Home of the Braised (22 page)

Gav spoke quietly. “Another homeless person found him bleeding on the street. The man flagged down a police car and they called for an ambulance.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the Keeper.

“Fooled them, though, didn’t I?” He grinned showing yellow, uneven teeth. “My time isn’t up yet. Not until balance is restored.”

“Do you know their names?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Can you tell me what they looked like?”

His right hand, tethered to an oxygen meter, came up a second time to stroke his nonexistent beard. When his bony fingers came up empty, he grumbled. “Wondered why it was so cold in here.” He gave a wet, phlegmy cough.

“What do they look like?” I asked.

“Good thing they shot me in the head,” he said, knocking into it with his right hand. “Doctor told me that the bullet skimmed along my skull and stopped right about here.” He pointed to a spot just above his ear. “Got lucky.”

I knew our time with him was running out, so I tried a different approach. “If you tell us as much as you can about them, we might be able to catch who did this.”

“Demons are wily,” he said. “They look like us. Ordinary. They blend right in.”

“What did she look like?” I asked.

“Tried to hide what she looked like.”

“I don’t understand.”

He smiled. “Of course you don’t. You aren’t used to seeing demons.”

A nurse stepped in behind Gav. “Time’s up. The patient needs his rest.”

“Please,” I said to the Keeper. “What do you mean?”

“Young face. Young body.” He shook his head. “I remember blue. Flowers, I think. She dressed old.”

I thought about the woman who’d pushed me on the train platform. She’d disguised herself to look old, but had moved like a younger woman. Would I be able to recognize her again?

“What about the man?” I asked.

The Keeper coughed again, this time deeply.

“It’s time for you to leave,” the nurse said. “Now.”

“But—” I said.

“We’ll take good care of him for you, I promise,” she said as she patted me and Gav to the door. “Come back tomorrow.”

I knew with the Durasi state dinner that I wouldn’t be back tomorrow. “Don’t let anything happen to him,” I said.

She smiled. “He’s in good hands here. There’s nothing to worry about.”

WHEN URLICH PICKED ME UP THE NEXT MORNING
, the sky was still black. “Sorry,” I said as I got in. “I know this is ridiculously early.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I have a lot on my plate today and I appreciate the early start.”

“I know you’re one of the people giving speeches tonight,” I said. “What else do you have going?”

“I have two important errands.” He held up a finger. “I need to meet with Alec this morning.” Urlich shot me a look. “He’s a great boss, but a fierce micromanager. Not that I’m not nervous enough as it is. I swear he’s going to send me over the edge.”

I smiled. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

He nodded, holding up a second finger. “More important, however, when I’m finished with Alec, I need to connect with a colleague of ours who’s helping with our speeches. That meeting is essential before the event tonight.”

I didn’t understand. “Your colleague is helping with your speeches, but isn’t meeting with Alec, too?”

Urlich made a face. “Like I said, Alec is a great boss. But that doesn’t mean he’s particularly easy to work with.”

• • •

BUCKY AND CYAN WERE IN BEFORE ME, AGAIN.
“Good morning,” I said when I pulled off the light jacket I’d worn against the early morning chill. “I expected to be here alone for a while.”

Bucky downed whatever was left of his coffee. “Is that a complaint?” he asked, raising the mug in greeting.

“The opposite. I’m delighted. Confused, though. You two are never in this early.”

Cyan pointed to the clock. “You said you would be here by four. It’s four.”

“Yeah.” I’d been about to say that my being in at four usually meant that they showed up by 4:30, but decided to let it go. With Virgil out of the picture and the dinner scheduled for tonight, we’d be squeezing blood out of every single minute today. I was glad to have them here.

We’d already blocked out our tasks for the day, divvying up the temporary chefs among ourselves to get everything done on time. As executive chef I had minimal food-making responsibilities. What I needed to do was ensure that everyone else was staying on task, that the courses were being prepared correctly, and that the presentation of each was perfect.

Most of the frantic work would happen in those last hours before we began to serve. And even though the stress wouldn’t diminish until the last plate was carried out the door, I always loved every minute of it.

“Josh promised to be down here around noon,” I said.

“Wow. That’s early,” Bucky said. “Won’t it be a long day for him . . . and for us?”

“Could be,” I admitted. “I think he’ll do fine, though. He’s a tenacious soul.”

Cyan elbowed me. “No wonder you two get along so well.”

• • •

URLICH POKED HIS HEAD INTO THE KITCHEN
later that morning.

“I didn’t expect to see you today,” I said.

“Change in plan. Alec needs me to meet him at the office, pronto.”

“Has something happened?”

Urlich grimaced. “I don’t know,” he said with a burst of frustration. “Clearly something is up, but he isn’t telling me what it is. He claims he wants to go over our presentations again, but there must be more to it. He warned me that he’ll need me there for the rest of the day. What could possibly keep me busy that long?”

It was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer. Urlich’s exasperation with his boss, though evident, still didn’t explain what he was doing here in the kitchen. As if reading my mind, he said, “I’m here to ask if you need to go anywhere today. I can arrange for a backup bodyguard if you do.”

Surrounded by fresh, soaking-wet spinach leaves, I almost laughed out loud. “I think it’s highly unlikely I’ll leave this kitchen at all today,” I said. “You’re safe.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Uh . . . Your errand yesterday to the courthouse . . . did you ever get out there?”

“No, couldn’t make it. Business got in the way. If I don’t have a chance later, let me wish you good luck with your speech tonight. Excited about that?”

His eyes roved the kitchen, but it seemed as though he wasn’t seeing anything. “Nervous is more like it. Alec wants to go over every word, every nuance. He says that our speeches tonight will go down in history.”

“I thought you said you needed to connect with a colleague who was helping you with your speeches.”

“Yeah,” he said with more than a little anger. “That was the original plan. Thanks to Alec, however, everything has been turned on its head.” He shrugged. “What can I say?” With a final look around the kitchen, he sighed. “See you later, Ollie.”

When he was gone, Cyan turned to me. “I didn’t think that Urlich was all that cute at first. He’s starting to grow on me.”

I laughed. “Two things: He’s got to be at least ten years older than you are, and he’s seeing someone named . . . what is it? Naomi, I think. He mentioned it on one of our commutes.”

Cyan wrinkled her nose. “Darn.” She wiggled her finger toward the guest list we had tacked to the wall. “There are a couple of other cuties coming to dinner tonight. Have you met Tyree and Larsen?”

“Have you?”

“They came down here once when you were up talking with Sargeant,” she said. “Very polite. Very deferential.”

“What did they say or do?”

She shrugged. “Looked around a little. Asked a few questions. Nothing special, why?”

I shook my head, but Cyan wasn’t finished with her wish list. Her finger stopped about halfway up. “What about Alec Baran? He’s gorgeous.”

“He’s also rich and powerful,” I said. “Nice pick.”

“Not so rich after the president’s dinner tonight,” Bucky said. “Remember the big announcement and ceremony they have planned. Baran is supposed to give that speech about how he supports the president’s decision to pull mercenary forces out of Durasi. I don’t know that I believe him.”

“I don’t know that I do, either,” I said. Alec’s speech was one of many scheduled to start immediately after dinner was served. I should be excited, and yet if I put my finger on it, I’d have to say my mood was something else entirely. Terrified, maybe.

I felt as though I was missing an important kernel of truth, a key point, or some flash of inspiration that might help answer my myriad of questions. No matter how hard I tried, however, it was just beyond my reach.

• • •

THE FIRST WAVE OF SBA CHEFS ARRIVED RIGHT
on time, and we put them to work. I had two women in charge of deboning dozens of pheasants and slicing pockets into the sides of the breasts—just so—to make room for the wild rice stuffing that was currently being put together by a team across the kitchen.

I’d provided precise instructions for every step of every process. Although I had no doubt these chefs had made dishes similar to this one before, I insisted on instructing them step-by-step on how I wanted tasks completed. Each and every breast had to be perfect, so that they would present uniformly when served.

I was pleased that one of the women was Agda. One of our favorite SBA chefs, she was tall, cheerful, and took to the task of deboning the pheasants with her customary speed and accuracy. She spoke little English, but she was one of the hardest-working chefs in the business. Every single one of the portions she worked on came out like a thing of beauty.

Another chef we’d used before, Samantha, was struggling to keep up with Agda. “Take your time,” I said after she’d ruined three breasts by cutting the pocket too deep. “This isn’t a race.”

“Yes, Chef.” Slightly chubby, with tightly fastened maroon hair, Samantha was about twenty-five. The last time she’d been here, Virgil had belittled her in front of the rest of the staff. I noticed how she glanced up in fear every time someone entered the kitchen. It wasn’t hard to deduce the reason for her anxiety.

“By the way,” I added, conversationally, “Chef Ballantine won’t be here today.”

“Was he fired?” she asked, pale eyes growing bigger, more fearful. “Last time I read about him in the paper it sounded like he still worked here.”

“He’s not here today,” I said, unwilling to share any more than that. “You can relax a little. We’re all on the same team.”

She nodded eagerly. “Thank you, Chef.”

We worked quickly and efficiently, and mostly quietly. The kitchen tension would build as serving time approached, and it would get louder down here. For now, as I walked among the many busy assistants making the magic happen, I appreciated the team’s calm competence.

“I’m here,” Josh announced in the doorway, right at noon. He had two Secret Service agents assigned to keep tabs on him while he worked in the kitchen with us.

“Wonderful,” I said. I knew Bucky and Cyan weren’t thrilled by the prospect of having a youngster traipsing about in our busy kitchen, but I knew how important this was to Josh. “Come on over here.”

I placed my hands on the boy’s shoulders and raised my voice to the room. “Attention, everyone.”

Chopping, stirring, and rolling ceased. All eyes turned to me.

“As you probably know, this is the president’s son, Josh. He’s going to be helping us here today in the kitchen and we’ll be encouraging him to help some of you. He’s very capable and he’s eager to learn. Two rules: One, if you would like assistance and you believe Josh might be able to help, come to me and I’ll decide whether to assign that task to him; and Two, under no circumstances are you to share any information about Josh, any stories about his presence here in the kitchen, or even that he
was
here, with anyone outside these walls. Like everything else in the White House, you will keep information you acquire here confidential. Failure to do so will result in you being blacklisted from our SBA lists. If anyone here believes they will be unable to comply, now’s the time to speak up.”

No one did.

“Great,” I said. “Thank you, all.” As they returned to their jobs, I spoke to Josh. “You know that things may get a little crazy here, right?”

“I know. I’ll stay out of your way when that happens.” For the first time since I’d agreed to have him here while we prepared dinner, his eager smile and nod worried me. I hoped I wouldn’t regret the decision to include him.

“You know that this is a really important night for your dad, right?”

I thought Josh might have been tempted to roll his eyes. “That’s all he’s been talking about this week.”

“We have a lot of work set aside for you. When you’re chopping your hundredth carrot, it may not feel as though you’re helping, but I promise, you are.”

He gave me a very solemn look. Maybe that was his substitute for an eye roll. “I made dinner for my family before, remember?” he asked, so innocently. So confidently. “I think I can handle this.”

I tamped down a smile. “I think you can, too. Let’s get you started.”

A little while later, Cyan sidled up to me. “I didn’t realize the Secret Service was supposed to stay right next to him,” she whispered, gesturing to where we’d gotten Josh settled dicing dried apricots. She gave a melodramatic glance around the room. “And we thought we were cramped before, huh?”

The two large men accompanying Josh remained quietly alert, but were not friendly in the least. They flanked the small boy, at all times keeping an eye on every movement in the kitchen.

“We have a bunch of chefs here within ten feet of the president’s son, all handling sharp knives and hot implements,” I said. “Granted, everyone here has been thoroughly vetted, but they’re not taking any chances. I don’t blame them. Besides, you and I both know that we’ve worked under more challenging circumstances. Compared to a few of our other situations, this one is nothing.”

She hefted the two containers of molasses she’d brought in from storage. “True that.”

I did a quick check of Josh’s progress. His pile of chopped dried apricots was growing. “Getting bored yet?” I asked.

“No way,” he said. “Will these really be used tonight? You’re not going to have me chop up a bunch of stuff and not use it, will you?”

I put my hand over his, stopping him from working for a moment. “Would I do that to you?”

“I didn’t think so. But I overheard a couple of other chefs talking about what happens to the food they’re working on when they don’t do something exactly right. It doesn’t get served.”

I directed his gaze toward the center work area, where Agda and Samantha were still slicing the pheasant breasts. “Those have to be exactly right. Exactly perfect. Every single one of them. I’ve put two of our more experienced chefs on that task because I know that they’re going to be able to deliver the results we need, quickly.” I put my face close to Josh’s ear, while indicating Samantha. “One of the two chefs is newer, but she’s very talented. I’m hoping that by giving her this job, we’ll boost her confidence. It isn’t hard work, but it is exacting.”

Taking a few of the chopped apricots from Josh’s pile, I continued. “You see how these are more or less uniform in size? That’s perfect because then they’ll cook evenly. We will use every single one of these apricots.” I replaced the diced fruit I’d picked up and said, “You’re doing an awesome job, Josh. Keep it up.”

As I patted him on the shoulder, I could feel him straighten, looking a little more pleased with himself, a little prouder than he had been moments earlier. “Thanks, Ollie.”