Delicious (33 page)

It was from Hawaii. She was hoping Stanley had sent her some fresh pineapples. That's all he could talk about in their phone calls, how good the fruit was.

She sliced through the tape down the middle of the box and then had to cut the tape at both ends before she was able to pop it open.

Mary Sue Meaker opened the box, looked inside, and started screaming.

...

When Jack pulled his specially built van up to his office, in an industrial park just outside of the city, he saw Mary Sue sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. He knew her well enough to know that something was wrong.

“What's goin' on?”

“I'm not goin' back in there.”

“Why not?”

She gave him a strange look and shuddered. “I thought it was pineapples.”

Jack patted her shoulder. “Sit tight.”

He clomped his walker up the specially designed handicap ramp that led into the building. Mary Sue called after him.

“You want me to call the police?”

He turned toward her. “I'll handle it.”

Jack found the box sitting open on Mary Sue's desk. He looked inside. For a fraction of a second he thought he'd vomit, either that or just start screaming like a freaked-out toddler in a haunted house. But he shakily held his shit together long enough to collapse into a chair and take a few deep breaths.

Oddly enough, he wasn't surprised. When he'd seen Sid still alive at the Teamsters office, he'd thought something might've gone wrong. Jack looked at the skulls, the bones; there were two sets of everything. Baxter and the weird hitman with the sweater. The Sumo and his pals got them both. They knew he'd hired them and they'd gotten them. Apparently they'd eaten them. Jack saw a note stuck to a femur. It said:
Delicious. Send more.

The trucks, neat and shiny and hardly used, stood in a row at the back of an abandoned warehouse, the Lucey company logo still painted on the cab doors. Wilson and Sid stood there, admiring them.

“He not so bad.”

Wilson turned to his father. “Who?”

“Jack Lucey.”

Wilson couldn't hide his surprise. “He tried to kill you.”

Sid shrugged. “But he kep' his word, fo' sure. He give up da trucks.”

“What're we gonna do with 'em?”

“Giovanni up da North Shore can turn one into a shrimp truck. An' I was thinkin' we move a couple over to the Big Island; dey's sometime work in Hilo.”

“Let's send one fo' Joseph in New York.”

Sid looked at his son and laughed. “Dat's a good one.”

...

The kitchen was crazed. It was Saturday night, nine o'clock, crunch time. Joseph stood at his station, grilling fish, as the
sous-chef called out the orders. The kitchen was filled with cooks, men and women from all over the world. Half of them spoke Italian, the other half spoke French. For some reason they all spoke Spanish. Every now and then Joseph would speak Hawaiian as a joke. But at crunch time, there was no time for jokes. It was all about pure concentrated lucid movement.

Joseph loved it. The chef was an exuberant, demonstrative fellow with a real affection for his crew. Like all great artists he could sometimes be arrogant and demanding, but he returned the loyalty of his cooks by teaching them unique techniques and innovative combinations. He encouraged boldness and experimentation. He taught them how to smell, how to taste, how to pay attention to the nuances and connections that food and flavors brought into the consciousness.

Flavor is memory. Food works with your mind to transport you to places you've been, places you want to go, and places in your imagination. Taste is emotion. You might hate one kind of food, love another. A certain taste or smell might remind you of a lover and all the emotion—good and bad—the memories bring with it.

Eating is a sensual experience. If a flavor excites the senses, caroms through your consciousness until it collides with memory and ignites the imagination, it is delicious. If it's delicious enough, you can fall in love.

When Joseph wasn't cooking, he was eating at other restaurants or drinking late into the night with his fellow cooks. There was a whole universe of them. They had a unique camaraderie, like police officers or emergency-room workers, individuals who understand the collective stress.

He'd found a small apartment in Long Island City, one stop on the number seven train from Grand Central, that was
classic New York. He wondered what Hannah would think of the claw-foot bathtub sitting in the middle of the kitchen. He'd thought of her when he signed the lease. Even though she was only coming out for the summer, he knew she'd like it. She'd be impressed that he'd started a new life in the big city. She might even want to stay. He didn't know. He hoped she would. He thought about the islands a lot, but the only time he got homesick was when he saw the sorry shape the pineapples and papayas were in when they got to New York. They were nothing like the ones he'd picked off the tree in his uncle's backyard.

In the height of the crush, when Joseph had four sea bass, twelve salmon, and three orders of scallops all sizzling on the grill, the chef came rushing up to him.

“I just got a call from the cultural attaché at the UN. The president of some country is coming for a dedication, and they want me to cook a goat.”

He looked at Joseph.

“Can you cook a whole goat?”

Joseph smiled.

“I can cook anything.”

This book would not be possible without the intelligence, energy, and enthusiasm of Mary Evans, Morgan Entrekin, Kevin Jones, and Daniel Maurer.

A big mahalo to my Honolulu crew: Detective Mike Cho of the Honolulu Police Department Narcotics/Vice Division; Walea Constantinau of the Honolulu Film Office; the Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel; Det. Mike Church and Det. David Brown of the Honolulu Police Department Criminal Intelligence Division; and a shout out to Lee A. Tonouchi, “Da Pidgin Guerrilla” whose books were invaluable research.

I'd like to thank Olivia and Jules Smith, Tom Boyle, Paula Shuster, Gerald B. Rosenstein, Sheldon MacArthur, Janet Baker, Kristine Larsen, Adam Schroeder, Elizabeth Beier, and Barry Sonnenfeld for their kind words and support.

And thanks to my team at Endeavor: Tom Strickler, Christopher Donnelly, Bill Weinstein, and Brian Lipson.