Cooking Most Deadly (8 page)

“I see. How about Perrier?”

“Perry…?”

“You know, water.”

“Water. No problem.”

A short while later, the waiter brought her a plate of spaghetti—just as delicious as she remembered—and a glass of water, no ice, straight from the tap. This restaurant needed even more help than she thought it did.

“Oil,” Angie called once more when she saw him stick his head through the swinging doors to see how his three customers were doing.

He walked over to her table. “Whatsa matter now?”

“Would you tell your cook that I think he's marvelous. Also, I'd like to help him put more choices on the menu.”

“Why? He got da spaghetti right.”

She braced herself. Now, she'd see if her plan would work or not. “I work for the government,” she said, trying to sound bureaucratic. “I give cooking assistance to new restaurants.”

The waiter stepped back. “You're from da government?” His eyes narrowed. “You don't look like you work for da Man.”

“It's a new program to help the small businessman,” she said hurriedly. “There's been so much criticism that government doesn't help small businesses, that this administration came up with our little way to change all that.”

He frowned. “What parta da government you from? You gotta badge?”

“You never heard of us, I'm sure. A small bureau—and no badges.”

“So what's it called?

Good question
. “Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cookware.”

“Oh. Dat sounds kinda familiar. Jus' a minute.” He ran into the kitchen.

 

Earl skidded to a halt in front of the stove. “'Ey, Butch! We got a retoin customer.”

“Somebody came back for more?” Butch stopped stirring the spaghetti sauce and wiped his palms against his formerly white apron.

“Da broad. An' now she says she's from da government, and she wants to help you cook better.”

“Why does everybody think there's somethin' wrong with my cookin'?” Butch grumbled.

“Maybe sometime you gotta feed somebody somet'in' besides spaghetti an' meatballs.”

“Vinnie says we ain't supposed to feed nobody nothin'—except we can't throw the customers outta here. That ain't kosher.”

“But she's from da government. If we don't let her help, she might shut us down. Or call da FBI.”

“Or worse,” Butch muttered. “Our parole officers.”

“And dey might look in da basement.”

“We're stuck,” Butch announced glumly. He felt for his long-gone shoulder holster.

“You t'ink we oughta tell Vinnie?” Earl asked.

“And put him in a worst mood? No way. We gotta keep this quiet. Tell him she was snoopin' around, so we put her to work in the kitchen. That way, she'll keep busy and won't find nothin'.” He frowned. “Anyway, a woman's place is in the kitchen.”

“What if she hears noise from da basement?”

“We'll tell her it's rats. Women hate 'em. She won't have nothin' to do with the basement.”

“I don't know,” Earl said. “My ex-wife usta say da only kinda rat she hated was da two-legged kind.”

“She oughta know.”

“Dat's right—she run off wit' No-Nose Nolan—an' he's a rat.”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, we gotta stall. Tell her to come back in two days.”

“I'll try, but I t'ink she's kinda stubborn. Like Vinnie.”

“Naw. She ain't big enough.”

Earl went to the swinging doors and tried to push them open. They wouldn't budge. He tried harder. They gave only a little. If anything it seemed they wanted to open inward, toward him. It was all he could do to stop them from smacking him in the face. He wasn't amused.

Carefully, he let go of the doors and stepped back. When they didn't open in on him, he curled his arms against his stomach and, leading with his left shoulder like Lawrence Taylor going in for a tackle, he leaped, both feet leaving the air, and hurled himself against the doors.

 

Angie decided the swinging doors must be broken. They wouldn't open into the kitchen, no matter how hard she pushed against them. With her shopping bag on her arm, she grabbed hold of a door handle and, stepping to the side, yanked the door open.

The waiter named Oil flew past her like a cannonball and headed straight toward the other customers. Angie had noticed that they'd been sitting waiting for their check. It was about time Oil began taking his job seriously.

She stepped into the kitchen, undistracted by the sound of breaking dishes behind her.

“Whadda you want?” In front of the stove, a small, wiry man wearing a disgustingly dirty apron bounded around on the balls of his feet. Angie figured he must have just burned himself on a pot.

“My name's Angelina Amalfi.” She placed the shopping bag on the large butcher block. “You must be the cook here.”

He scowled at her and her bag. “You the Fed?”

“Let's not think about that.” Angie looked around the kitchen in amazement. It was fully stocked with restaurant equipment and everything looked quite clean—probably
well scrubbed by the owner so that he could rent it out. “I'm here to help get you started. I've got lots of experience in restaurants. I even once worked at LaTour's, which was quite famous before it unfortunately shut down.”

“I don't know no LaTours, El Tours, or LaTrines, and I don't want no government agent in my kitchen. I don't even vote.”

“As I said, just forget about that. I'm afraid I don't know your name.”

“Butch Pagozzi.”

“Italian, just like me. I should have known that when I tasted your meatballs.
Parl'italiano?
”

“Huh?”

So much for consanguinity. “I want to compliment you on your spaghetti and meatballs. They're quite unique.” She began going through the shelves of food. There was little there except a twenty-pound box of spaghetti, cans of tomato paste, and a few containers of Italian seasoning. Hamburger meat was in the refrigerator, plus French bread—exposed to air and getting hard—and big cans of a variety of stews, chili, and strange processed foods no self-respecting restaurant would be caught dead serving.

“Where's the rest of your food?” she asked.

“I didn't wanna spend much money 'til we got some customers,” Butch said.

“You're not going to get customers unless you spend money to buy the food to bring them in.”

“Yeah, but we don't have no money to spend. So the customers get the spaghetti, or they take a hike. It's a tough world, lady.”

These boys were in trouble. “You really do need to have more on your menu than one thing.” She began going through the spice shelves. They had a good supply of all kinds of spices, but nothing to spice up. She looked with frustration at the shelf. There wasn't a single spice that could give Butch's sauce and meatballs their special flavor.

“It'll be easy for you to build an interesting menu on
the base of the spaghetti and meatballs that you already have, you know.”

Butch swaggered. “Sure. I know that.”

“Good,” she said, trying to hide her disbelief before going back to opening jars of spices and smelling them to see what was fresh and what had turned old and sour or flavorless. “What's your recipe for meatballs?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Nothin' special.”

Damn. She hoped he'd just blurt it out. “You use ground beef, right?”

“Extra lean.”

Extra lean
? Angie didn't let her skepticism show. “And I suppose you put in salt, pepper, Oregano, chopped onion, garlic, bread crumbs, and an egg to bind it?”

“I know how to make meatballs. I don't need no Fed—”

“But your meatballs are different. What else do you put in?”

He folded his arms. “Nothin'.” His look dared her to contradict him.

“I'm not being critical. I'm interested. There's got to be something more. The taste—”

“Basil. Yeah, basil.”

“Basil?”

“I put in a little basil. Always have, always will,” he said with a pugnacious, smug smile.

Basil wouldn't do it. Basil would give a lightly scented herbiness to the meatballs, not the pungent, salty tanginess that had her so baffled.” And?”

“Nothin'.” He fidgeted. “This is a real third degree, lady.”

She'd just have to watch and find out.

“To show you how serious I am about helping out,” she said, “I'll show you right now how you can double your menu with almost no additional work or expense on your part.”

“I don't believe it.”

“You don't?”

“No way.”

Using the cheese and French rolls she'd bought at the grocery, she quickly made the sandwich she had in mind. She spooned Butch's spaghetti sauce on the inside halves of a split roll and then halved three meatballs and placed them on the bottom portion of the roll. She sprinkled coarsely grated mozzarella on top of the meatballs, then spooned on more sauce to melt the cheese. Angie put the sandwich together and sliced it in two with a triumphant flourish.

“Hey,” he said. “It looks good enough to eat!”

“That's the idea.”

One of the swinging doors opened all the way and hit the wall with a loud thud. Earl stood in the doorway. He held his hand to his forehead and blinked rapidly, as if he couldn't quite focus.

“Oil!” Angie cried. “What's wrong?”

“You better sit down,” Butch said, taking his arm. “What happened?”

“I'm stronger'en I t'ought. After I knocked open da doors, I ran so fast, I hit da post out dere and musta knocked myself out. When I woke up, da customers was gone—wit'out paying for da food. Dey stiffed us, da lousy crooks!”

“You've got to keep City Hall
out of this case. As far as the press knows, she was a typist. Nothing more. Mumble when you say where she worked.” Lieutenant Hollins got up from behind his desk, walked around to the front of it, and leaned against the edge. Paavo and Yosh sat facing him. They'd just completed briefing him on the Tiffany Rogers investigation. Hollins made it a point not to get involved in his men's investigations unless political heat was turned on. In this case, the heat was on high.

“Her friends and coworkers are at City Hall, and there's a good chance the guy she's been seeing is there as well,” Paavo said.

“It's our only lead, Chief,” Yosh added. “So far, the CSI unit can't even find a suspicious fingerprint to lift. The crime scene is clean as a whistle. She always met her boyfriend away from her apartment. We aren't sure where yet. We've got a few leads we're still checking.”

“So you've got nothing except for a dead woman lying in her own blood on the floor of her own living room!” Hollins added.

“We have to follow wherever the leads take us,” Paavo said.

“I'm not saying not to, all I'm saying is keep the press away.” Hollins paced back and forth in front of his desk. “The mayor and the Board of Supervisors want this murderer caught right now. This isn't the kind of publicity they want for themselves or the city. I mean, if someone who works for them isn't safe, who is?”

“Aw heck, Paavo.” Yosh turned to his partner. “The supervisors said they want us to catch this murderer fast. Here I'd planned to take my sweet time with this case.”

Paavo couldn't help but grin.

“Cut the comedy, Yoshiwara.” Hollins stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and chewed. “This case is number one for you both, got it?”

“We are not dropping the Nathan Ellis case,” Paavo said with an edge to his voice.

“Calderon and Benson can baby-sit it for you for a few days—until you catch Rogers's killer.”

“Nobody has to baby-sit our case. We've spent days on it.”

“With City Hall involved, I don't want any hint that the Rogers case doesn't have your full, undivided attention.”

“What about Debbie Ellis? She thinks her husband's case has our attention.” Paavo's eyes were narrowed, his only sign of anger.

“Calderon will handle her all right.”

Paavo and Yosh kept silent.

Hollins said, “Get out there and find Tiffany Rogers's killer before City Hall comes down on all of us.”

 

On her way to City College, Angie gave herself some extra time so that she could drive by Paavo's house to see if he was home. He'd been so busy with his latest murder case, she hadn't seen him for a few days. His car wasn't in front of the house—his small cottage didn't have a garage—and his cat, Hercules, was sitting on the fence in the sunshine.
Angie was quite sure Hercules spent his days heckling any dogs who went by on a leash.

When Paavo was home, Hercules was usually inside asleep after scarfing down a full can of 9-Lives. Once Angie brought him some fresh crabmeat, shelled. He refused to eat 9-Lives for three days thereafter. Paavo made Angie promise she'd never do anything like that again.

She tried the door, but after receiving no answer, she continued on her way to City College, where she taught a noncredit adult education course on the history of San Francisco. The class, as much as it was an asset to her students, was also to help her with her historical study of the city—the book she'd been working on for several months.

Writing the book might not have been interesting, but her class was a different story. In it, she didn't want to just look at the politics of the city—which had been fascinating, decadent, and corrupt—much like any other American city's, but to view it from the point of view of the kinds of people who lived here long ago. She wanted to talk about the San Francisco of longshoremen and teamsters, of gamblers, gold diggers, and the Barbary Coast, of the only city to successfully call a general strike, the Left Coast home of the Wobblies.

As the class studied about each new ethnic group that moved into the city, she cooked up a small dish or two when the lesson began, and as each topic ended, she took the class to a restaurant that specialized in the cuisine of that particular nationality. If you can't walk in their shoes, you can at least eat in their kitchen, was her motto. What better way to learn?

She brought her charges to Yuen's Gardens for
dim sum
, L'Etoile for bouillabaisse, Italian Seasons for manicotti, Speckmann's for sauerbraten, and Tommy's Joynt for a pint of the Guinness. It was expensive, but her class attendance skyrocketed, and she didn't have a single dropout—an achievement unheard of in adult education classes.

Pulling the Ferrari into the faculty parking area, she cut
the motor and gathered up her books and lecture notes. As she got out of the car, she noticed a man walking her way. There was something strangely familiar about him. He wore a N.Y. Yankees baseball cap and sunglasses, jeans and a blue parka. When he saw her watching him, he stopped walking, gave a half smile, and leaned casually against a black Beemer. It somehow didn't look like it was his car. In fact, he didn't look like a member of the faculty. Something about him made her uneasy.

No, she was being silly. Ever since she'd danced with that creepy guy at the Sound Works, she'd been seeing monsters in every corner. There was no reason for such paranoia. Heck, the poor guy was probably a new student here to check out the faculty—especially the female faculty. A schoolboy stunt. Nothing more.

She held her books tighter and hurried toward the school building, trying not to look his way.