Spiced to Death (18 page)

“Houdini?”

“Yes, you know, the magician—”

“I know who he is. I was just musing … That’s a thought.”

“What is?”

“An idea,” said Gabriella, “just an idea … I’ll tell you about it later.”

“All right. Meanwhile, when are you calling me into action?”

“Just waiting for a couple of things to fall into place. It may be tomorrow. Keep in touch.”

“One other thing …”

“Yes?”

“It is possible, I suppose, that the thief has sent—or taken—the Ko Feng overseas.”

“Hal thought of that. He’s ordered a special watch at ports and airports and asked the post office to be on the alert.”

“It could easily slip through.”

“I know. But Hal doesn’t think it’s likely. He feels that the U.S. is the big marketplace and that the spice is still here.”

“All right,” I said. “One other thing … You remember I mentioned that Don Renshaw had wanted to see copies of the
New York Times
from five years ago?”

“Yes. I told Hal about it. He ran it through the system. There are similarities in the MO but nothing else came out.”

“Well, I’d like to follow it up. I know who the importers were.”

“What do you expect to learn?”

“Maybe the two cases have more in common than just the MO. Whatever we learn about the first theft might help with the second.”

“Hm, and it might take a food expert like you to spot it.”

“It’s the birds’ nest angle that intrigues me.”

“I don’t see how you can learn much that way,” she said. “No restaurant owner is going to admit stealing it.”

“No, but they might know or suspect who did.”

“The Chinese are a tightly knit community,” she said.

“Like the Italians?”

“Comparisons are not appropriate,” she said in a school-marmish voice. “Anyway, do you know how many Chinese restaurants there are in New York?”

“No. How many?”

“I don’t know either, but I do know there are seventeen thousand of all kinds and a fair proportion must be Chinese. An investigation like that could take weeks.”

“Gabriella, let me tell you about birds’ nests. In the first place, many Chinese restaurants use substitute materials.”

“You mean, not birds’ nests at all?” She sounded horrified.

“Right. Second, a lot of them use the black birds’ nests.”

“From blackbirds?” Now she was puzzled.

“No, no, the nests are black, not the birds. It’s because they’re different birds. That’s the inferior grade, the cheaper one. That leaves a relatively small number of top restaurants which use the expensive and much rarer white birds’ nests. Well, not just top ones—there are some that pride themselves on using genuine ingredients.”

“I see.” She was beginning to sound interested.

“Now we can whittle that down even more,” I said, getting more enthusiastic by the minute myself. “Birds’ nest soup is not that popular a dish in the West. It still is in the Far East but not here. It’s an acquired taste—many Westerners find it bitter. There are lots of Chinese and Indo-Chinese here, of course, and they will go to a place which serves a good soup, expensive as it is.”

“It might be worth following up, after all,” she conceded. “But remember that the Chinese are clannish. They won’t let much out to a Westerner—especially one as foreign as you.”

I let that one go by. “I know—but let’s suppose there were several Chinese restaurants that wanted those birds’ nests. What if only one got them? Wouldn’t the others feel irritated?”

“We say PO’d.”

“That abbreviation has now crossed the Atlantic,” I told her. “So, might one of the others still be nursing a grudge and therefore love the opportunity to spill the beans?”

“It’s an idea,” she admitted.

“After all, it sells for somewhere around $150 an ounce.”

“What! That’s outrageous!”

“It’s more than caviar. Quite a lot for bird spit, don’t you think?”

She gurgled. At least, that’s what it sounded like. “What did you call it?”

“The birds are called salanganes—they’re found only on a few small islands just off the coast of Java. They’re small—smaller than hummingbirds. They make their nests on the walls of grottoes overlooking the sea and always on the tops of high, almost inaccessible cliffs. Their sticky saliva forms a crust that is the tiny nest. The natives have to make dangerous climbs to get the nests and the birds are rare—”

“That’s what pushes the price so high?” Gabriella asked.

“Right—and it’s pushed even higher by the long, tedious manual work needed to remove the soil, feathers, dirt and other—”

“You don’t need to spell it out” Gabriella said. “I get the message. Remind me never to order birds’ nest soup. Thank goodness Italian cuisine is pure and clean.”

“You think so? How about—”

“No. Not now. Anyway, thanks for narrowing the field. Go for it.”

“I have your backing?”

“Give it a try,” she said. “Oh—and take care.”

I appreciated her solicitous concern for me but it gave me a slight shiver. I consoled myself with the thought that the person who had threatened me on the subway platform and at that street corner hadn’t wanted to kill me, just scare me. Besides, that person couldn’t be the thief because the thief knew I didn’t have the Ko Feng.

So I couldn’t really be in danger because if the person threatening me wanted me to tell where the Ko Feng was, I had to be alive to do it. I didn’t like the corollary to that—namely that once I told, I was no longer of value. But then that didn’t apply because I didn’t know so I couldn’t tell.

Worst of all was the thought that the thief—or someone else connected with this -whole mess—had already killed Don Renshaw. The most likely reason was that Don had learned something which might identify the thief. And here I was, contemplating a solo expedition into Chinatown to learn something …

L
IKE SEVERAL NEW YORK
restaurants, Vienna Intrigue was underground. There was no clue to this from the outside. A black awning trimmed in silver and double doors of a black hardwood seemed normal, but then the doors swung open as the customer intercepted an invisible beam and an empty lobby with mirrors led to an automatic elevator. This came to a stop that was so gentle it was undetectable. The door slid open and the maître d’ was there, smiling, dressed impeccably.

The ambiance was dark but not gloomy, with black and purple the dominating colors. The restaurant was divided into several areas, each with four booths, separated so as to provide complete privacy. Black wood paneling and hidden strips of silvery light maintained the atmosphere suggested by the restaurant name.

The mention of Ms. Branson’s name brought a murmured invitation to follow the maître d’ to a table. She had not yet arrived but the wine waiter arrived promptly and I accepted his proposal of the house cocktail.

The menu contained a description of the restaurant. It was a replica of one in Vienna which had been a meeting place for men and women of the aristocracy who wished their affairs to be conducted in privacy bordering on secrecy. There were several Viennese specialties on the menu but also a few other dishes from various European cuisines.

My companion was twenty minutes late, though she saw no need to apologize for it. In any case, her appearance drove all other thoughts right out of my mind. Her smooth blond hair glowed with a golden sheen. It fell straight and was cut medium short. Her face was classically sculptured and made even more striking as she was maturely beautiful. She had a serenity that suggested an inner peace, though I wondered how that was possible in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry and in the supercharged arena of New York City. She was slightly above medium height but her slim figure and gliding carriage made her appear taller. She wore a severely tailored business suit in dark forest green that molded the curves of her body precisely.

“I like this place,” she said. Her voice was as enticing as it had been over the phone though a tone lighter.

“Vienna is a good model to use for a decor of intrigue. All that’s needed are curtains that can be drawn.”

She smiled, a placid smile—or so it seemed at first. Then, and without changing, there was a hint of delicious wickedness in it.

“Look behind you,” she said.

I had thought that the walls were covered with drapes, mostly black and some purple, but now I saw that the purple ones were in fact curtains and that they had cords.

“Not only attention to detail but realism,” I commented.

She ordered the same house cocktail. It was champagne with some fruit juice in it—I thought a blend of guava and mango.

We sipped. I waited for her to open the conversation.

She said nothing. Her composure was extraordinary.

To break the silence I said, “I’m glad they haven’t thought to add more atmosphere by playing
The Third Man
theme on a zither.”

“Ernst-Erich is half Swiss, half Austrian. He’s too subtle for that.”

Another short silence followed. It must be her technique, I thought, her way of throwing me off balance. Then she started to speak and I decided I had been wrong. She spoke when she had something to say and didn’t feel the need to bridge gaps of silence.

“Let me tell you about Paramount Pharmaceuticals first of all. We are the seventh largest pharmaceutical company in the Western world. Our total sales last year were twenty-three billion dollars. Our operating profit was a record high at eight hundred percent and our net income was five hundred million dollars …” She broke off to smile apologetically. “Numbers get so boring, don’t they? Especially when millions and billions get thrown around so readily. We have one hundred and four subsidiary companies all over the globe and our long-term earnings are growing at nineteen percent per share. Last year was a record year in every respect—for the fifth year in a row.”

She paused to assess what effect she was having on me.

“A remarkable achievement,” I said. “Especially in these tough times.”

“My responsibility is new products. Developing new products isn’t easy. Few chemical products are really new. Most are simply improvements on the old. Occasionally, we succeed in synthesizing one of nature’s original products but that is expensive to do and manufacturing them is even more expensive. So you can see why we become excited when we hear of a genuinely new natural product.”

We were getting there at last. I nodded encouragement and waited for her to continue.

“I decided to establish a new group a few months ago. A new group to develop and market a new category of pharmaceutical products. Products that have never been marketed before.”

I frowned.

She smiled, her red lips perfectly shaped with a tantalizing crinkle at the corners. “Does that surprise you?”

“It certainly does. It must be very rare for a product group that new to be developed.”

“Rare indeed,” she agreed. “The group I’m talking about are aphrodisiacs.”

That got my full and undivided attention.

It also brought a silence down on the table that must have been noticed by the waiter for he deemed the moment appropriate for bringing menus and he was promptly followed by the maître d’, who appeared to be accustomed to giving Ms. Branson the personal treatment.

She introduced me as a visitor from London.

“He has a reputation as a gourmet,” she told the maître d’, “so you had better give him your finest recommendations.”

“I’m looking forward to hearing them,” I told him. “Viennese cooking has a unique pedigree—drawn from a dozen cultures.”

He gave a slight bow of agreement.

“In the days of the Emperor Franz Josef, sixteen languages were spoken freely in Vienna and there were even more national cuisines,” he said. His slight accent was smoothly and definitely Austrian. “Many contributions were made—from herdsmen of the Hungarian plains, Czech peasants, Serbian mountaineers, Alpine guides, Turkish pashas, Polish noblemen, Italian seamen, Levantine traders. The best was taken from each, for the Viennese were choosy. They also blended a little of this cooking with a little of that and evolved new dishes.”

“Didn’t you tell me that everyone in Vienna ate well except the emperor?” asked Gloria.

The maître d’ smiled. “Yes, indeed. He wanted only boiled beef every day.”

“Tafelspitz,” I commented. “I enjoy it when I can find it, but once or twice a year is enough.”

“So what do you recommend for twentieth-century capitalists?” Gloria asked.

“Hapsburg Soup would be very suitable …”

We both smiled.

“It’s very good,” conceded Gloria, “but too creamy.”

“Dumplings are, of course, very much a Viennese specialty …”

“I’ve had them several times,” she said. “I’m beginning to look like a dumpling.”

The maître d’ and I responded simultaneously with protests that nothing could be further from the truth. Gloria smiled, having achieved her desired result.

She decided on the Russian Eggs and I ordered the Barley Soup. Discussion continued on the next course. Gloria favored the Hot Oysters and I chose the Eel in Dill Sauce. For the main course, she went for the (a true Viennese specialty, the maître d’ assured us) and I eventually selected the Fricasseed Goose, as goose is unfortunately becoming increasingly harder to find.

The wine waiter came and confided that he had a few bottles of Austrian wines in the cellar.

“They are drier and more alcoholic than the German wine varieties drunk most often in this country,” he added. We accepted his recommendation of a Klosterkeller Steigendorf, a full-bodied but dry Riesling.

When he had gone, Gloria returned to her theme.

“Apicius, the Roman cookbook writer, had recipes for increasing sexual desire. Homer, Ovid and Pliny all described sexual stimulants in their writings,” she said.

“Both garlic and onions were considered as such stimulants, weren’t they?” I asked.

“And still are. In fact, there was a period in India when they were banned because they were considered to be too stimulative. And in Europe for centuries, both of them were forbidden food in nunneries and monasteries. Nero ate huge quantities of leeks—which, of course, are the same family.”