by Steven Gomez
Maurice entered the house, turned on a few lights, and made his way to the kitchen. As the rattle of the pots and pans grew, the smell of chicken and garlic wafted through the air. I pressed my face to the window, watching Maurice lay a bowl for himself and ladling it heavy with stewed chicken, onions, mushrooms, and wine. He sat the dish down on a small table in the kitchen, uncorked a bottle of Burgundy, and poured himself a healthy snootful. From there I watched him as he walked into the parlor and over to one of the many enormous bookshelves lining the walls of the room.. Each shelf overflowed with phonograph records. He studied the shelves as if he were going to be tested on them and, after some time, a smile pushed through his many chins as he pulled a record from the shelf.
Carrying the record as if it was his first born, he walked to the nearby oak chest and opened the lid, revealing a very elegant and very expensive phonograph. He carefully placed the record on the player, lowered the needle, and was rewarded with the powerful blast of an Italian tenor filling the house. He closed his eyes and smiled as he soaked in the music. It filled every part of him, almost lifting the pudgy little toad off the floor. He hovered for a few more moments in rapture before remembering his dinner.
Walking back through the small hallway that connected the parlor to the kitchen, Maurice paused at a framed playbill from a European opera hall. He quickly looked from his left to his right as I dove into the bushes, catching a mouthful of Hydrangea for my troubles. From the peeping tom position, I watched Maurice pull on the corner of the framed picture, revealing a wall safe on the other side. This complicated matters.
His considerable bulk blocked my view of his sausage-like fingers working the dial. When the door opened, he tossed in his wallet, his watch, and a few stray papers. From what little I could see in the safe, it looked as if most of its contents were paperwork. And most of the paperwork looked like stationery.
I began to doubt that Mrs. B was his only pigeon.
I watched Maurice return to his bowl of stew in the kitchen, and the muscles in my jaw tightened. The presence of the safe was an issue. I couldn’t just waltz in and slap the little weasel around for the letters. I could wait for Maurice to leave, but since Mrs. B was on his hook he might just decide to move the letters.
The time to strike was now, but I was coming up snake-eyes. I was tired, out of ideas, and my stomach was protesting the copious amounts of coffee I drank all day. To make matters worse, the scent of Maurice’s chicken stew was intoxicating and my already rebelling gut gave a rumble in protest. I was about to call it an evening and find some grub when inspiration struck. It was after five o’clock and, down the street a newsboy was getting ready to start hawking the evening edition.
I rang Maurice’s bell, using the time it took the portly man to waddle from his kitchen to the front door to straighten my tie and smooth my hair. I had dusted the dirt I collected from Maurice’s shrubbery off my suit and managed to look presentable, but I knew that if you held my suit up next to Maurice’s, mine was destined for the rubbish bin.
Maurice threw open the door and sized me up immediately. Since I obviously held little wealth, influence, or power, he kept his reserve of pleasantness closed, lest he run low on it at some critical moment.
“Waddaya want?” he said, small pieces of chicken raining down from his mouth onto my suit. Maurice clearly wasn’t a man who enjoyed being disturbed in mid-feedbag.
“Mr. De Leon, I represent the owner of a small liquidation company, and I was referred to you by a fellow representative of the Collins-Walker Listening Library.” I had looked in the phonebook, and this was the most upscale library listed. “I have in my possession a small but very discerning listing of recordings from the continent, and it has been mentioned that someone of your refined tastes might appreciate such an offering.”
“Recordings?” Maurice asked, finishing his mouthful and spotting the possibility of personal benefit. He cracked open the charm reserve and I was treated to a smile and a welcome.
“Where are my manners?” asked Maurice, stepping backwards and showing me inside. “I was just at dinner, but please, do come in.”
Maurice led me to the kitchen where he pulled a chair out, poured a small glass of Burgundy, and asked if I would care to join him for a bowl of Coq au Vin. The smell in the small kitchen was heaven, and clearly Maurice knew his stuff. The man may very well have been a creep, a blackmailer, and a gold-digger, but he knew his way around a stove.
“Now please, tell me more about this collection of yours.”
I gave him a fake name, using a couple of the names of streets I grew up on. I told him that my firm had acquired a number of rare pieces, including lost recordings of Luigi Mancinelli, Ezio Pinza, and Enrico Caruso. It was a lavish, lush, inviting picture I painted as I feasted on a Coq au Vin that was equally tasty. But there was one distinct difference between the collection I described and the tasty stew.
The collection didn’t exist.
As I went on about the fabricated collection, Maurice’s eyes seemed to narrow and his head nodded slightly, as if he were a snake about to strike. He refilled my wine glass as I greedily finished off my stew.
“This collection sounds remarkable,” Maurice said, not wanting to show too many cards. I would have told him that it sounded too good to be true, but my mouth was full. “And the firm you represent is willing to part with this collection for …?”
He wanted me to give a number so that he could counter it with half, or less. I wanted to give him a high number, so that he would feel that my collection actually existed. Before I had a chance to say anything, we were interrupted.
There was a knock on Maurice’s door. To be more precise, there was a torrential rain of bangs and blows to the front door, mixed in with kicks and doorbell rings thrown in for good measure. Even if I had answered Maurice’s question, my response would have been lost in the racket that came from his landing.
“What the blazes!” Maurice said as he sprang from his chair faster than I would have thought possible for a man of his bulk. He raced from his kitchen through the hallway and parlor, and around the corner to the front door. He threw the door open, preparing to rebuke the intruder for the loud and unwelcomed interruption, and found that the source of the racket was about three feet lower than he expected.
“Hey Mister!” yelled a young, freckle-faced Franklin Meyers, the newspaper boy from the end of the block. “Billy was supposed to pick up his load of papers from the docks and get them to me an hour ago! You gotta get him out here and put his butt in gear!”
Maurice stood transfixed, trying to decipher Franklin’s words as if they were in a foreign tongue. Slowly his senses returned and he addressed the loud little newsy.
“Young man, there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding. I have no idea who or what you are looking for, but I assure you that you have the wrong house.”
“Oh no you don’t mister!” yelled Franklin as he jammed his foot into the door. “I’ve been down the block all morning pulling my own shift, and I ain’t gonna pull another because Billy’s too lazy to do his job. You tell him to get his sorry behind out here!”
Maurice attempted to reason with Franklin, and then tried to forcibly remove him. All the while the kid was screaming bloody murder. I had to hand it to the kid, he was earning the five-spot I gave him before I entered Maurice’s home. So far, he had got Maurice out of the kitchen and arranged for me to spend some quality time with the wall safe. The rest was up to me.
The safe was a bare-bones type, with a large, numerical dial on the front, but it was enough to do the job. While I’m no expert, I’ve been able to crack the odd safe in favorable circumstances. The problem was, with Franklin yelling his lungs out at the front door, circumstances were less than favorable.
I gave the dial a few test spins, just enough to shake up the tumblers, and determined that it was a three-number combination. Quickly, I thought what numbers a music-nut like Maurice would use. Measures, octaves,
and scales all floated through my head as I tried to latch onto something, but I was nowhere. I cursed myself. A golden opportunity was slipping through my fingers.
Then it hit me!
It wasn’t a musical clue I was looking for at all. The combination came from Maurice’s day job.
38-24-38.
I spun the dial and the safe opened like the Gates of Heaven for a just man. I quickly found the letters and was set to go when my eye caught sight of another prize. I pocketed the note that caught my eye, showed myself out through the parlor window, and was down the street fast enough to see Franklin blowing raspberries at Maurice as the fat man finally managed to dislodge the paperboy from his doorstep.
I met up with Franklin at his corner and gave him the second five-spot, as per our agreement. I also tossed him a fifty-cent piece as a bonus. As I made my way back to my own humble abode on the other side of the tracks, I imagined that I would sell Mrs. B some soft-soap about Maurice being lost at sea, or captured by cannibals, or some other tripe. The man was as easy to find as bad news, but she chose not to. She wanted more than just her reputation. She wanted to hold onto the memories.
I would meet her tomorrow at the Met after I tossed Andrew a banana or two. I would give her the letters and I would make a nice little profit on a less-than-honest day’s work. But in the meantime, I had some chicken stew to whip up.
MAURICE’S COQ AU VIN
1/2 lb. bacon slices, cut into ½” pieces
1 large yellow onion, sliced
3 lbs. chicken thighs and legs, excess fat trimmed, skin ON
6 garlic cloves, peeled
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups Burgundy Red wine
2 bay leaves
Several fresh thyme sprigs
Several fresh parsley sprigs
2 cups button mushrooms, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 Tbsp. butter
Chopped Fresh parsley for garnish
In a large Dutch oven, brown the bacon on medium heat, just long enough to fill the kitchen with the smell of heaven, or about ten minutes. Remove the cooked bacon but keep it handy.
In the pot, working in small batches, add the chicken and onions, skin side down. Brown the bird well on all sides, adding salt and pepper as you go.
Spoon off the excess fat and add the chicken stock, wine and herbs. Toss the bacon back in and bring the whole mess to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Cover the Dutch oven and cook until the bird is tender and cooked through. Remove the chicken and onions to a separate platter. Take out the bay leaves, thyme, and parsley and toss ‘em.
Add the mushrooms to the broth and heat on high. Keep up the heat until it reduces by about three-fourths and it becomes thick and saucy. Lower the heat, stir in the butter, and return the chicken and the onions to the Dutch oven. Coat the chicken and onions, and add more seasoning if necessary.
Garnish with the parsley and serve with Don Giovanni.
THE CASE OF THE FOWL PREDICTION
Where we learn the difference between chickens and pigeons
I checked in with my message service this morning because, deep down, despite what people might say, I’m an optimist at heart. In fact, I consider it an act of optimism just to have a message service. The young gum-chewer who manned my line, as well as the hundreds of other optimists they charged by the month, surprised me with a message that wasn’t an invitation to purchase encyclopedias or an inquiry as to whether or not my icebox was running.
“You’ve got a message from someone calling themselves ‘Calabash’ or something like that,” she said, paying more attention to her nails than to me.
“I don’t suppose that you managed to pry a return phone number out of the stiff?” I asked, my optimism in full recession.
“No, smart guy,” answered the charm school candidate, filing what must have been the remnants of her last customer away from her fingernails. “He didn’t leave no phone number. He left an address though, and said that you should hot foot it over there as soon as you could.”
The card she handed me had the words “Mr. Cala-something” scribbled at the top, and an address on Adams Street that I could make out if I squinted hard. I thanked her and tossed her a two-bit tip. For a minute, I thought that she might toss it back.
“Thanks a lot, big spender,” she grumbled, dropping the quarter onto the desk and returning to her manicure. I threw a nod back at her and went on my way, feeling a little less optimistic than when I came in.
265 Adams Street was an unfamiliar neighborhood to me, and after spending two seconds there, I could tell why. The homes of Adams Street were ivy-covered, picket fence affairs that my Aunt Petunia would have described as ‘quaint.’ Each little plot of heaven had a postage-stamp sized lawn in front and window boxes that overflowed with begonias or gardenias, or whatever it was that grew in the suburbs. It was a colony of trimmed hedges and clean streets that rubbed shoulders against the sleeping giant of the city. Looking at the front yard, I was surprised that the colonists hadn’t lynched whoever lived here.
I opened the gate to the Adams Street house, and was immediately mobbed by an aggressive bunch of chickens intent on drawing blood. My shins and toes were assaulted by the pecking and scratching of this malevolent brood, but I managed to keep a bit of my dignity and shooed some of the foul creatures away. All but one.
The lead chicken was a large, plump, bully of an old hen with a plume of dark feathers around her neck and malice in her heart. She picked up where the others left off, charged at me with a fire in her eyes that I hadn’t seen equaled in even the cruelest mob bosses. She was relentless, and I considered punting the hen over the picket fence as if she were pigskin. Before I could take a decent backswing, however, the front door opened, and a familiar voice rang out.
“Lulu, behave yourself!” Since no one had referred to me as “Lulu” since the third grade, I assumed that the voice was calling out to the chicken. I followed the voice, and was surprised to find a familiar face attached.
“Miguel Ramirez?” I asked. I could not have been more surprised if the chicken had called out. Miguel Ramirez was a small time operator from my old neighborhood and the two of us used to run numbers for his uncle at the corner bar. A war broke out during our last year at reform school, we were just young and idealistic enough to join up the day we graduated. Or in Miguel’s case, should have graduated. I went off to war and was shipped overseas. Miguel stayed home and learned the fine art of flimflam.
The man who stood in front of me still had the face of the kid I knew from the neighborhood, but had grown at least a foot since then, and weighed even less than when I last saw him. He was a tall, dark figure, with jet black hair pulled into a long pony tail. Evidently he hadn’t seen a barber since we had parted. He sauntered up to me as if the world had laid out a red carpet just for him.
“Miguel, you look great,” I said, “but there has to be some kind of mistake. I’m here to see a man by the name of ‘Cavendish.’” He almost doubled over in laughter.
“It’s Kandu!” he said. “I told the young woman that you were to come here to meet “Kandu the Mysterious.”
I looked at Miguel’s goofy grin as he waited for me to catch up. If there was a joke to be had, I was missing it.
“So you’re ‘Kandu!’” I said to Miguel’s widening smile. I really was going to have to get a better message service. I shook my head as a tiny, dim bulb went on over my head. “All right, what’s your racket?”
“I am Kandu the Mysterious, all-seeing and all-knowing. Allow me to be your spirit guide into the realms of the unknown, where all will reveal itself to your humble servant in perfect clarity.” He closed his eyes and raised his upturned palms as he spoke, and my hand instinctively checked my wallet.
“Did you ever stop to consider for a moment that there might actually be a hell for liars?” I told the fake fakir. When he opened his eyes again, the boyish grin returned
.
“I can’t imagine any higher being finding me anything less than charming,” he said, and if that higher power were anything like the girls in our old neighborhood, Miguel had no worries.
“In that case, the higher power better guard his billfold. How long have you been running this racket?”
“You wound me,” said Miguel, with well-practiced sincerity. “I’ve been drawn to the existential my entire life, but let’s be civilized and have a snoot before business. Lulu, down honey!” The evil hen managed to get in a couple more pecks before I shooed her away. I closed the door quickly before the fowl followed me inside, and was surprised to find myself smack-dab in the middle of a posh parlor, complete with red satin curtains, matching rug, chandelier, and a small, round table covered with a heavy tablecloth. In the center of the table was a large crystal ball, resting on a brass holder. The room was intimate, but I had no doubt that there was much more than met the eye.
“Please allow me to welcome you to my humble parlor,” said Miguel as he pulled a chair out for me. I sat down and Miguel reached behind a nearby curtain and produced, as if by magic, a small bottle and a couple of shot glasses. He poured a couple of fingers into each glass, and we toasted our alma mater, the School of Hard Knocks.
“Now look, Miguel,” I said, getting down to brass tacks. “It isn’t like old-home week isn’t swell and all, but how’s about running down this little scam for me?”
“It’s like this,” said the charming con man. “The society swells meet me at a cocktail party or fund raiser, and I dazzle them with a little of the old ‘pulling back the celestial veil.’ Just a taste you, understand. Then I give them a card, have them stop by here, and give them a full reading.”