A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 13

"What do you do?"

I dove past her, straight for my purse. "You ask Robert Kemp." I pulled out my cell, thumbed the screen and waited while it rang.

"Good afternoon, Chef Caine." Robert Kemp, Nightlife's matre d', had a voice that sounded like it had been delivered fresh this morning from the BBC.

"h.e.l.lo, Robert."

"Is there news about the reopening?" he inquired mildly, as if it was a subject of obscure and entirely academic interest.

"Not yet. Sorry." On the other side of the room, Jess was tidying her instruments and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g on jar lids, but not, I noticed, putting any of them away. She did not so much as glance toward me. I was not fooled, but shrugged it off. All things considered, I probably owed her a little eavesdropping. "Robert, I need a favor."

"I'll be glad to do whatever I can, Chef Caine."

I'd known he would say that. Robert owed us big-time. Actually, it was Chet he owed. Chet had convinced me that we should hire Robert, and it took him two weeks to do it. Robert's previous place of employment-a four-star establishment called UniQ-had accused him of embezzlement. The charge turned out not to be true, or at least not to be provable, but the gambling problem that made him look suspicious was. Between that bad habit and the recession, no topflight restaurant would take him on. In fact, no one at all would take him on. I gave in only after Chet pointed out two things. First, Robert was willing to work cheap, and second, despite all the problems, Robert Kemp was still was on a first-name basis with every single concierge in Manhattan.

This is really important. Concierges make recommendations to hotel guests on good places to eat out. That they recommend places where friends and acquaintances work should not come as a surprise to anybody. That a matre d' might use some of his tip money to ensure their continued friends.h.i.+p was not something a smart executive chef ever asked about. Plausible deniability is also really important.

"I'm looking for information on Bertram Shelby," I told Robert.

"I am not familiar with the name." He didn't even need to think about that. Robert had a high-definition memory for people.

"He's the current owner of Post Mortem, a vampire club in the East Village."

"Ah." I could picture Robert looking down his very long English nose. Jobs were transient things, but the true matre d's sn.o.bbery was bred in the bone.

"He's been around for a while." Actually, this was a guess, but Shelby wasn't a young man, and as little as I liked the place, Post Mortem just didn't feel like a maiden voyage to me. "Can you find out where, and with whom?"

"I'm certain I can. Is there anything specific you want to know?"

I hesitated and glanced at Jess. She'd given up her nonlistening charade and was sitting at the table, arms folded and head c.o.c.ked. "I just need an employment history and to find out how Shelby got to be running Post Mortem." Clubs in New York are the only ventures riskier than restaurants. The vast majority of them fail before they celebrate their first anniversary. More than one, however, has survived by allowing a.s.sorted exciting and highly profitable activities to be conducted on or through the premises. Now, of course, I didn't think Chet was doing anything illegal, but Bert Shelby might be, maybe with Taylor Watts's help. If I'd been living right, that something might be related to whatever had gotten Dylan Maddox killed and we could clear the entire mess up all at once.

"Very well, Chef. I will see what I can turn up."

"Thank you, Robert."

"Not at all. I will call you as soon as I have something."

We said our good-byes and I thumbed the phone off.

Jessie had her eyebrows raised. "So, Charlotte Caine's the new Nancy Drew?"

"Not even close." I ran my hand over my hair. "I just want to know what happened. Chet's keeping something from me, and I need to know if it has anything to do with Dylan's murder and what the h.e.l.l he thinks he's up to. Maybe he thinks he's protecting somebody, or protecting Nightlife. Anyway, he's not going to tell me anything if I don't have something solid in my hand already. So I have to ask around. That's all this is." All of which sounded way more like guilty babbling than I was comfortable with.

"Which is of course entirely different than Nancy Drew-ing, especially since there's a dead man involved."

Of course it was, but I couldn't seem to think how. It would have come to me if I'd had a second, I'm sure, but Jessie wasn't giving me a second.

"Come over here and take your shoes off." She reached behind her red cases and brought out a strange-looking bundle of silver sticks that turned out to be a folding footstool.

"What? Why?"

Her smile sharpened, and I'm certain I saw a glint in her eye. "I've got you in my clutches, girl. You're not getting out without the full treatment."

"Jess . . ."

"Don't 'Jess' me. You stand on your feet ten hours a night. You've probably got calluses on your calluses, and if you don't start taking care of them, they're going to split and bleed. It's going to be nasty and you're going to miss work. Shoes off."

It was the "miss work" that did it, just like she knew it would. Clearly, she was a more dangerous saleswoman than I had realized. I went back to my station and obediently took my shoes off. Jess scooted her chair around and set about giving my feet the same kind of work-over she'd given my hands. It could have been the warmth, or that I wasn't used to sitting around doing nothing, or that I hadn't eaten or slept decently in the past couple daysing aroundwhatever it was, I found myself drifting off slowly toward sleep. Something told me this was not the best idea, but I was tired of fighting to keep my head together, and for once I let go. The nap descended softly, and it felt almost as good as the paraffin soak.

My phone was ringing. I blinked my eyes open and automatically checked my watch. I'd been asleep for two hours. Jess and her implements of destruction were nowhere in evidence. My phone rang again. I swung my feet off the stool and a flash of color made me stop and look down.

While I'd been asleep, Jess had painted my toenails Mary Sue Scarlet.

Brat. I thumbed my phone on without looking at the number. "What?"

"Catching you at a bad time, Chef Caine?" asked Linus O'Grady.

"No, no." I frowned at my toenails. The polish did not evaporate.

"I've got good news. You won't be able to open the restaurant for a few more days, but I can let you back into your kitchen tomorrow."

And just like that, all was right with the world, Mary Sue Scarlet toes and all.

13.

All remained right with the world for exactly thirteen hours. I forgave Jess. I called Chet as soon as the sun went down and we whooped and hollered our mutual triumph. It took some effort, but I set aside all my questions about his whereabouts and his connections to Post Mortem. For just this one night I was going to pretend everything could still be all right. If insisting that Trish and Jess come to dinner with me at Pilar's Downtown to drink Dos Equis and eat way too much fresh guacamole was to help keep those questions bound and gagged, I was surely owed at least one night of avocado-and-chile-flavored avoidance tactics.

But then came Wednesday morning, bright and early. Suchai, Marie and Jorg Sanchez-the only one of the line cooks who could be bothered to show up for the triage-crowded into the walk-in with me as I stared at tub after tub of unusable food.

Restaurants throw out an incredible amount of food. It's a fact and you get used to it, but we were about to open a whole new level of waste. Anything that had been cut or prepped on Sat.u.r.day had settled into its own ooze. The bread was long past stale. Then there was the produce that had been so fresh and lovely for the weekend, and the stuff that we'd been pus.h.i.+ng on the specials because it was about ready to go. . . .

All I could think was this must be what a vet felt like looking at a horse that had to be put down. Thousands of dollars' worth of food was about to be dropped into the Dumpster out back, where we were supposed to douse it in bleach to discourage scavengers. We mostly forget this step. Once you've seen a ten-year-old standing watch while his mom goes diving to try to find something the rats haven't gotten, it does things to you.

That memory turned me back around.

"We're making soup."

"What?" Jorg moved at light speed when he had a knife in his hand, but he was not exactly quick on the uptake in conversation.

But I had already flipped over into executive chef mode and didn't bother to explain. "Suchai, call the food pantry and find out if they've got some vans, because bur we're going to have dinner for a couple hundred. Jorge, start getting the crates upstairs. Go through them and find out what's edible-I don't care whether it's pretty-and get it into the soup pot. Marie, sort out the breads. Stale we'll use in the soup, or as croutons. Mostly fresh, we can use for grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches. There's got to be something we can do with those prepped short ribs from Sat.u.r.day too."

"We can't use the dining room," Marie reminded me. That was still cop territory. O'Grady had been very clear on that.

"But we can use the kitchen and the back door. Grab a bin and let's go." I hefted a tub of not-so-new-anymore potatoes and started up the stairs.

"Yes, Chef," said Jorg.

"Yes, Chef!" said Marie.

"Yes, Chef!" said Suchai.

After that, it got kind of amazing. First it was just the four of us, sorting, chopping, getting the burners fired and filling that cold kitchen with the sounds and smells that meant life. Then Mohammed, another of our line cooks, came in, towing Marie's apprentice, Paolo, behind him. They said nothing, just washed up, found knives and started taking apart crates of tomatoes. Somebody had gotten busy on the phone, and I hadn't even seen who it was. By the time we got around to turning the toasted bread into crumbs and croutons for the pomodoro, the whole line-including all the baby Bobby Flays-was in. Half the front-of-the-house crew took up stations beside them to pack boxes with sandwiches and highly improvised bar cookies, courtesy of Marie and Paolo. The other half had appropriated folding tables from somewhere and set them up out back because the food pantry workers had wanted to know how soon they could start funneling people toward us, and now we had a line.

I did not cry. Seeing my people-who I was sure were getting ready to bail on me-working full tilt to feed their fellow New Yorkers could not possibly make me cry. That would be bad for my authority.

I was backing out the door carrying a stockpot full of pasta carbonara and blood sausage when a woman in a black pantsuit shouldered her way through the line of the homeless, the hungry and the idly curious.

"Oh my ghad! Omighad! It's perfect! Perfect! Charlotte, if I wasn't going to kill you, I'd kiss you."

Elaine West, Nightlife's PR agent, was professionally thin and tastefully blond. She carried a designer bag big enough to conceal a full-grown watermelon and when she didn't have her BlackBerry in her hands, her thumbs twitched.

"Why are you going to kill me?" I pa.s.sed the pasta off to Katy, who worked the dinner s.h.i.+ft the three days a week she wasn't at film school.

"Because you didn't tell me!" Elaine was already thumbing her phone. "Dave? Elaine West. We need a camera down at Nightlife. Now. I don't care where from, just get it here." She hung up.

"I wasn't doing this for the PR," I muttered.

"Well, you are now, sweetie." She linked her arm in mine and smiled. "So let's go over how this extremely generous impulse came to you, so you can get your life back and have a total smash of a reopening."

When she put it that way, I was not only more than ready to be coached, I was doing the face-palm. Why hadn't I thought of that? I guess that's why we were paying her the big bucks, or would be as soon as we had them.

By the time the first camera got there, I was in a fresh-pressed chef's coat explaining how important it was for the city's food professionals to give back to the community and praising my people, who were all donating their time. I meant it, of course, but according to Elaine it also made me look magnanimous and feminine. Well, there's a first time for everything.

We drew an audience as soon as the cameras started cl.u.s.tering around. Suchai put out one of the stockpots with a sign asking for donations to the food bank, and the dollars started fluttering down. More cameras converged and I had to go through my Elaine-prepped spiel four more times, but I did so with a song in my heart. Some days you know that, just this once, you did good.

Sundown found us all collapsed in the kitchen, drinking beers, scarfing down leftover pasta, sandwiches and cookies. We all had our smartphones, BlackBerries and PDAs out so we could take turns reading from the blogs and news Web sites. Every good mention earned a new round of high fives. It wasn't a 100 percent turnaround by any means, but the conversation about us had switched away from murder and vampires, and that felt like a victory.

Every time I glanced at the door to the dining room, though, I knew nothing had really changed. The limits of my ability to play make-believe had been reached. Until we knew for sure why Dylan Maddox had died, and more important, until Little Linus and the rest of New York's finest knew, everything could come cras.h.i.+ng down on us again.

So while the crew huddled together, texting their comments to the holdout blogs that still didn't think we were all that plus or minus a bag of chips, I took a fresh beer to Suchai where he was hunkered down on an overturned five-gallon bucket. We raised our bottles to each other.

"Thanks for being here, Suchai."

He shrugged and swigged. This was one of the few times I'd ever seen him in T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans instead of his immaculate white captain's coat. He looked relaxed and easy, except for the dark circles under his eyes that came with being a new parent. "My wife would kill me if I didn't. She thinks you are the next great chef in Manhattan."

"I always did like Surio." I grinned, and changed the subject as abruptly as any blog. "You remember that fang tease from Sat.u.r.day, the one who helped start this mess? What table was she at?"

"Two up front. She had the pumpkin soup." Suchai grimaced.

"That much I remember. Thanks." He wanted to ask me what was going on, but being Suchai, he just nodded and took another swallow of beer.

"Did you see them come in?"

Suchai shook his head slowly. "I was making sure everyone knew we had Anatole Sevarin in the house, and then I had to help Terry with the service on fifteen. You should ask Robert."

"It's on the list." I looked down the neck of my beer bottle.

Suchai nodded again. "Listen, Chef, I hate to have to ask this-"

"I know. I know." I waved his words away. "You need to know when we're reopening. I've got no answer. If you've gotten a job offer, I won't blame you for taking it."

He looked down the neck of his beer bottle too. I'm not sure what either one of us thought was in there. "We're all right for a while, but I've got the kids now . . . you know how it is."

"Believe me, Suchai, I'm trying to get answers as fast as I can."

"Sure. And if there's anything I can do, you let me know."

"I will." There was a pause I did not want to spend any longer than necessary in, so I reverted to giving orders. This was my kitchen, after all. "You take off, and say hi to Surio and the pups for me."

"You got it, Chef." Suchai got to his feet and joined the others heading for the lockers. I put my beer bottle on the counter and walked over to the desk in the corner that served as my office.

My computer is old, and cranky, but it is also has a (painfully slow) WiFi connection to the other computer out front, where Robert enters the reservations. I sat down and tapped at the keys, calling up the date, time and table. Of course, Detective O'Grady had already dug out this information, but he wasn't the one I wanted it for.

The problem was, the system showed no reservation for table two at eight p.m. on Sat.u.r.day. We enter the table number after the reservation is seated. It's a bookkeeping measure, and one way we track how busy we've been. Besides, you get the occasional customer who wants their "regular table," and it's good to have a record of what that table is. But table two at eight p.m. last Sat.u.r.day had no reservation, not for Pam Maddox or anybody else. I swore and scrolled down, then up again. Maybe Pam and her nebbish-date had just walked in off the street. But no, that couldn't be. We'd been booked solid on Sat.u.r.day. I remembered because it had been our first time as an absolutely full house, and we'd been elated, even before we knew about Anatole Sevarin.

All the other reservations were there-at least, it looked like they were-but as far as the reservations list was concerned, table two had been free.

My first thought was that someone on the Paranormal Squad had deleted the reservation. But that made no sense. They'd need it for evidence, wouldn't they? My next thought was that Chet had deleted it. I waited for guilt to show up, but it didn't. What came instead was a fifty-pound sack of further disappointment.

My crew were coming out of the changing area with their jackets on and waving at me as they filed toward the back door. I waved back and told myself there was more than just me and Chet to worry about. People counted on me. This had to go away. All of it. Whatever it was.

Suchai paused and looked back at me. "You coming, Chef?"

"You go on." I hit a couple keys and blanked the screen. "I can lock up."

"You sure?" Marie leaned out from behind him.

"I'm sure. I'll call tomorrow as soon as there's news."

We said our good-nights and I listened to their footsteps, and how the back door opened and closed again. But instead of silence, I heard another pair of hard-soled shoes crossing the tiles, and getting closer. I automatically sat up and shoved my hand into my pocket for my cell phone.

"Ah, Chef Caine. I'm glad I caught you."

Robert Kemp rounded the corner and I let out a long, slow sigh of relief.

Running a successful restaurant is all about the little things. Decor, table arrangement, and lighting all matter as much as the menu. Every detail affects the guests' response to the s.p.a.ce, starting with the person who greets them at the door. The matre d' is the famous first impion, and despite all his troubles, Robert Kemp was one of the best in the business.

Tall and trim and hawk-nosed, he had waving white hair swept back from a clear forehead. Robert dressed in suits made-to-order from Savile Row when he could afford them and the closest Hong Kong copies when he couldn't. His s.h.i.+rts were always crisp, and I'd never seen him without cuff links. Along with the cultivated accent, he had faultless manners, and by the time he handed guests off to their table captain, they felt as if he'd mistaken them for minor royalty.

"Thanks for coming in, Robert. Please." I pushed a chair toward him. He thanked me and sat. I happened to know Robert was closing in on seventy, but his back was still straight as a poker.

"I've been talking to some acquaintances about Mr. Shelby," he said.