Taco Noir (11 page)

            I rang Maurice’s bell, using the time it took the portly man to waddle from his kitchen to the front door to straighten my tie and smooth my hair. I had dusted the dirt I collected from Maurice’s shrubbery off my suit and managed to look presentable, but I knew that if you held my suit up next to Maurice’s, mine was destined for the rubbish bin.

            Maurice threw open the door and sized me up immediately. Since I obviously held little wealth, influence, or power, he kept his reserve of pleasantness closed, lest he run low on it at some critical moment.

            “Waddaya want?” he said, small pieces of chicken raining down from his mouth onto my suit. Maurice clearly wasn’t a man who enjoyed being disturbed in mid-feedbag.

            “Mr. De Leon, I represent the owner of a small liquidation company, and I was referred to you by a fellow representative of the Collins-Walker Listening Library.” I had looked in the phonebook, and this was the most upscale library listed. “I have in my possession a small but very discerning listing of recordings from the continent, and it has been mentioned that someone of your refined tastes might appreciate such an offering.”

            “Recordings?” Maurice asked, finishing his mouthful and spotting the possibility of personal benefit. He cracked open the charm reserve and I was treated to a smile and a welcome.

            “Where are my manners?” asked Maurice, stepping backwards and showing me inside. “I was just at dinner, but please, do come in.”    

            Maurice led me to the kitchen where he pulled a chair out, poured a small glass of Burgundy, and asked if I would care to join him for a bowl of Coq au Vin. The smell in the small kitchen was heaven, and clearly Maurice knew his stuff. The man may very well have been a creep, a blackmailer, and a gold-digger, but he knew his way around a stove.

            “Now please, tell me more about this collection of yours.”

            I gave him a fake name, using a couple of the names of streets I grew up on. I told him that my firm had acquired a number of rare pieces, including lost recordings of Luigi Mancinelli, Ezio Pinza, and Enrico Caruso. It was a lavish, lush, inviting picture I painted as I feasted on a Coq au Vin that was equally tasty. But there was one distinct difference between the collection I described and the tasty stew.

            The collection didn’t exist.

            As I went on about the fabricated collection, Maurice’s eyes seemed to narrow and his head nodded slightly, as if he were a snake about to strike. He refilled my wine glass as I greedily finished off my stew.

            “This collection sounds remarkable,” Maurice said, not wanting to show too many cards. I would have told him that it sounded too good to be true, but my mouth was full. “And the firm you represent is willing to part with this collection for …?”

            He wanted me to give a number so that he could counter it with half, or less. I wanted to give him a high number, so that he would feel that my collection actually existed. Before I had a chance to say anything, we were interrupted.

            There was a knock on Maurice’s door. To be more precise, there was a torrential rain of bangs and blows to the front door, mixed in with kicks and doorbell rings thrown in for good measure. Even if I had answered Maurice’s question, my response would have been lost in the racket that came from his landing.

            “What the blazes!” Maurice said as he sprang from his chair faster than I would have thought possible for a man of his bulk. He raced from his kitchen through the hallway and parlor, and around the corner to the front door. He threw the door open, preparing to rebuke the intruder for the loud and unwelcomed interruption, and found that the source of the racket was about three feet lower than he expected.

            “Hey Mister!” yelled a young, freckle-faced Franklin Meyers, the newspaper boy from the end of the block. “Billy was supposed to pick up his load of papers from the docks and get them to me an hour ago! You gotta get him out here and put his butt in gear!”

            Maurice stood transfixed, trying to decipher Franklin’s words as if they were in a foreign tongue. Slowly his senses returned and he addressed the loud little newsy.

            “Young man, there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding. I have no idea who or what you are looking for, but I assure you that you have the wrong house.”

            “Oh no you don’t mister!” yelled Franklin as he jammed his foot into the door. “I’ve been down the block all morning pulling my own shift, and I ain’t gonna pull another because Billy’s too lazy to do his job. You tell him to get his sorry behind out here!”

            Maurice attempted to reason with Franklin, and then tried to forcibly remove him. All the while the kid was screaming bloody murder. I had to hand it to the kid, he was earning the five-spot I gave him before I entered Maurice’s home. So far, he had got Maurice out of the kitchen and arranged for me to spend some quality time with the wall safe. The rest was up to me.

            The safe was a bare-bones type, with a large, numerical dial on the front, but it was enough to do the job. While I’m no expert, I’ve been able to crack the odd safe in favorable circumstances. The problem was, with Franklin yelling his lungs out at the front door, circumstances were less than favorable.

                          I gave the dial a few test spins, just enough to shake up the tumblers, and determined that it was a three-number combination. Quickly, I thought what numbers a music-nut like Maurice would use. Measures, octaves, and scales all floated through my head as I tried to latch onto something, but I was nowhere. I cursed myself. A golden opportunity was slipping through my fingers.

Then it hit me!

It wasn’t a musical clue I was looking for at all. The combination came from Maurice’s day job.

38-24-38.

       I spun the dial and the safe opened like the Gates of Heaven for a just man. I quickly found the letters and was set to go when my eye caught sight of another prize. I pocketed the note that caught my eye, showed myself out through the parlor window, and was down the street fast enough to see Franklin blowing raspberries at Maurice as the fat man finally managed to dislodge the paperboy from his doorstep.

I met up with Franklin at his corner and gave him the second five-spot, as per our agreement. I also tossed him a fifty-cent piece as a bonus. As I made my way back to my own humble abode on the other side of the tracks, I imagined that I would sell Mrs. B some soft-soap about Maurice being lost at sea, or captured by cannibals, or some other tripe. The man was as easy to find as bad news, but she chose not to. She wanted more than just her reputation. She wanted to hold onto the memories.

I would meet her tomorrow at the Met after I tossed Andrew a banana or two. I would give her the letters and I would make a nice little profit on a less-than-honest day’s work. But in the meantime, I had some chicken stew to whip up.

MAURICE’S COQ AU VIN

1/2 lb. bacon slices, cut into ½” pieces

1 large yellow onion, sliced

3 lbs. chicken thighs and legs, excess fat trimmed, skin ON

6 garlic cloves, peeled

Salt and pepper to taste

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups Burgundy Red wine

2 bay leaves

Several fresh thyme sprigs

Several fresh parsley sprigs

2 cups button mushrooms, trimmed and roughly chopped

2 Tbsp. butter

Chopped Fresh parsley for garnish

• In a large Dutch oven, brown the bacon on medium heat, just long enough to fill the kitchen with the smell of heaven, or about ten minutes. Remove the cooked bacon but keep it handy.
  

• In the pot, working in small batches, add the chicken and onions, skin side down. Brown the bird well on all sides, adding salt and pepper as you go.
  

• Spoon off the excess fat and add the chicken stock, wine and herbs. Toss the bacon back in and bring the whole mess to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Cover the Dutch oven and cook until the bird is tender and cooked through. Remove the chicken and onions to a separate platter. Take out the bay leaves, thyme, and parsley and toss ‘em.
  

• Add the mushrooms to the broth and heat on high. Keep up the heat until it reduces by about three-fourths and it becomes thick and saucy. Lower the heat, stir in the butter, and return the chicken and the onions to the Dutch oven. Coat the chicken and onions, and add more seasoning if necessary.
  

• Garnish with the parsley and serve with Don Giovanni.
  

THE CASE OF THE FOWL PREDICTION

Where we learn the difference between chickens and pigeons

I checked in with my message service this morning because, deep down, despite what people might say, I’m an optimist at heart. In fact, I consider it an act of optimism just to have a message service. The young gum-chewer who manned my line, as well as the hundreds of other optimists they charged by the month, surprised me with a message that wasn’t an invitation to purchase encyclopedias or an inquiry as to whether or not my icebox was running.

              “You’ve got a message from someone calling themselves ‘Calabash’ or something like that,” she said, paying more attention to her nails than to me.

              “I don’t suppose that you managed to pry a return phone number out of the stiff?” I asked, my optimism in full recession.

              “No, smart guy,” answered the charm school candidate, filing what must have been the remnants of her last customer away from her fingernails. “He didn’t leave no phone number. He left an address though, and said that you should hot foot it over there as soon as you could.”

              The card she handed me had the words “Mr. Cala-something” scribbled at the top, and an address on Adams Street that I could make out if I squinted hard. I thanked her and tossed her a two-bit tip. For a minute, I thought that she might toss it back.

              “Thanks a lot, big spender,” she grumbled, dropping the quarter onto the desk and returning to her manicure. I threw a nod back at her and went on my way, feeling a little less optimistic than when I came in.

              265 Adams Street was an unfamiliar neighborhood to me, and after spending two seconds there, I could tell why.  The homes of Adams Street were ivy-covered, picket fence affairs that my Aunt Petunia would have described as ‘quaint.’ Each little plot of heaven had a postage-stamp sized lawn in front and window boxes that overflowed with begonias or gardenias, or whatever it was that grew in the suburbs. It was a colony of trimmed hedges and clean streets that rubbed shoulders against the sleeping giant of the city. Looking at the front yard, I was surprised that the colonists hadn’t lynched whoever lived here.

              I opened the gate to the Adams Street house, and was immediately mobbed by an aggressive bunch of chickens intent on drawing blood. My shins and toes were assaulted by the pecking and scratching of this malevolent brood, but I managed to keep a bit of my dignity and shooed some of the foul creatures away. All but one.

The lead chicken was a large, plump, bully of an old hen with a plume of dark feathers around her neck and malice in her heart. She picked up where the others left off, charged at me with a fire in her eyes that I hadn’t seen equaled in even the cruelest mob bosses. She was relentless, and I considered punting the hen over the picket fence as if she were pigskin. Before I could take a decent backswing, however, the front door opened, and a familiar voice rang out.

              “Lulu, behave yourself!” Since no one had referred to me as “Lulu” since the third grade, I assumed that the voice was calling out to the chicken. I followed the voice, and was surprised to find a familiar face attached.

              “Miguel Ramirez?” I asked. I could not have been more surprised if the chicken had called out. Miguel Ramirez was a small time operator from my old neighborhood and the two of us used to run numbers for his uncle at the corner bar. A war broke out during our last year at reform school, we were just young and idealistic enough to join up the day we graduated. Or in Miguel’s case, should have graduated. I went off to war and was shipped overseas. Miguel stayed home and learned the fine art of flimflam.

The man who stood in front of me still had the face of the kid I knew from the neighborhood, but had grown at least a foot since then, and weighed even less than when I last saw him. He was a tall, dark figure, with jet black hair pulled into a long pony tail. Evidently he hadn’t seen a barber since we had parted. He sauntered up to me as if the world had laid out a red carpet just for him.