Cooks Overboard (9 page)

About an hour later, Angie changed to a simple yellow cotton dress and walked into the galley. Mike Jones and his assistant, Andrew Brown, were in a corner talking, Brown perched on a counter and Jones sitting in a chair. They smiled in greeting when they saw her, Brown quickly hopping off the counter and retreating to the back of the kitchen with his habitual timidity.

“Please make yourself at home, Miss Amalfi,” Jones said, approaching her. “I leave it to you to look around and decide what you’d like to cook. We’ve got a pretty good selection of spices and foods to choose from.”

“I will, thanks,” Angie said.

“Can I take your things?” Jones asked as he led her to the food storage room.

All she had was her tote bag. “It’s no problem,” she said, putting it down just inside the
door. She immediately began checking canned goods on shelves, refrigerated items, and those in an enormous freezer compartment. After last night’s storm, she could understand why everything was so snugly packed and braced. If her kitchen at home had been thrown around the way this galley and storage area was, everything she owned would be in the middle of the floor in a thousand pieces.

She checked the meat and fish, telling herself it didn’t matter that Paavo hadn’t joined her out by the pool. It was clear he wasn’t at all interested in how she would be spending the rest of the afternoon.

Had he joined her now, the only thing he could have done was peel garlic, anyway. He was great at it once she’d showed him the trick of slightly mashing the clove with the handle of the chopping knife to help separate the skin from the meat. He stirred well, too. But he’d be checking his watch every few minutes and wondering when she’d be finished. Good cooking was not something to be accomplished with a stopwatch.

All in all, she decided, she’d be better off without him underfoot. Besides, she was still trying to stay angry at him. Her and Julio? Honestly!

“Did the storm last night bother either of you very much?” she asked Jones and Brown, who stood by, mutely watching her.

“It was all I could do not to fall out of bed,” Jones replied. “I was sick as a dog.”

“It scared me,” said the soft-spoken Brown, hovering behind her.

“How did you do?” Jones asked her.

Angie decided not to tell them about the wall bed incident. “It kept me awake,” was all she offered.

She found some fish fillets. “Oh, Mike, are these fillets Pacific petrale sole, by any chance? Or are they plain old flounder?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

What kind of cook didn’t know the type of fish in his own kitchen? These boys needed her help even more than she’d thought.

She went to the larder and began loading her arms with onion, garlic, and spices. “Let me help you with that,” Jones said, running to her assistance. Brown shyly hung back, doing only what Jones asked him to.

Together, making several trips, they carried the vegetables, vermicelli, vinegar, butter, and potatoes, as Angie directed, into the work area of the galley. She noticed Jones pick up her tote bag and begin to walk toward the door with it.

“Where are you going with that?” she asked.

He spun around. “1 was just going to…put it on the counter so that it doesn’t get stepped on.”

“You can leave it on the floor by the wall over there. It won’t get hurt. I need all the counter space possible.”

“Whatever you say.” He flashed her one of his deep-dimpled smiles.

Ignoring him for the moment. Angie planned
her meal. She’d start with
soupe au pistou
, a Provençal vegetable soup with carrots, leeks, green beans, zucchini, tomato, and vermicelli, flavored by the
pistou
, which was made by crushing basil and garlic with a mortar and pestle, then adding Parmesan cheese and olive oil. Next she’d serve a spinach salad with a vinaigrette dressing. The main course would be poached fish fillets in white wine with mushrooms, served with parsley potatoes. For dessert, she decided on a simple chocolate
pot de crême
. Due to the ship’s limited provisions, the ingredients of this meal wouldn’t be remarkable, but what she did with them would be.

They needed to prepare the soup first, then the
pot de crême
and the potatoes, and last of all, just before time to serve, she would poach the fish. All afternoon, with Jones’s assistance and Brown acting as silent backup in the pantry, chopping and dicing, she worked on the meal. Despite the time it took, she looked forward to seeing the expressions on the passengers’ faces when they discovered what it was like to have a meal by a real cook.

She suspected more than one of them thought she was just blowing smoke when she’d talked about being a restaurant reviewer and knowing a bit about gourmet cooking.

There were times when she loved showing off.

She was turning the flame under the potatoes to a low boil when she heard a thud and saw
Mike Jones stumble. “Oops, just kicked your tote,” he said. “We’ve really got to do something about it.” He picked it up and handed it to Brown, who’d just emerged from the pantry. “I don’t want anything to get crushed. You have sunglasses in it, don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

Just then Paavo entered the room.

“Here to help, are you?” she asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“I’d like to talk to you before dinner, if you’ve got a minute,” Paavo said.

“Excuse me.” Brown started to move toward the door.

“Wait.” Angie walked over to him and took her tote bag. “Everything’s under control here,” she said to the two men. “We can all take a ten-minute break. When we get back, though, we’ll be very busy. It’ll be time to serve the soup, the salad, put the fish on to poach, and season the potatoes. Got it?” Jones nodded. “See you in ten.”

With that, she put down the knife and untied her apron.

“You can leave your bag,” Jones said. “I’ll put it in a corner out of the way. It’ll be safe.”

“That’s okay,” Angie said, slinging the bag’s long strap over her shoulder. “I want my sunglasses and sunscreen with me. My nose is starting to burn.” With that, she followed Paavo out the door.

They walked out onto the deck. It was very
quiet, and they were alone. That was another nice aspect to freighter travel, Angie thought. There were lots of places to go where no one disturbed you.

Paavo placed his hands on her shoulders and gazed steadily into her eyes. “I want to apologize.”

A part of her wanted to at least pretend to still be angry with him, just to make him squirm a bit. But one look at his big baby blues and, as usual, she was a goner. Instead of saying anything, she just nodded.

“I’ve been acting like a son of a bitch ever since this cruise began,” he said. “It had to do with my last case. Not you, but I took it out on you.”

“I see,” she said, still waiting. That wasn’t much of an explanation.

“A cop was killed,” he said quietly. “It was my fault.”

His fault?
The raw pain of his words made her stomach knot.

“We were going after a drug lord.” He dropped his hands and slid them into his pockets. “Yosh and I connected him to a homicide we were investigating. I had a snitch…a guy who was supposed to tell me what was going on. I trusted him….”

Paavo stood behind the police barricade along with his partner, Homicide Inspector Toshiro Yoshiwara, and watched the SWAT team close in
on the drug lord’s soldiers. The neighborhood appeared deserted; residents here had long ago learned to remain unseen behind barred windows and warped wooden doors that, despite their columns of locks, could be sprung with one sharp kick.

Paavo and Yosh had tracked the gang to the dingy, once-white wooden home in the city’s Bayview district. Red and green cement patches lined the fronts of houses instead of lawns. Cracked and chipped cement stairs led to front porches buckling with dry rot.

Their homicide investigation had begun innocuously enough, giving no hint that it would lead to this place. A successful, politically connected lawyer had been killed in what appeared to be a drive-by shooting. Soon, though, the lawyer’s use of cocaine had become a prominent factor in the investigation and had led Paavo and Yosh to Jim Nhu, one of the most powerful drug lords in California.

A nervous snitch spilled the location of a drug and money exchange Nhu had planned. The cops and DEA were waiting, ready to move in.

But someone at the drop site, that run-down Bayview house, must have spotted something amiss in the unnaturally quiet neighborhood. A blast of gunfire turned the drug bust deadly. A ten-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, Sergeant Ed Gillespie, was hit by the first eruption of bullets. He had stood between Paavo and the drop site. Paavo watched
pain and surprise distort the man’s beefy features as he fell.

At that moment, more than anything, Paavo wanted Jim Nhu dead. He vowed that Ed Gillespie, a brave man with a wife and family, hadn’t died in vain.

An arsenal of M-16’s and other automatic weapons held the police at bay for fourteen more hours, until, finally, the gang’s firepower diminished and the police pincer formation closed in on the drug dealers.

But something inside Paavo had died along with the police officer. His work had brought the SWAT team to the Bayview house; his work had led to Gillespie’s death. Had he overlooked something? Trusted someone he shouldn’t have? Been too quick to act and not exercised sufficient caution? He’d carry those questions to his grave.

Suddenly, he knew he was tired of it. Tired of the constant burden of the job, tired of a responsibility too great to handle. Tired of the nightmares after good men die.

He decided to wrap up the case, do all the necessary paperwork, then quit the force.

But the head of the homicide bureau, Lieutenant Hollins, apparently knew him better than he thought. Hollins called him into his office the night the shoot-out ended, the night before he was supposed to go on a vacation he’d forgotten completely about and couldn’t bear
the thought of. Hollins ordered him to take the vacation.

He had refused, saying he was staying for the funeral and, after finishing up some loose ends, was resigning from the force.

“All the more reason to leave town,” Hollins had stated. “You aren’t welcome at the funeral.”

Paavo could only stare at him, stunned.

Hollins squared his shoulders, his voice, his whole demeanor firm and cold. “Only men who believe in police work—the work Ed Gillespie died doing—are welcome. Not quitters. Take the leave you have scheduled, and when you come back, I’ll look at your resignation request.”

Yosh had stayed up with Paavo throughout the night talking. The two of them, despite the months they’d worked together, had never talked from the heart the way they did that night.

When morning came, somehow Paavo’s bags had been packed, and Yosh had convinced him to go on the cruise with Angie, that there was nothing more he could do in San Francisco. Above all, he needed to get away and think things over.

Paavo drew a deep breath, and as he did, he noticed that Angie’s hand held his now, that she had stepped closer to him, and her face had grown pale as he had given her the barest outline of all that took place that day. “It was my
collar. It should have been an easy bust,” he said. “But they fired on our guys. I keep wondering what sign I overlooked, what I missed.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Ed Gillespie was right in front of me.”

Angie looked away as his words cut through her. Tears filled her eyes at the death of another man, and at Paavo’s pain. Her body quaked at the grim reality of his words, but also at the thought that if Gillespie hadn’t been there…if another man hadn’t died…

She knew she couldn’t say that to Paavo. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her arms around him. “I’m so sorry.” There were no platitudes she could give him that would help. Right now, though, what he needed was to feel her hold him. That comfort she
could
give.

“That’s why I’ve got to quit,” he said as he stepped back and gazed into her eyes. “When you make a mistake, and another man is killed…it simply gets to be too much.”

He walked over to the railing and stared out at the sea. “I’m sorry, Angie.”

For a while, when they had first come on board and he told her he was leaving the force, she had felt elated. But no longer. Not this way.

If he wanted to leave because he was tired of the danger and the irregular hours, she’d be overjoyed. But he couldn’t leave feeling like a failure, feeling that his mistake had caused the death of another.

She walked up behind him and put her arms around his waist, her head against his back. One and a half weeks remained before he would return to work and officially resign. One and a half weeks for her to help him realize that whatever had happened, he’d done what he thought was right. That he was a careful man, meticulous in his police work, who’d never risk anyone’s life thoughtlessly. That whatever had made the arrest go all wrong was horrible, but not his fault. Somehow, she’d help him see that.

Yet helping him see that also meant he could change his mind about resigning. He might decide to stay with the police force. And next time, another man might not be there to stop a bullet meant for him.

Could she do that? How could she do otherwise? For all his smiles, he was more unhappy than she’d ever seen him, because this time he doubted himself. The man she’d been vacationing with these past few days wasn’t Paavo; he was a shell of the man she loved. She wanted her man back.

He turned to her and brushed her hair back off her face as he looked down at her, then gently kissed her forehead. “Forgive me?” he asked.

“There’s nothing to forgive you for,” she said, her arms tightening. “I’m glad you told me the whole story. And glad Hollins told you to think about your resignation.”

He seemed surprised at her reaction, then he nodded. “I guess your ten minutes are up.”

She let go of him. “You’re right. I’d better go help the boys with dinner. I’ll meet you in the dining room.”

“Okay.”

She started to turn. “Oh, one last thing. The black-and-blue marks on my arms were caused when someone pulled me into the galley last night, then pushed me into a rack of pots and pans. Be careful.”