Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (5 page)

“We will make every effort to conceal both your and our identities,” Gunther said.

“Thanks, man.” Lancelot nodded absently, his attention distracted by a pair of yuppies perusing his recycled knitwear with some interest. “Would you mind if I get back to my stall now?”

After they released Lancelot, Keith was ready to go, but Gunther insisted on seeing the rest of the market. He bought a dozen light bulbs from one table and three bottles of hot sauce from another. A few vendors gave them nervous smiles as they passed by but most stared stonily or looked away. Before leaving, Gunther stopped by and bought a Carnivore Circus CD from Lancelot, which seemed to smooth things over somewhat. Lancelot shortchanged Gunther three bucks. Keith wondered if that was malice, nervousness, or bad math. There was no real way to tell.

Their last pass was through a row of food vendors. Keith was hungry but at the same time deeply distrustful of food—any food—prepared by goblins. Fortunately, there was Spartacus and his cider. He bought one and found a place at one of the picnic tables.

“It seems like it’s getting to be lunchtime,” Gunther remarked.

“I’d have thought you already filled up on cherries.”

“Merely an appetizer,” Gunther said. “Can I buy you lunch?”

“Nothing here looks that great to me,” Keith said.

A smile twitched at the corner of Gunther’s lips. “Let me take you to lunch in my neighborhood.”

“You mean to San Francisco?”

“Home of some very famous vegetarian restaurants including one little five-star hole in the wall called Verdant. We could be there in half an hour.”

“It takes that long to get through the portal?”

“No, but traffic between Fisherman’s Wharf and Fort Mason isn’t that great at this time of year. What do you say?”

“Portaling to San Francisco for five-star lunch sounds less like a business arrangement and more like a date.”

“So what if it is?”

“Now who’s not keeping it professional?”

Gunther stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Neither of us seem to want to, so why should I adhere to some pretense?”

Keith shook his head. “We’ve already done this, Gunther. It didn’t work the first time and it won’t work now.”

“We never had a proper date before, just a series of booty calls,” Gunther said. “So let me make it up to you the old-fashioned way.”

Keith had to admit the temptation. And not just the temptation of going on a date with Gunther. Verdant was legendary. While he’d worked as a chef, he’d never given much credit to the vegetarians in his field, nor had he been any great star. The chef at Verdant was both. And he did want Gunther to make it up to him. Hell, he might even be able to figure out what Gunther found so inadequate about that series of disconnected sexual events that he’d wanted to call them off.

“Wouldn’t we need reservations?”

“The chef owes me.” Gunther leaned forward and whispered, “Pixie trouble. You know how capricious they can be. One little misunderstanding and they’re curdling your cream and luring you off Lands End in the dark. But it’s all sorted out now. So how about it? We can be down there, done, and back again before this place closes.”

Keith was about to refuse. Then the alcohol kicked in, relaxing him enough to say yes.

***

Verdant was located in an airy space alongside the marina in Fort Mason. From its wide windows, Keith could survey both the marina and the Golden Gate Bridge beyond.

The chef, a friendly faced brunette with close-cropped hair, greeted Gunther as a VIP and seated him immediately.

The menu was elegant, filled with heirloom vegetables, local wine, and cheese.

The price tag was breathtaking. Keith, in fact, had to take a deep breath as he automatically calculated price-point to food cost.

It actually wasn’t that bad, for the location and for what they were getting.

And besides, he wasn’t paying.

Like every fine dining establishment that Keith had ever been to, the tables were small and relatively close together. But no one was seated alongside them, so once the appetizer had been delivered, their conversation could continue unimpeded by the presence of civilians.

“So, who do you like for the murders?”

Gunther glanced up, a look of slight confusion on his face. He set his fork down and said, “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“My lunch. My companion.” He gave a warm smile, as though it was only right and natural that all knowledge of his current mission should be put on hold just because someone set a radicchio, apple, and pomegranate seed salad down in front of him. “I was wondering, was being an agent your first career choice?”

“No, not at all,” Keith said, laughing. “I was a chef with no aspirations at law enforcement and no knowledge of the other realms.”

“I wondered,” Gunther remarked.

“Why?”

“When we—” Gunther seemed to struggle a moment before finding the words he wanted. “When we were seeing each other before, you seemed to be uncomfortable with extra-human Americans.”

Keith shrugged. “I hadn’t been with NIAD that long. And the few experiences I’d had—especially with goblins—had been extremely negative and personally painful.”

“I imagine they were.” Gunther poked at his salad, seeming to consider and then discard some worrying thought before saying, “So when you cooked, did you work in other people’s restaurants or did you have your own?”

“Other people’s at first. I followed the tourists from place to place. Finally I managed to get the capital to open my own place—a former diner with twenty seats and the ugliest gray linoleum ever manufactured.”

“I sense this is when you had your first other-realm encounter,” Gunther said.

“It wasn’t for about a year. I busted my ass making that place. I was surprised that all my teeth didn’t fall out from grinding. I got this gray streak during the opening.” Keith touched his temple self-consciously. “I’m thinking of dyeing it. I’m only thirty-four.”

Gunther shrugged. “Premature gray is standard in our line of work, I think.”

Keith nodded. “Very true.”

“You were telling me about how you joined NIAD,” Gunther prompted.

“One day one of my customers came by with this special request. He had this family obligation. Some kind of religious feast he wanted me to cater. He’d provide the meat and all I had to do was cook it for this special summer banquet. I asked, ‘what’s the meat?’ He told me it was special pork from Sweden.”

Gunther nodded grimly. He took a forkful of salad.

“Right away I knew it wasn’t pork. The bones were all wrong, but I needed the money and I just didn’t think about it that hard.”

“What did you think it was?”

“I honestly didn’t know. Some endangered creature, I suppose. I figured if it was already dead it shouldn’t go to waste, right?” Keith shook his head. “I was an idiot.”

“You weren’t an idiot. You just didn’t know what you were dealing with.”

“Even without the extra-human angle I knew there was something sketchy about that meat and I went ahead and cooked it anyway. I used to try and figure out what it had been. I ran down all those endangered Chinese delicacies, trying to figure it out—looking at the bones of sun bears—seeing if they matched. And I knew for a goddamn fact it had to be illegal, but the money was too good to say no. I kept thinking, ‘At least I’m not dealing coke, right?’ It never occurred to me to look at the bones of one of the most widely dispersed animals on the planet.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“I got a piece of protein that had some skin attached and found a tattoo. No caribou, cow, or sun bear tattoos
Mom
on their arm.” Keith wiped his lips with his napkin.

“Had you eaten the flesh?”

“Of course I’d eaten it. How was I supposed to tell how it tasted without eating it? I’d eaten a lot of it.”

Gunther sat in silence. An unspoken question within him. Since Keith knew exactly what the question was, he said, “It’s okay. You can ask me. Everybody asks me.”

“How did it taste?”

“Really delicious.” Keith pushed his soup plate away. The spinach, chard, and escarole soup had gone down easier than he expected, considering the conversation. “The best meat I ever ate. The last meat I ever ate, as it turns out.”

Gunther, too, finished his first course and set his fork aside. “That doesn’t explain how you got involved with the Irregulars.”

“No.” Keith waited politely for the slim, pleasant-seeming waitress to take his plate before continuing. “I reported what I’d found to the police and a couple of agents contacted me. They wanted to set up a sting operation and I agreed. That’s how I found out that my customers were goblins.”

“That must have been a shock.”

“Finding out that everything I’d previously believed to be a myth was a pretty big shock, yeah. During that time, the agents assigned to the case communicated with me extensively. They and I both realized that there wasn’t anyone at NIAD who had specific knowledge of cooking or restaurants, while at the same time, there was still this problem with human-sourced protein. I suppose the agents who contacted me had planned to recruit me from the moment that they introduced themselves, but I’m not disappointed. I do good work. Important work.”

“Don’t you miss cooking?”

Keith found himself smiling. Melancholy drifted through him. “I do miss it. I miss the companionship of the kitchen, the creative aspect…I suppose what I miss most is the solvability of all problems.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, when you’re cooking during a dinner service, it’s a pass-fail situation. Either you get the food out right and on time or you don’t. Problems don’t linger. At the end of the night you’ve done all you could and tomorrow is another day where you get a fresh chance at success, no matter how big the fail might have been on the previous day.”

“I see,” Gunther said, nodding. “Our job is not like that at all.”

“No, it isn’t.” Keith folded his hands, observing the sunset across the bay. “It’s not so bad though. I’m the first and only specialist in the detection of contraband food items. I like the idea that I can make a difference.”

They spent the rest of the meal engaging in the sort of harmless chat that they’d never bothered to make before. He found out that Gunther’s high-school track specialty had been hurdles and that he had majored in sociology with a minor in anthropology before signing up with NIAD.

Finally, during coffee and dessert, Keith got the courage to ask the one question he wanted answered.

“So why exactly did you call off our previous arrangement?”

“You made a few offhanded comments about goblins that I didn’t care for,” Gunther said simply. “At the time, I was offended. I couldn’t say I was offended because I hadn’t told you about myself, so I just called it off.”

“Why invite me to lunch today then?”

“I guess I just remembered how sexy you are. And I felt like I’d been unfair.”

Keith drained the last of his coffee. He tried to remember what he might have said that could have been offensive. With no small degree of horror, he realized that he’d said plenty. Shame verging on mortification churned through his chest.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses for myself, but I wasn’t all that stable at the time. I was still in the humans versus monsters mindset.”

“Yes, I remember.” Gunther’s expression remained neutral, even somewhat blank.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry if what I said hurt you. I’m not all that smart and it takes me a while to adjust sometimes,” Keith said. “But I do know it’s not all cut and dried. I do now anyway.”

“That’s good to hear.” Gunther glanced at his phone. “We should probably be getting back to the market if we want to use the portal.”

***

Back in Portland, the market was just wrapping up. Their rental had a parking ticket tucked lovingly under the windshield wiper. Keith stuffed it into his pocket to commune with the other three already crammed in there.

“Anything else on the agenda for this evening?” Gunther asked.

“On demand and a shower for me. Unless you feel up to interrogating vampires after nightfall. In which case you’re free to take the rental.” Keith wiggled the key fob at Gunther.

“Actually, I was hoping to borrow the car to pick up a box of legendary Bauer & Bullock feijoa jam
alfajores
. Apparently, they’re the most addictive cookie ever made. I need to bring back a farewell gift for another agent.”

“Someone retiring?” Keith had often wondered where old agents went to retire once their crime-fighting days were over.

“No, just moving. Promoted to directing the Vancouver field office. You might remember him from last year’s Cookie Jamboree? His name was Rake? Great big fellow?”

Keith had a sharp recollection of an enormous hulk of a man hanging around near the cookie decorations eating sprinkles and silver dragees when he thought no one was looking.