CHAPTER 17
Atten the next morning Capucine was deeply immersed in the bitter waters of one of her brigade’s case files. An SDF—police jargon for sans domicile fixe, a homeless person—had been savaged viciously by a dog at four in the morning as he was sleeping in the doorway of a Carrefour supermarket. The lieutenant in charge of the case suspected it was the work of a gang of youths notorious for breeding and arranging fights for illegal pit bulls. He had a few good leads. He needed more support to run them to ground.
The phone rang. Immersed in the lengthy and grisly description of the victim’s wounds, Capucine picked up the receiver mechanically.
“Commissaire? Hi! It’s Béatrice. From the restaurant.”
“Béatrice. Ca va? How are things?”
There was a short pause.
“Pas mal—just fine. I was calling because, well, I hadn’t spoken to you in over a week and was wondering if you had any news on that killing in my restaurant.”
“We’re making satisfactory progress on the case.”
Béatrice snorted a polite guffaw. “Capucine, it’s me, Béatrice, your favorite chef, not the press. You don’t have to feed me a line.”
“Sorry.” Capucine laughed. “But it’s not really a line. Police work is mostly slogging and even when you’ve been at it for weeks there’s often not all that much to talk about.”
“Poor you. That must be really frustrating sometimes. Listen. I was also calling because I want to ask you to do me a favor. Will you do something for me?”
“A favor? What’s up?”
“I want you to be my guinea pig.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m trying out something new in the restaurant, and I want you to tell me if it works or not. See, a lot of restaurants put a table for two right in the kitchen. The guests get to sit in the middle of the action. No barrier at all between chef and diner. I’m dying to do that, but my maître d’ tells me I’m too foulmouthed.”
“And you want to try it out on me? Is that it?”
“If you could. I’m going to clear out my office and put a table in there just to see how it works. See, you’d be the distinguished guest, but since you’re really a pal, it would be okay if the experiment doesn’t work out.”
“Count on me. I’m game. Just tell me when.”
“Tomorrow night, if you’re free. And I’m also going to try out a new dish on you. I’ve been working on it for months. It’s a big departure from what I usually do, but it’s totally fabulous and I want it to be my signature piece. You’ll be the first person outside of my kitchen who’s tasted it.”
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
With great formality Capucine was shown into Béatrice’s tiny office by the black-suited maître d’. The desk piled with papers and notebooks had been replaced by a small two-person table covered with an immaculate white tablecloth set with stemmed glasses, the restaurant’s gold-rimmed plates, and monogrammed silver flatware. As the maître d’ eased her into the chair, a waiter arrived with a flute of champagne.
“Before we start,” the maître d’ said with the gravity of a croupier, “Chef would like to show you the preparation of your appetizer. I think she’ll be ready in a minute.”
Béatrice stood at the corner of a table surrounded by four cooks in brilliantly white T-shirts set off by black aprons. The cooks were bent over intently, brows furrowed, staring at something on the stainless-steel table as Béatrice lectured them, wagging a finger in the air. In the contrasting light and shadow from the overhead lamp, the tableau looked like a scene from an eighteenth-century medical dissection.
Béatrice looked up and pointed at the maître d’.
“I believe Chef is ready for you now,” he said.
Béatrice beamed and kissed Capucine on both cheeks. “We’re about to assemble our little masterpiece. If you don’t tell me it’s the best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, I’ll ... I don’t know ... cry, probably.”
The center of attention was a shiny, solid-looking sepia tube that appeared to be made of industrial plastic, possibly a component of some mechanical apparatus. A one-inch hole had been bored through the center and was filled with a gelatinous sludge the color of crankcase oil. It was anything but appetizing.
As Béatrice extracted a long-bladed chef’s knife from a stainless-steel beaker filled with water, there was a collective intake of breath. With great care she cut a sliver from the end of the tube. The knife slid through the substance as if it was warm butter. One of the chefs scooped up the initial slice and removed it. The tension around the table increased a notch.
Béatrice dipped the knife back in the beaker of water and cut a second slice—this one a good inch thick—and placed it reverently on one of the restaurant’s plates. An acolyte produced a plastic squeeze bottle and—with great concentration—made an artistic squiggle of black sludge around the supine disk.
A waiter appeared and, under the hawkeyed gaze of the maître d’, took the plate to Capucine’s table. Capucine followed, trailed by a procession of white-clad cooks, who hovered, almost farcically nervous, when she sat.
A waiter ceremoniously placed a small silver bucket on the table containing points of brioche toast peeking coquettishly out of a napkin.
“What am I supposed to do here?” Capucine asked. “Eat it like foie gras?”
“Of course. It is foie gras,” Béatrice said.
It certainly didn’t look like any foie gras Capucine had ever seen. She cut a small section and put it on a piece of the toast.
“Put some of the sauce on it. That’s very important,” Béatrice said.
As Capucine put the morsel in her mouth, the four chefs stared at her intently, waiting for the verdict. The scene reminded her of that coffee advertisement where the entire village waits breathlessly for the decision as the gringo taster samples their beans. She suppressed a giggle, and then the taste hit her. It was a lobe of foie gras, no doubt at all about that, but as she held it in her mouth, the flavor continued to grow and grow and grow in a crescendo that culminated with far more intensity than any foie gras she had ever eaten. As the detonation subsided, she recognized a delicate fruity sweetness. Fig? Yes. The sludge was some sort of fabulous fig sauce.
“It is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Without any doubt at all. But what on earth is it?”
The four chefs beamed. A mariachi band played loudly. The gringo would buy the coffee. The village was saved.
“The magic of the laboratory,” Béatrice said. “Molecular cuisine. Food is deconstructed and then reconstructed so that it tastes even more like itself. Like sorbet, but carried to new heights.”
“But how did you make this?”
“The lobe is first put in a bag, which goes into a vacuum machine that sucks out all the air. Then it sits in a precisely controlled water bath the precise temperate the inside would reach if it was grilled on a pan. That way the entire lobe reaches the ideal temperature. If it’s cooked in a pan, the outside is overcooked so the middle comes out right.”
“Is that what they call sous vide?”
“Exactly,” Béatrice said in a tone halfway between an older sister and a schoolmarm. “After four hours it’s ready. Then it goes into a special high-speed blender that transforms it into an unctuous cream. We inject that under pressure into a steel cylinder, which is flash frozen with liquid nitrogen. When it’s rock hard, it’s released and kept frozen for a day until it’s allowed to thaw very, very slowly. The freezing process further accentuates the taste.”
“And the sauce?” Capucine asked.
“Now that’s a little tricky,” Béatrice said.
Her four chefs laughed politely in adulatory agreement.
“It’s made with fresh Persian figs with a number of Indian spices and a hint of ginger. It’s cooked only just enough to marry the components but not to reduce it. The trick is that instead of boiling it down, which would sully the flavors, I reduce it in
a chemist’s centrifuge, which separates the liquid from the solids. That’s why it tastes more figgy then figs do. It’s harder to pull off than to describe.”
“I’m beyond impressed,” Capucine said.
Béatrice laughed. “So are we. We had some exciting moments with that liquid nitrogen. I’m amazed we all still have ten fingers left.”
The chefs continued to beam.
“All right,” Béatrice said. “You just sit and enjoy your molecular treat while I get these guys off their high and sorted out for the dinner service. Then I’ll be back and we can catch up.”
As Capucine drifted beatifically with her foie gras and the glass of Sauternes that had appeared unnoticed, the kitchen began to pick up momentum as the restaurant filled slowly for the dinner service. The noise level escalated, and the air filled with steam, pungent odors, and urgent, coarse invective.
Once the kitchen choreography stabilized and the noise level dimmed, Béatrice arrived with the main course, the quail stuffed with foie gras Capucine had been served at Jacques’ dinner.
“Normally, I’d never serve foie gras on top of foie gras, but you’re like family and I wanted you to taste this. It’s my signature dish, the staple of the restaurant.”
Even though it appeared identical, and had presumably been made following an identical recipe, the quail was so superior to Madame de Sansavour’s, it seemed like an entirely different dish. Capucine decided Alexandre was going to have to explain how that was possible.
“So, still no breakthroughs on the killing in my restaurant?” Béatrice asked.
Capucine shook her head, relishing her quail. “This is really unbelievably good.”
“Yup. The problem is that we cook it so often, the chefs do it by rote now. That invites mediocrity. I’m going to have to take it off the menu. And what about the murder in that blind restaurant? Do you think it was the same guy?”
“Might have been,” Capucine said. “The MO was almost identical.”
“It was?”
“The victim was stabbed fatally with a basting needle but he was also injected with a concentrate of castor beans.”
“It’s totally lethal, right?”
“No. That’s an old wives’ tale. To extract the poison from castor beans, you need a complicated chemistry lab.”
“Well, I convinced my mother it was poisonous and got her to stop making me take that awful castor oil. It was the only time I ever convinced her of anything.”
Both women laughed.
“And how do you go about solving these cases? Is it like television, where very somber and intense men determine the identity of the killer from a single microfiber found in the victim’s nose?”
“We have those somber, intense guys, all right. But they haven’t found anything. So it’s going to be good old flat-footed police work, pounding the pavement, looking for a motive.”
“Motive?”
“Ninety-five percent of all police work is so-called motive-driven. Find out who would benefit from the crime and you’re three quarters of the way to finding the culprit.”
“Motive. I never would have thought of that. I thought it was all about clues—”
Béatrice jumped up. “Bordel de merde, Jean, qu’est-ce que tu me fous la!” She dashed over to one of the chefs and pushed him away from his station with her hip. Peering down into a copper pot he had been whisking, she shook her head in disgust.
“Putain de merde,” she shouted. “C’est dégelasse. Dé ... gueu ... lasse!—Vomit! Start over!” The cook stood abashed, trying to hide under the stove.
As the loud, heavily spiced, remonstration continued, the maître d’ appeared at Capucine’s table, his croupier’s veneer cracked, his brow wrinkled by lines of concern.
“Ça vous convient, Madame? Is everything all right? Is Madame enjoying her experience of eating in the kitchen? Madame doesn’t find it too troubling?” He looked nervously at Béatrice, who continued ranting, red-faced, at the cook. When it was finally over and she started to return, the maître d’ intercepted her and whispered urgently in her ear.
Béatrice arrived at the table, blowing exasperated puffs of irritation.
“He’s telling me that I won’t be able to talk to my chefs like that if I’m going to have patrons eating in the kitchen. How the fuck does that smart-ass think this stuff gets cooked? This isn’t some fucking TV show where sweet, fat old ladies make coq au vin while they prattle on about their stupid grandchildren. Merde!” Béatrice kicked the table leg. Capucine’s empty plate jumped, and she grabbed her glasses before they toppled over.
Béatrice took a deep breath and sat down. “Some cheese?” she asked Capucine with forced sweetness.
Capucine nodded, feeling a rush of sympathy. How many times had she fought to master her own irritation and frustration? How often had she been tempted to shake an officer by the scruff of his neck?
“The table in the middle of the kitchen might not be the best idea, after all, right?” Béatrice asked.
Capucine squeezed her hand. “Maybe in good time. Or maybe not.” Capucine smiled at her. “You know, the genius of your cooking really doesn’t need support from any gimmicks.”
Capucine smiled and then burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Béatrice asked with a hint of irritation.
“I was thinking about my mother. I once got spanked for saying something we had been served at dinner was dégueulasse.”
“Spanked? You got off lightly. I was deprived of dessert for a week for saying that!”
In the midst of their laughter Capucine crossed over a watershed.
“You know,” she said. “The Dîner en Blanc is next week. We’re setting up a table for six. Just a few close friends and my cousin, but it would be totally fabulous if you could join us.”
“The Dîner en Blanc? What’s that?”
“It’s this silly tradition—actually kind of fun, though—that’s been going on for years. It started when about twenty or thirty people dressed up in white outfits and had a picnic in some public place in Paris. You know, like the courtyard of the Louvre or someplace like that. They’d arrive, throw a big white tablecloth on the ground, and gobble up their picnic before the police arrived. Over the years it just got bigger and bigger, and now it’s a huge production with rented buses and thousands of people. The location is still kept secret even though it’s officially ‘tolerated.’ ”
“So how do you know where to go?”
“They announce a meeting place—usually somewhere in the Bois de Boulogne—where the buses are lined up. Last year five thousand people showed up. You bring folding bridge tables and dress as extravagantly as you want, but it has to be all in white. And, of course, you bring fabulous food and wine.”
“How did I miss this?”
“Probably because you were in the South, but you won’t miss it this year.”
Béatrice looked crestfallen. “I’d love to go, but there’s just no way I can leave the restaurant. You’ve seen the way the cooks get. One disastrous dinner and I’m toast. But ... wait. Let me cook dinner for you guys. How about that?”
“Béatrice, I can’t let you do that.”
“Of course you can. I’ll give you my molecular foie gras as an appetizer. It will impress Alexandre. Maybe some of his restaurant critic pals will stop by, and you can give them a taste. I need all the press I can get. Every little bit helps.”
Capucine squeezed her hand. “Béatrice, that would be absolutely fabulous. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Do you have any idea where it’s going to be held this year?”
“Of course. The press always knows beforehand. Alexandre told me. It’s going to be at the Arc de Triomphe. The tables will spill all the way down the Champs-Elysées.”
“Is Alexandre going to review the event?”
“No. He never does human interest pieces. But there are always loads of reporters. Le Figaro always sends a fashion reporter, and some photogr
aphers take pictures of all the kooky white outfits for their ‘Living’ section. And most of the other papers send food critics and photo teams.”
“Perfect. Then I’ll definitely get the right kind of publicity.”
CHAPTER 18
Even though it had changed almost beyond recognition over the years, Capucine still delighted in the annual Dîner en Blanc. While still in university she had seen the event as something mildly countercultural, meaningful in its derision of bourgeois convention and its flirtation with lawlessness. Now, even though the dinner had become an established event on the Paris social calendar, the closing item on the eleven o’clock news, it still gave her a frisson.
In recent years the event was organized by professionals, who announced the “secret” staging ground by e-mail, rather than whispered word of mouth, which had been the rule in earlier years. An e-mail had announced they were to board the buses at precisely seven o’clock the next evening at an intersection deep in the Bois de Boulogne.
The evening air was still hot and the sun still far from setting as Capucine and Alexandre lugged Béatrice’s two surprisingly heavy plastic containers in search of bus D-24. Alexandre wore white linen slacks, a white shirt opened down to the third button, and an enormous Panama hat with the brim turned down all around. With a cigar in his mouth he fully achieved the intended look of a Cuban roué.
Capucine was glowingly summery in a daringly short, pleated frock made from white cotton tulle as light as tissue paper. She felt deliciously naughty in her outfit. It wasn’t just the brevity of her dress. She had finally summoned the courage to break free from the Police Judiciaire rule requiring officers to carry a regulation sidearm even when off duty. The directive made dresses impossible for women, an irritating sartorial constraint for Capucine.
Determined to wear what she wanted on her own time, she had purchased a quick-draw holster that could be attached to her inner thigh with a strap of soft foam rubber and had fitted it with a Beretta 21A pocket-sized pistol so tiny it looked like a child’s toy. True, it was not an officially sanctioned weapon and fired a derisory .22 caliber bullet, universally deemed useless for police work but still she was armed as required. She had never had the need for a side arm when off duty anyway and most important, it was finally at long last truly summer so what difference did it really make? And the best part was that Alexandre had told her the thigh holster was the sexiest thing he had ever seen her wear. It had been a miracle they made it to the buses on time.
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