Spiced to Death (8 page)

Half a dozen spits rotated, kebabs oozing fat as sharp-bladed knives sliced off thin strips.
Kufia,
small meatballs, sizzled on a grill wafting scents of mint, basil and cinnamon. Huge bowls of rice were in profusion—the indispensable accompaniment to any Middle Eastern dish.

My glands were salivating as I reached the Topkapi Castle, “where all the jewels are food” according to the board outside. The restaurant in the Murray Hill district of Manhattan was the home of this exhibit and the smells promised well to anyone liking the cuisines of Istanbul and the Anatolian provinces.

The Turks haughtily assimilated any good cooking they encountered in their wars, making Turkish cooking today a fascinating mixture of Greek, Jewish, Central Asian and Arab influences. The decor was pleasant but not gaudy—often a good sign that the emphasis is on the food. Tables were in sunken areas and a long mezzanine stretched along one wall. Ceramic, glass and copper utensils hung on the walls and the waiters were all dressed impeccably in white.

Selim Osman was of medium height, with thinning hair, slick and black. He had piercing black eyes and a trim little black mustache. Energetic and resplendent in a white suit, he received me politely but with a reserve that hinted I wasn’t going to learn very much.

“I know about the Ko Feng, of course,” he told me. “In our business, it’s today’s topic of conversation.” He shrugged. “Tomorrow, who knows?”

“Do you see any place for it in your cooking?”

“I suppose any chef would want to try it. It is not just a spice—it is history.”

“Have you been offered any?”

He pondered the question for a minute. Early diners were already in place. A dish of pan-fried squid, golden and with a bowl of garlic dipping sauce, went by on a waiter’s arm. Sword-fish kebabs with rice dotted with currants and flecks of spinach swished past. Bottles of Turkish beer clanked on another tray.

“I wouldn’t say ‘offered.’”

“What would you say?” I countered and he smiled suavely.

“A commodity like a spice that has been lost for centuries requires a different marketing approach from a trailer load of potatoes. Anyone possessing it might not even know precisely how he intended to market it—but how could any man decline such an opportunity?”

His speech was carefully metered. The thoughts behind the words were, I felt, significant. He was telling me something. His English was flawless and wherever he had learned it, I would bet it was a tough environment. I thought he could handle a frontal assault.

“Who do you think stole the Ko Feng?”

He didn’t bat an eyelid. He said nothing for a few seconds but I wasn’t hopeful that he was going to reel off a list of suspects.

“I don’t know.”

“Care to make a guess?”

He smiled. “Slander can be expensive. We are sue-happy in New York and we have spread the habit all over the country. I wouldn’t want to risk a lawsuit.”

“So you might suggest a name if you weren’t afraid of legal action?”

“We must talk again.” He was being politely dismissive. “You should come and eat at the Topkapi Castle.”

“I’d like that. Here’s my card. Call me if you hear anything that might help me get the Ko Feng back.”

He took it. I added quickly, “After you’ve told the police, naturally.”

He nodded and watched me leave.

I was some distance away when I heard a call from behind.

I turned to see a man approaching me at a brisk pace and waving an imperious hand. He was a military-looking character with a small mustache and an erect bearing, and he was wearing a Nehru-type jacket that I hadn’t seen since the Margaret Thatcher era.

“Caught a little of your conversation back there,” he said in a voice that must have served well on a parade ground. “Name’s Nelson Keyhoe—I’m Keyhoe Chemicals, we’re in the Fortune 500.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “That’s a nice place to be.”

“Been there for the past five years and one way we stay there is by keeping up with trends and developments.”

“What sort of chemicals?” I asked.

“Our current product list has about eight thousand of them on it—so we’re in a great many markets,” he said proudly.

“And what’s your connection with food?”

“We make additives, coloring agents, sugar substitutes …”

“Flavor enhancers?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes, we make those too.”

I pondered my next question for a split second, then I decided that, what the heck, I hadn’t been getting very far anyway—so what if I upset somebody?

“It must have been a relief to you when the Ko Feng was stolen,” I said in a chatty tone.

He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“It would take away a lot of your business, wouldn’t it? Ko Feng is probably many times more effective than any of the flavor enhancers that you produce.”

“We’re accustomed to competition from all directions,” he said. His face suggested that if he’d had me in his battalion, I’d have been locked up by now and with no likelihood of release.

“On the other hand, you might welcome Ko Feng—if you could get hold of any, that is. If it’s such a powerful flavor enhancer, then it could be much more valuable than any your lab makes.”

His expression changed to what in someone else might have been almost a smile.

“Well, now, if we could get hold of some of this Ko Feng, our laboratory boys could make a comparison and see if that’s really true.”

“When it’s recovered, you may have a chance to do just that.”

“Getting close, is it? That recovery?”

“The police are confident,” I told him. “Good luck with the comparison.”

I walked away without waiting to be dismissed.

I
WASN’T SURE IF
Selim Osman knew anything or if he suspected someone. Even the thumbscrews and the racks of his ancestors wouldn’t get any information out of him so I didn’t expect to. Still, it was a lead—even if I didn’t know what to do with it. The question wasn’t only what he knew but how he knew it. He might be unwilling to divulge the former but the latter might be easier to uncover.

Not that I had any intention of investigating the theft, of course—that was strictly the affair of the police as Lieutenant Gaines had pointed out. Still, I
was
involved. I knew I had been brought here only to authenticate the Ko Feng but I felt that my professional integrity had been sullied when the spice had been taken from under my very nose.

I went outside to cross to the next pavilion. I was assailed by powerful aromas that I would have been able to grab by the handful if they had been only a fraction stronger.
SAY CHEESE
was the name of the stand, and they were all there—from Arrigny to Vendôme, from soft to hard, from mild to extra sharp, from aperitif to dessert, and in every color—blue, yellow, red, green, white. There were slabs and slices, bars and hunks, wheels that would barely fit through a doorway.

It was an aggressive stand and it didn’t require any signs pointing in its direction. A board inside carried the thought that “Cheese is milk striving toward immortality.” The most valuable item mentioned in the will of François Villon, the French vagabond poet, had been the contents of his cheese cellar and the throngs at this stand indicated that cheese had lost none of its pull.

I passed through Kosher Canyon where the most amusing sign said
JEWISH TEX-MEX.
Ingenuity and humor abounded in the entire exhibition, and I walked on past
NOTHING BUT THE WURST
where the perspiring staff was having a hard time handling the flow of sausages of all styles and sizes. Mustard was being supplied by the bucketful, a German band oompahed in brassy bursts, and girls in Bavarian dress hurried between tables with trays of foaming steins.

It was a problem to know where to eat.

I finally decided on a Magyar cafe in the Hungarian quarter and ordered the smoked tongue, a dish I had not eaten in a long time. The way it is cooked in its home country is to boil the whole tongue until it is tender, dredge it in eggs and flour and then pan-fry and slice it. A few dumplings and a piece of black pumpernickel spread with Liptauer, a cheese flavored with paprika and caraway, made a very satisfying lunch. A glass of Hungarian Riesling was my choice of a wine. The famous Bull’s Blood was not easy to resist but it is a little heavy for midday drinking. A popular Hungarian dessert, crepes with chocolate syrup, got a second glance but only out of professional interest.

Such exhibitions are tiring but I set out again on a tour of some of the other attractions. I admired a replica of a Hong Kong riverboat restaurant with a menu that would take as long to read as it did to eat. The Napa Valley vineyards had a big spread and I browsed and chatted. Morocco’s stand was a brilliantly decorated affair and the food looked and smelled so good that I almost wished I had waited.

By now, it was late afternoon. The crowds were thicker still. Many were eating and drinking as they walked between stands. One speaker was trickling out the dainty music of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet while another across the way had the Ink Spots singing “The Java Jive.” Aromas were now becoming indistinguishable as I found a phone booth and called Don.

He sounded strangely uncommunicative.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No, no, everything’s fine,” he said quickly.

“A problem with the business?”

“No, it’s not that …”

“Is someone with you and you can’t talk? I can call you later.”

I would have thought he would want to discuss the theft of the Ko Feng, in fact, be anxious to do so. Between us perhaps we could conceive some approach for finding out where it was and what the thief’s intentions were.

“No, there’s no one here.”

“I was thinking of coming over.”

“Look,” he said hurriedly. “Could you come over in the morning?”

“Sure. I’m anxious to see your warehouse and we can—”

“Okay,” he cut in. “See you in the morning.”

I plunged back into the throng, puzzling over what could be the problem. Was it something connected with the Ko Feng? That was the uppermost subject in my mind and it must be in Don’s too. But it looked as if I had to wait until tomorrow to find out what it was.

I took a cab back to the Framingham Hotel, stopping to buy some essential supplies. I watched television for a few minutes while drinking a vodka and tonic. A hair salon was advertising “follicle nutrition” with panther urine and on the news, a man was perched on the ledge of a tall building in Manhattan threatening to jump if the Mets didn’t end their eleven-game losing streak. I fell asleep during a Doris Day movie and it was ten o’clock before I awoke. I made smoked salmon sandwiches, ate them accompanied by another vodka and tonic and went back to sleep.

T
HE SPICE WAREHOUSE WAS
a place of spectacular aromas. Some could be isolated but the mingling of so many different herbs and spices resulted in an exotic atmosphere that was both heady and mysterious.

Both the retail and the wholesale were catered for and it looked like a botanical wonderland. I couldn’t see either Don or Peggy so I picked up a current copy of the newsletter from the stack of literature by the door and looked around.

It had really been a warehouse and had high ceilings with air vents and windows, ideal conditions for its present purpose. The retail section was laid out like a supermarket with herbs and spices in open boxes and trays—each marked with its country of origin and giving a description of its uses and characteristics.

Chervil from Belgium, poppy seeds from Poland, nutmeg from Grenada, juniper berries from Italy—the extent of the stock was amazing. Glamorous names from all over the globe sprang out everywhere—Madagascar, Cyprus, Zanzibar, Bahamas, Ecuador, Egypt … It was like walking through a minijungle.

Peggy was just concluding the sale of some lemon grass when I found her.

“Don’s in his office talking to somebody,” she said. “I don’t know how long he’ll be.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I could browse here for hours. Wonderful place you’ve got—you must be very proud of what you’ve done here.”

Her face lit up. “We are. So glad you like it.”

“Is Don okay?” I asked casually, examining some sage, the herb whose smoke was used to protect against the black plague.

“Yes,” she said and looked at me quickly.

“He sounded preoccupied, worried even, when I phoned yesterday. I thought maybe something was wrong.”

Alarm was beginning to show in her eyes and I hastened to placate her. “It was probably just worry about this Ko Feng business.”

“He is very concerned about it. It’s the strangest thing … I could hardly believe it when he told me …”

We discussed it for a few minutes, then an assistant in a trim green uniform came over to ask her help.

“Go ahead and browse,” she told me. “I’ve got a perplexed customer here.”

A pile of ugly, dirty-brown plants that looked like knobby clubs caught my eye. They were stacked high on a shelf and I went to take a closer look. I was reaching for one of them to feel its texture when a hand touched mine. A very attractive woman in a light blue wool suit turned to smile at me.

“Sorry,” she said. “You were first.”

“No, go ahead. I’m only looking.”

“So am I. It’s a curious plant, isn’t it?”

“It is. A lover of ginger, are you?”

She looked at me perplexed, then at the label.

“Yes,” I said, “ginger, that’s what it is.”

She examined the unpleasant-looking sticks with a look of surprise on her face. Finely chiseled features, light chestnut-brown hair and a pretty smile made her well worth looking at and there was a firmness in her brown eyes that gave her character and suggested plenty of determination.

“I’ve seen it before but never in such large pieces.”

“It’s probably African,” I said, searching for the tag. “Yes, it is. Most people consider the Jamaican variety as the best but recently, more and more has been coming from Africa. It’s much larger and many like the flavor even better.”

“I must admit I usually use the shaker,” she said, tilting her head to one side in a charming gesture.