Death al Dente

by Peter King

  “The view is different today?” I asked.

  “They seem to be getting nearer to the truth now. Both Richard’s parents were French, did you know that?”

  “No. We think of him as so essentially English.”

  “He was brought up in France and spent more than three-quarters of his life there. More than any other king of England, though, he belongs to the world of romance and legend rather than the world of history. It’s understandable—the bravest warrior of the age, leading a great crusade to the Holy Land, captured while returning to England, imprisoned in a castle, finally returning home to wrest back the throne from his rascally brother, John.”

  “Which viewpoint did your screenwriters use?” I asked.

  “They’ve had to bring in as much of the romantic element as needed for a movie. Generally, though, they show him the way historians today see him—as a military genius, a very capable ruler, and a brilliant political strategist.”

  Interested in everything, Lansdown was clearly ready to go on about Richard, but across the restaurant marquee, Francesca had seen a stunt man she knew from a couple of Roman epics. He had made the transition from chariots to one of Saladin’s commanders, so she went with him to talk about old times while Lansdown and I went to his trailer, a massive Winnebago that he jokingly called his 747.

  It was luxuriously furnished, and we sank into plush armchairs while Oriental carpets spread on the floor and oil paintings on the walls made it hard to remember where we were. A silent air conditioner kept the temperature and humidity at comfort level, and Lansdown stretched out his legs and said, “Right. Now’s the crunch. What about these three chefs?”

  I didn’t take out my notes. I wanted to give them to him verbally before I did that.

  “I’ll give you a thumbnail sketch of each before we get into details. Let’s begin with Giacomo Ferrero, chef and owner of the Capodimonte. He’s a huge, bearded character, looks like Pavarotti, extroverted, boisterous, noisy, opinionated. Been in kitchens all his life, stays fully involved in all aspects. He’s a fine organizer and a stickler for precision. His aim is to offer nothing less than perfect food and flawless service. He believes in thorough professionalism and is a hard worker.”

  “First out of the gate.” Lansdown grinned. “Off and running, may be hard to beat.”

  “The food is excellent, service too. From an extracurricular point of view, he owns part of a vegetable distributor and has stock in a trucking outfit that handles mostly foodstuffs. One final point.”

  Lansdown leaned forward attentively.

  “He is about to lose one of his three stars, according to gossip.”

  “Gossip!” he said contemptuously.

  “Well, you’re in the entertainment business, which is lubricated by gossip. I know you’re in the restaurant business too, so you know that it’s taken more seriously there.”

  He looked unconvinced. He shrugged, though, and asked, “Any basis to the gossip?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Married?”

  “Yes.” I decided not to enlarge on the sultry charms of Anita so I just added, “She is not active in his business.”

  “All right. Next?”

  “Ottavio Battista, chef-owner of the Palazzo Astoria—”

  “Heard he’s a bit of a prima donna.” commented Lansdown.

  “You can say that again. But he’s imaginative and more than that, he can see the possibilities of food combinations that nine out often chefs would miss. He’s unusual for that brilliant a chef, too, in that he always seems to have an eye on costs. He’s not a penny-pincher but he has more awareness of economy than most chefs. He can get away with clever touches—he leaves the pink coral on grancevola, spider crabs. He can make simple dishes into special dishes. Do you know strangolopreti?”

  “Don’t think so. What is it?” He was all attention at the chance of learning something new.

  “It’s gnocchi filled with spinach. Seasoning the spinach with chives or marjoram is as far as most chefs go—even the better ones. Ottavio adds garlic and caraway, a real daring idea. A lot of chefs try challenging things like that and many fail. With Ottavio, he seems to have an instinctive flair for knowing, just knowing that they will work.”

  “And on the negative side?” Lansdown asked.

  “The man’s a mess, personally. Looks like a reject from a rehab clinic. He’s a tyrant in the kitchen too. All he needs is a whip—though his tongue is just as effective. He treats his crew as if they were galley slaves.”

  “And how do they react?”

  “I won’t say they love it, but many of them have become chefs elsewhere and several have gained stars.”

  “He’s a woman-chaser as I recall from the earlier survey when we still had a lot of candidates.”

  “They swoon over him as if he were, well, a movie star,” I said straight-faced.

  Lansdown grinned. “Surely women don’t do that?”

  “There are rumors.”

  “Okay.” Lansdown nodded. “And the third, that’ll have to be Bernardo Mantegna. Bit of an odd duck from all accounts.”

  “He is a genius with flowers and plants. From a culinary point of view, probably one of the best-informed people in Europe. Yet he doesn’t let them dominate. He likes to make use of them as much as he can, but he is superbly talented with conventional dishes.”

  “Sort of a Zen character, isn’t he?”

  “Different, yes, but not eccentric. He admits to being totally immersed in his approach to cooking as being also an approach to nature. There’s one difficulty that has to be faced— his wife hates London.”

  “Impossible,” said Lansdown promptly.

  I smiled, expecting him to say that. As a barrow-boy on the North End Road in Fulham who had progressed to one of Britain’s most visible exports, he was a fervent Londoner at heart and not likely to understand how anyone could dislike the city.

  “She even faked an affair with another of the chefs because she wanted to help him get the job, thereby making sure that Bernardo didn’t.”

  “Is she involved in his business?”

  “Deeply. She does the books, handles the money.”

  “H’m.” Lansdown sighed and rose, going over to an elaborate bar. “Get you anything while we judge the finalists?”

  I had a glass of palo cortado, a style of sherry slightly less rich than the oloroso and from the famed Valdespino bodega, the oldest family in the sherry trade. Lansdown opened a bottle of Spanish beer, San Miguel. “Can’t beat Young’s or Fuller’s,” he said, keeping up his loyalty to English beer, “but this is not bad.”

  He returned to his seat and put the beer in front of him. “Now let’s see your notes and get down to some nitty-gritty.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing, reviewing, arguing. The time was punctuated by another sherry and another beer and then another. We covered every aspect in the decision-making process and we were nearing the selection of a name when a knock came at the door.

  “Mr. Stewart asks if you could come and look at these dailies, Mr. Lansdown,” called a voice.

  “I still call them rushes,” Lansdown said. “Shows how long I’ve been in the business, I suppose.” He called out an agreement. “I’m co-producer on this picture,” he said to me, “so Bob likes to keep me involved.”

  “You and I are close to making a choice.”

  “Yes. Might be a good idea to sleep on it, though. When are you planning on flying back?”

  “I have a flight to London at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and Francesca leaves for Rome and Bologna an hour later.”

  “Why don’t you do this then?” Lansdown said. “We keep a few rooms booked at the Parador de Salamanca. Stay there tonight and we’ll finalize this in the morning. Bob and I have a meeting tonight with the fellows responsible for the Spanish army.” He chuckled, “I don’t mean the generals—these are from their War Department. We’re going to use two thousand soldiers
in the scenes coming up and we don’t want to have to keep them a day longer than necessary. Neither do the Spanish—they might have a war sneak up on them.”

  So it was agreed, and I went in search of Francesca, wondering if the movie bug had bitten her again and if she was right at this moment signing up for the next epic.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE PARADORS OF SPAIN are hotels par excellence. Most are castles, abbeys, and monasteries converted with superb taste and flair so as to provide all the modern comforts while losing none of the medieval magnificence. The Parador de Salamanca is, unfortunately, not one of these. It is a modern building, multi-storied and constructed in the early eighties when the tourist boom was at its height. Still, it is well up to the standard of a good hotel. The one area in which all the paradors are lacking is food. It is true, there is the initial disadvantage that Spanish food is not one of the foremost in Europe, but the guest at a parador has to be satisfied with mediocre meals which do not make the best use of the country’s produce, especially the seafood.

  When Francesca and I returned to the location site the next morning, rows of cavalry soldiers were drilling on a wide plain where they could be photographed against the backdrop of the castle. A soft breeze ruffled multicolored banners and pennants. Puffs of sand rose from the horses’ hooves, and it was a sight to stir the most sluggish imagination. The director of cinematography was with his camera operators, studying angles and distances, and the site was a buzzing hive of preparation.

  Francesca found a script girl to chat with and I went to Lansdown’s trailer. He was studying my notes as I went in and he waved a sheet. “You did a good job. Now it’s time to wrap this up. Who’s our man?”

  “Your preliminary review was well done,” I said. “You came up with three chefs who all like to cook. That sounds like a simple requirement, but chefs today have so many facets and are expected to be in so many fields that it’s easy to overlook the basic point. These three have been cooking all their lives. They have a lot of experience but they are not rigid—all continue to strive to get better. All three have another characteristic too—they are aware of the standard stylized cooking techniques but they are not afraid to experiment. Any one of them could do a fine job for you.”

  “I think so too. Anything else?”

  “All the three have outside interests,” I went on, “but none of them wants to be a Wolfgang Puck or an Alain Chapel or a Paul Prudhomme. I don’t think you want a chef who is thinking more about his upcoming TV series or his twenty-four-volume set of cookbooks or jetting off to Tokyo to open a cooking school. I think you want a man who is dedicated to cooking good food.”

  He grinned that insouciant grin he had employed to such good effect in the remake of Kipling’s “Soldiers Three” in which he had co-starred with Sean Connery and Roger Moore. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s what we want. We have three like that so the question is, which one?” He paced around the large living room of the trailer, talking as he did.

  “Have we both decided?” he asked.

  “I have,” I told him.

  “I have too. We’ll compare choices and if we differ, we’ll hammer it out.”

  “Okay. You first, it’s your restaurant.”

  “No, you first—you’re the investigator.”

  We grinned at each other like a couple of schoolboys.

  “Right,” I said. “Ottavio Battista.”

  He stopped pacing, sat in a big leather chair. “You surprise me. I thought you were going to go for Giacomo.”

  “He would be an excellent second choice,” I said. “It’s a near thing. Here’s the way I reasoned. I ruled out Bernardo. He’s brilliant, original—in fact, almost unique in his imaginative use of plants and flowers in his cooking. He may be a little too original, though, for your purpose. Bernardo is great in his own kitchen but in someone else’s—”

  “I don’t interfere in the kitchen,” Lansdown said, aggrieved.

  “But the day would come when you—or your partner— might. And in any case, you want a chef who is a superlative Italian chef above all else. You don’t want a chef who is passionate about a different aspect of cooking. You couldn’t tighten the reins on Bernardo’s enthusiasm for his plants and flowers. The main point that ruled him out in my estimate, though, was his wife. They are a devoted couple, and as she detests London so much, it just wouldn’t work.”

  “Strange woman,” Lansdown said, shaking his head. “Okay, so Bernardo is out.”

  “It was hard deciding between Giacomo and Ottavio. A minor item was one of the things that settled it. Ottavio had one of his sous-chefs reducing milk by a technique that must be centuries old. He was preparing lait d’amandes, the almond milk that preceded coconut milk and makes such an enormous difference to many dishes.”

  “Still,” Lansdown objected, “it is, as you say, a minor item.”

  “It says more than just that—it’s an indication that Ottavio is willing to incorporate the best elements of foreign cuisines. Oh, I know you want an Italian chef who cooks Italian, but in today’s world even the most passionate specialist has to know how to make use of the best available from other cooking styles.”

  “How does Giacomo compare in that regard?” Lansdown asked.

  “Giacomo believes in professionalism and precision, but that kind of dedication is just not him.”

  “Plus he’s losing a star.”

  “I paid no attention to that,” I said. “It wouldn’t be fair. I don’t know who said it or why.”

  Lansdown got out of the leather chair and paced again.

  “Interesting,” he said. He took a few more paces. “I reached the same conclusion that Ottavio was our man, though obviously not for the same reason as you. But I thought his manner and his attitude might have put you against him.”

  “There is the one proviso. You would have to keep him in the kitchen. I don’t see it as a problem for you, though. You know about public relations and the value of customer confidence, so you would want to have a smoothie up front anyway.”

  He studied me for a moment then he chuckled. He broke out into a laugh and held out his hand. “Jolly well done.”

  “Just routine,” I said with a grin.

  I didn’t add that it was just routine once you forgot a terrifying monk with a knife, a high parapet on top of a cathedral, a robot plane spraying gas, a killer at the controls of a six-wheeled monster, and an assassin with an automatic.

  The espresso machine in the coffee shop at the Bologna airport rumbled and vibrated in a determined if futile effort to compete with the noise of the Boeing 727 rolling past the window where we were sitting.

  “I hate long good-byes,” Francesca said, idly watching the silver shape slide by, “remember Marcello Mastroianni saying that to Sophia Loren in Sabato, Domenica e Lunedi?”

  “Saturday, Sunday and Monday, yes, but I always thought that was a strange statement for him to make in the circumstances,” I said. “They were dragging him off to prison.”

  “No,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “You’re thinking of Ieri, Oggi e Domani.”

  “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow? I thought that was the one where he was dying of multiple bullet wounds.”

  “That was Dall’Alba al Tramonto, From Dawn Till Dusk.”

  “He wasn’t in that film,” I objected.

  “He was. He didn’t want any billing, that was all.”

  The espresso was so strong that one more bean would have refused to dissolve. When I had recovered from another sip, I asked her, “Why didn’t he want any billing?”

  “Something to do with tax.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She fixed me with her of-course-I-am look, her chin upraised. “I worked on the film. I should know.”

  “So how did you enjoy being on the set again? Did it give you the urge to dig out your union card?”

  She stared out of the window. “Only temporarily. I prefer the escort business�
�oh, and the investigating business too.”

  “Not thinking of taking out a private eye license, are you?”

  “Not really. It’s too hard on the clothes and the accessories,” she said disdainfully.

  “That escort service—you keep mentioning it, but you never tell me about it. Just what services do you provide?”

  “It varies according to the client’s requirements.” She stirred the thick black liquid and took a delicate sip.

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “It’s confidential,” she said with her lovely smile. “Just like your business.”

  “As far as my business in Italy was concerned, you knew as much about it as I did,” I complained.

  “I told you many times, in Italy everybody—”

  “Knows everybody’s business. Well, maybe you’re right, maybe you should stay with the escort business—whatever it is, it must be safer than investigating three chefs turned out to be. You don’t have to shoot people, which reminds me,” I added, “I want to thank you again for saving my life. Sorry about your handbag, but at least it died in a good cause.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I’ll never find another handbag like that one. Did I tell you it was a limited edition?”

  “No, you didn’t, but I’m putting it on my expense account. Desmond will understand.”

  She brightened. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. It’s guaranteed.”

  “Against gunshots?”

  “One of my sisters-in-law manages the shop where I bought it.” Her dismissive tone turned into one of her delicious giggles, and it was then that the PA system announced that passengers on Flight 067 to London were invited to board now.

  She walked with me to the gate.

  “When will you come back to Italy?” she asked without looking at me.