by Peter King
“In what way?” I asked.
“Electrical appliances that had been declared potentially dangerous, clothing that could be flammable, toys and games that were hazardous—that kind of thing.”
“Nice people,” I said. “And these are big companies, well-known merchants?”
“Oh, yes. They operate through several layers of other organizations so that we can’t get to them.”
“And you don’t know who they are?”
“We suspect one or two but it’s hard to get proof. Most of them, we don’t know who’s behind them.”
I knew where we were now. We were cutting across Harlem and heading for one of the bridges over to the Bronx. Our whereabouts was only registering on the back of my mind. My primary attention was on Gabriella’s story.
“So today we are going to one of these?”
“These people have got very specialized. A girl on Staten Island was electrocuted recently and it came out that the VCR she had bought at ninety percent off the regular price came from one of these sales.”
“Couldn’t you—I mean the police—do anything about that?”
“How? The sales are not advertised, it’s just word of mouth. The sale is one day only and the venue can be anywhere. A stadium, an empty theater, a church hall … Oh, once in a great while we manage to bust one of them but we never get to the people behind it.”
“I can see it’s a tough nut to crack. Which brings us to the present—”
“Yes, well, we’ve never heard of one of this type of sale before but whenever there’s a whisper on the street, it gets circulated through the department. There’s one today and”—she paused dramatically, probably her theatrical training—“this one is foodstuffs only.”
“I see. And you’re thinking that one of these dubious food items that will be on sale just might be Ko Feng?”
“It’s a long shot but when Hal heard about it, he suggested that I go.”
“And take me with you?”
“He had the idea that if any Ko Feng is offered for sale, you should be on hand to identify it.”
We were crossing the Harlem River, a sullen, slow-flowing mass of dark water. The Bronx was a sharp contrast to Manhattan and we hit the bottom of a big pothole, stretching the Ford’s suspension to the limit.
“It can’t be too dangerous then,” I said. “I mean, we’re talking about people who run department stores, chains of shops—they’re not gangsters, they don’t kill people.”
“No, no,” Gabriella said, curling past a truck carrying a heavy overload of gravel and spraying a goodly amount of it through the Bronx. “It’s not really dangerous.” I wished she hadn’t said it so quickly.
“Then why are you carrying a gun?” I asked.
“Routine.”
“I don’t believe you are carrying one.”
She threw me a smile and honked to warn a garbage collection vehicle not to pull out of an alley.
We reached our destination a few minutes later, a run-down neighborhood with derelict shops, empty storefronts and dirty windows. A liquor store was open and a man looking like a hobo came out with a large brown paper bag. Across the street, a fruit and vegetable stand was doing a small amount of trade. Two young men lounging by a fire hydrant turned to stare at Gabriella’s legs as we got out of the car.
“See what I mean about a honeypot?” I muttered.
“Ignore them. Come on.”
We walked briskly along the cracked and decaying pavement. A siren shrieked in the distance. The air smelled dusty and sour.
We had parked near a corner. We turned and ahead of us, past a shop selling “adult” videos, stood an enormous building, easily one of the ugliest I had seen in a long time. An uncomfortable blend of brick and old stone that looked more like concrete blocks, it had evidently gone through several building and rebuilding stages. It had been a church as I could see when we got close but not very recently. All the windows were gone, some boarded over, others covered with crisscrosses of barbed wire. Weeds had sprung up everywhere and were climbing the walls. A pile of garbage had grown higher than a man.
“Looks deserted,” I said. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“It’s the place, all right. Let’s find an entrance.”
That was harder than it sounded. The chipped stone steps led to what had been the main doors but they were now barricaded with planks. We walked along the outside looking for another way in, but the side doors were barred just as effectively.
“Those planks have been there a long time,” Gabriella said thoughtfully. “Let’s walk around again.”
We did but could find no other entrances. Then she pointed. “Look there!”
A large steel panel was set in the ground against one of the walls. We had missed it the first time as it had a sprinkling of soil and grass over it. Gabriella reached out with one shapely leg and rubbed the soil aside with her three-inch-spike-heel shoe. She tapped. It sounded hollow.
“There’s another,” she said, and sure enough another steel panel was set in the ground next to it.
“And another,” I added. A whole row of them stretched out in a line and Gabriella’s finger traced the line across the desolate ground to the ruin of a building about forty paces away. It had probably once been the church hall but only a corner of it was left.
We followed the line of panels. The ruin looked like a junction of two crumbling walls at first but it had a rough wooden structure about the size of a normal room. There was a door with peeling brown paint. I turned the knob and it opened. We went in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A MAN SAT AT a desk reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. The walls were the same rough wood as outside and a bare electric bulb hung from a fraying wire. A wide flight of wooden stairs led down and out of sight.
The man had scrubby black hair and hadn’t shaved recently. He glanced at us over the top of his paper but didn’t put it down.
“Something?” he asked, without moving the cigarette.
“Whistler sent us,” said Gabriella.
He looked her up and down, then again more slowly. I think he knew I was there but he said to Gabriella, “Whistler?” as if he had never heard of him.
She nodded coolly. “Whistler.”
He looked at her without speaking for a long time. Then he nodded toward the stairs. “Go ahead.”
We went down the stairs. At the bottom, a long tunnel was ahead of us. A trench just deep enough to walk in and wide enough to accommodate only two people at a time had been dug and covered over with the steel panels we had seen from outside. A dim light at the far end shed just enough illumination for us to walk on the hard-packed soil.
When we arrived at the end of the tunnel, we encountered a heavy steel door with no handle and no lock visible from this side. I banged on it with a fist and the booms echoed down the tunnel.
A “boy” in his late teens opened it. He looked aged beyond his years, with a thin face and hair pulled back in a ponytail. He opened the door only partway and looked questioningly at us.
“Whistler sent us.”
He looked at Gabriella as if he had never heard of Whistler. “Who?” he asked.
“Whistler,” she said, cool as ice.
He eyed her a while, gave me a hundredth of a second glance, then swung the door open. We went up another flight of stairs that curved, then led into the main body of the church.
It was a huge place, vast and cavernous as an Italian railway station. The ceiling was out of sight with the dim lighting of haphazardly strung wires and bare bulbs. The walls were in fairly good shape and columns soared up to be lost in the darkness. The concrete floor was patterned with cracks but serviceable.
And there were a lot of people.
That was the most striking thing of all. After the barren approach and the gloomy tunnel, it was a shock to find so many people but after the initial surprise had worn off”, it was like being in Macy’s at Christmastime.
Well, almost … Counters and tables had been set up and bare wood shelving erected against the wall in several places. These gave the place more the air of a hastily conceived charity sale in a village, raising money to send boys and girls to summer camp. Boxes and crates were piled high everywhere, cans and packets were in untidy heaps, confusion was prevalent, but the people were intent on getting bargains and trade was brisk.
Gabriella and I stood for a few minutes, absorbing the scene. Then she said to me, “See any supervisors, bosses, that kind of person?”
I didn’t. The hard-working sales staff were a mixed crew. Mostly young, some even teenagers, but a fair number of older people, probably retirees making a few extra—if illegal—dollars. About half and half male and female, and a mix of races and ethnic backgrounds. As they called out the quality of their wares and the irresistible bargains to be had, a bewildering array of accents could be heard. But nobody was in sight who looked to be in any position of responsibility.
A young Hispanic with slick black hair and a trim mustache stood behind a pile of cans. We moved closer. They were five-pound cans of ham. A couple had been opened and it looked fine. Cut pieces with toothpicks in them were spread on a dish as samples and they were going fast. The young man was taking orders as fast as he could scribble. Each time, he handed the buyer a slip of paper and money changed hands. Gabriella picked up one of the cans and studied it critically. I did the same.
“Can’t see anything wrong with it,” I murmured.
“Looks all right to me,” Gabriella said.
“Then how can they make any money?” I asked her. “Even at a good wholesale price, they can’t make enough to cover expenses.”
“He isn’t selling these cans individually. The orders he’s taking are for crates.”
“Even so, there isn’t enough markup, surely …”
Gabriella made a motion with her head and we edged out of the crowd around the table. When we were out of earshot, she said, “He has a terrific markup. Everything he gets is profit.”
“How can he—oh, I think I see … This stuff is hot?”
“Sure. When the big stores have sales, they take the opportunity to bring out merchandise they couldn’t sell before. When the people behind these ventures put on one of these illicit sales, they bring out stolen goods too.”
We moved on. People were still coming in and the noise level was rising. There weren’t any low-value items on sale—no soap powder or cereal, no sugar or flour, and of course no perishable goods like eggs, bread, butter or fruit.
We came to a stand with jars of jams, jellies, chutneys and marmalades and another with cans which all appeared to be the same. We stopped to examine them. The first was lobster and the only thing wrong with it was a red stain on the label. I looked at another can and it was the same. Gabriella was looking at a can and it had the same red stain on the label.
She looked at her can, then mine. “Funny,” she said. “The stains are similar.”
“All the cans are like this. Notice where the stain is?”
“No.”
“Exactly where the ‘sell-by’ date is.”
We came to a stand with a few large trays of what looked like fat dry herrings. The little wizened man attending the stand was short on teeth but made up for it with a booming voice. He was arguing with a prosperous-looking man with gray hair.
“What is it?” asked Gabriella.
We watched and listened.
“We’re getting warmer,” I murmured.
“But what is it?” she persisted.
“Japanese fugu fish.”
After a moment, she asked, “Isn’t that the poisonous one? Didn’t some people die last year in San Francisco?”
“There are twenty species of fugu and all are deadly poisonous except one. That one is only edible from October to March and even then only certain parts are safe to eat. The fish contains a poison called tetrodotoxin, which is found in the ovaries, liver, entrails and in the skin. The Japanese describe the fish as ‘touch and go’—one touch they say, and you go.”
Gabriella shuddered. “Is it that good? That people will take that kind of risk?”
“A lot think so. Or it may be that it appeals to eaters who also enjoy Russian roulette. Before it can be cooked in Japan, the poison must be removed by a qualified cook, and those qualifications are issued only by a government department. Only one cook in five passes the tests. It’s admitted that at least five hundred people die in Japan every year from eating fugu and the true figure may be very much higher.”
The next stand was selling an even stranger-looking edible, though Gabriella didn’t want to believe that it was. Two or three inches long, they were pinkish brown strips of puffy flesh and I told Gabriella that they were duck’s tongues.
“They eat those?” She wrinkled her nose.
“Italians eat spider crabs, don’t they?”
She shrugged. “Well, in Venice, yes.”
“Goat meat and turnip tops?”
“But they’re good—”
“And what about squid, carp and cuttlefish?”
“Delicious. They’re different, they’re real foods.”
“Everyone doesn’t think so,” I told her. “Anyway, duck’s tongues are a highly valued item in zen cooking. Hong Kong imports them from all over the world.”
“I think they look revolting.”
“Cooked with broad beans, onions, ginger and white wine, you’d love them.”
“Not if I knew what they were,” she said firmly.
I knew better than to press the point any further so instead I said, “In any case, you might be wrong with these. Duck’s tongues are easy to duplicate and the ones here could very well be phonies.”
Our onward progress led us to a bar where an elderly woman with orange hair and far too much makeup beckoned us. She held out a balloon glass with the tiniest amount of pale emerald green liquid in the bottom.
“Only five dollars,” she urged as her face cracked into a persuasive smile.
“What is it?” I asked.
She waved a hand almost hidden under a weight of rings and bangles. The wave indicated a double row of bottles behind her on the bar. They carried a label which had a curving crimson band against a background of yellow and brown flowers intertwined. Along the crimson band was a word in large white letters: ABSINTHE.
“Too early in the day for me,” murmured Gabriella. To the woman, she said in a chatty tone, “I didn’t know anyone still drank it.”
“They do if they can get it,” said the woman meaningfully.
“What’s in it?” Gabriella wanted to know.
“Try it and see,” enticed the woman.
Gabriella was still playing hard to get. “I heard it was dangerous.”
“It’s dangerous, all right,” she leered. “He knows, don’t you?” she said, looking at me.
“It was banned because it was believed to encourage moral laxity,” I said. “Ernest Hemingway drank a lot of it for that or, well, a parallel reason.”
“Tell her they used to give it to the French Army,” the woman insisted. “Wouldn’t have done that if there was anything wrong with it, would they?”
“What’s in it?” Gabriella asked me.
“Wormwood was in the original recipe. It affected the nervous system and destroyed the brain.”
“Van Gogh drank it all the time—him and those other French painters,” said the woman, not willing to give up.
“The word absinthe to me conjures up a picture of Toulouse-Lautrec wandering through Montmartre with a glass of it in his hand,” said Gabriella thoughtfully.
“There! See!” said the woman triumphantly. “And look at all the wonderful paintings he did! And just with those little legs of his! Not only him either—what about all those others? That one who looked like Anthony Quinn and went to Hawaii!”
“It used to be 140 proof,” I contributed. “That’s almost twice the strength of bourbon or scotch.”<
br />
“Right,” said the woman. “It’s good and strong. Don’t want to taste it? Take a bottle home.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Hundred dollars—special price.”
“Think I’ll stick to Chianti,” said Gabriella as we shook our heads sadly and walked away, the woman’s voice still calling after us with progressively reducing prices.
“It’d be a great price for the genuine stuff,” I said to Gabriella.
“Surely there isn’t any of the original still around?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured her. “Bottles keep showing up at auctions quite often. One sold at five thousand dollars recently. At a state banquet in Switzerland, President Mitterrand of France was the guest of honor and they served soufflés made from authentic absinthe.”
“I suppose there’s an awful lot of the fake stuff on the market, then?”
“Lots. The herbs that were in the original were fennel, aniseed and hyssop and those are still used. Industrial alcohol made from sugar beet is sometimes used as it’s cheap.”
We were looking for the next stand to examine. Gabriella said, “Well, we seem to be running across items that are a bit nearer to what we’re looking for. Somehow, though, I can’t see us finding any Ko Feng here.”
“No, you’re right,” I agreed. “There isn’t—”
A tap on the shoulder stopped me.
A deep voice asked, “Looking for Ko Feng?”
I turned to find myself facing the biggest and the blackest man I had ever seen in my life.
CHAPTER THIRTY
HE WORE A LIGHT gray suit, a waistcoat that had a thin red-thread pattern running through it and a cream shirt with a flowing red and white tie.
I was able to see these details clearly because my eyes were on a level with the middle of his waistcoat. He was so large that the suit had to have been specially made, but even so it was extremely tight and the pearl buttons looked as if they might pop off under the strain at any moment.