Death al Dente (27 page)
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.
“As soon as I can. When will you come to London?”
We stopped at the Passengers Only Past This Point sign. We kissed.
“Remember that other Mastroianni film?” she asked as she turned to walk away.
“Which one?”
“Uno di Questi Giorni.”
I hadn’t known that Mastroianni was in that one—perhaps he was experiencing another of his tax dilemmas. If pressed, I would have guessed that film featured Gina Lollobrigida and Vittorio di Sica. Not that it mattered. I turned it into English in my mind.
Some Day Soon.
M
Y SINCERE AND ENDURING
thanks are due to Jeff Gerecke of JCA Literary Agency, New York and Charles Spicer, Senior Editor, St. Martin’s Press, New York, whose expertise, advice, and encouragement have been of inestimable value throughout the Gourmet Detective series.
I would also like to express my appreciation to the following for their help with this book: Bill Froug, Emmy-winning writer and producer whose intimate and expert knowledge of what it is really like to be on a film location was invaluable in writing the final chapters of this book, and Roberto Mei, owner of Fontana di Trevi in New York City and Cafe Baci in Sarasota, Florida, for his contributions, corrections, and suggestions on all matters pertaining to Italy and Italian cooking.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1999 by Peter King
cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7785-0 (Mobi)
This 2012 edition distributed by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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PETER KING
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