Vintage (11 page)

“I gave him a few suggestions.”

“Anything else? Think.”

“Oh, yeah . . . while he's here, his phone rings. He answered. Sounded like he was speaking Russian or Polish or something. I could hear a woman's voice on the other end.”

“Okay. Thanks, Morty.”

“Be careful, Bruno. If you get clumsy, we're both screwed.”

*      *      *

Bruno found this detective work both exhilarating and somewhat frightening. He stopped for a Chicago-style hot dog to bolster his conviction, and it worked marvelously. It reminded him that the details were what mattered: a poppy-seed bun steamed to perfection and sport peppers elevated the humble dog to the level of regional cuisine. He needed a full belly to be able to think on his feet, and this little meal prepared him for an evening assault on the Hilton.

One might not expect a food writer to excel at espionage, but over the years Bruno had crashed small-town festivals and
bacchanals, weddings, auctions and even state dinners. He'd mastered the art of swiping name tags from sign-in tables and adopting a new persona. So when he spotted a conference sign-in table in the lobby he studied the names and selected one that read
Dr. Piotr Piotrowska
.

“Here is me . . .” he said, holding the badge up for the woman checking in guests. “Am late for lecture!” He slipped down the hall and then ducked into the service elevator and pinned the name tag to his lapel, wondering what sort of doctor he should be. He couldn't help but imagine what they were serving at the convention, the sustenance of the hot dog already starting to wear off.

Room 317 was, of course, locked. But a cleaning cart stood next to it with the sounds of vacuuming coming from the neighboring room. Bruno plucked a fresh bathrobe from a stack on the cart. He changed quickly in a vestibule, stuffing his clothes behind the ice machine and melting a few cubes in his hands to wet down his hair.

He popped out again and stood before 317 with his best forlorn pout. When the maid emerged from the next room, he sighed.

“I just had a swim and I'm afraid I've locked myself out,” he said. He suddenly hoped that the Palmer House had a pool.

The maid simply shrugged. She glanced up and down the hall and, seeing no one, she slipped her master key into the slot. Bruno feigned embarrassment and gratitude, though what really concerned him was the thought of finding the large thug with the scar inside.

The room was hot and stuffy. He let the door close gently behind him, and he heard the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. Then a deep baritone singing, some sort of anthem, confirmed that the man was in the shower. Bruno spoke some German and French, and could get by well enough in
Italian, Spanish and Yiddish, but he was lost when it came to Slavic languages. The singing sounded Russian, but whatever the case, it was a robust baritone that produced it: the man sounded large.

Bruno gulped, his heart in his throat. He was tempted to dash out, but he gathered himself and minced on trembling feet into the room.

It was spare. A small suitcase lay open on one of the beds. Socks, shorts, slacks were folded in crisp piles inside. A wristwatch sat on the nightstand.

The singing stopped and Bruno froze, eyeing the door. But then it started again and he rifled through the suitcase. Lifting up a clean white shirt, he found a pistol in a holster. Seizing it would give him the upper hand. He could interrogate the thug, or at least escape unscathed in the case of an altercation.

But Bruno could no more wield a pistol than he could balance a checkbook. If the thug were to see it gripped awkwardly in the writer's hand, he'd easily be able to overpower him and beat him senseless with the handle, or worse. So Bruno covered it up again and tiptoed over to the desk. Best for the fellow not to know someone had been here.

The room was pristine. Nothing interesting jumped out at him. He grew more nervous. The shower was due to end. He rifled through the wastebasket and the drawers.

Then he spied a blazer hanging on the bathroom door. He tiptoed over. He felt his heart thumping against his ribs so loud that the man in the shower had to be able to hear it.

He gingerly checked the inside pockets of the blazer and there found a pin and a slip of paper. The message bore a few lines written on it in Cyrillic, a few numbers, plus, written in curvy script,
'43 Trevallier
.

Fucking Morty,
Bruno thought.

Bruno quickly transcribed the note on the hotel's courtesy paper, hoping he wasn't making some error that rendered the information useless. The pin had a red cross with a strange bat-wing logo. Bruno slid it into his pocket, hoping the man wouldn't miss it. Then he returned the original note to the jacket pocket.

Relieved, he headed for the door, but stopped when he spied the minibar.

He hesitated. He deserved a treat, didn't he?

He tiptoed back over, opened the small refrigerator and found a split of passable California Chardonnay. Just as he was about to grab it, he heard the water in the shower turn off.

He froze.

The sound of the curtain dragging along the shower rod.

He seized the bottle and made for the door, Chardonnay clutched to his chest.

He heard the bathroom door open just as he was gently allowing the hotel door to click into place behind him.

Breathless, he made it back to the vestibule where he'd hidden his clothes. His hands shook as he dressed.

*      *      *

Visiting Aleksei the next morning didn't help to settle Bruno's nerves. He needed help with the translation. He found his friend in his corner booth at the Samovar, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, painting a porcelain tea set. Bruno sat across from him nervously while Aleksei gently set a cup down and frowned as he studied the note.

“Well, it's definitely Russian,” Aleksei confirmed. Aside from the mention of the Trevallier, the rest of the transcription seemed to be information on an Air France flight. “Yuri, call the airline
and check the flight numbers,” Aleksei said, and the large bartender appeared at his elbow.

“Flight is leaving tomorrow morning,” Yuri said after patiently wading through the menus and then speaking to an actual human to confirm. This story was becoming Bruno's entire future, and the Russian fellow was a step ahead.

But what was worse was the pin. Aleksei turned it over and over in his hands, whistling through his teeth. “This is the insignia of the Spetsnaz,” he said. Russian special forces. Aleksei told him that this specific unit operated with deadly efficiency in the Second Chechen War.

“I don't understand . . . So the Russian government is after rare wine?”

“Many of the former soldiers are employed as bodyguards and chauffeurs for the Russian elite . . . oligarchs, industrialists and crime bosses. They're the ones more likely to care about rare wines. My suspicion is that this fellow is a henchman in the employ of some wealthy collector.”

“And I led him right to your locker.”

“No matter . . . Sometimes these repossessions can cause more trouble than they're worth. But perhaps there is also an opportunity in it for you.”

“Perhaps,” Bruno said, though his hopes had clouded over. How could he find the Trevallier and write a book about it if some well-funded collector and the Russian equivalent of a Navy SEAL were also after it?

“Bruno,” Aleksei warned, “this guy could probably kill you with his little toe. Be careful.”

One must thank the Hapsburg Empire for the gift of strudel. The stew of ethnicities comprised of their imperial subjects blended the cuisines of the Ottoman Turks with Jewish, Alsatian, French, Dutch, Moravian, Slavic and Polish traditions. Eastern baklava met German restraint in Vienna, forming a perfect pastry of subtle complexity to serve with good coffee: an excellent choice for when you need to have a serious conversation.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
T
WENTY
R
ECIPES FOR
L
OVE

A
leksei's warning and Bruno's financial inability to pursue the story of the cork kept him awake late into the night. As a food journalist, he was supposed to dream of sauce reductions, pastries, craft cocktails or barrel tastings, not pursuit by a Russian super-soldier. He finally drifted into a heavy slumber until Anna called and roused him at noon the next day to ask him if he could pick up the girls because things were going to shit at the office. She of course knew that he had nothing better to do.
He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was still angry with him.

All of this weighed on Bruno to the point of distraction. In times of such stress it's always best to focus on the very next step, which—of course—should involve food. So he stopped at the grocer's to inspect the produce. A small basket of gnarly, blighted apples caught his attention, so sad next to their gleaming, waxed and flavorless cousins. He took a bite of one and smiled at the acidic tang. They were Belle de Boskoops, perfect for baking and especially tasty in strudel. Anna loved strudel. He imagined her coming home from a bad day at work to the smell of apples baking in brown sugar. He would enlist the girls to help him make her some. He also picked up sultanas, fresh cinnamon and some good bread flour.

A little later Bruno was sinking his teeth through an apple as he leaned against the schoolyard fence at Claire's high school, holding a paper sack of groceries in one arm as he waited for his oldest daughter to emerge from the stream of students disgorged through the school's metal detectors

He caught sight of a familiar flash of coppery hair in a gaggle of girls walking his way and then Claire was standing before him in surprise. He was pleased that she showed no hint of annoyance or embarrassment. She'd gone through a phase when she was horrified by the mere proximity of parents. But now she was confident and unabashed.

“Daddy, what are you doing here?” she asked, hugging her books as she waved goodbye to her friends.

“Your mom's got to catch up at the office and I happened to be available.”

“Okay, cool!” Her smile warmed his heart. He tossed her an apple and she looked knowingly at its blotchy green skin with a blush of orange russet. “So, we gonna bake something?”

“Strudel for your mom.”

“Fun!”

They followed a street lined with brownstones and leafy trees that buckled the sidewalks with their swollen roots. They chatted as they walked. They'd become better friends since his and Anna's separation, though he sometimes suspected that Claire felt sorry for him. You've reached a new low when you earn the pity of your teenage daughter.

“Have a good day?” he asked.

“Yeah, great,” she said, but she read something in his furrowed brow. “Dad, what's bothering you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Um, yeah.”

They walked to Carmen's school a few blocks away. She was in choir practice for another twenty minutes, so they hung out on the playground. Claire sat on a swing and drifted slowly back and forth, gusts of spring wind pushing her. A lone sparrow pecked in the gravel under her feet as Bruno drew a deep breath.

“Claire, I haven't been writing.”

“But your book . . .”

“I'm stuck. I get two, maybe three pages in and then I get bogged down.”

“But you've been working so hard.”

“No. Not really. Sulking, mostly.” Bruno sat on the swing next to her, the chains creaking.

“But what about that cork . . . ?”

“The cork is the key to everything. It's like some kind of sign. I've been playing around at being a writer for a long time now. I've been stubborn even though it clearly hasn't worked out. And now all of a sudden there's this great story just sitting in front of me. And I think that if I can take a shot at telling it right, then
everything would have been worthwhile. I could make it up to you. To your mom.”

“You're psyching yourself out, right?”

“Exactly. I'm afraid to get started. And then there's a . . . er . . . problem. Researching this lost vintage is going to require funding.”

“But Harley said they were excited about it in New York . . .”

“Harley said
no
.”

“That douchebag . . .”

“Claire!”

“Well, I never liked him. Anyway, I'm sorry, Daddy. That really sucks. What about Mom?”

“You heard our last financial discussion. I don't think she's in any mood to entertain more of my schemes.”

“You could explain it to her the way you've explained it to me.” She gave him a reassuring, sympathetic smile and he wondered who the adult was. Then she asked him for a push and he got up and gave her a running shove, dashing underneath her before she dropped again.

“Underdog!” She laughed and began to pump her legs to push the swing as high as it could go. The chains creaked and she was like a little girl again, and his heart ached over all the time he'd spent away and misbehaving when he should have been home pushing his daughter on a swing before she became too old for it. Ten years he'd been wasting his time.

Claire shrieked and hurtled through the air, leaping off the swing. She landed in the gravel and fell onto her backside. She stood up, laughing, and brushed off her jeans. Then she walked up to Bruno and hooked his arm. The bell rang and they walked toward the front door of the school.

“Why don't you just let me talk to Mom about it? Maybe she could float you a loan,” Claire said as they craned their necks to see if they could pick Carmen out of the rush of students.

“I've gotten you into enough hot water with your mother over that whole culinary school thing. Maybe it's best you just keep out of this one.”

“Can't I just talk to her? Girl-to-girl?”