Tell me again how you found this guy

16Oct

I had lunch at his bistro, out in the hip part of Brooklyn. That set me back a nice chunk of cash. Craziest menu I’ve ever seen, too. Shit like smoked quail eggs in cubes of maple gelatin. Or fondue of pig’s blood reduction — whatever that is — served with maize fritters. Or a test tube set of chilled teas, arranged from light green to dark brown and filled with tapioca balls, each injected with a different essence: cinnamon, bergamot, chiles, lemongrass, etc. Bite down and the flavor erupts and mixes with the tea. But my favorite was the charcuterie plate — had to look that word up — with sausage “caramels” and this sweet, taffy-like cheese you have to cut with scissors and chew really slow. If you bit hard, it damn-near cracked your teeth.

The place was packed. And there were a ton of reviews on all the restaurant apps, everything from “Best meal I’ve ever had” to “A complete travesty of cuisine.” The Department of Health apparently shut him down over the summer. He had to go to court and everything, and for awhile, there was some question of whether he’d reopen. But he did and was all the busier for it.

I’d learned enough to be very suspicious of reversals of fortune like that — not just the rebound, but getting shut down in the first place. Seemed to me someone was using magic against him. Seemed to me he was using it right back. I’d hoped to get a look at him while I was there, but he never showed. Everything’s made by his assistants, the ones in the dark bandannas and matching smocks. From what I read online, that’s usually how it is. Verhoeven was right. The man is a recluse. No fancy black-and-white head shot on his website, no press releases, no interview in Gourmand magazine. Reams have been printed on his cooking, but everything there is to know about the man could fit typed and double-spaced on a single sheet of paper.

Etude Emile Saint-Antoine Étranger. Real name unknown. Born fifty-some years ago in a remote village in the Amazon. He was taken from his parents as an infant — he never knew them — and raised by the village shaman to be his replacement. On his thirteenth birthday, young Etude had to prove his manhood or whatever, so he was sent out to live on his own in the jungle. He survived, obviously, although rumor is he bears a serious wound on his chest.

When he came back, his village was gone. Erased. Loggers had moved in. Cleared the whole area. Nothing but stumps and ash. Kid probably thought the end times had come. Supposedly he lived on his own for a while. Then he was found by some French anthropologists, husband and wife. Doctor and Doctor Étranger-sur-something-or-other. They take the kid back to France, write a bunch of papers on him and his people — in French. It was fun tracking those down, let me tell you. Had to call in a favor with a guy at Interpol to get me hard copies. Anyway, they give him a Western education, only he’s a genius or whatever, so he just absorbs it all. And then some. Somehow he ends up at a fancy cooking school of all places. But he never finishes. He leaves France in a hurry, in fact, and is still wanted for questioning, which is why my contact in Paris was only too happy to help. Not that he gave me any details.

For most of the next decade, he travels all over the world doing these crazy dinners, his Gastronomic Circus or whatever. I don’t even know how to describe it. He did this one in the Australian outback where he trapped poisonous snakes, barbecued their meat, and deep fried the skins like a pork rind. After they puffed up crispy, he tossed them with chili seasoning and served them on top of the meat. Fucker totally made a name for himself, too. But after several years, he shut it all down, completely out of the blue.

“Look at this,” Hammond said from the seat next to me.

A vintage black Jaguar purred as it rolled to a stop in front of the bistro down the street. From where we were parked, we could see the back of it clearly. It looked awfully familiar.

“Is it just me,” he said, “or does that look like the car from the video?”

The chef didn’t have any cars registered in his name. We’d checked. So I snapped a picture of the license plate, which hadn’t been visible before.

We watched in silence as the man himself walked out of the plain, unmarked door just down from the restaurant, bald head and everything. He was even wearing the same coat.

Hammond started the car as I took a few more pictures.

“Who’s driving?” he asked.

I shook my head. A man, it looked like, but I couldn’t see.

The Jag pulled away and we followed. It was a sweet car, too — an MK10, four-door, all black. Late 60s I’d say. We tailed it north to the office of a commercial moving company, strictly nonresidential, specializing in large items, like art for offices and expensive factory equipment. He met with them while Hammond and I waited down the road and across the street.

“Think he’s going somewhere?” I asked.

Hammond nodded. “So tell me again how you found this guy.”

“I never told you a first time,” I teased.

“Come on,” he chided. “Twenty million people in this city. We got a random picture of one. You go away and come back a couple days later with a name. How’s that work? And don’t say facial recognition because we didn’t have a shot of his.”

“He’s not in any of the databases anyway,” I said. “I already checked.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” He turned to look at me. “This guy’s a ghost. Here he’s implicated in at least three murders, the disappearance of Alexa Sacchi, and God knows what else, and we got no way to find him. And yet, you pull his name out of thin air. How does that work?”

“Magic,” I said with a smile.

He made a face.

“Look. I took a gamble and it paid off.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was close enough that I didn’t mind leaving it there.

Hammond turned back to watch the door down the road. The Jag was nowhere in sight.

“You don’t wanna tell me,” he said, “that’s your prerogative. Just don’t insult my intelligence, all right? Is it a fucking deal?”

I scowled. “Whatever. You don’t get to pick and choose what you wanna know and what you don’t.”

“What are you talking about?” He got defensive.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I mention anything to do with the occult, anything at all, and you cover your ears and start making baby nois — ”

“No, no. I do not.”

I’d try to talk to him a couple times. I tried to talk to him after the Sacchi case. We had a row. I realized that I’d be on my own after that, for anything that mattered anyway, so I put in for a transfer.

“Target’s on the move,” I said flatly.

The black Jag appeared and took Étranger stepped from the office door as the black Jag pulled up with perfect timing. They drove a few miles down the road to a florist, where the chef spent all of five minutes before coming out with a tasteful bouquet.

“Going to see a girlfriend?” I asked as we pulled into traffic.

Hammond laughed. Genuinely. He just looked at me and shook his head.

“What?”

“For all the women you’ve dated, you’d think you’d be able to tell the difference.”

“The difference between what?”

He put the car in drive and pulled out. “That was a funeral arrangement, you dope.”

“How could you tell?”

“You didn’t see the white lilies? And the fern branches? In a short round pot?” He nodded to me earnestly. “Give a gal something like that and she’s liable to think you’re being a snot. Or want her dead.”

I didn’t say anything.

“How do you not know that?” he asked.

“Whatever, man. Flowers are flowers. I get whatever looks nice. Or whatever she says she wants.”

“By ‘she’ do you mean the one with the colorful hair and the yoga legs?”

“Yoga legs?” I turned to him. “That’s what you remember?”

He shrugged. “What was her name again? Kinsey?”

“Kinney,” I said after a moment.

“Ah,” he said in understanding. He got from my tone that we weren’t together anymore. “She liked you,” he said. “She liked you a lot.”

I didn’t reply, and he waited a few minutes before asking. “You wanna talk about it?”

I made a face. “What do you think?”

“I’m just asking,” he said holding up a hand.

I watched the Jag, which was several cars ahead of us in traffic. We were inching toward the freeway. It took us another twenty minutes to get there, after which we wound through Queens and crossed the river before turning north up the FDR. Hammond followed at a safe distance. That we were following a vintage car and not just another silver SUV made it easy enough to spot even if we lost sight for a minute.

“You think I don’t listen to you?” Hammond asked out of the blue.

I squinted at him. “What?”

“You said I don’t get to pick and choose what I wanna know and what I don’t,” he explained very deliberately, like he wanted to be sure I understood his meaning. “Does that mean you think I don’t listen to you?”

I kept squinting at him as he changed lanes on the expressway. “What’s with you? You on estrogen pills or something? Got testicular cancer?”

“Close, actually.”

He pulled a stick of gum from his pocket. He handed it to me, but I refused and he unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. I could smell the mint.

“Dinah and I got this gal we talk to,” he said. “You know, a complete stranger you tell all your secrets to. But I like her, believe it or not. She doesn’t let me get away with the bullshit. Not that I’d ever let her know that. Anyway, the consensus seems to be that I’m not a very good listener.”

I shook my head with a smile, choking back the easy jibe.

“Laugh all you want, Chase. Some of us take our relationships seriously.”

“That’s not why I’m laughing. I’m laughing because it took you almost 50 years to figure that shit out, you big clod.”

He nodded solemnly — like it was my words, versus what everyone else in his life had been telling him, that clinched it.

“You’re not a bad listener,” I explained. “You’re just selective. When you wanna be, you’re Mr. Fucking Rogers.”

He had to think about that awhile. He shook his head. “In the session the other day, I was distracted. Dinah thought I was mad, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Cerise.”

“Who?”

“The Chinese girl, the one I almost locked up. She wasn’t much older than my girls. I sent her to you. Did I tell you that?”

I shook my head.

“The night she disappeared. She started talking about . . . All that kinda stuff.” He waved a hand. “She had a tarot deck and was talking curses and shit and I thought ‘Oh Christ. Here we go.’ And I told her to talk to you. I thought you could sort it all out. I didn’t wanna deal with it. I already had a caseload up to my ball sack and I didn’t want to waste time wading through all the — ” He stopped.

We watched as the Jag exited the expressway. Hammond hit the blinker and we followed into Spanish Harlem.

He sighed, like he was sorry he mentioned anything and wanted to wrap it up. “So now I’m wondering if I treat all the women in my life that way.”

“What do you mean?” I knew he didn’t mean me. In Craig Hammond’s mind, I wasn’t a woman. At least not like that.

“I’m just wondering how many times I’ve sent the girls to their mother like that, when they were worried about school or some boy or something, because I was too busy trying to put some asshole away.”

“Naw,” I said. “I don’t see it. No offense to Dinah, but you’ve always been a better dad than a husband.”

He nodded again, wistfully.

I turned to him. “You wanna talk about it?” I asked with a wry smile.

He snorted. “Fuck you.”

The Jag pulled into a three-story public parking garage.

“Shit,” he said.

If we followed them right behind, there’s a good chance we’d be spotted. If we rolled around the block, we’d probably lose them on foot.

“There,” I pointed.

Just inside the alley between the garage and a hair salon there were three open spots, reserved specifically for police. Hammond pulled in as I pulled the car’s department registration from the glove compartment and tossed it on the dash.

We jumped out at the same time.

“You go east,” he said, and took off the other way.

I moved down the alley, eyes scanning the parking garage for any signs of the Jag or the man in the fantastic coat. But there was nothing. I ran out to the main road at the far side of the alley which was lined with single-story shops on both sides of the street, the kind with narrow facings crammed full of wares where the signs displayed the brands for sale rather than the name of the store. Men’s clothes, a couple ladies boutiques, a Farmacia Latina proudly displaying the Puerto Rican flag, a combo wig shop and hair salon, a convenience store, a falafel shop, a taqueria, and more, all the way down to the train tracks that ran over the street two blocks from me.

Cars were parked at meters along the street, and there was the usual forest of telephone poles and street signs. With the crowd, I didn’t have any trouble keeping cover. And the chef wasn’t hard to spot, not with that bald head and that pot of bright flowers cradled in his arm. He’d crossed the street and stopped two blocks down in front of a large mural painted on a brick wall facing the main road. It was a swirling, floral, blue-and-white tribute to a goatee’d man, whose likeness took up most of the image. He was looking up and away to the horizon warmly but resolutely. Smaller depictions, presumably scenes from his life, fell away on both sides of his head in turning band of flowers and curls. Most of it was done in white paint. The shading and contrast was all the same tone of gray-blue. The sidewalk underneath was filled with flowers and votive candles of all kinds.

The chef added his contribution, which looked horribly formal and out of place, before stepping back to admire the image. I took the opportunity to snap a photo of the mural from my perch behind a parked car on the other side of the street. A quick image search told me this was a memorial to a local man named Alonso White, who had apparently died the year before. We were coming up on the anniversary. He blew himself up in some Wall Street office the very same night Kent Cormack was shot, the night I had my first seizure in decades.

I read as much as I could about the deceased. He seemed like quite the saint — community organizer, ordained priest, some political ambitions but nothing to get anyone worried. All in all, a stand-up guy.

I glanced up from my phone every few seconds to check my quarry, who seemed to be paying his respects, when suddenly I looked again and he was gone. I turned my head right, then left, and spotted him walking down the road under the train tracks. I just had time to see him disappear around the corner on the other side.

I ran after, drawing a screech and a couple honks when I crossed the road, but as soon as I took the same turn, I ran right into a dead end. I slapped my hand against the wall of brick, just to make sure it was real. I spun and scanned the street in every direction. But he was gone.

“Shit.”

That’s when I saw someone on the roof of the building across from me — a big guy in a leather coat. He turned and walked away before I got a good look at him, but I’m positive it was the driver of the Jag.

I’d been made.

rough cut from my forthcoming supernatural mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS. Like it? Leave a tip!

art by Piotr Jablonski