by Peter King
“You know that he went to the auction before it opened and pulled a fast one in getting the book?”
Gambrinus smiled. His teeth were yellowed from smoking and I saw that the wooden rack on his desk was full of well-used old pipes.
“Richie was sharp. He occasionally did that kind of thing.”
“Do you have any reason to believe that he was not buying the book for you?”
Gambrinus’ smile disappeared. “He was buying the book for me! … What do you mean?”
“I’m suggesting the possibility that he planned on selling the book to somebody else but that person shot him and took the book.”
“You mean Richie was going to cheat me?”
“You must admit it looks that way,” I said.
He absentmindedly picked up one of the morocco-bound volumes on his desk, studied the spine, then put it back.
“He never cheated me before.”
“Perhaps he never needed money as much as he did this time.”
“I said Richie was sharp, I never found him to be crooked.”
“Know anything about his friends, acquaintances?”
“No. We didn’t mingle socially,” he said, with a touch of acid.
“No reason to think he might know some dubious characters?”
“Not really. Still, New Orleans has at least its share of those, and maybe more.”
“Did you ever meet his brother?”
“I didn’t know he had one.” His answer was prompt but then he added, “Is he involved in this, do you know?”
“He’s involving himself. First, he was going around accusing people of killing his brother.” I didn’t add that I was one of the accused. I felt it was better to maintain my investigational status as above suspicion.
“Do you have any other scenarios to suggest?” I asked him.
“He could have got the book by his cute trick of avoiding the bidding and brought it back here for me. It could have been that someone else came in, demanded the book then shot him when he wouldn’t hand it over.”
“You believe the book is that valuable? Enough to kill for?”
He eased back in his chair, ran his fingers through his hair again. “It is only a chef’s book, isn’t it?”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“You think it’s something else?” He picked up my card from where it lay on his desk. “‘The Gourmet Detective,’” he read, holding the card by its edges.
“I’m not really a detective,” I explained. “I’m more of a food-finder. I hunt up rare spices, lost recipes, advise on foods for special occasions—that kind of thing.”
“And on this occasion?”
“I was hired to go to the auction and examine the Belvedere book and make sure it was genuine. If it was, I was to bid on it and, if I could, buy it.”
“Did someone think it was not genuine?”
“You’re in the book business,” I told him. “Don’t you occasionally run into forgeries?”
He looked pensive, probably wondering how far to venture out onto ice that thin. “Not very often.”
I took a chance on pushing him further in that thought. “I’ve heard there are forgers active here in New Orleans.”
“Currency, you mean? Oh, I—”
“No, not only currency. Books, old books.”
“Really. I suppose it’s possible.” His carefully neutral tone said that he was more aware of it than he admitted.
“You must run into forged books now and then.”
“Rarely,” he said. “I suppose the purpose of having a forgery made would be to sell it and the original both?”
I nodded. I waited for him to pursue the point but he didn’t. Instead, he changed the direction of the conversation. “I have some nice cookbooks back here,” he said. “A few really old ones. Like to see them?”
He was closing out the interrogation but, lacking the authority of Lieutenant Delancey, I couldn’t reserve that right for myself. So I looked at the cookbooks.
He had Eliza Leslie’s Directions for Cooking, published in 1928, The Carolina Housewife, written in 1847 by “A Lady,” and Mrs. Chadwick’s Home Cookery, which was published in Boston in 1853. On open shelves were Pino Luongo’s A Tuscan in the Kitchen and several modern writers including Betty Watson, Mary Fisher and Richard Olney.
In a locked, glass-fronted case, I saw A New Book of Cookerie by A.J. Murrell—not the original printed in 1615 but the 1805 edition. Next to it was the refreshing Miss Leslie’s Complete Cookery, published in Philadelphia in 1837.
Vincent La Chapelle’s The Modern Cook was dated 1733 and is renowned as the first cookbook to give recipes for making ice cream. This volume was in very poor condition and Gambrinus probably found it very difficult to sell but its detailed instructions made it valuable.
A copy of The Canadian Settlers’ Guide, published around 1850, unfortunately had no date but is of interest for its account of cooking by the early settlers at the time the first versions of the modern stove appeared.
“Ever run across a cookbook by Scappi?” I asked him.
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“He was personal chef to Pope Pius V. It was published in 1570 and it’s surprising that there are still a number of copies around. It’s in Italian, not Latin, and has some wonderful engravings. I saw one once.”
“I picked up a copy of The Sportsman’s Cookery Book a while ago,” Gambrinus said. “Didn’t realize how many eager buyers would show up. Could have sold a copy to all of them.” He must have realized the inference in that statement—at least, he hurried on to say, “Then a good customer of mine asked me to track down a copy of Mrs. Frances Trollope’s The Cook’s Own Book. Do you know it?”
“Published in Boston, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, in 1845. She had some amusing comments on dining etiquette—a far cry from ‘grabbing a po’ boy sandwich,’ I’m afraid.”
“You have some old volumes in that case over there,” I said, pointing to the glass-fronted and locked cabinet.
“They are the more valuable items,” Gambrinus said. I thought he wanted to terminate the conversation and get me out but his pride in his books got the better of him.
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” he said with a nod to a leather-bound volume. “First edition, 1891. Probably worth four thousand dollars. This one next to it is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. It has been described as the most satisfying of all children’s books, worth two to three thousand.”
“You have a Hemingway here,” I said. “Is that a first edition? Must be—being in such illustrious company.”
“Actually, it’s a later printing but it’s signed and inscribed by Hemingway so it would probably bring about five thousand. There are a lot of Hemingway fans who are collectors.”
“Lolita,” I said skeptically. “Should that be in this case?”
Gambrinus laughed, a deep rumbling laugh. “Worth more than all these others!”
“Surely not?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a first edition, printed in 1955. You find it hard to believe that I wouldn’t sell that book for under ten thousand dollars?”
“Very. Guess I don’t know that much about the book business.”
“Sold a first edition of The Great Gatsby the other day,” Gambrinus said. “Three thousand. An even more recent book, The English Patient, brings a thousand—or even more if it’s in top condition. First editions of Harry Potter books bring over twenty thousand,” he added disparagingly.
All through these interchanges, he had been edging me closer and closer to the door and when I reached it, I made the required move. As the bell clanged behind me, I was thinking that Michael Gambrinus wasn’t a hot candidate for the villain but I wasn’t going to rule him out of having had some complicity.
Rain was threatening but didn’t have enough conviction yet. A faint smell of marsh grass was in the air, presumably wafted in by breezes from the bayou country. Some seagulls were perfor
ming aeronautical maneuvers at low altitude and a man in all black leather clothes was tooting on a flute. He had silver buttons, silver beads, silver epaulets and a big silver buckle on his black belt. His face was darker than his clothes and his flute-playing was clearly influenced by James Galway although this fellow had not had as much practice.
I was standing in Jackson Square, not far from the hotel. It was one of the historic sights of New Orleans according to the guidebooks in the hotel lobby. I hadn’t got to the history yet, having stopped to watch a mime while nearby, a spindly-legged fellow spun a bicycle tire on his head while tap-dancing a Bojangles Robinson number. A young woman, probably a music student, played a violin with a good deal of flair and I strolled on past the redbrick Pontalba Apartments, said by the guide book to be the first apartment buildings in America.
Shutters were snapping closed furiously for it was obviously among the most photographed sights in the city. A tour group from Scotland was listening intently to their guide explaining in a thick Glaswegian accent how the apartments had been built by the Baroness Pontalba after she had been shot and wounded by her husband who then shot himself dead.
The guide went on to fill in the details of the scandal that involved many famous names in New Orleans and in Europe. The baroness had been a fine businesswoman, though, she said. When “the Swedish Nightingale,” Jenny Lind, performed in the city, she stayed in the Pontalba and after the singer departed for home, the baroness held an auction and sold off—at a handsome profit—all the furniture from the apartment in which Jenny Lind had stayed.
The statue of Andrew Jackson, general and later president, sits proudly on his charger in the center of the square. I edged close to the Scottish tourists to hear the guide tell about him. “If you visit South America,” she was saying, “you will see this same statue in many cities. It was so admired by the dictators of so many countries there, that orders rolled in. The sculptor simply mass-produced the statue and put a different head on each one—that of the country’s leader.”
A bunch of chattering schoolchildren crossed the square, clearly excited at the release from educational captivity, while teachers at front and back watched in earnest desperation for stragglers.
As the afternoon drew on, more musicians came onto what had been, in turn, an execution square, a military parade ground and a town square. The chords of half a dozen instruments sort of blended into a harmonious cacophony even though the players were unconnected. Many of the benches were occupied and people sat by the fountain. A clown appeared and immediately attracted the attention of the schoolchildren while a tarot-card reader was getting a hard time from a dissatisfied customer who thought her future should be more glamorous than was being depicted.
At the Decatur Street end of Jackson Square were ranks of open carriages. They had a convincingly romantic look to them and appeared to be doing good business. I had assumed at first glance that they were horse-drawn but now I saw that the pulling power came from mules, not horses. The animals were decked with ribbons and flowers and a couple wore straw hats at jaunty angles.
The leisurely atmosphere in the square applied to both residents and tourists. No one seemed in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything. It was very relaxing, and that was how I came to notice a hurrying figure going by the fountain. He was the only person in sight who was in a hurry.
He wore a checked suit in light gray which appeared to be almost a uniform, and the light gray cap with a brim added to that impression. I was looking away when a third item brought me back to look at him again—this time, his face.
How could he be familiar? Then I recognized him—it was the man from the Delta Duchess who had offered me the phony Belvedere book.
I watched his fast stride take him across the square. He was moving in the direction of the ranks of the carriages. To my surprise, he took down a sign advertising tours and dropped it out of sight in the passenger seat. He climbed into the driver’s seat, took up a whip, flicked it and released the hand-brake. The horse reared its head, stamped its forefeet to restore circulation and pulled away from the curb.
I dodged between musicians, tourists, mimes, clowns, schoolchildren, nurses, contortionists and hot-dog stands as I hurried toward the rank of carriages. In one of them, a West Indian driver with a luxuriant mustache was already sitting in the driving seat. He looked ready for hire and I jumped in behind him.
I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself saying, “Follow that mule!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A FLIGHT OF PIGEONS took to the air, apparently small friends of the mule’s. The clip-clop of the mule’s shoes had a friendly rhythm and we rolled past restaurants and coffee shops that ringed around the square. We went west along Decatur Street then turned left onto St. Ann Street, which was apparently one-way.
A small painted sign said the driver/owner was Benjamin and as we made the turn, he asked affably, “Where you want to go, man? Don’t seem like you really want to follow that mule.” He flicked his whip, pointing ahead to where the other carriage was just in sight.
“I do,” I told him. “He’s a friend of mine. I just saw him pulling away but couldn’t catch him in time.”
He nodded as if satisfied, but after a pause that lasted two blocks, he asked, “What’s his name, man?”
He had me there. I could have pretended a memory lapse but didn’t think it would sound convincing. I said with a laugh, “Oh, I’m sure you know him. You see him every day.”
“Yeah.” He sounded sour and cracked the whip loudly in emphasis. “Sixty bucks he owes me now. He ain’t ever gonna pay me, man.” He looked back over his shoulder at me. “’Course, if he’s a friend o’ yours, shouldn’t be saying that.”
“He’s not exactly a friend,” I said. Maybe any man who was out sixty dollars was more of a friend than my quarry was.
“Figured that,” said Benjamin, and spat expertly into the gutter.
“Know him well?”
“Nah. None of us do. He don’t associate with us.”
“What kind of a guy is he?”
“Not for me to say,” Benjamin muttered. That meant he was going to say, so I waited. After half a minute, it came. “Owes a lot of the drivers; it ain’t just my sixty bucks. If you ask me, he got his finger in a lot o’ places it shouldn’t ought to be.”
“Trouble with the law?”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “You’d know more about that.”
“I meant the local law. I just got into town.”
“Don’t know if he’s ever done time, but guys come around asking questions about him. Some lawmen, some others.”
We were still going north, through the French-Quarter, and we crossed Rampart Street, one of the infrequent intersections to have a street sign. A large park loomed on the left and he saw me looking. “Louis Armstrong Park,” he said. “Know who he is?”
“Everybody in the world knows Satchmo.”
He grinned. “You right on, there.” The mule trotted along happily. Ahead, the other carriage was just in sight. The driver read my mind. “He won’t think nuthin’ of us behind him—even if he sees us, which he probably won’t. See us carriages all over the city.”
He beat me to it, “You don’t sound like a cop. Private?”
“Not from round here.”
“Figured that. Interpol, I bet.”
“You’re a shrewd fellow. So what’s his name?”
“Earl Whelan. Want him bad, huh?”
“Don’t want to lose him.”
“We won’t. Don’t you worry none. Myrtle’s the best in the city—ain’t you, old girl?”
A flick of the tail indicated that the mule recognized her name as she plodded steadily along. “Females make better carriage mules than male—you know that?”
“No, I didn’t. It’s good to know, though.”
He laughed, a chuckling, half-wheezy laugh. We passed underneath State Highway 10, thick with traffic. Darkness was falling fast.
&nb
sp; “Still heading toward the lakeshore, aren’t we?” I knew the city from looking at maps and had a rough idea of the layout.
“Right, but we ain’t goin’ there.”
“We’re not? Why, do you know where he lives?”
“No, but he don’t live lakeshore, you can be sure o’ that. More likely, he live where we comin’ in now. Old Metairie, got a famous cemetery here, lotsa folks visit it. You into cemeteries?”
“Not before my time—and that’s not yet,” I told him, and got a deep chuckle.
It was a marginal neighborhood, not downright slum but not too appealing: rows of small houses on narrow streets. We had moved closer to the other carriage now that the traffic was much lighter, and Benjamin slowed Myrtle’s steady step. “Gonna nail him?” he asked eagerly.
“Not right away. I want to watch him a bit longer. See who he’s with.”
“When you cuff him, can I get my sixty bucks first?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Wanna watch him so’s you can get the rest o’ the gang too, huh?”
“Something like that.”
After a few minutes of slower progress due to the narrow streets and clogging traffic, Benjamin said, “He’s stopped.”
“Stay back but keep him in sight.” I said it the way any Interpol operative would say it, crisp and commanding.
We stopped a full block away and across the street. The houses here were old and looked none too firm. The one that Whelan approached had a large building on the side. Whelan opened a door, then a bigger one swung open. It was a barnlike structure and he proceeded to back the carriage into it, disconnect it, then put the mule in there, too.
“Is that legal?”
Benjamin shrugged. “’Round here they don’t care. Long as they get the rent.”