Roux the Day

by Peter King

  Next to it was the Flea Market, tables of jewelry, gleaming silver and gold ornaments, souvenirs, T-shirts, even life-sized wooden Indians and alligators. One whole section had colored beads and I watched one couple slipping necklace after necklace of these around the necks of two giant mastiffs. The two animals appeared to be watching each other to make sure they were not being outdone.

  These inevitably triggered considerations of lunch, and one of the many friendly shopkeepers recommended the Quarter Scene restaurant on Dumaine Street.

  I found it casual and unassuming, only a block off busy Bourbon Street and with wide windows for watching the passing scene. The walls were covered with old lithographs and paintings depicting scenes of early Louisiana while other walls had works by contemporary local artists. It all indicated Southern hospitality. I was seated just in time to hear the waiter explaining to people at the next table that it had been the favorite eating place of Tennessee Williams when he had lived just up the block.

  Many favorite local dishes were on the menu and I decided to go strictly homemade Louisiana. I was learning, though, that even the so-called “strictly Louisiana” restaurants incorporated into some of their dishes influences of Caribbean flavors. Jamaican jerk dishes were the most popular of these and the tuna steak prepared this way and topped with tropical fruit salsa caught my eye briefly.

  Ginger, bay leaf, allspice, garlic, thyme, cinnamon and chiles are the principal jerk spices and are blended with soy sauce, orange juice and vinegar to produce a very pungent marinade and sauce. Properly prepared, it is said to be so good that Jamaicans put it on everything including eggs.

  Still, I concluded that, while in New Orleans, I should keep to Louisiana-style food so I ordered the catfish, encrusted with pecans and served with a crawfish sauce. It proved to be an excellent choice and I was even successful in preventing the waiter from explaining to me why those deep-fried, golfball-sized dark-brown accompaniments to it were called “hush puppies.” That explanation must have been heard around the world by now.

  Having had only the one course, I felt justified in having the Bread Pudding with Praline Sauce, a homemade house specialty. It was a real treat.

  The television studios at WKNO were fizzing with eager young communications tycoons and a large number of young men and women pursuing mysterious and indefinable tasks. After I had received my badge, I was conducted through the building and marveled at the degree to which the public is absorbed with news and weather. Studio after studio was dispensing one or the other.

  My experience of weather forecasting was that it was not much more reliable than betting on horse races. The most fascinating activities in this medium were those where the presenter was in one studio and the large screen showing the changing weather pattern was in another. The sight of the attractive girl pointing to an empty screen and telling us to watch out for “this cold front” or “this storm area” was surely the basis for a comedy show.

  When I finally reached the studio where the Cajun-Creole confrontation was to take place, Elsa Goddard was already bawling out a hapless underling who must have been seeing her hopes of being the next Connie Chung fading rapidly. Elsa saw me, gave a wave and continued her harangue. The stage was being set with two rows of chairs half facing each other while microphone lines were being strung and pushed out of sight.

  A dozen fifteen-inch television monitors sat on a shelf on each of two walls. Several different programs emanating from WKNO’s numerous studios were showing on one bank and the other bank displayed programs from competing networks and cable stations—either to inspire or emulate. Ceiling-height black screens formed the walls and could be moved around. Noises from behind them suggested that other shows were being prepared.

  In our area, a man in an outfit that looked like a musical-comedy version of a forest ranger accosted me. “You in this here show?”

  I admitted it.

  “You must be Georgie Redding,” he said. “Howdy.”

  Before I could correct him, he was continuing. “Bird’s my name—Eugene C. Bird from Greensboro, North Carolina. Originally, that is. New Orleans the last twenty years. Heard you was goin’ to be with us. Glad to have ya aboard. Gonna have a lot of fun.”

  A dowager lady with a great deal of hair and a purposeful demeanor joined us. “Which team you two on?”

  “Team?” I asked.

  “Cajuns, o’ course,” said Eugene C. Bird.

  “Me too,” said the lady. She gave me a nod that included me in the “team.”

  Another woman joined us. I had seen her trying to get Elsa Goddard’s attention and failing. The unfortunate assistant was wilting by the minute. “You all Creoles?” demanded the woman who was small and thin and wore a dark red dress with gold shoes.

  Eugene C. Bird looked at her as if she had accused him of being a child molester. “We’re Cajuns,” he said ominously.

  A gray-haired, gray-faced skinny man picked his way through the cables. “I’m a Creole,” he said in a piping voice. “Lester Levison, from Burnside, Louisiana.” He gave us a feisty glare as if challenging us to contradict him. I was beginning to think that New Orleans folk were fiercely parochial, especially on this matter of origin.

  Elsa Goddard’s assistant had almost melted into a puddle of unresisting flesh and had been pushed off into some remote recess of the studio. Her vanquisher, the queen of the airwaves herself, came to greet us, checking us over. “Someone’s not here,” she announced accusingly.

  “Tess Natoches,” said Lester Levison promptly. “Her niece is in hospital in Biloxi.”

  “She could have told me.” Elsa Goddard was appalled that her universe was being disturbed.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the thin lady in the red dress. “We’ve got three Creoles.” She waved a hand that encompassed herself, Lester Levison and me.

  “I’m not a—” I began, but the dowager lady pointed to me.

  “He’s Georgie Redding, he’s a Cajun.”

  “I’m not Redding, I’m—”

  “Of course you’re ready. We all are,” said Elsa Goddard, smiling her professional smile, the one that smoothed out all difficulties as being trivial. “Don’t worry. We go on in ten minutes.”

  Seats were taken, Cajuns on one side and Creoles on the other. I tried to distance myself from both of them but space was cramped. Makeup people dabbed here and there, throat mikes were clipped on, tests were made and then Elsa’s radiant personality beamed out over Louisiana. She introduced herself and the show then went on to speak about today’s program.

  “The Cajuns trace their heritage directly from the Acadian French who, after being expelled from Nova Scotia by the English, relocated in southern Louisiana. Creole culture had its roots in the early 1700s during the French colonial period.

  “Here in New Orleans”—she pronounced it “N’Yorlins”—“we are familiar with these differences and we all have a pretty good idea of the differences between Cajun cooking and Creole cooking. We hear a lot about the merging of the two cuisines, but is everyone in favor of this?”

  On the monitors, the camera panned along the two battle lines.

  They were glaring at each other and the answer to Elsa’s question was clearly in the negative. She smiled in satisfaction, smelling blood.

  “First of all,” Elsa said, “I’m going to introduce the two teams.” She did so, then said, “For the first question, I’m going to ask the Cajuns for their opinion of Creole cooking.”

  Oh, oh, I thought, here we go. And we did.

  The little lady in the red dress spoke up. “African cooking—that’s all Creole is. All the Africans knew was cook a long time over a little fire.”

  The dowager lady with all the hair couldn’t wait to leap in. “Creole cooking is French, Spanish, African, Italian, blended together to produce—”

  “A mishmash!” crowed Eugene C. Bird. “That’s not a blend, that’s a mishmash! Why, the only idea the Spanish contributed was to mix meat and fish! Can
you believe it? Meat and fish together?”

  Lester Levison elbowed his way into the argument. “Know why the Spanish let the Acadians into Louisiana? It was because they couldn’t find any other people dumb enough to want to live in the swamps!”

  “Cajun cooking,” declared the dowager lady, “is a coverup. It relies on peppers that are hot enough to cover the taste of the food.”

  “Know what the Cajuns do?” cackled the lady in the red dress. “Put pineapple in cole slaw! Imagine anybody with any taste putting pineapple in cole slaw!”

  Elsa Goddard was enjoying this hugely. The conflict had become violent right at the start of the program; she hadn’t had to do any priming at all. But she still wanted to make it clear that it was her program and now she tried to grab hold of the swelling confrontation before it got out of control.

  “Ladies and gentlemen—” She had to say it three times. “Isn’t there a saying that ‘a Creole takes three chickens to feed one family—’”

  Lester Levison was ahead of her. “‘And a Cajun can feed three families on one chicken.’”

  “All the Cajuns know is how to feed a lot of people on not much food,” said the lady in the red dress scornfully, backing up Lester in fine style. “Talk about loaves and fishes!”

  “What about gumbo?” demanded the dowager lady, raising her voice to cut through the melee. “That’s what I want to know. What about gumbo? All it is is leftovers—bits of ham, scraps of duck, crumbs of sausage meat, shreds of bacon, flakes of fish! You Creoles call that food?”

  “Stupid Cajuns!” shrilled the little lady in the red dress. “Spent twenty years trying to grow grapes ’afore you found out that the soil was all wrong.”

  Off camera, the dowager lady was making frantic motions at me. Come on! Get involved! was her message, I had no doubt. It would have been like stepping between two groups of dagger-wielding opponents or trying to make peace between the Hatfields and the McCoys while dodging the bullets. From the other side, Lester Levison was giving me dirty looks and waving, his exhortation certainly being the same.

  Elsa also was making motions that meant she wanted me to enter the fray and I was suddenly alarmed when I glanced at the monitors and saw myself replicated up there several times. “As a comparative outsider,” she was saying, and I caught querying looks from the Cajun team who had thought I was Creole and the Creoles who had thought I was Cajun. “As a comparative outsider, where do you stand in this fascinating discussion?”

  “Mustard,” I said. Relative silence reigned. They were waiting to find out whether it was a criticism or a question. “There’s French mustard, English mustard, German mustard, Chinese mustard and kosher deli mustard. They cover the chef’s range of needs very well, so why did the Creoles need one of their own?”

  It wasn’t that difficult a question but no one offered a reply. I fired a second salvo. “One thing I could never understand about Cajun cooking is why does it have no pasta dishes?”

  Elsa smiled brassily and brought up the topic of jambalaya. The Creoles said it was red and the Cajuns said it should be brown. It was a more inflammatory theme and we were back on the verge of fisticuffs very quickly. The program ended in a verbal fusillade from both teams of combatants and if there was a musical playout, it was The Ride of the Valkyries.

  Elsa came up to me afterwards. “Perhaps I should have told you we were changing the format of the program,” she said brightly. “This seemed like it would provoke more discussion. I think it went very well, don’t you?”

  “Pyrotechnically speaking, yes.”

  She was trying to catch my eye and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “Over by that reflector …” I said.

  She turned. “What is it?”

  “There’s a man standing behind it.”

  “I don’t see—”

  A figure emerged. “It’s Larry Mortensen!” Elsa said, surprised. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but he has his hand inside that jacket again and the way it sags, I think he’s brought his gun with him.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “YOUR BADGE,” ELSA SAID accusingly as Larry Mortensen reached us. “It’s the one you were issued the last time. It’s not valid for today.”

  Mortensen looked irritated. His clothes looked as if they had just been thrown on and the ancient bomber jacket he was wearing must have been made long before bombers were invented. The garment attracted my attention particularly because it bulged where his right hand was inside it. He didn’t seem concerned about Elsa’s accusation. He looked from one to the other of us. “Which of you killed Earl?” he demanded.

  He was tall and strong and had a gun—all of which made him dangerous. He had a more purposeful look now than before, which was disconcerting.

  “You knew Earl?” queried Elsa. It was a good move. It diverted him from any immediate action and he clearly wanted to explain.

  “He was a good friend of Richie’s,” he said. “Who killed him?”

  “Let’s get out of this studio,” Elsa said briskly. “The staff will be in here in a few minutes to get it ready for the next show. We can go in the conference room. Let me close out my segment.” She went to an instrument panel and pushed buttons and turned switches. I took the opportunity to engage Larry Mortensen. “So the three of you were friends, were you?”

  “We were good friends.”

  “Then you must know something about the book.”

  “The book?”

  “Yes. Your brother got the Belvedere cookbook from the auction and took it to Gambrinus’s bookshop. He waited there for someone to pay him money for it. They had an argument and the person shot him, shot your brother. Do you know who that person is?”

  He gave me a penetrating look. “Was it you?”

  “Certainly not!”

  His eyes roamed over to where Elsa was turning away from the instrument panel. She came over to us. She gave me a glance that seemed to have some hidden meaning but only said, “Let’s go to the conference room.”

  We had reached the door when a uniformed man hurried in. Elsa’s head moved fractionally in Mortensen’s direction. The uniform had tags that said SECURITY and the burly guard took in Mortensen’s appearance with a practiced glance.

  “I’ll escort you to the lobby,” the guard said, ready for trouble but not inviting it. Mortensen had his hand out of the bomber jacket now. He gave Elsa and me a very annoyed look but went without any resistance. We exchanged relieved glances.

  “That fellow is getting to be a nuisance,” she said. “What was he saying to you while I was summoning security?”

  “He was accusing me of killing his brother.”

  “Might be as well if you stayed out of his way.”

  “I agree but it may be more to the point if he would stay out of mine.”

  “Are you any closer at all?” she asked. “To finding out who’s behind this, I mean?”

  “Still chasing the story? The big one that could make you famous?”

  “Sure.” She was nonchalant with her answer but I could sense a steely determination underlying it.

  “My answer is, I’m making progress but not yet ready to announce an arrest. How about you?”

  She was debating in her mind. Was it how much she should confide in me? To urge her along, I said, “Wasn’t it one of us who suggested that we might make more headway if we pooled our knowledge?”

  “Was it?” she said with the wisp of a smile. “Which one?”

  I shook my head sadly. “And just when I thought I was going to hear a revelation.”

  “From me?”

  “Yes.”

  She still had her clipboard in her hands She raised it and glanced at it but with an unseeing eye. “I’m not sure how much of a revelation this is, but I guess there’s no harm in telling you. After all, we’re both after the same end, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m primarily looking for the book. You wa
nt a spectacular murder hunt with a dramatic ending.”

  She wagged the clipboard thoughtfully. “It’s just this. I think one of the Witches is involved.”

  “Which Witch?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know. I have a few ideas but I don’t want to say anything until I’m more sure.”

  “What makes you suspicious of the Witches?” I was remembering the words of Emmy Lou Charbonneau. She, too, harbored the same conviction. Were they both suspicious of the same woman? And for the same reason?

  “Oh, various aspects of this whole crazy business.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  “No, I’m not—and I know I’m not. I just don’t want to throw suspicion in the wrong direction, that’s all. If I can just gather a few more facts …”

  “You know what I think?” I asked.

  She gave me an amused smile. “No, what do you think?”

  “I think that you may not be the only one who is suspicious of the Witches.”

  “You mean you are, too?”

  “Not me. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if other Witches aren’t suspicious of the Witches.”

  “One of them has told you this.”

  I knew she was sharp so I wasn’t surprised. I neither confirmed nor denied, in the classical tradition. She did the right thing and concluded that she was right as well as sharp. “And you’re not going to tell me who it is. Okay, it’s a standoff.”

  “For the moment. But we should cooperate. I’d hate to think of either of us being the killer’s next victim.”