A Taste of the Nightlife

by Sarah Zettel

  “Erm . . .”

  “Uh-huh.” Jessie set down the wooden proddy thing and checked on whatever was brewing in her chafing dishes. “What’s Erm’s first name?”

  “Brendan.” I braced myself for the squeeing overreaction. Complete mockery was also a real possibility. Jessie settled for plunging my hand into a warm liquid about the consistency of a loose puree. “Nice name. Cute? Paraffin soak,” she added. I assumed that last one referred to the liquid she held my hand in, not to Brendan.

  I pictured Brendan’s warm eyes and killer smile, and the heat from my soaking hand seemed to spread straight through me. “Definitely cute.”

  “Employed?” Jess asked, proving her mother had instilled in her a firm grasp of the essentials.

  “Enough for a loft in SoHo.”

  “Definite bonus. So.” She pulled my hand out of the paraffin and wiped it down with a warm, soft towel. “What’s the problem?”

  “What problem?”

  “You’re making faces, Charlotte. What’s the problem? He married?”

  “What? No!”

  “So, what?” She pushed my hand back into the paraffin. I hoped I never had to admit this, but the soft warmth was actually starting to relax my back and shoulders. Tense is my natural state, but this was affecting me like my trip to the produce market had. Slowly, things inside me were letting go.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  Jessie gave me another of her glowers. I wondered if this was what Chet felt like when I turned the Big Sister Glare on him. “Pretend for a minute you don’t believe I’m a total idiot.”

  “I don’t believe you’re a total idiot.” Jess pulled my hand out of the paraffin and contemplated it while fingering a little hooky thing and I swallowed. “Really.”

  “Uh-huh. Hold still.”

  I swear to God, I don’t know how she did it. I’m very good at keeping things inside my own head. But while Jessie soaked, smoothed, massaged and buffed my other hand, I told her what had happened to me yesterday. All of it, including the play-by-play on dinner with Brendan and then what happened with Chet, and Anatole, and afterward.

  She was toweling off the fingers on my left hand when my words finally ran out. “You’re not going to do the smart thing and call the police, are you?”

  I shook my head. “How can I? I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You mean you don’t know how much you’re going to have to cover for Chet.”

  That should have been the cue for my famously short temper to rise up and cut loose. It would have for anybody else. As it was, I was wondering uncomfortably how Jess could understand so much about me when we were so different.

  “This is so messed up,” I muttered.

  “You’re right about that much.” Jessie gave my nails a final swipe with one of her astounding array of brushes and leaned back to consider her . . . handiwork . . . from farther away. I looked at my fingers. They looked . . . new. The skin and nails were perfectly clean and had a healthy pink glow. My hands felt relaxed and ready to go.

  “What you need is a once-a-month lunch,” said Jess.

  “Sorry?” I blinked, and resisted the temptation to touch that rosy skin just to confirm it was still mine.

  “Once-a-month lunch. All the district reps get together once a month and do lunch, without the district supervisors. You find out everything that’s going on.”

  I was so surprised by this transformation of my work-hardened hands that it took a minute for Jess’s words to sink into my head, and another minute for them to bloom. “Dear God,” I whispered. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Really? Why?”

  There was a little too much glee in Jessie’s voice just then, but I ignored it. A new idea had come out of the back room, this one fully formed and fully cognizant of its own worth.

  “If you want to find out what’s going on with somebody in the business, you don’t just ask them.”

  “What do you do?”

  I dove past her, straight for my purse. “You ask Robert Kemp.” I pulled out my cell, thumbed the screen and waited while it rang.

  “Good afternoon, Chef Caine.” Robert Kemp, Nightlife’s maître d’, had a voice that sounded like it had been delivered fresh this morning from the BBC.

  “Hello, Robert.”

  “Is there news about the reopening?” he inquired mildly, as if it was a subject of obscure and entirely academic interest.

  “Not yet. Sorry.” On the other side of the room, Jess was tidying her instruments and screwing on jar lids, but not, I noticed, putting any of them away. She did not so much as glance toward me. I was not fooled, but shrugged it off. All things considered, I probably owed her a little eavesdropping. “Robert, I need a favor.”

  “I’ll be glad to do whatever I can, Chef Caine.”

  I’d known he would say that. Robert owed us big-time. Actually, it was Chet he owed. Chet had convinced me that we should hire Robert, and it took him two weeks to do it. Robert’s previous place of employment—a four-star establishment called UniQ—had accused him of embezzlement. The charge turned out not to be true, or at least not to be provable, but the gambling problem that made him look suspicious was. Between that bad habit and the recession, no topflight restaurant would take him on. In fact, no one at all would take him on. I gave in only after Chet pointed out two things. First, Robert was willing to work cheap, and second, despite all the problems, Robert Kemp was still was on a first-name basis with every single concierge in Manhattan.

  This is really important. Concierges make recommendations to hotel guests on good places to eat out. That they recommend places where friends and acquaintances work should not come as a surprise to anybody. That a maître d’ might use some of his tip money to ensure their continued friendship was not something a smart executive chef ever asked about. Plausible deniability is also really important.

  “I’m looking for information on Bertram Shelby,” I told Robert.

  “I am not familiar with the name.” He didn’t even need to think about that. Robert had a high-definition memory for people.

  “He’s the current owner of Post Mortem, a vampire club in the East Village.”

  “Ah.” I could picture Robert looking down his very long English nose. Jobs were transient things, but the true maître d’s snobbery was bred in the bone.

  “He’s been around for a while.” Actually, this was a guess, but Shelby wasn’t a young man, and as little as I liked the place, Post Mortem just didn’t feel like a maiden voyage to me. “Can you find out where, and with whom?”

  “I’m certain I can. Is there anything specific you want to know?”

  I hesitated and glanced at Jess. She’d given up her nonlistening charade and was sitting at the table, arms folded and head cocked. “I just need an employment history and to find out how Shelby got to be running Post Mortem.” Clubs in New York are the only ventures riskier than restaurants. The vast majority of them fail before they celebrate their first anniversary. More than one, however, has survived by allowing assorted exciting and highly profitable activities to be conducted on or through the premises. Now, of course, I didn’t think Chet was doing anything illegal, but Bert Shelby might be, maybe with Taylor Watts’s help. If I’d been living right, that something might be related to whatever had gotten Dylan Maddox killed and we could clear the entire mess up all at once.

  “Very well, Chef. I will see what I can turn up.”

  “Thank you, Robert.”

  “Not at all. I will call you as soon as I have something.”

  We said our good-byes and I thumbed the phone off.

  Jessie had her eyebrows raised. “So, Charlotte Caine’s the new Nancy Drew?”

  “Not even close.” I ran my hand over my hair. “I just want to know what happened. Chet’s keeping something from me, and I need to know if it has anything to do with Dylan’s murder and what the hell he thinks he’s up to. Maybe he thinks he’s protecting somebody, or protecting Nightlife.
Anyway, he’s not going to tell me anything if I don’t have something solid in my hand already. So I have to ask around. That’s all this is.” All of which sounded way more like guilty babbling than I was comfortable with.

  “Which is of course entirely different than Nancy Drew-ing, especially since there’s a dead man involved.”

  Of course it was, but I couldn’t seem to think how. It would have come to me if I’d had a second, I’m sure, but Jessie wasn’t giving me a second.

  “Come over here and take your shoes off.” She reached behind her red cases and brought out a strange-looking bundle of silver sticks that turned out to be a folding footstool.

  “What? Why?”

  Her smile sharpened, and I’m certain I saw a glint in her eye. “I’ve got you in my clutches, girl. You’re not getting out without the full treatment.”

  “Jess . . .”

  “Don’t ‘Jess’ me. You stand on your feet ten hours a night. You’ve probably got calluses on your calluses, and if you don’t start taking care of them, they’re going to split and bleed. It’s going to be nasty and you’re going to miss work. Shoes off.”

  It was the “miss work” that did it, just like she knew it would. Clearly, she was a more dangerous saleswoman than I had realized. I went back to my station and obediently took my shoes off. Jess scooted her chair around and set about giving my feet the same kind of work-over she’d given my hands. It could have been the warmth, or that I wasn’t used to sitting around doing nothing, or that I hadn’t eaten or slept decently in the past couple daysing aroundwhatever it was, I found myself drifting off slowly toward sleep. Something told me this was not the best idea, but I was tired of fighting to keep my head together, and for once I let go. The nap descended softly, and it felt almost as good as the paraffin soak.

  My phone was ringing. I blinked my eyes open and automatically checked my watch. I’d been asleep for two hours. Jess and her implements of destruction were nowhere in evidence. My phone rang again. I swung my feet off the stool and a flash of color made me stop and look down.

  While I’d been asleep, Jess had painted my toenails Mary Sue Scarlet.

  Brat. I thumbed my phone on without looking at the number. “What?”

  “Catching you at a bad time, Chef Caine?” asked Linus O’Grady.

  “No, no.” I frowned at my toenails. The polish did not evaporate.

  “I’ve got good news. You won’t be able to open the restaurant for a few more days, but I can let you back into your kitchen tomorrow.”

  And just like that, all was right with the world, Mary Sue Scarlet toes and all.

  13

  All remained right with the world for exactly thirteen hours. I forgave Jess. I called Chet as soon as the sun went down and we whooped and hollered our mutual triumph. It took some effort, but I set aside all my questions about his whereabouts and his connections to Post Mortem. For just this one night I was going to pretend everything could still be all right. If insisting that Trish and Jess come to dinner with me at Pilar’s Downtown to drink Dos Equis and eat way too much fresh guacamole was to help keep those questions bound and gagged, I was surely owed at least one night of avocado-and-chile-flavored avoidance tactics.

  But then came Wednesday morning, bright and early. Suchai, Marie and Jorgé Sanchez—the only one of the line cooks who could be bothered to show up for the triage—crowded into the walk-in with me as I stared at tub after tub of unusable food.

  Restaurants throw out an incredible amount of food. It’s a fact and you get used to it, but we were about to open a whole new level of waste. Anything that had been cut or prepped on Saturday had settled into its own ooze. The bread was long past stale. Then there was the produce that had been so fresh and lovely for the weekend, and the stuff that we’d been pushing on the specials because it was about ready to go. . . .

  All I could think was this must be what a vet felt like looking at a horse that had to be put down. Thousands of dollars’ worth of food was about to be dropped into the Dumpster out back, where we were supposed to douse it in bleach to discourage scavengers. We mostly forget this step. Once you’ve seen a ten-year-old standing watch while his mom goes diving to try to find something the rats haven’t gotten, it does things to you.

  That memory turned me back around.

  “We’re making soup.”

  “What?” Jorgé moved at light speed when he had a knife in his hand, but he was not exactly quick on the uptake in conversation.

  But I had already flipped over into executive chef mode and didn’t bother to explain. “Suchai, call the food pantry and find out if they’ve got some vans, because bur we’re going to have dinner for a couple hundred. Jorge, start getting the crates upstairs. Go through them and find out what’s edible—I don’t care whether it’s pretty—and get it into the soup pot. Marie, sort out the breads. Stale we’ll use in the soup, or as croutons. Mostly fresh, we can use for grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches. There’s got to be something we can do with those prepped short ribs from Saturday too.”

  “We can’t use the dining room,” Marie reminded me. That was still cop territory. O’Grady had been very clear on that.

  “But we can use the kitchen and the back door. Grab a bin and let’s go.” I hefted a tub of not-so-new-anymore potatoes and started up the stairs.

  “Yes, Chef,” said Jorgé.

  “Yes, Chef!” said Marie.

  “Yes, Chef!” said Suchai.

  After that, it got kind of amazing. First it was just the four of us, sorting, chopping, getting the burners fired and filling that cold kitchen with the sounds and smells that meant life. Then Mohammed, another of our line cooks, came in, towing Marie’s apprentice, Paolo, behind him. They said nothing, just washed up, found knives and started taking apart crates of tomatoes. Somebody had gotten busy on the phone, and I hadn’t even seen who it was. By the time we got around to turning the toasted bread into crumbs and croutons for the pomodoro, the whole line—including all the baby Bobby Flays—was in. Half the front-of-the-house crew took up stations beside them to pack boxes with sandwiches and highly improvised bar cookies, courtesy of Marie and Paolo. The other half had appropriated folding tables from somewhere and set them up out back because the food pantry workers had wanted to know how soon they could start funneling people toward us, and now we had a line.

  I did not cry. Seeing my people—who I was sure were getting ready to bail on me—working full tilt to feed their fellow New Yorkers could not possibly make me cry. That would be bad for my authority.

  I was backing out the door carrying a stockpot full of pasta carbonara and blood sausage when a woman in a black pantsuit shouldered her way through the line of the homeless, the hungry and the idly curious.

  “Oh my ghad! Omighad! It’s perfect! Perfect! Charlotte, if I wasn’t going to kill you, I’d kiss you.”

  Elaine West, Nightlife’s PR agent, was professionally thin and tastefully blond. She carried a designer bag big enough to conceal a full-grown watermelon and when she didn’t have her BlackBerry in her hands, her thumbs twitched.

  “Why are you going to kill me?” I passed the pasta off to Katy, who worked the dinner shift the three days a week she wasn’t at film school.

  “Because you didn’t tell me!” Elaine was already thumbing her phone. “Dave? Elaine West. We need a camera down at Nightlife. Now. I don’t care where from, just get it here.” She hung up.

  “I wasn’t doing this for the PR,” I muttered.

  “Well, you are now, sweetie.” She linked her arm in mine and smiled. “So let’s go over how this extremely generous impulse came to you, so you can get your life back and have a total smash of a reopening.”

  When she put it that way, I was not only more than ready to be coached, I was doing the face-palm. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I guess that’s why we were paying her the big bucks, or would be as soon as we had them.

  By the time the first camera got there, I was in a fresh-pressed chef�
�s coat explaining how important it was for the city’s food professionals to give back to the community and praising my people, who were all donating their time. I meant it, of course, but according to Elaine it also made me look magnanimous and feminine. Well, there’s a first time for everything.

  We drew an audience as soon as the cameras started clustering around. Suchai put out one of the stockpots with a sign asking for donations to the food bank, and the dollars started fluttering down. More cameras converged and I had to go through my Elaine-prepped spiel four more times, but I did so with a song in my heart. Some days you know that, just this once, you did good.

  Sundown found us all collapsed in the kitchen, drinking beers, scarfing down leftover pasta, sandwiches and cookies. We all had our smartphones, BlackBerries and PDAs out so we could take turns reading from the blogs and news Web sites. Every good mention earned a new round of high fives. It wasn’t a 100 percent turnaround by any means, but the conversation about us had switched away from murder and vampires, and that felt like a victory.

  Every time I glanced at the door to the dining room, though, I knew nothing had really changed. The limits of my ability to play make-believe had been reached. Until we knew for sure why Dylan Maddox had died, and more important, until Little Linus and the rest of New York’s finest knew, everything could come crashing down on us again.

  So while the crew huddled together, texting their comments to the holdout blogs that still didn’t think we were all that plus or minus a bag of chips, I took a fresh beer to Suchai where he was hunkered down on an overturned five-gallon bucket. We raised our bottles to each other.

  “Thanks for being here, Suchai.”

  He shrugged and swigged. This was one of the few times I’d ever seen him in T-shirt and jeans instead of his immaculate white captain’s coat. He looked relaxed and easy, except for the dark circles under his eyes that came with being a new parent. “My wife would kill me if I didn’t. She thinks you are the next great chef in Manhattan.”