Taco Noir

by Steven Gomez

  I put a hand on the top of the display and tilted it back, lifting the edge away. I clenched my jaw and waited for the alarms to go off.

  I got nothing.

  I looked over at March and saw that his eyes had bugged out like those Argentinian frogs that always look so cute on the cover of National Geographic.

  The expression didn’t look so cute on March

  “How is this possible?” stammered March as he ran towards the display. He gaped and gasped at the display before grabbing one of the construction goons and pulling him towards the exhibit.

  “There’s no alarm on this display case!” screamed March. The worker looked as if March told him that there were clouds in the sky.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mac,” said the worker calmly. “We’ll get it all done before you put anything in there. Just relax.” March blinked dumbly at the crew as they went back to work. I backed up a few steps in case March’s head exploded.

  “So the dagger could have walked out of here at any time during the last day or night?” I asked.

  Silence.

  “And it might have even made its way out of the museum by now.”

  More silence.

  I thought of mentioning that one of the school children on a field trip might have made off with the dagger, but that might have pushed him over the edge. Instead I made my way over to the buffet line to see how the better half lived. Apparently they lived on shrimp cocktails.

  “We is just getting everything put,” said the small, gnome-like woman who managed the group of gnome-like women who set up the food. I did my best to keep my eye on the woman who spoke, but as she mixed into the group, I found it hard to tell them apart. So instead, I turned my attention back to the spread that the old women were “just getting put,” and was truly impressed. Everything from champagne and foie gras to Crème Brule and chocolate truffles made up this cornucopia of excess. I rolled up my sleeves and dove in while March increased his blood pressure and questioned the staff. Since there was still a bit of mystery in the air I thought I would pace myself. I planned on working my way from asparagus to zeppoles. I only got as far as the letter B before I hit a snag.

  “Pardon me,” I said to one of the women who were floating about the chow line moving things here and there. “The grub here seems first rate, but do you happen to have a spoon or something for the Baba Ghanouj here?”

  The lady sighed and disappeared into the gaggle of women. When she reappeared, she tossed a utensil into the chafing dish without breaking stride. Guessing that I had ‘unimportant guest’ scribbled on my forehead in indelible ink, I picked up the handle of the utensil and started to load up my dish. It was only after my plate bowed did I notice the utensil I was holding.

  “Oh March,” I called over my shoulder. From the amount of time March spent yelling at his underlings, you would have thought he’d be out of breath. You would be wrong.

  “Don’t say another word,” barked March, turning his wrath to me. “If you were half the detective you’re supposed yourself to be, you would have been able to turn up some clue to the dagger’s whereabouts.”

  “But I think….”

  “No, I don’t believe that you do,” snapped March. “Consider yourself fired. I’ll expect you off the grounds in the next five minutes.”

  March turned on his heel and sped off into one of the smaller galleries in search of someone else’s life in which to spread a little sunshine. Since I was not only fired, but never hired in the first place, I loaded up my plate for a nice long lunch at home. Before I left, I wiped the eggplant from the Dagger of Cheoptu and left it neatly in the bussing tray.

  BABA GHANOUJ

  2 1-pound eggplants, halved lengthwise

  1/4 cup olive oil

  1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste)

  3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

  ½ teaspoon of cracked black pepper

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 garlic clove, chopped

  Pita bread wedges

  Crank up the heat in the oven to about 375 degrees F and slice the eggplant in half while you wait for the oven to do its thing. Put the halves face-down on a baking sheet and throw it in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until the fight is gone from them. Using a spoon, scoop out the guts of the eggplants and sweat them out in a strainer, until they’ve lost most of their liquid.

  Throw the eggplant guts into a processor and add the olive oil, tahini, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, and garlic. Give it a spin and serve it up with the pita bread.

  Suitable for any museum heist.

  THE BIG SHOULDERS

  A Special Agent Hugh W. Cranston Adventure

  I walked past the stone lions that stood guard over Chicago’s Federal building, giving the boys a snappy salute as I did so. I had spent the last three weeks in Mr. Hoover’s employ as a recent graduate of the FBI training academy, and felt it was my duty to start each day off right by giving the lads a hearty good morning from Hugh W. Cranston.

  The ‘W’ stood for patriotic!

  I made short work of my first assignment of the morning by wearing out a little of the old shoe leather. As the newest agent in the Chicago office, I had to start on the bottom rung of the investigation ladder but, a little elbow grease and my nose to the magnifying glass, and I had already earned the trust of the Bureau Chief, Special Agent Stanton. My only concern thus far was that my meteoric rise might generate the envy of my fellow agents, but such is the life of a civil servant.

  I had heard the term ‘rookie’ bandied about behind my back at the water cooler, but I didn’t consider myself a rookie as such. While it was true that I was a recent graduate, since I had gone through the academy twice I thought of myself as a seasoned veteran. Another factor in my favor was that I had opened over forty cases in my short time in the Chicago office, more than any other agent in Bureau history, and had doubled the workload of every agent in the office. I told Special Agent Stanton that there was no need to thank me, that the work was reward enough, but he insisted that I be rewarded by running a special assignment this morning, taking me away from the office.

  I threw open the front door, fresh from this morning’s success. I heard the odd sigh and grumble escape my fellow agents. I kept my business-like expression, but inside I sympathized. It’s hard when you’ve been toiling away for years in anonymity only to see the spotlight fall on another.

  I marched confidently into Special Agent Stanton’s office and dropped the package onto his desk. Stanton was a bulldog of a man with a crimson facial hue and a bulging vein on his head that indicated coronary distress may be in his future. He was on the phone when I entered and nodded absently to me, waving me away as he rummaged through his desk for a pencil. I headed back to my desk and fed a sheet of typing paper into my trusty Underwood. In the process of completing my mission I had come afoul of a hot dog vendor who had aroused my suspicions, and my case load could use the boost. I started to type but was interrupted before I finished the word ‘frankfurter.’

  “Hughie!” yelled Special Agent Stanton. The din in the office faded as all eyes fell on me.

  “Uh, it’s Hugh W. Cranston, boss,” I corrected the Special Agent. It is always a gamble to correct a Special Agent of the FBI. “What can I do for you, chief?”

  “Does this look like anchovies to you?” asked Stanton, holding up a hunk of Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza fresh from Rossi’s Delicatessen. I removed my glasses, took a handkerchief, gave them a quick wipe, and had a gander. To my trained eye, it did not appear to have any anchovies.

  “They assured me that your slice had anchovies, chief.”

  “That was the only thing I asked…,” he grumbled, casting an eye towards heaven as he dropped the wedge back into the brown paper sack. “Go back and grab me another slice.”

  “But Chief, I just started another report on a possible subversive….”

  “We don’t need another report on the paper boy,” sighed Stanton, rubbing his temples slowly. Eve
r since I had met the Chief he suffered from sudden onset headaches. One of the burdens of the mantle of responsibility, I suppose. “Go get me my slice.”

  I stood up and pulled on my coat, preparing for my next mission. As I walked to the door, Stanton called after me.

  “And take your time.”

  Rossi’s Deli was the neighborhood hot spot for pizza and pasta, and in Chicago, that said something. When my fellow office dwellers took their daily lunchtime constitutional, their olfactory senses led them here, to wait in line for the best deep-dish pizza Chicago ever crafted. Even though lunchtime was almost over, there was still a fifty-foot long line of famished citizenry. I stood in line for Stanton’s slice with anchovies, and hoped that they wouldn’t run out of pizza before my turn.

  The ladies at the counter worked the line with military efficiency, the sandwiches, containers of pasta, and slices of pizza flying through the front door with considerable haste. After a slight wait I found myself at the head of the line. I felt a bit on the peckish side myself and was debating between rigatoni and ravioli, when a voice behind me called out to one of the women in Italian. The woman nodded at him as he tossed a dollar over my shoulder. Before I could say ‘pasta fazool’ the last slice of deep dish with anchovies was spirited away, placed in a brown sack, and walked out the door in the hands of the man who had cut in front of me.

  Rules are the ties which bind society together, so as a patriot, as well as an agent of the FBI, I felt honor-bound to pursue the man, who I’ll refer to as Mr. X. No one puts one over on Hugh W. Cranston.

  The ‘W’ stood for vigilant!

  I observed Mr. X proceed to his right, away from my office, and I tailed him. He was a tall, thin, athletic man who wore a rather thread-bare blue suit. He swung the pizza sack in the devil-may-care fashion of a subversive, whistling a jaunty tune as he did so.

  Although I am not what one may consider an expert on modern music, I think it was ‘If I Didn’t Care’ by the Ink Spots. And while I may not have cared, it would come up in my report, so I made note of it.

  Mr. X partook of a bit of window-shopping as he strolled. More than once I saw the mysterious stranger stop and gaze into a storefront window to smooth his hair or straighten his tie. Vanity thy name is Subversion!

  As per standard FBI protocol, I kept at least a half-block distance between my subject and myself. I continued to tail Mr. X as he made his way down Main Street, and soon the store fronts and offices gave way to apartments and brownstones. We left the commercial area of town behind and headed towards the residential section. I continued to keep the subject in my line of sight, despite twice stopping to kick a stone out of my shoes and to tie my laces.

  Mr. X merrily continued his stroll through the afternoon sun. When he reached the alleyway between Bessie Avenue and Montague Street, he darted quickly to his right and disappeared down the alley. I hesitated for a moment before I broke into a sprint. I made it to the mouth of the alleyway in far more time than my physical trainer at the FBI academy would have cared for. Standing there catching my breath, I found the alleyway empty.

  The ‘W’ does not stand for speedy!

  I looked down the alley and saw that one side was made up of the large bay doors of the warehouses of Bessie Avenue, and the other side held the back entrances to the cheap apartments that lined Montague. The trail died in this alley, and it was up to good, old-fashioned, All-American ingenuity to bring it back to life.

  I looked at the rusty metal doors along the west end of the alley and my trained analytical eyes noticed that all of them were coated with rust and secured with heavy padlocks. If my quarry had disappeared through them, then the racket he generated would have been heard by J. Edgar himself. It made more sense that my mystery man had disappeared through the back entrance of one of the filthy apartment buildings behind, so that’s where I decided to begin my investigation.

  Figuring that Mr. X wouldn’t have had time to get to the far end of the alley, I tried the first door I came to. It was locked and bolted, and I deduced he wouldn’t have had time to get through and bolt it after him. At least not with a sack full of greasy deep-dish. It was the same story with the second door, but the third door spelled success. It was unlocked and even had the tell-tale signs of a grease-smeared hand.

  I opened the door and found that the rear entrance led to a long hallway with the front door at the opposite end. Next to me was a staircase that led to the second story. On either side of the hallway were three doors, each belonging to a different apartment. Mr. X could have been anywhere, but the best minds of the FBI had placed their faith in me.

  Twice, in fact.

  I went to the mail slots at the front entrance and looked at the nameplates. There were eight apartments, and out of the eight four were rented by “Misses,” one by the superintendent, two by “Misters,” and one by an “F. Brown.” Since I doubted that most superintendents wore blue suits to fetch their lunch, I ruled him out. I resolved to start on the first floor and work my way up.

  “Good afternoon, citizen,” I told the man in apartment three, brandishing my credentials. He was a large, hirsute man in a dirty and worn undershirt. “Agent Hugh W. Cranston of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m looking into a matter of official Bureau business. I’m searching for…”

  And then the door slammed.

  In my mind I could hear the training agents of the FBI telling me their agents were made of sterner stuff, but clearly the brute in apartment three was not Mr. X, so I made my way upstairs to the next apartment.

  I had paused at the door of apartment seven and was rehearsing my opening speech when it flew open, almost knocking me over. A large, beefy individual wearing black slacks and a white shirt backed into the hallway. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows and sweat seemed to exude from every pore.

  “Excuse me, good citizen,” I said, just as I had rehearsed in my head a moment before. “If you could spare a moment of your time….”

  “Hey, buddy,” interrupted the man, throwing me off my speech. “How about giving me a hand with this?” The man was in the process of pulling a large, wooden, dust-covered crate into the hallway. His face contorted with effort and his eyebrows knit together, giving them the appearance of a singular, large, angry caterpillar. His disturbing eyebrows caught me off guard and I couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse not to help. With a shrug I attempted to lift one side of the crate, but it was more substantial than one might have thought.

  “As I was saying, sir. I’m with the Federal Bureau of….”

  “You gotta put your back into it,” said the fellow, a tad more testily than I would have liked.

  I grunted and swore before the ability to speak left me. I would have questioned the caterpillar fellow further, but between his growls and my breathlessness, any conversation that might have happened died.

  “I’ll see if I can get old Mrs. Petravich in apartment six to give me a hand. She’s only eighty!” spat the man with the prodigious eyebrows. I leaned on the crate to catch my breath and regain my voice. From where I stood, I could see the man’s apartment. The condition of the apartment made me wish that I couldn’t.

  It was quite literally a rat trap. The floor was strewn with dirty clothes, old newspaper, and rumpled sacks from Rossi’s Deli. There was also a large Philco radio on his dresser, blaring the exploits of one “Dexter Reilly, Range Detective.” Dexter Reilly was my inspiration for becoming an investigator in the first place. I closed my eyes and listened, but the voice of the Range Detective sounded… off somehow.

  I entered the apartment while its occupant was downstairs trying to convince the geriatric woman to come up and help him. Inside I listened, and Dexter’s voice seemed a tad too tinny and metallic. I’ve been an expert on all things Range Detective related since I was eight, so I leaned forward to see what might be wrong with the dusty, old Philco. I squinted at the dial and the sheer amount of dust and grime overwhelmed me. I fell into a sneezing fit the likes o
f which I had seldom experienced and, as I did, a blast of feedback blared out of the radio, startling my sneezes away.

  I examined the old, cathedral-style radio closely. On first inspection it seemed to be the real McCoy, but turning it revealed a strange wire snaking around the electrical cord leading to the wall. I had completed the FBI’s surveillance course in the top 7/8ths of my class and considered myself quite the expert on wire-tapping. I clapped my hands together loudly and heard more of the feedback blocking out Dexter Reilly’s gripping dialogue.

  The wire braided along the AC electrical cord was the same color and thickness of the power cord, and blended perfectly, so much so that John Q. Public would never have guessed that their radio was listening back. John Q. Public, however, was not Agent Hugh W. Cranston of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and did not possess my level of expertise.

  The ‘W’ stood for expert!

  Quietly I drew my service revolver and crept outside.

  Downstairs the caterpillar fellow continued his attempt to convince Mrs. Petravich in apartment six to come upstairs and help him move a large box. I heard Mrs. Petravich tell him in broken English that her Goulash was simmering. What one had to do with the other I have no idea, but the pair seemed to have reached an impasse. I left them to work out their own solution as I snuck down the hallway to the neighboring apartment, where the wire led. From a crouch, I gently tapped on the door.

  “Waddaya want?” called a gruff voice from inside the apartment.

  “Girl Scout cookies,” I answered.

  “We didn’t order any girl scout cookies,” came the gruff reply.

  “Pizza.”

  “Look,” called the voice, growing louder as the door flew open. “We didn’t order any pizza, cookies, or Kung Pao chicken! Now take your sorry…”

  I never got the chance to hear what exactly I possessed that was so sorry as the man from Rossi’s Deli came face-to-face with a well-polished Government Issue service firearm. The man in the threadbare suit fell silent, but he still wore tell-tale bits of Rossi’s deep dish on his jacket, and his devil-may-care visage had turned to a chiseled scowl.