Cooking Most Deadly

by Joanne Pence

  “You wanna eat?” he asked. His thick, curly brown toupee looked almost shellacked, reminding her of those fifties dolls with plugs of shiny vinyl hair stuck into their scalps. She was impressed. This place really went all out for authenticity.

  “The restaurant is open, isn’t it?” she asked, still staring at his hair.

  “I guess.” He didn’t move. When she didn’t move either, he waved an arm toward the empty tables and said, “Have a seat.”

  “Thanks.” She was growing more dubious about staying. But maybe the waiter had a weird sense of humor. He certainly had a weird accent. He had to be from either San Francisco’s North Beach or Mission districts—or Brooklyn. The accents were amazingly similar.

  She chose a spot by the window overlooking Columbus Avenue. This part of the avenue was fairly quiet. A drugstore, card shop, jewelers, locksmith, and small corner grocery served the people who lived and worked nearby.

  The waiter dropped an old, greasy menu on the table in front of her. The name across the top, Columbus Avenue Café, had been lined through with a ballpoint pen. The new name hadn’t been written in.

  “I understand this restaurant just opened,” she said.

  “Couple days ago.”

  “How’s business?”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  Why didn’t she believe him?

  “Good,” she said, eyeing the menu again. She’d always thought preparing a menu and seeing the restaurant’s name printed on it would be one of the biggest thrills a new owner could have. For the owner to still be using the former café’s menu made no sense to her at all.

  As the waiter walked away, she turned her attention to the dinner entrees. Pasta Primavera. Ravioli. Veal Parmigiana. All the regulars. It was a surprisingly complete menu, and the smells coming from the kitchen were inviting.

  This place had been closed for months, ever since the Columbus Avenue Café, a well-respected but unprofitable establishment, had gone under. The building’s owners had been desperate, she’d heard, and willing to rent out the restaurant space for a song. The problem was the location. A little too far north of fashionable North Beach restaurants to pick up the trendy crowd, yet too far south of Fisherman’s Wharf to get its trade. The location ended up serving only people who unknowingly wandered away from the other restaurants and grew desperate. A tough way to make a living.

  She beckoned the waiter over.

  “I’ll try your manicotti. With it, I’d like a small salad with Italian dressing served with the main course, not before, and the house red.”

  He squinted as if in pain. She noticed that his face was heavily lined under the toupee. “Uh, we don’t have no manicotti today.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad. How’s the lasagna?”

  “Same as da manicotti.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Veal Parmigiana?”

  He shook his head.

  She shut the menu. “What do you have?”

  “Spaghetti an’ meatballs.”

  She handed him back the menu. “Fine.”

  He half waddled, half ran back to the kitchen. Maybe she’d be smart just to leave without waiting for dinner. But she was hungry, and this was a new restaurant in town. Leaning back wearily, she ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it back off her forehead. Being a freelance restaurant reviewer meant she had to be adventurous, despite the occasional disastrous meal. On the other hand, if the food here was especially good, this would be regarded as her personal find. A feather in her cap.

  Right now, though, she had the sinking feeling her cap would soon resemble a plucked turkey.

  Somehow, she was going to have to come up with a job that paid a decent salary. She lived in a beautiful apartment in a building owned by her parents, and her Ferrari had been a gift from them. But it was time to become independent, self-sufficient—especially if she planned to give serious thought to marriage.

  She was a person used to knowing her own mind and acting on that knowledge with conviction. Great conviction, in fact. Marriage, though, had her baffled. The thought of it was scary.

  The sight of Curly-locks heading her way juggling a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs, plus a basket of French bread and butter, broke her out of her reverie. As he placed it on the table, he stared at her forehead.

  “Thank you,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to make eye contact. “It looks wonderful.”

  “Yeah.” He continued to stare.

  “This restaurant has a beautiful name,” she said uneasily. Was there such a thing as a forehead fetish? “The Wings Of An Angel. I was expecting gossamer curtains on the windows and warm wooden furnishings.”

  “Yeah? Well, dis ain’t so classy. Maybe you wanna leave now?”

  “Leave? I haven’t eaten yet.”

  “You got some doit.”

  “Doit?”

  “On your forehead. Doit.”

  She tugged at her bangs, pulling a few strands of hair back onto her forehead. “Not dirt, it’s ash. Today’s Ash Wednesday. I was at Ss. Peter and Paul’s Church up the street. That’s how I found you.”

  “We was wonderin’ how you found us.”

  “I guess that makes me God’s gift to you,” she said, and then grinned. “Not only that, your restaurant has the word Angel in its name, and my name’s Angelina. Sounds like fate to me.”

  The waiter blanched and started to back away. He couldn’t possibly think she was being serious, could he? “Just leave da money on da table,” he said.

  “I’m joking,” she called, but he didn’t stop. “How much is it?”

  Over his shoulder he shouted, “Two bucks.”

  Two bucks? Nothing cost two dollars anymore, except maybe a cup of espresso. Caffe latte and cappuccino were usually more. This place was too strange. She twisted some spaghetti around her fork and took a bite. Hmm…

  She took another bite, shut her eyes, and chewed. The sauce was delicious. Different, she had to admit. A little odd. But still, delicious. She tasted the meatballs. They’d been cooked in the red sauce, and the combination of flavors had merged in a mysteriously heavenly way. There were all the regular meatball and spaghetti sauce flavors—ground beef, tomato paste, garlic, onion, basil, Oregano, fennel, a touch of ground pork…and something else as well. What? It was a trifle salty, whatever it was, but quite good.

  She kept eating, trying to figure out the mix of ingredients, but couldn’t. “Waiter!” she called. “Waiter!”

  He stuck his head out between the swinging doors. “You ain’t chokin’, are you?” he asked.

  “No. I was wondering if I could have a word with your cook.”

  “He don’t talk to nobody.” His head disappeared.

  She listened to the sound of hammering coming from the kitchen. Maybe they were still doing some construction, and that’s why things were so out of kilter here. She took another bite. Delicious.

  That did it. She was going to find out what was in those meatballs if it killed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Paavo sat at his gray metal desk in the tightly crammed office of the Homicide detail and reached for his phone. Around him, stacks of books and papers balanced precariously, the only clear space being a small area in front of his computer. For the sixth time in the past three hours, he punched out Angie’s number. For as many times, he’d listened to her answering machine.

  He hung up in disgust. Last night, she’d told him she’d be home this evening. He’d planned to surprise her by taking her out to dinner. Too often after making plans for an evening out, he’d get involved in a case and have to cancel. This time he’d decided not to call her until he was sure he’d be free—and she wasn’t home.

  Homicide was practically empty. Most of the inspectors had gone home or were out in the field.

  He finished his report on a suicide out on Castro Street—the third this month. This city was known for its high suicide rate, but despite all the psychological rot about why they happened h
ere—two centuries of “go west, young man,” the end of the trail, and so forth—three deaths within thirty days was too many. Homicide had to check out each one to be sure it wasn’t a cleverly disguised murder. But in this case, his gut reaction was that the dying man didn’t want to wait for the full ravages of the disease that would soon claim him.

  He leaned back in his chair and glared at the telephone. Where had Angie gone? Between doting parents, four older sisters, all married and with kids, cousins, and friends, she could be anywhere.

  He phoned her neighbor, Stanfield Bonnette. Paavo could barely stomach Bonnette, but Angie seemed to like the guy, and sometimes she dropped in over there. Bonnette lived in a small one-bedroom place across the hall from Angie’s larger apartment.

  “Hello! Stan the man, here.”

  Paavo nearly hung up the phone right then. “This is Paavo Smith. I’m trying to locate Angie. Have you seen her?”

  “Ah, the good inspector! Well, well, what a surprise.” Paavo hated the smug sound of Bonnette’s voice. “I’m sorry to admit I haven’t seen Angelina today. She usually tells me where she’s going, too. I’m surprised she didn’t this time. I guess she doesn’t tell you her whereabouts anymore at all, does she?”

  Paavo didn’t know what Bonnette meant by that crack, but he knew what was being implied, and he didn’t like it. “Thanks for your help,” he said, then hung up. Hell, Bonnette was just trying to get his goat, and—dammit—he’d succeeded.

  Paavo considered calling Angie’s mother and asking if Angie was there, but immediately dismissed that thought. Once Serefina got him on the phone she’d say that if they’d just get married, he wouldn’t have the problem of not knowing where Angie was. They wouldn’t have to arrange dates—they’d see each other at home every night. Angie hadn’t said anything yet, but he had the feeling her thoughts were traveling along much the same route.

  “No luck, Paav?” his partner, Toshiro Yoshiwara, asked. Yosh had transferred down to the San Francisco department a couple of months ago from Seattle, where he had been highly regarded. He was a big man, tall as Paavo, broad-shouldered, with huge, strong hands and a small head that bore only a stubble of black hair from his buzz cut. He had been teamed with Paavo after Paavo’s longtime partner was killed by gun smugglers. Yosh was as boisterous and outgoing as Paavo was quiet and reserved.

  “She’s been out all afternoon.”

  “Tell you what,” Yosh said. “Let’s go down to the Court House and have a beer. You can phone her from there.”

  “If she goes home.”

  “It’s worth a try.” As he spoke, he swung around in his swivel chair. “Hey, look who’s here. It’s Mr. Jolly!”

  Luis Calderon had just entered the room. Frowning, without a word to anyone, he walked straight to his desk.

  “Hey there, Luis,” Yosh called out. “How ya doing?”

  Calderon’s expression grew more dyspeptic. “Lousy.”

  “Lousy?” Yosh repeated, acting shocked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I hate this time of year. It’s the worst. When I was a kid I was supposed to give up something for Lent. But we were so poor I didn’t have anything to give up.”

  Paavo gave a quick shake of his head, hoping to stop Yosh. Everyone who’d ever worked with Calderon had heard this before. Every year, every season, a litany of Calderon complaints. Even before his wife, Carlota, left him, the guy viewed life through misery-colored glasses.

  Instead of stopping, though, Yosh winked. “And soon,” he said, in a mock-soothing tone, “all that changes with the beauty of Easter.”

  “Sure. All that candy making kids sick. Easter bunnies. You know what my family used to do with Easter bunnies? Eat them. I grew up scarfing down Peter Rabbit.”

  Yosh got up from his chair and plunked his bulky, well-muscled body on the edge of his desk. “I thought you said Christmas was the worst time of year?”

  “Yeah.” Calderon sighed. “It stinks, too. Holidays stink. I hate ’em. So, you two supposed to stick around and cheer me up tonight, or what?”

  “I’m heading for the Court House,” Yosh said, then turned to Paavo. “You coming?”

  “Paavo doesn’t go for that stuff,” Calderon said. “Anyway, I could use a little help here.”

  Paavo wasn’t one to stop at the neighborhood watering hole, and everyone in Homicide knew it. Usually he’d just go home when work quieted down. Tonight, though, he felt antsy, and the thought of staying with Calderon had less than zero appeal.

  He grabbed his jacket. “Okay, Yosh,” he said. “Lead the way.”

  Homicide was located in the Hall of Justice, an ugly, block-sized monstrosity that housed the police administration offices, coroner, office of the district attorney, courtrooms, judges’ chambers, and a variety of other city government offices. Behind it stood a brand-new, scandalously expensive city jail with a twenty-two-thousand-dollar curved sofa in the waiting room, paid for out of Art Commission funds. Across from it stood a fast-food restaurant that was shut down before it ever opened to the public because it had been built on top of a former gas station site, and someone apparently “forgot” to mention that the ground was contaminated.

  One block away stood the only facility that functioned well, efficiently and profitably, in the whole area—the Court House, a decent bar in a neighborhood of dives. Hall of Justice employees from bailiffs to the chief of inspectors lifted glasses in there. Lawyers for the defense rubbed shoulders with district attorneys. It was said that more pleas had been bargained in that bar than in all the offices in the Hall put together.

  The smoke-filled lounge was packed when Paavo and Yosh entered.

  “Hey, Paavo,” called one of the assistant DAs, Hanover Judd. “Long time no see.”

  The DA’s offices were on the third floor of the Hall, with Homicide directly above them on the fourth. Paavo had recently spent a lot of time on three working with Judd on what had become known as a reverse burning bed case—one of those typically bizarre San Francisco cases where a husband offed his wife while she slept because, he claimed, he had grown tired of her beating him. It reflected poorly on his manliness, he cried, and had the bruises to prove it. The problem was, it was all a lie.

  Paavo discovered that the so-called victim had a girlfriend and had paid her brother to give him the bruises.

  Judd stood at the bar, a scotch and soda in his hand. In his early thirties, he managed to maintain an exuberance and idealism about his job that Paavo found refreshing after the politics and power-mongering that usually went along with much of the work at the Hall of Justice.

  Paavo went over to him and shook hands. “How’s it going, H.J.?” He introduced Yosh.

  “I got a call today from someone you might know,” Judd said. “A retired judge, name of Lucas St. Clair. Called to report that he’s being harassed by someone, wondered what we could do about it.”

  Paavo ordered a Dos Equis amber, and Yosh, still enthralled by the city, ordered San Francisco’s own Anchor Steam. “I remember St. Clair,” Paavo said. “What’s going on?”

  “The guy he’s complaining about hasn’t done anything except loiter around the neighborhood. But today, he gave the judge’s wife a copy of the Chronicle.”

  “Considering that paper,” Yosh said, “I’d say that’s definitely a criminal offense—misinformation or something.”

  “Does the judge have any idea who he might be?” Paavo asked.

  “St. Clair can’t give us a good description. The guy’s always wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap. Thing is, the judge lives right across from the Palace of Fine Arts. He said the guy parks next to the duck pond. It’s a weird town, Paavo. The guy might just have a thing for ducks.”

  Paavo doubted it. “Did the judge go through the newspaper? See if there were any stories that meant anything to him?”

  “I didn’t ask. He said he’d already read the paper that morning.”

  “It might be worth looking into—a message of some kind.
” The Chronicle—Angie had left a copy of her newspaper at his place the other night. Seemed a lot of people were giving away Chronicles for some reason.

  Yosh had been listening to this conversation with interest. “You know this judge, Paavo?”

  “He was one of the toughest,” Paavo said.

  Judd chuckled. “The DAs thanked their own saints when they got St. Clair, but the defense lawyers called him the judge from hell.”

  “Uh-oh,” Yosh said under his breath. “Speaking of DAs, I think I’d better get out of here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I see Lloyd Fletcher over there. He’s still pissed off by the way I answered the judge at the Marlowe arraignment. But I wasn’t about to perjure myself just because he had a lousy case.”

  “He knows that.”

  “He might know it, but he won’t forgive it.”

  Paavo glanced at a silver-haired man in a corner booth, so aloof and polished in a charcoal Brooks Brothers suit that he seemed out of place here. “He used to be a reasonable guy.”

  “That was before he started thinking he’d like to be mayor,” Judd said.

  “Fletcher? He’s never held any office but DA, and that’s after years as an assistant DA in the city.”

  “You got it. That’s why he thinks he’s got a chance. Who can say if he’d be a good mayor or a bad one? He can run as an open-minded liberal who’s also against crime and win big in this town. No one will know whether or not he’s telling the truth.”

  As Fletcher and the man he’d been talking to, Maxim Wainwright, a member of the Board of Supervisors, stood up to leave, he noticed Paavo and Yosh. He made his way to them.

  “Well, well,” Fletcher said. “What brings Homicide’s finest to these shores? Hello there, H.J.,” he added, then immediately turned back to the inspectors. “I thought you two never touched anything stronger than Snapple.”

  “We’re down here seeing how the other half lives, Lloyd,” Yosh said. “Buy you a drink?”

  The tall man cocked an eyebrow as if unsure how to take Yosh’s remark. “No, better not. I’m on my way home. By the way, Smith, you did a great job on the Barker case.”