Spiced to Death

by Peter King

  “What we were hoping to find,” said Gabriella, “was some Ko Feng.”

  I hadn’t been expecting her to be that forthright. The man hadn’t either. He gave her a quick glance and his expression changed.

  “That’s that spice that went missing?”

  She nodded.

  “You call these prices high and you’re looking to buy some of that?” he asked.

  She looked uninterested. “Have any?” she asked casually.

  He shook his head. She wasn’t going to give up.

  “Know where we can get any?”

  He gave a noncommittal grunt.

  “We can raise the cash,” she said.

  He shook his head again. “The word is that that English guy snatched it.”

  “He was shot,” said Gabriella.

  “Then the other English guy’s got it.”

  “Is that a fact?” Gabriella drawled. “Know where we can find him?”

  The man’s eyes were on me but I didn’t think there was any significance in it. I hoped I was right.

  “Shouldn’t be hard,” the man said.

  He eyed me a moment longer, then gave us a nod and walked away.

  This time I waited until he was out of earshot—and everyone else in the place too.

  “Don’t believe a word he said,” I advised Gabriella.

  “Maybe he knows something,” she said.

  “He’s wrong.”

  She half smiled.

  “Is Whistler still inside?” I asked her.

  “Who?”

  “Now, don’t you start with that!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know!” I said, appalled. “You don’t know and you risked our lives!”

  “Police work occasionally entails risks,” she said carelessly. “What’s on that stand over there?”

  It was more hot merchandise, large restaurant-size cans of oysters. We listened to the presentation being repeated by a heavy, overdressed woman who Gabriella thought was moonlighting from her regular job in a brothel.

  The numbers of cans she was offering brought a further comment from Gabriella. “Just about a twenty-ton trailer load.”

  It was then that I saw another face I recognized. Gabriella saw me looking. “Know him?”

  “His name is Lennie Rifkin. He has a restaurant called Phoenicia. It prepares and cooks dishes of the ancient world—Greece, Rome, Egypt and so on. He’s hoping for some Ko Feng.”

  His course brought him directly into our path. He stopped when he saw me. He stared at Gabriella, then looked her over again, more slowly. Tearing himself away from that pleasurable action, he gave me a curt nod.

  “Might have expected to find you here,” he said.

  “You too,” I said. “Come here often?”

  “Just like to look,” he retorted.

  He looked Gabriella over again appreciatively, waiting for me to introduce him. When I didn’t do so, he said in a surly voice, “Haven’t seen any Ko Feng here, have you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Expect to?”

  “Going to keep looking until I find it.”

  He sniffed, either unconvinced or disbelieving, and went on by.

  “Not one of your admirers,” commented Gabriella.

  “Not even a supporter,” I admitted. “Yet another of the legion who doubt me.”

  “Speaking of doubters,” said Gabriella, her voice changing, “look who we have here.”

  It was the cold-faced man from before.

  “And this time, he’s brought help,” she added.

  The two of them approached us directly. The second man was bigger and looked even tougher. The man we had talked to previously raised a hand to detain us.

  “This is a buddy of Whistler’s,” he declared.

  Gabriella gave him a nod.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said. “Any friend of Whistler’s is a friend of ours.”

  Gabriella gave me a glance of warning not to get too flippant. The fact was, I was annoyed. The man’s face darkened. “Tell us when you talked to him,” he invited and I didn’t like his tone.

  The resourceful Gabriella was about to say something when we were joined by another. This one was the biggest of all. He dwarfed the big man confronting us and easily outweighed the two of them. It was Yaruba Da from the Congo.

  He came up from behind them and clapped a hand the size of a shovel onto the shoulder of each.

  “You met my friends already!” he said jovially. “That’s good. I like to see folks getting along. It’s a pity they have to leave but you gentlemen and I can have a chat—as a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you about this olive oil over here. It seems very reasonably priced and I was wondering about its origin. I shouldn’t sound so suspicious, I know but at this price, well…”

  His formidable grip turned the two of them away from us.

  “Our cue to leave,” muttered Gabriella. We slipped through some bunches of eager customers and the teenage boy with the ponytail standing by the steel door gave us only the briefest of glances—and that was at Gabriella—before letting us out.

  We hurried along the tunnel, gave the man at the other end a nod and emerged thankfully into the daylight. I didn’t let out my breath until Gabriella had pulled away from the curb and the Ford engine was hammering out a farewell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  IT WAS ABOUT TWO o’clock as we reentered Manhattan.

  “How about some lunch?” I suggested.

  “I really should get back to my desk …” Gabriella said but I have always been a firm believer that when people say they “really should” do something, it means that they can be persuaded to do something else.

  “Even hard-working cops get time off for lunch,” I told her. “Anyway, this will be police business—I want to tell you about my inquiries yesterday. So where do you recommend?”

  “To a gourmet? I wouldn’t be so bold.”

  “I don’t eat gourmet all the time.”

  “You don’t? What about the Bull Moose—can’t get any more gourmet than that.”

  “That was a culinary experience not to be forgotten,” I said carefully. “Can we ever match it?”

  She laughed. “Okay, I can’t stop too long but there’s a place near here—we go right past it on our way back. By the way, do gourmets eat chili?”

  “I do. Love it. I often cook it at home. I’m always trying different ways—there can be few dishes that have so many variations on one theme.”

  “Good,” she said. “When you cook at home … does your wife like chili too?”

  “I’m not married,” I told her. “I live alone.”

  She made no reply and in about ten minutes, she stopped to put the Ford in an outdoor parking lot. It had barbed wire around the top of a rusting steel fence, the ground was sand and gravel, which must be a mess in rainy weather. A black man came out of a battered, tiny wooden shack to collect money, and even he looked at the Ford with disdain.

  “I thought he was going to give us half price when he saw the car,” I said to Gabriella as we walked into the restaurant.

  “I’ll get a Cadillac next time.”

  “No, no,” I said. “This one is certainly good camouflage.”

  The name of the restaurant was Chili Today. It was a big, barnlike building that Gabriella told me had been converted from a dance hall that had been put out of business by police order. The wooden benches with plank seating and wooden floors gave it an air rather like a German beer hall. Flags hung on the walls and I asked Gabriella about the name.

  “Why only today?”

  “It’s a line from a Peggy Lee song,” she said.” ‘It may be chili today but it’ll be hot tamale.’”

  As we read the descriptive and informative menu, the significance of the flags became apparent—they were the flags of all the places that claim they serve the best chili—Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Colorado, the Mexican Republic and a number of other state
s including, of course, New York.

  We ordered Mexican beer, Carta Blanca, then Gabriella said, “Well, we didn’t find any Ko Feng but it was an interesting day and we got an invitation to an African barbecue.”

  I nodded. “I doubt if the people running that sale have any Ko Feng but they might hear who does—they may travel in the same circles.”

  “I’ll do some checking when I get back. What about that Rifkin character? He looked shady.”

  “Check on him by all means,” I said. “He would love to get his hands on some Ko Feng and he might not be too choosy about how he did it.”

  The beer arrived. “Like Mexican beer?” Gabriella asked.

  “Oh, we can get it in London. It’s not uncommon. Not as full bodied as English beer but more flavor than the run-of-the-mill American beers.”

  We examined the menu and exchanged comments on the numerous chilis offered and on the flamboyant text that accompanied them.

  There were all the regional variants and many adventurous deviations. For instance, there was turkey chili and even a venison chili. The menu explained that real chili purists insist that chili is never made with minced beef but only with beef cubes and furthermore, it never contains beans. In Texas, it went on, they break both rules. The New Mexico variant is called chili con carne verde and the “verde” refers to the small green chiles that it contains.

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed and Gabriella looked up. “What?”

  “Did you know there was an Italian chili?”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Right here on page four. It uses tomato sauce of the kind used for pasta, lots of tomatoes, mushrooms and sliced pepperoni.”

  “I’ll tell my mother about it,” said Gabriella, “but doubt if her regular patrons will ever forgive her if she serves it.”

  There were recipes originated by, or beloved by, many famous people—Harrison Ford, Bob Dole, Mick Jagger, Jim Florio (the former governor of New Jersey), Linda Ronstadt, Reggie Miller, an astronaut, a neurosurgeon who had won the Nobel Prize, Jacques Cousteau, Ernest Hemingway, Zubin Mehta … the list went on and on.

  There was a paragraph on Cincinnati Chili and I pointed out to Gabriella that it is served over spaghetti there, which might appeal to her mother. All of the familiar chili names were present such as Three Alarm Chili, Rockbottom Chili and Texas Red, and an inset warned that the longer chile peppers are cooked the hotter they get. “For a real taste thrill,” it said, “ask for chili from last August.”

  The establishment’s own recipes were graded in order of hotness. First, there was Aunt Susie’s Saturday Night Special. “Mild but still tangy, assertive without being aggressive,” said the poet in the kitchen. Next came My Way, the chef’s own statement of how chili should taste. “Moderately inflammatory” was the comment.

  Tame with Flame was moving fast up the heat scale and the accompanying advice was to eat it slowly so as to give the paramedics plenty of time to arrive. Mrs. O’Leary’s Revenge was ripe with roasted hot jalapeño peppers and was said to have a smoky taste which endured—“Probably to the end of the century,” remarked Gabriella.

  Anyone who thought that dish was hot should try the Doomsday Express, said the menu writer, adding that it had initially been developed for testing tank armor.

  “Better bring us two glasses of water,” Gabriella said to the waiter, a skinny fellow with spiky hair.

  “I thought water came with everything,” I said.

  “It used to but not anymore. Now you have to ask for it. Shows how long it is since you were last in New York.”

  “You folks from out of town?” the waiter asked.

  “No,” Gabriella said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “In that case, can I suggest that you try our combination platter? It has some of each, and you can write your own comments on the asbestos paper we supply.”

  We agreed and it arrived quickly, I still marveled at the speed of the service in American restaurants, no matter what their status. We had a choice too of corn bread, coleslaw, potato salad, rice—all foods to counteract the hotter chilis, as Gabriella observed. Simultaneously, she asked for more ice water.

  The waiter grinned. “No problem. We have a couple of glaciers anchored outside—we get daily delivery.”

  “What do you think of that Doomsday Special?” I asked Gabriella.

  “Towering Inferno would have been a better name” she said with a shudder. “I can handle everything up to that level, though.”

  We were entering the last lap and had cleaned up everything except that really hot one when Gabriella said, “That was fun.” She looked at me anxiously. “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Terrific. Now I know how the West was won.”

  “I think you’d rather have had a French meal.”

  “No, no,” I insisted.

  “It’s all right for food to be fun once in a while, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely. Food and cooking have been put on a pedestal that has led to their getting too stuffy an opinion of themselves.”

  “You mean they need bringing down to earth—the way Gene does, for instance.”

  “Right. And anyway, there’s room for all kinds of food and the great thing about a dish like chili is that the food itself is more important than the presentation. Too many chefs have let themselves be carried away by presentation—it became not so much cooking as interior decoration.”

  “I blame the French for that,” said Gabriella.

  “Any true Italian girl would. No, no—” I waved off her protest. “I’m not saying it’s just an ancient rivalry. Nouvelle cuisine was largely responsible for the shift in emphasis from taste to appearance.”

  “Luckily, it didn’t last long.”

  “It was food as an art form,” I said, trying not to sound too opinionated. “It was a boon to food magazine photographers and gave them all kinds of new challenges. But to be fair, nouvelle cuisine did play a part in changing cooking styles. It brought about a lighter, healthier approach. It cut down on excessive amounts of butter and cream.”

  “It must have focused on the hazards of deep-frying, too,” Gabriella said.

  “It did—and in doing so, refocused on techniques like stir-frying, which we knew about but didn’t make enough use of in Western cooking.”

  “So once again, we drew knowledge from the East.”

  “Michel Guerard certainly did—he was probably the most famous French chef at the time that nouvelle cuisine was taking a hold. He ransacked the Chinese and Japanese cookbooks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and applied both their food and their methods.”

  We had been obliged to order more beer by this time. Water was not enough to hold back the fiery onslaught of the chilis. As the beer arrived, Gabriella said, “Speaking of the Chinese, tell me about your adventures in Chinatown. You seem to have emerged without any scars from the hatchet men.”

  “It was a terrifying experience,” I said. “I never expected to come out alive. If it hadn’t been for this exotic Chinese girl—Lotus Petal, her name was—”

  “Just the facts, man.”

  I outlined my talk with the affable Mr. Koo at the Shanghai Palace and my abortive efforts to pry any information out of Mr. Singyang.

  “You did well,” Gabriella said. “The Chinese are not known for being talkative and there are people who would label them secretive.”

  “I thought of turning it over to you after I had been to the Forbidden City,” I told her, “I suppose you could have sent in a Chinese cop.”

  “They don’t give away any more to them than they do to any other kind of cop.”

  “Well, Mr. Koo was friendly enough and he tried to be helpful.”

  “And how much did you actually learn?” she asked.

  “Well, having had the birds’ nests stolen from him at a time when he really needed them, he was willing to finger Mr. Singyang but there I hit the Great Wall.”

  “You think he got th
e shipment?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So he knows who stole it.”

  “Maybe he did and didn’t want to tell an outsider.”

  “Or it could have been arranged so that he didn’t know,” she mused. “By the way, did you happen to ask who handled the insurance on the birds’ nest shipment?”

  “Yes. They’re called New England Assurance.”

  Her expression changed. “Are they now? That’s interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the same insurance company that covered the Ko Feng.”

  “Could be coincidence—”

  “Could be. They’re big, do a lot of insuring. We’ll do some checking—it’s good to be able to rule out coincidence.”

  “One other thing … whenever I have the chance, I’m spreading the word that parcels of phony Ko Feng are being offered.”

  Her brown eyes regarded me thoughtfully. “The result being … ?”

  “Hopefully, it will cause potential buyers to focus on me. With Don Renshaw dead, I’m the only person who can identify the Ko Feng.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “It should also make it difficult for the thief to dispose of it before we catch up to him. Nobody will want to take the risk of paying a lot of money for a sack of worthless flower stamens.”

  “I may have to arrange extra police protection for you,” she said, finishing her beer.

  “I’ll just get an order of the Doomsday Special—better than a flame thrower.”

  She didn’t debate the idea any further, conceding that it was worth a try and warning me to be careful.

  “This case would be getting out of hand if we lost another Englishman,” she concluded.

  Another beer would have been necessary in order to fully assuage the ravages of the chili but we agreed to call it a day. I asked Gabriella if she was sure she didn’t want some chocolate cheesecake for dessert but she rolled her eyes in horror. She insisted on going Dutch on the bill, which was surprisingly reasonable.

  The attendant at the parking lot seemed glad to get rid of the Ford. No doubt it lowered the tone of his place. Gabriella dropped me at my hotel and gave me a cheery wave as she drove off.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE