A Dinner to Die For

by Susan Dunlap

  I had the urge to kick him—and the feeling that I’d break my foot. Few things were more frustrating than interrogating the strong, silent type. I had chosen the wrong tack with him. Straight-on confrontation was what he must be used to. He’d know how to deal with it—strongly and silently. I let a minute pass, then leaned forward, adopting a more relaxed tone: “Look, I was just asking you what time you got to work.”

  I could see the slight drop in his shoulders. “Four-thirty,” he said with not a hint of the hiss.

  “Why so early?”

  “Pots, pans, mixer bowls, stirring spoons, knives. Cooks can’t run out of them. And tonight I was doing prep.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “Normal?” His pale eyebrows shot up into that desert of forehead. “There is no normal in a kitchen. Look, the guy who did prep quit last week. Tonight the sous-chef didn’t show. Called at four and said his tires had been slashed. Adrienne’s slamming pans around, screaming that nothing’s ready for her. Mitch is in the dining room screaming because he can’t get anyone to cook on five minutes’ notice. If Ashoka hadn’t shown up, we’d have been up shit creek.” The hiss was back.

  “Ashoka Prem?”

  “Right.”

  “Mitch’s friend from college.”

  “Yeah.”

  I made a note of that, then asked, “Couldn’t Mitch have cooked tonight?”

  “Not in the same kitchen with Adrienne.”

  “How come?”

  “Too many prima donnas.”Again the hiss.

  “But this was an emergency, wasn’t it, with two people out?”

  “Those two couldn’t work together even if a representative of the Michelin Guide were coming.”

  “What about the waiters and the busboy?”

  “They don’t cross the Maginot Line either.” I had the impression he almost smiled.

  “Maginot Line? What do you mean?”

  “Adrienne hasn’t let anyone but cooks past the warm table in three months. If they need something farther inside, they ask the prep cook.”

  “What about Mitch Biekma? He was in the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, but not until after midnight. If he’d come any earlier, while she was still cooking, he’d have heard it.”

  “It’s his restaurant.”

  Yankowski laughed, a rough, craggy sound that was painful to hear. “Lady, you don’t know the pecking order in the kitchen. It may be Biekma’s dining room, but it’s Adrienne’s kitchen. There everyone follows her rules, him included.”

  “And he didn’t object?”

  “Yeah, he objected, but it didn’t change anything. It just annoyed Adrienne and made her dig her heels in more.” The hiss was louder.

  How could he stand that hissing? But then what choice did he have? “How did Laura Biekma deal with this animosity between Mitch and Adrienne?”

  “Laura? She never boils over. Maybe that comes from all the years she’s listened to customers complain at the gas company. I told Adrienne she should take a lesson from Laura. Laura never wastes time creating a scene. She just realizes what needs to be done and gets started. Adrienne could save herself, and the rest of us, a lot of grief if she’d be more like Laura.” The hiss was longer. It wasn’t there every time he spoke. I started to listen for it.

  In the back of the room, Grayson cleared his throat. I glanced warily at him, ready to motion him away. I didn’t want any show of authority to inhibit what rapport I’d been able to develop with Yankowski. But Grayson wasn’t looking at us.

  I said to Yankowski, “Tell me what happened when Mitch got the soup?”

  Awkwardly, he lifted a foot and placed it on the opposite knee. His legs were thick and muscular, the type that don’t bend easily. “Mitch scooped some soup into a bowl and left. He always helps himself to a bowl of soup and sips it while he goes over the night’s receipts. Like it was a mint julep.”

  “Who was in the kitchen then?”

  “Adrienne, Ashoka, Laura, and me.”

  “But the last salad must have been made hours ago. Why was Laura still there?”

  “Cleaning up, deciding what can be saved, what can’t, labeling what can, noting how much of it there is and how soon it has to be used. The prima donnas will tell you being a chef requires brilliance, but running a restaurant takes organization. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you end up throwing out half your food every night you’ll never make a profit.”

  I nodded. I wondered how long Yankowski had been a dishwasher. He seemed distinctly overqualified.

  Standing, I motioned Yankowski toward the kitchen. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “My fingerprints are all over anyway.”

  “We don’t want you covering up someone else’s prints. It’s for your own protection.”

  He looked at me as if to say, In a pig’s eye.

  Careful not to react to that, I moved next to the warm table, by the dining room door. Down from it was one stove, across from it the other. Yankowski’s pale bulky form looked as out of place here as I had imagined. “Earth Man usually came here at eleven o’clock, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Tonight he says there was a note on the door telling him to come back later. Did you see the note?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone tack it up?”

  “Nope.” He started to lean back, then caught himself. His thin lips flickered in a half smile.

  I smiled in response, anxious to establish the kind of bond that could be more valuable than any verbal assurances. “An hour later the note was gone. Did you see anyone taking a note down?”

  “No. Look, at the end of a shift everyone’s rushing around. No one’s looking at anyone else, we’re all just trying to finish up our own work. We’ve been at it seven or eight hours by then. Earth Man could have wallpapered the door and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t surprised at his response. He could easily have missed the note. He could have posted the note himself, in which case he might have good reason not to admit it. Or there could have been no note; I had only Earth Man’s word it existed at all. “So what happened when Earth Man knocked on the door?”

  “Mitch came flying out of the pantry, screaming about deadbeats.”

  “Why was he so angry?”

  “Moody. He had a cold. He was worried about it. It put him in a shitty mood.”

  “How bad a cold?”

  “Almost gone. Anyone else would have forgotten it, particularly on a busy night like that. But with him you’d think it was pneumonia. He was still using the horseradish. I’m surprised we had any customers left, the way he’d been sneezing and blowing out there all week.”

  I stared, amazed. Paradise was a small place. Even a delicate, shielded sneeze would resound through the dining room, disrupting the aura of understated elegance that Biekma had been so proud of. A barrage of snorts and blows would have been devastating.

  “Why did he work the desk if he was that sick?”

  Suddenly his face seemed to close. “Don’t know.”

  I didn’t believe that. “What would be your best guess?”

  His shoulders tensed and stayed tense. Even though he wasn’t speaking, the hiss permeated his breathing. His pale eyebrows were scrunched together, creating a hummock of flesh at the top of his nose. “Okay. Look, Biekma was an asshole. He shouldn’t have been in here at all, sneezing and snorting all over the food. He could have infected half of Berkeley with his colds. He got them often enough. Why didn’t he take a decongestant like a normal person? But no, he had to doctor himself with his horseradish. And he didn’t touch that till he had his soup, after all the customers had left. Fat lot of good it did anyone at that hour. But tell him that. What did he care who he annoyed, who he infected, who he stepped on when he raced over the finish line first? Ashoka offered to host, but Biekma wouldn’t have it. Not The Witty Voice of the Gourmet Scene, Mr. Almost Guest Host. No way would he share the limelight.” />
  Yankowski’s face was red; his breath screeched; the strong, silent facade was gone. Had Yankowski himself been one of the people Biekma had stepped on? Before he could regain control, I said, “You could have made more money waiting tables or busing dishes. Did Biekma keep you—”

  “Nah. I don’t want that,” he said, breathing through his mouth.

  “Why not?”

  “Can’t be bothered.”

  “Can’t be bothered with what?”

  “People. They’re a pain in the ass. With dishwashing, I do my thing and I leave.”

  “Not in this kitchen, not according to you. You can’t avoid people here. You can’t even avoid Mitch Biekma. And for all that hassle you make, what, five bucks an hour?”

  He tried to answer but his breath caught. He gasped. “Don’t need much.”

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  His faced purpled.

  “What?”

  Taking short, labored breaths, he peered nervously through the doorway into the dining room.

  “Yankowski, withholding information in a murder investigation is a crime. I don’t have to remind you about jail, do I?”

  He clenched his hands over his elbows. Even with his mouth open, his breath was shrill. He looked like he’d take a bulldozer to move. I didn’t want to have to call Grayson to help get him to a car.

  “Yankowski, this is your last chance. Give me an honest answer or you can be silent at the station.”

  His hands clenched tighter. He hissed louder.

  “We’ll keep asking you; we’ll run you through files, we’ll talk to your neighbors and friends, and enemies. We’ll send your fingerprints to the computer in Washington. We’ll find what it is you’re covering up. It’ll just take time, ours and yours.”

  He didn’t move. His breath was pitched so high it sounded ready to explode. Then it stopped. He grabbed me by the shoulders, lifted me up, and flung me back against the sink. I landed hard on my ribs. My feet flew out and I hit the floor.

  The back door banged. Yankowski was gone.

  CHAPTER 11

  “YANKOWSKI’S GONE!” I YELLED to Grayson as I ran out the door, my back throbbing with each step. On Grove Path, I paused. Yankowski was nowhere in sight.

  “Smith?” I spun around. The rookie guarding the yard was pushing himself up. Where’d he go?”

  Grayson banged out the door.

  “Christ, the guy ran right over me,” the rookie said. “I never saw him coming. He pushed me over with one hand!”

  “Where’d he go?” I demanded.

  “Toward Josephine.”

  “All the way through to the street?” Grayson asked. Lopez and Raksen rushed out the door.

  The rookie thought a moment. “Footsteps sounded like it.”

  I ran for the street, as Grayson spewed orders—he had access to the walkie-talkie and the car radios; he would coordinate the search till the sector sergeant arrived. I had only a beeper, useless in a chase. Grayson yelled for the rookie to check Rue Driscoll’s and the yard opposite, Lopez to guard the restaurant, and Raksen to get back to work. A light went on upstairs in Rue Driscoll’s bedroom.

  At Josephine I stopped, gritting my teeth against the pain in my back, and waited for Grayson. The house on the right was dark. Cars lined the curb. Yankowski could be crouched behind any of them. There was no sign of life across the street, no porch lights, no lights in bedroom windows. The people who slept there were too far away to hear Grayson on the radio telling the dispatcher to pull down the units from the north hills.

  Through the thin fog I peered to the left. Branches swayed stiffly in the night wind, leaves crackled, and in the distance wind chime pipes smacked against each other atonally. Grayson shouted into the mike for Murakawa to circle south from Paradise. Two houses down, a cat skittered across the lawn. But there was nothing the size of Yankowski. To the right, trees in front yards shaded the streetlights. “How could he disappear so fast?” I demanded. “The guy’s the size of a house trailer.”

  “Got a good jump on you. Should have had someone on the back door,” Grayson muttered before pushing in the button on the mike to answer a call from officer 836.

  “Mmm!” This wasn’t the time to ponder “should haves.” There would be ample time later. I turned to the right again, looking up the street as it rose to a hummock two blocks away. Halfway between, at the far side of the parked cars, a shadow moved. “There he is! Look!”

  “Stop where you are, Yankowski!” I yelled.

  Yankowski froze momentarily, then raced toward the crest.

  “Give me your flashlight.”

  Grayson thrust it toward me. Grabbing it, I ran full out, up the middle of the street, racing across the dark intersection. A block to the right on King Way, a car accelerated. With each step the pain clawed my back. I pumped my legs faster, pushing off harder. I hit the top of the rise. The block ahead came into view, but there was no sign of Yankowski. In the distance sirens of converging patrol cars singed the night. I pushed on to the corner and stopped, glancing right. No Yankowski. And left. Nothing. I had to choose. To the right was King Way—traffic, patrol cars. Ahead, another residential block. To the left a short block, then Martin Luther King Junior High School, with its three-winged building, its smattering of outbuildings, and a two-acre paved yard that dropped abruptly twenty feet down to the track, playground, and pool on the north side—a fugitive’s heaven. A figure moved in the shadows by the school. Turning the flashlight on and off so Grayson would be sure to see, I pointed left. “School!” I yelled.

  Grayson would have the dispatcher get units to the four corners surrounding the school yard. Backups on foot would head inward through the underbrush to the east, through the backyards on the west, the track and playground. They’d converge on Yankowski, if they weren’t too late.

  I ran down Rose, cutting right on Grant. To my left was the dark stucco wall of the school, to my right a smattering of tree-shrouded houses. The gate to the yard was closed, locked. Through the hurricane fence I could see movement in the school yard. Was that Yankowski? I ran for the fence, pulled myself up, flung a leg over the top, and dropped to the macadam. The pain exploded in my sacrum. A cry broke the silence of the yard. I slammed my mouth shut.

  Where was Yankowski? Thick shadows hung off the wings of the main building, onto the acre of gray paving behind it, dark enough to hide him. Lights, dim against the fog of the night, looked more like mosquito lamps than beacons. I could make out the big square gymnasium across the yard, but the corners were fuzzy, and Yankowski, pressed unmoving against it, would be invisible. At the edges of the yard, the wind jostled the branches of tall full trees, but between the buildings there was no vegetation to be moved. In the dim light the school yard looked like a black and white photograph shot without a flashbulb—forever still, forever too dark to reveal its secret.

  Revolver in one hand, I aimed the flashlight alongside the outbuilding to my right. The beam skimmed the ground till it was eaten by the fog. No Yankowski.

  The sirens sounded closer, coming in from all directions.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain, I moved forward, my rubber-soled shoes silent on the macadam. As I rounded the corner of the school, the wind whipped loose strands of hair in my face. I pushed it away and stared ahead at the deserted acre and a half of school yard. There were a hundred places to hide here, around the corners of the wings, under staircases, behind dumpsters, behind the outbuildings; or in the woody underbrush on the east side, in the backyards of the houses to the west; or around the pool, the playground, the trees that edged the track to the north. If he crossed Hopkins Street into the residential area with its maze of backyards, we could spend hours—and half the manpower in our department—and still not come up with him.

  I flashed the light back into the black vee between these two thrusting wings of the school, but Yankowski wasn’t there. The wind iced the sweat on my face and neck. Standing still, I list
ened for the slap of moving feet, for that labored hiss of Yankowski’s breath. On King Way a car screeched to a halt, then started up. I noted the pitch of the sirens, trying to judge how close they were. Murakawa would be circling to the west. He should be rounding the corner soon onto Hopkins and coming up by the pool.

  I stepped out farther into the yard. Headlights threw gray-white cones onto the macadam.

  I peered across the yard toward the buildings at the north side. They were too far away for the flashlight beam. I could just see outlines through the fog, filling them in from memory. Near the gym was a small garage-sized structure, beside it a smaller storage shed. West of that was a large wooden umbrella with wings extending out on two sides; during the day seventy-five students clustered on the benches there out of the sun, lobbing scrunched-up papers in the general direction of the heavy, weighted metal waste-bins. To the west the earth had been humped up to create two small bare hills. I eyed them, for variations, a suggestion of a head peering over the top. Yankowski could be anywhere.

  To my left the headlights of the patrol car threw long fuzzy beams. I paused, waiting for them to come nearer, and bathe the yard in their strong light. They didn’t move. The car had stopped. Of course, the gate was locked; the driver would be climbing over as I had. He’d have called Grayson. Grayson would have notified the dispatcher, who would be trying to get hold of the school custodian. Fat lot of good! By the time the custodian got here, Yankowski could be in San Francisco.

  A flashlight beam shone around the corner of school wall. I flicked my light. It fell on a uniform. Devlin? He flicked back. He would finish at the building.

  My beam just made the unlit yard blacker. Turning it off, I started across the pavement, letting my eyes reaccustom themselves to the dark. I glanced back at the mounds of dirt, trying to see them as separate from the leaves waving in the distance. The mounds sat dark and unmoving. I shifted my gaze to the umbrella, checking along the extension toward the gymnasium. One of the support poles widened. Was there a trash can behind it? I flicked on the light. There was a trash can. And behind it, not shielded by the trash can, was Yankowski’s thick arm, bare beneath the ripped edge of his gray T-shirt.