A Dinner to Die For (19 page)

“The fifth head,” he said, caressing the top of the sculpture, “is symbolic.” He sank down on a folded blanket and sat cross-legged. His breath was thick.

Along the walls, tables the size of those in Paradise were pushed together. But unlike Mitch Biekma’s utilitarian wooden tables hidden under his colorful tablecloths, these tables were marble. And like the multifaced Shiva, they must have cost Prem a bundle.

His breathing had grown louder. Looking down at him, I asked, “How long have you spent creating this.” I waved my hand around the room.

He exhaled, the sides of his chest sinking into the spaces between his ribs. “Three years. I supervised all the work myself. I made two trips to India to find the right lingam. The whole effect would be destroyed if that were wrong.”

I looked back at the sturdy faces under the stylized mounds of hair at the top of the lingam. “You’ve succeeded. It’s magnificent, and it does set off the room. Still, this is a great deal of work and money to put into a restaurant without being sure when it can open.”

“I wasn’t that foolhardy,” he said with an unconvincing laugh. “I had an opening date. Ten months ago. August twelfth. I had hired the staff from the Indian community here; I’d ordered flowers arranged just like they are in India. The advertising was already cut and pasted.” He fixed his gaze on the symbolic head of the lingam, and began an inhalation. His eyes half closed, he drew his mouth into a laconic smile; his torso shivered as he inhaled.

Behind him, Murakawa shook his head.

When he had exhaled, Prem’s expression returned to normal, and he said, “It was my own fault. I was so busy supervising the plasterers and cabinetmakers, so concerned with getting to India to find the lingam, and to check out the restaurants that I had heard of since my last trip, that the Gourmet Ghetto Ordinance was law before I realized it. Oh, I’d heard about the possibility, sure”—the tenor of his voice was rising—“but it never occurred to me the city would pass it. I mean, you’d think people would be delighted to have a great restaurant close enough to walk to.” He took another breath, but this time there was only a lowering of his pitch, a slowing of his words. “Someday Bhairava”—his glance moved from the ominous face on the lingam around to encompass the restaurant—“will open and it will be even better. Time is nothing more than time. I can wait.”

But I noted that his voice had risen again as he announced his patience. “And for now you’re first on the list to open?”

“That’s true. It could be any time—ninety percent of restaurants fold in the first year.”

“But not in the Gourmet Ghetto,” I said.

“No. But I’m not impoverished. I’m willing to wait. I wouldn’t want to open if that meant one of my friends had to close.”

It all sounded good, too good, particularly for someone who had all his assets tied up here. “So you don’t have any idea when you’ll be able to open?”

“No.”

“But if Paradise closes …”

“Mitch was my friend,” he snapped. After another, shorter breath he said, “We went to school together. I helped him plan for Paradise. He heard every idea I had for Bhairava. I was there helping out last night.”

“Fortuitous,” I remarked.

But if he caught my sarcasm, he gave no indication. “They’d been short-staffed. It was Mitch’s own fault. You can’t go around firing people wholesale and expect to be able to find decent replacements. Reliable people don’t want to work where the boss is capricious.”

“And where the customers are poisoned?”

He hesitated. His chest, which had been reacting rhythmically to his breathing, became immobile. Then he said, “I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the poisoner when Mitch uncovered him.”

“You think Mitch would have?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said without hesitation. “Mitch had energy like I’ve never seen. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was on something. But he wasn’t; didn’t need to be. No drugs, no exercise, no spiritual practices: zilch. The guy must just have had good heredity. And he was obsessive. That’s why he was so good at so many things. That’s why he could be so funny when he was carrying on about the customers and the cooks and the waiters and Rue and everyone on those talk shows. He knew obsession from the inside. And when he got his teeth into something, he never let go, not till he devoured every bite and there was nothing left.”

I pictured Biekma rather like the ominous lingam head. Returning to my question, I said, “You just happened to call Paradise yesterday afternoon. Are you in the habit of calling the Biekmas right before they open?”

“No. Of course not. But yesterday, when I was doing my
P.M.
practice, I kept getting thoughts of them. I knew things were tight there. Everyone was stretching over his limits. Laura has a female problem. And Adrienne had a rash on her hand—”

“A rash?” I asked amazed, barely restraining myself from asking if they stayed home with pimples too.

“In this business, a rash is serious. You can’t work in the kitchen without getting your hands in all sorts of acids and irritants—chili peppers, alkalis. You keep working and your rash will get infected. Just a matter of time. Do you know what the biggest cause of injury is in a kitchen?”

I thought a moment. Hot grease, slippery floors? “Knives? Cutting yourself?”

“Close. But no. It’s boiling water. The most common injury is burns from water. And the bitch of that is that it happens midshift, and then you’re a person short. It’s like last night. Even with Laura and me helping out, things were strung as far as they could go. Laura was sick; she shouldn’t have been working at all.”

“Sick? How?” Had she gotten a taste of the poison?

“She has something the matter with her uterus. It can give her a lot of pain, on and off. That’s the reason I called yesterday, to see how she and Adrienne were.”

I leaned back against the nearest table. “You and Adrienne were in France together. Are you closer than just friends?”

Prem shrugged. “Taking that at face value, yes. Everyone in this business is closer than just friends or just enemies. There are no casual relations in the kitchen. But you don’t mean that, do you?”

“Lovers? Maybe you were lovers in France?”

He laughed. “You’re thinking of long, lazy afternoons on the Left Bank? Let me tell you, it’s not like that. Well, maybe at the school Mitch and I went to—the Rich American Klutz Classes. But Adrienne went to the best. They work till midnight there. It’s like being in a monastery. If Adrienne had had any free time, she would have spent it in bed, asleep. Mitch and I ran into her one Sunday at a leftist rally. We couldn’t believe it, but it turned out that her school was closed that week.”

“Still, if Paradise does close, you will get to open.”

His smile faded. “I wouldn’t have killed Mitch for that. You don’t spend years feeling every breath in your nostrils, in your lungs, your ribs, your intercostal muscles, on the inside of your skin, and then throw it all away and kill a friend so you can serve curry a month sooner.”

“But it could be a year, two years. It could be never.”

He shrugged. “I have to accept what is.”

“And make payments here while you do. How long can you do that?” Adrienne had told me Prem had money. But he’d already put enough into this building to keep an Indian village for a century.

“A while,” he muttered. “I can hang on a while.”

“How long?”

He shrugged.

I repeated the question.

“Three months,” he said in a voice as quiet as it had been when he first sat. But there was none of that lassitude now. There was no faraway look in his eyes. He looked like any guy who had just about lost his dream.

But there was no way to know whether that was because he had come to the end of a long fruitless wait, or because he’d tried to turn the odds in his favor.

I
T WAS NEARLY THREE
o’ clock when I got back to the station. I clarified my notes on the Prem interrogation, and glanced over the others to see if they were still clear. I wouldn’t get around to dictating till at least tomorrow. Things I thought were unforgettable could slip into the unknown by then. Two inches thick, that was the average homicide folder. Two inches equals about a hundred fifty sheets of paper, a hundred fifty pages I hadn’t begun to dictate or gather up from Inspector Doyle, from Pereira, Murakawa, Grayson, Raksen, Parker, Lopez, Heling, the sector sergeant, from the guys on surveillance—when they all got around to dictating. And it wouldn’t be top priority for them, not unless I got on them. And I couldn’t do that with my own reports undone.

There were times when dictating helped me sort my ideas, but I knew this wouldn’t be one of them.

I dialed the office at Paradise. Pereira answered.

“I called with a gift,” I said. “How’re the books going?”

She sighed. “It’s good for me to do this once in a while. It reminds me why I didn’t become an accountant. I could make a lot more money that way, in creative accounting.

“You could go to jail, too.”

“I’ll tell you, Jill, when you’re not halfway through books like these, it’s a hard choice.”

“Come up with anything yet?”

“Such as?”

“A big order of aconite?”

“From the River Styx Supply Service?” She laughed. “Hey, Jill, what about this gift you were offering?”

“Dinner. I owe you. How late will you be there?”

“All evening. Tomorrow’s my day off. I’m not going to spend my Saturday with my nose in profit and loss.”

“Nine o’clock okay?”

“Very continental. Sounds like this gourmet exposure is improving your social graces.”

I snorted and hung up.

I leaned back in my chair. If I didn’t watch it I’d fall asleep here. My back, which I’d ignored since morning, throbbed. It had been like this when I got out of the hospital. It would just get worse unless I rested it. Maybe the hot tub, and the Jacuzzi. Maybe just bed.

I grabbed the nearest of the cardboard boxes Howard had brought—I’d make do with whatever was in it. I was too tired to root through it here. Any choice was preferable to what I was wearing now. I could be home by four, in bed by four-oh-one.

But when I got there the draw of the hot tub was overwhelming, particularly when I realized that it sat under a skylight, and next to a one-way picture window that looked out on the bay. I fished out the thermometer, recalling tales of the hours necessary to heat these tubs. It read one-oh-four. Wasteful of them to keep the heater running. Superbly wasteful. I stripped off my clothes, and washed my hair. Then I slid slowly in, savoring the bite of the water as it rose over my hips, up my ribs, over my breasts, to my shoulders.

It was like coming home to a hero’s welcome—the steamy embrace, all those little bubbles cheering. I settled back, propped my feet against the wooden bench at the other side, and watched while the fog nestled against Twin Peaks in the city, as if a Great Pyrenees were settling its bulk against the back of a couch.

Why was I seeing dogs everywhere? Was it the residue of a month with my parents, looking at old pictures of us and our succession of dogs?

I looked back at the fog, squirming there at Twin Peaks, scrunching a massive shoulder, shifting a furry leg. I could almost hear the strained snores from a snout pushed into the sofa cushions. Then, sleepily, tentatively, a paw reached over the edge, hovered there; then another paw reached over. Like the Great Pyrenees tumbling off the constricting couch and sprawling comfortably on the floor, in half an hour the fog would flow over the ridge of Twin Peaks and cover the city.

I turned on the Jacuzzi, centered the small of my back in front of it, and let the needles of water massage the pain away. The picture window was steamy. Drops of water began to meander down, like sleds on a snowy hillside. Maybe like Great Pyrenees on a snowy hillside, or tiny sleds on a Great Pyrenees. Smiling, I leaned back and rested my head on the side of the tub. It was so warm, so comfortable. My eyelids were closing. So what? I had five hours. Lazily, through my lashes, I watched the drops mosey down the foggy glass. I reached languidly for the Jacuzzi switch, flicking it to low, resting my fingers on it, sinking back, releasing my fingers. The pulsing water drawing me down. Deeper.

Reaching for the collective lever to bring the helicopter up. Where is it? Keeps moving away. Too far. Can’t reach. Rain battering the windshield. Nose down. Too sudden. Rotors stopping. Ship plunging. Into the Bay. Down, down. Crashing. Water rising, closing around my head
—

I gasped for air, grabbed for the edge, frantically pulling myself up, half out of the tub. My heart was slapping my chest. I could see the mounds of my breasts pulsing. Hell and damnation, couldn’t I even deal with a hot tub? What a great headline it would make if I drowned:
HOMICIDE DETECTIVE STEWS OVER RESTAURANT MURDER
. Adrienne could toss in some spices and serve me for weeks. I stayed poised there till the shaking stopped, then dragged myself out, yanked a thick terrycloth robe off its hook, and wrapped my wet body in it. Looking back at the once-inviting tub, I grabbed my clothes, yanked open the door, strode to the bedroom, and set the clock for seven-thirty. That would give me an hour and a half before meeting Pereira, ninety minutes to drive down Marin Avenue—the steepest street in town—back up the hill and down again, until I’d beaten this fear.

It was the telephone that woke me.

“Jill, what about that dinner you promised?” Pereira demanded. “Restaurants don’t stay open all night.”

9:15. “Sorry. Be there in ten minutes.” I jumped up, splashed some cold water on my face, did a world-record makeup job, rooted through the box and pulled out a not-too-wrinkled Eddie Bauer black sweater and L. L. Bean brown cords, grabbed my Land’s End jacket, and raced out the door. As the engine warmed, I remembered for what time I’d set the alarm, and why. What had happened to the alarm?

My car was pointing south, toward the more gently sloping streets, the ones I had to take driving uphill in the old VW. Taking a breath worthy of Ashoka Prem, I hung a U toward Marin Avenue.