Gambrinus?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How about Richie Mortensen?”
“No, neither of them. I assumed it was Gambrinus when I saw the body. I hid in the alley for a few minutes, not knowing if you were the killer. Then the police began arriving. I didn’t want to appear on the scene too soon so I didn’t show up until enough time had elapsed that it wouldn’t look suspicious.”
“How did you meet Larry?”
She smiled. She looked quite human despite the heavy makeup. “He accused me of killing his brother.”
“You, too?” I returned her smile.
“It seems to be his investigational technique. He accuses everyone.”
“Do you have any thoughts on what happened to the book?” I asked.
“No. Oh, I didn’t go to the auction to buy it for myself. I went on behalf of a group, they wanted—”
“You mean the Witches.” I nodded and she stared.
“You know about them?” she said, genuinely surprised.
“Oh, yes, we know,” I said in an offhanded way, shamelessly allying myself with the New Orleans Police Department.
She eyed me, obviously wondering how much else I knew. In my turn, I wondered how much more she knew that I didn’t. I waited to see where else this trail might lead, but she didn’t offer any help.
“Is there anyone else who might want the book?” I asked her. “Enough to kill for it?”
She seemed about to answer but thought better of whatever she was going to say and instead said, “It could be valuable enough that a number of people would be after it.”
“Because of its intrinsic value? Surely not.”
“There could be … something else.”
“Such as what?” I asked.
“One of the recipes?”
I tried to analyze how much importance she attached to this idea. “Seems a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Are you going to follow this up?” I asked her.
She nodded vigorously and her blonde hair, though not long, danced a little. “The book is still a good story—it has to be when it involves one of the greatest names in New Orleans cuisine.”
“Exclusively?”
“Oh, no, I always have lots of stories going. This one isn’t likely to bring developments every day so I’ll probably come back to it every two or three days. I’ll keep that up as long as it’s still live.”
I nodded, waiting for her to show some spirit of cooperation in that endeavor, but she only gave me her professional smile. It was obvious that she’d like to know anything I found out, but I didn’t intend to reciprocate.
“Well, good luck,” I told her.
“Tell me one thing …” Her voice was unusually moderated.
“What is it?”
“Have you been to St. Cynthia?”
“Who?” I was baffled by the question.
She studied me, looking for signs of concealment. She evidently didn’t see any. “No, I guess you haven’t.”
“Who is she and why—”
She was already talking over my question. “It doesn’t matter. You can find your own way out, can’t you?”
I could and did.
I was ready for some sustenance after the morning’s excitement and it was approaching lunchtime. I dug into my pockets and came up with the cards I had been given by the Witches. One of the first that came to hand said VILLA ROMANA, and had the name of Della Forlani, one of my erstwhile kidnappers.
It was on the edge of the French Quarter and the cab ride was uneventful—no pursuers, tails or gumshoes. It was a little disappointing, really, to be forgotten already.
A drunk was singing “New York, New York” in a karaoke bar as I walked past the open door, and a few thin streams of tourists sauntered about. A man on a street corner was hawking packets of red beans and rice, and across the street a bearded, haggard young man was playing something mournful on a saxophone. It sounded like Hoagy Carmichael.
A lunch counter had a sign in the window, EAT LOUISIANA OYSTERS AND LOVE LONGER, and the Villa Romana was just past it, a pleasant building with green shutters and a wrought-iron balcony out in front above the entrance.
Della was in the restaurant, taking the first orders of the day, for it was still early. She beamed at the sight of me. “So glad you could come. Would you like a table by the window?” Restaurants like to fill the window seats, as it makes the place look popular, and I wanted one so that I could watch the passing scene.
After giving her order to the kitchen, she came out with a young woman who took over as Della came and sat at my table. A glass of sparkling white wine appeared at my right hand. “Prosecco,” I said, “one of my favorite wines.”
She clapped her hands with glee. “Good, I hoped you’d like it.” Then she became suddenly serious. “I hope we didn’t give you palpitations when we—er, kidnapped you. I’ve suggested that we stop doing that, but I’m outnumbered.”
“After the first few uncertain moments, it was all right,” I said. “Gives me something unusual to talk about back home. I may be the only person in my circle of friends who has ever been kidnapped. I’ll be the envy of Hammersmith.”
“In the meantime, you’re pursuing the book?”
“Absolutely. You wouldn’t have seen me—Oh, no, of course, you couldn’t, it was taped and will be shown tonight.”
She was frowning.
“Elsa,” I explained. “I went to talk to her and found myself on her TV show.”
“Ah, she’s a real dynamo, isn’t she?”
“She certainly is.”
“So what would you like for lunch?” she asked.
“First of all, tell me why an Italian restaurant in New Orleans of all places.”
“But that’s exactly why, don’t you see?” She became enthusiastic in talking about her restaurant. I liked to see her that way. “It’s all Cajun and Creole. They have French origins so I thought, Italian cooking is not enormously different and, besides, people might like a change of pace. So we offer great Italian dishes and also blends of Italian cooking with Creole and Cajun flavors.”
“The best of all possible worlds,” I nodded, “from the culinary viewpoint, anyway. Good thinking—how is it being received?”
“We’ve been in business four years and do better and better every year.”
“That’s great. Do you do the cooking?”
“I used to; now my husband does it—he’s half Italian. I take care of the front of the house.”
“I have a friend who says it’s easy to be a chef,” I told her, and her eyes widened as she began to protest. But I went on: “He says all you have to do is combine the brain of a scientist with the heart of an artist, the ingenuity of a used-car salesman and the energy of a marathon runner.”
She laughed merrily. “Anyway, what’s for lunch?” I asked.
We discussed her offerings one by one, but for the first course I decided on the ostriche appetitose. “A few of our tourist customers want to be adventurous and order this because they think it’s ostrich,” Della said.
Ostriche is, in fact, Italian for “oysters” and she explained that a batter of breadcrumbs, garlic, pepper, parsley and thyme is used to cover the oysters in their shells. Their own juice carefully preserved, they are then moistened with a drop or two of olive oil, cooked
on a hot grill and served with lemon.
I had eaten a similar oyster dish in Emilia-Romagna on an Italian assignment and I was sure that Della’s enthusiasm would make this outstanding.
“Now for the next course—” she went on.
“Make this the main course, please,” I asked her. “I know that any self-respecting Italian will have four or five courses for lunch, but I try to stay with three.”
“All right,” she smiled, “you must have our seafood Terrabona.”
“You’ve got me there,” I admitted. “I didn’t think there were too many Italian dishes I wasn’t familiar with, but you’ve found one already.”
“I cheated. It’s not strictly Italian. It’s a New Orleans dish and was originated by Italians living here. Also, it’s as traditionally Southern as you can get.”
“Sounds terrific; tell me about it.”
“It’s catfish fillets, shrimp, crawfish tails and oysters. First, the catfish are bronzed in a hot skillet, then the shrimp are butterflied and bronzed under a broiler. The crawfish tails are coated with seasoned flour and deep-fried and the oysters are coated with a blend of seasonings and also deep-fried—”
“What seasonings?” I asked.
“Salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, thyme, basil, oregano, cayenne and paprika.”
“That’s the New Orleans contribution, not Italian,” I commented.
“Right. We serve it with red beans and rice.”
“You refer to ‘bronzing’—I suppose that’s like blackening?”
“Yes, but using a spray of margarine to cook in rather than lots of butter.”
“You must have some pastas that are different from the standard Italian pastas,” I said.
“We do,” Della said, “We serve it Sicilian style, a cooking method that remains substantially the same as in Roman days. Fry lots of garlic in olive oil then add spaghetti already cooked al dente. We sprinkle chili peppers and Romano cheese and parsley on it.”
“That’s a very healthy way to cook it, too.”
“Yes. Tell me, have you had redfish since you’ve been here?”
“No, I haven’t,” I admitted.
“It’s a popular Gulf fish and you’ll see it cooked lots of New Orleans ways. We cook it Italian style—dipped in seasoned flour, then egg and then seasoned breadcrumbs. The big difference is that the standard Italian breadcrumbs are too fine and you can’t get the fillets crispy. You have to use the very coarse grade.”
Trout Florentine was another dish popular in Italy but given a New Orleans twist here at the Villa Romana. Artichoke with garlic mayonnaise was yet another, and the plentiful supply of oysters had initiated a number of cross-cultural dishes—veal rolls stuffed with oysters and sausage was a good example.
My appetite was getting the better of me by now. “I think I’d better order,” I told Della, and settled on the oysters she had described and then the seafood Terrabona.
“We have an excellent Gavi di Gavi if you like Italian wines.”
“I wouldn’t have any other kind,” I told her.
CHAPTER NINE
“JUST A SMALL PORTION,” I said firmly when Della pressed me to have one of their house specialties as a dessert. It came in a small cup and I slowly cut the spoon through the crunchy, crusty top and withdrew a spoonful. It was delicious—a slightly different version of the French crème brûlée, which also has a crusty top, or the Italian panna cotta, which does not. The texture was like silk on the tongue and the vanilla flavor was assertive, not the neutral taste we get used to in many ice creams.
“Is this a good time for you to make your report?” she asked, smiling.
“I talked to Larry Mortensen, Richie’s brother,” I told her. “He gave me a hard time at first, accused me of killing his brother.”
“Goodness!” Her eyes rounded.
“He accused Elsa Goddard, too.”
“He must have lost that argument.”
“Ah, you know her well, I can see. Yes, I think Elsa and I both convinced him of our innocence. He seems still bent on the vengeance trail, though.”
“What about the Belvedere book?”
“We didn’t get very far with that. We talked about the possibility of some family secret recipe. What do you think of that, from a professional point of view?”
Her features were not suitable for an expression of deep thought but she gave it a good shot. “It’s possible, I suppose,” she said at length. “But I’m not sure. If there were something else, it would be more likely.”
“I agree. Trouble is … what?”
We batted that around without any conclusion and she said, “Well thanks for the report. I’ll pass it along.”
“Thank you for the meal. It was great. You deserve to be successful.” The first and second courses had, in fact, been very good and I told Della she was achieving the blend of New Orleans cooking and Italian cooking with remarkable results.
“You’ll have to come again and have our gumbo Milanese,” she said. The twinkle in her eye led me to believe that she was kidding but she insisted she was serious. I had to suppose that the possibility of liaisons with the two cuisines was unlimited.
A thought was nagging at me as I was leaving. Had the farm-boy exile driving the cab been right, and we had been followed by another cab on the ride to the TV studio? In the first scary moments of being chased by a dead man with a gun, I had assumed that the pursuit had been a continuation of the cab incident. But that didn’t make sense—Larry Mortensen could not have been following me because he had been scheduled to be in the studio for Elsa’s show. Either the boy was wrong or someone else had been in that other cab.
The implications were not pleasant, and, anyway, another query was arising. If there was something in the Belvedere chef’s book that made it vital to get a hold of, why hadn’t someone already seen that entry? I thought back to the lawyer, Van Linn. Whose lawyer was he? Did he know more than he was telling me?
I phoned him. I expected a polite brush-off—nothing total, but at least stressing how busy he was, et cetera. I was surprised therefore when he agreed promptly. “I have an appointment in town in a couple of hours,” he said. “We can meet before that, say in an hour. Let me see … there’s a coffee shop near the Convention Center. It’s on Lee Circle and on the St. Charles streetcar line. It’s called Minky’s.”
Understandably, I had to ask him to spell that. “I haven’t thoroughly mastered the New Orleans language yet,” I told him. I found the nearest streetcar stop, still disappointed that the car called Desire had been taken off the line. (It had not even been replaced by one called Passion or Ecstasy—possibly the result of some local religious influence.) The ride was pleasant and only a dollar and a quarter. We passed grand residences and rattled along oak-lined avenues. We passed a cemetery and I recalled that these play a major role among the city’s sights. I supposed it was too early but I saw no vampire hunters, no wooden stakes or mallets and no rosary wavers.
Minky’s was a quirky mixture of styles. To some extent, it resembled the coffeehouses of seventeenth-century Europe, catering to a few students, several locals and some tourists. A bakery in the back was sending out a stream of beignets, cakes, pastries, sugar pralines and fudge balls bigger than golf balls. Two girls were eating ice cream and a waitress was bringing an omelette to the next table. The powerful aroma of freshly brewed coffee overwhelmed all others.
The restaurant had both booths and tables but as it was early, both were available, so I took a booth and ordered a café au lait. I watched people come and go and was ordering a second coffee when Van Linn arrived. He looked smooth-faced and prosperous. He sniffed as he sat down. “Still drinking the chicory, I notice,” he said, and I agreed.
He ordered coffee, specifying regular, and regarded me with just a little curiosity. “So,” he said, “you have some progress to report?”
I hated to disappoint him so I didn’t reply directly to the question. “Do you know there are
other factions trying to get hold of the book?” I asked.
“Other book dealers? I wouldn’t be surprised—”
“No, not book dealers. A group of women who call themselves ‘the Witches,’ for a start.”
“Bah!” His face showed his reaction. “Women’s-lib crackpots! Always complaining they’re repressed and excluded. Want to sue every time they think they have been mistreated or overlooked or discriminated against or—”
“They must make good clients for you,” I said slyly.
“I wouldn’t represent them. Oh, they’ve asked me once or twice, but I turn them down. So they’re after the book, are they? Do you know why?”
“They like the idea of the prestige of having it—they think it would enhance their image. Also, they say the secondary reason is its monetary value.”
“Value to whom? You mean they just want to sell it and make a profit?” He snorted derisively. “I don’t believe that for a minute.” He eyed me keenly. “Are you sure they don’t have any other reason?”
“Not that I’m aware.”
“They must have.” He drummed well-manicured fingers on the tabletop. “Anything else to tell me?”
“Yes. Richie Mortensen’s brother is involved in this, too.”
He frowned. “Involved how?”
“He’s looking for his brother’s killer. He accused me but I managed to persuade him otherwise. At least, I hope I did. I heard he’s accused others, too, so I suppose he’s not just focused on me.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Yes, I have.” I didn’t think it necessary to go into details.
“Do you think he’s looking for the book, too?”
“I didn’t get that impression. He seemed mainly intent on avenging his brother’s death.”
Van Linn’s coffee arrived. He stirred it but it must have been for thought-stimulating reasons because he didn’t put anything in it. “Did you have something else you wanted to ask me?” He was sharp—but then I hadn’t doubted that.
“You still don’t want to tell me who your client is?”