Dead in the Dregs (23 page)

“What are you doing here?” was all I could get out.“I just saw your mother.”

“
Il fait beau aujourd’hui
,” he said. “A beautiful day.” His smile was offset by the light in his twitching eyes, which were focused on nothing. The effect disturbed me.

“You following me?” I said.

“Why would I?” he said. “
C’est bizarre, ça.
”

“You tell me. Why did you try to crush me in the cellar the other day? Was that you behind me in the car? What the fuck is going on?”

Pitot backed up, slowly at first, then turned and ran toward the abbey. People were mingling in the courtyard, eating and visiting and smoking. They ignored him as he entered the doors, which had been thrown open. I followed him inside.

He stopped at the food table, and the women stopped what they
were doing, watching him. He and his mother were staring at each other. They seemed engaged in intense conversation without saying a word. The tension was palpable. No one knew what to do.

Pitot broke off from his mother, and as he walked the length of the tasting room, the
vignerons
all stopped talking, glancing at each other nervously. He hesitated at the threshold of the lower cellar, Bayne following some ten feet behind him as if sensing trouble. Rosen, suddenly aware of the hush that had fallen on the adjoining room, looked up, and Goldoni stopped midsentence. Monique appeared panic-stricken. Then Pitot bounded down the steps.

“You have to taste my wine,” he shouted at Goldoni.

“I . . .” Goldoni stammered and turned to Rosen.

“Who the hell are you, barging in here like this? I don’t even know who you are,” Rosen said.

“
Je m’appelle
Jean Pitot. I am a
vigneron,
too,” Pitot said, gesturing to the winemaker standing between Rosen and Goldoni who just stared, slack-jawed.

“I’m sorry. Everybody here works with me. I’m their importer,” Rosen said. “It’s not an open tasting. You can’t just walk in here and make a demand like that.”

Smithson Bayne stepped down into the cellar, positioning himself between Pitot and Rosen, looking to Freddy for a signal to eject the young interloper.

“But I want him to taste it,” Pitot said, pointing to Goldoni. “I brought it especially.”

“I couldn’t care less,” Rosen said in English. Then, dropping back into French, he added, “It’s not possible. I won’t allow it.”

Pitot took a few steps up from the floor of the
cave
and turned back. “
Trou du cul
!” he shouted.

“Fuck off!” Rosen retorted.

Pitot raced the length of the room, set the bottle of wine he’d brought in front of his mother, and hurried back outside. Everybody broke into frenzied conversation. I followed Pitot. The first thing I saw was that he’d waylaid Monique, whispering to her in suppressed fury. He reached out and grabbed her, but she tore herself away. I ran up behind them and took Pitot by the arm.

“Hey! Let go of her!” He turned at the sound of my voice, and I
thought he was going to take a swing at me. Just as suddenly, he turned again and ran toward the parking lot.

I reached for Monique, but she jerked her arm away.

“Are you all right?” I said. “Did he hurt you? You
do
know him, don’t you?”

“Don’t touch me!” she barked. “Leave me alone.” I raised my hands and just stood there as she strode back into the tasting. I was at a loss and ran after Pitot, but he was already on his motorbike, skidding across the gravel.

I walked back to the abbey. The scene with Pitot had effectively ended the tasting. Everybody was talking about it, and I had no doubt that Pitot’s intrusion would provide enough fodder for a week’s worth of gossip, at least. I looked around for Monique, didn’t see her at first, and walked to the lower cellar. She was standing between Rosen and Bayne.

“Are you sure?” she was saying, her tone transformed, coy and teasing, as if the whole thing had never happened.

“You’ve got to come,” Rosen said. “Roast chicken, some leftover wine. It’ll be perfect. We just have to wait for Kiers. He should be here any minute, though.”

So, Lucas Kiers had finessed an invitation after all.

“Tell me, Jack,” Monique said, turning to Goldoni. “Should I spend the evening with
les
boys?”

I could see the blood rise from his neck to his cheeks.

“Please,” Rosen was putting on the pressure. “I insist.” Then he changed tack. “Come on, help me with the wine.”

“I can’t now. I have to go,” she said, looking at me. “But I’ll be there later. I promise.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then,” Rosen said, kissing her on both cheeks.

He and Bayne went over to the long table, now covered with empty bottles. Monique hurried outside, and I followed, catching up with her in the parking area.

“What was all that about?” I said.

“Give me a cigarette,” she said. She took one from the pack I offered, and I lit it. She repaid me by blowing smoke in my face.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here? You’re fucking up everything.”

“I’m just trying to protect you,” I said. “Not piss you off.”

“Well, you are. You’re really pissing me off,” she said and got in the Fiat, slamming the door.

“I think Jean is Richard’s son,” I called. “That’s why he killed him.”

She stared at me and started the car. As she pulled out of the parking lot, I could have sworn she was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

It was nearly four o’clock. The
vignerons
gathered one last time to talk about Pitot and compare their impressions of the tasting and how they thought their wines had fared. Most seemed unsure, if their shrugs were any indication, both of what had prompted Pitot’s outrageous incursion and of how Goldoni had scored them.

Bayne and I helped Rosen marry the remnants of the wine, pouring what was left in the bottles into others of the same appellation that were half or a quarter full, and by the time we’d finished we’d put together a case of spectacular juice.

“You should join us tonight,” Rosen said to me. “Monique’s coming, you heard. In fact, you should spend the night. There’s plenty of room. The Chemin’s too expensive, anyway. Save yourself a few bucks. And I got a ticket for you to the public tasting tomorrow.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” I said, “but would you mind explaining what the hell happened just now?”

Rosen bit his lip and shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen him before. I have no idea who he is. But people get crazy around these guys,” he said, meaning the wine critics. “Crazy,” he repeated.

He left Bayne and me standing there and walked over to chat with his growers as they packed up, trying to reassure them that their wines had shown well and that he was pleased with how it had gone. Goldoni, meanwhile, was grazing through the remains of the buffet. Madame Pitot approached him and presented him with a generous slab of pâté.

Goldoni took a chunk in his fingers and popped it in his mouth.

“It tastes like shit,” he pronounced, rudely spitting the pâté onto the plate as if it were wine and setting it down.

I looked at Madame Pitot. It hadn’t been a very good day for her. She took her coat from the back of a chair and walked out,
abandoning her terrine and her son’s bottle of wine on the table. The women watched her go, obviously glad to be rid of her.

I calmed myself down by assisting Madame Gauffroy as she gathered up the tablecloths; then Bayne and I broke down the boards and trestles. By the time Lucas Kiers arrived, we were the only ones left.

“Sorry I’m late,” Kiers offered as he entered the room.

“You’re fine,” Rosen assured him.

“You’re sure it’s okay?” he asked, directing the question at Lucien Gauffroy, who stood calmly behind Rosen.

“
Absolument
,” Gauffroy reassured him. He looked as fresh and attentive as if it were his first appointment of the day. “
On y va.
”

We followed him down a steep staircase I’d seen earlier. It descended from the room where the tables had been set out to a basement cellar, a narrow room that ran the length of the abbey, a single file of barrels on each side, to a small chamber at the very back that housed older, rarer bottles caked with dust and cobwebs behind a wrought-iron grate. A small table stood in the center of the tiny cell.

Gauffroy offered us each a glass, and we started in on the least of his wines, a
village
Gevrey-Chambertin, proceeding to his two
premiers crus
and finally to a
grand cru
Charmes. We ended sampling his
pièce de résistance,
a
grand cru
Griottes.

Having assumed that my attenuated palate couldn’t endure another sip, I was astonished as we ascended from one level of complexity to the next, the lush brilliance of Gauffroy’s Pinot eliciting a string of exclamations from Kiers. “
Incroyable! Superbe! Magnifique
!” His boyish enthusiasm bubbled over. Gauffroy stood politely, his arms folded in mute repose, a smile etched on his face. Clearly, he was not surprised. Supremely confident and completely unassuming, he awaited the verdict.

“I’m really going to have to completely revise what I said a year ago,” Kiers finally pronounced. “I had no idea that this vintage could come around like this.”

“That’s because of the way you write, the way you taste,” Rosen said testily. “You don’t taste wines, you taste a vintage.” Kiers looked startled, but Rosen was on a roll. “You tell people what they should
drink instead of letting them discover it for themselves. ‘Drink the ’01s. Forget ’04; ’02 and ’03 look good. Mortgage your home to buy ’05.’ What kind of advice is that? Each one of Lucien’s wines is unique.” He uttered the last statement as if daring anyone to contradict him.

“Freddy . . .” I interjected.

Kiers, promising to recant his earlier opinion, was already clearly poised to highlight Rosen’s producer, and yet Rosen was intent on riding his hobbyhorse into the dust. I pulled him aside and led him to the rear of the cellar, suggesting a more diplomatic approach. But, fueled by five hours of tasting, the disturbance caused by Jean Pitot, and what he anticipated would be only a qualified endorsement of the wines by Goldoni, he was unable to contain his irritation, which soon erupted again.

“You generalize every vintage!” he said, now raising his voice for emphasis. “Do you have any idea how hard someone like Lucien works to bring this in? Any of my growers, for that matter? They give all their attention to their work. Do you know how much fruit they drop in a year like this one? Thirty percent! Maybe forty!” By now he was practically shouting. “And then they have to deal with the weather, the harvest . . .” He looked at Lucas Kiers, glowering.

“Look, Freddy, we’re writing for the consumer, not the insider,” Kiers remonstrated. “The average person isn’t going to travel to France each year. He needs guidance, and we’re here to help him. It’s a public service.”

“But what kind of service is it when you write off an entire vintage?” Rosen simply wasn’t to be appeased. Finally Gauffroy, who’d obviously been able to follow the twists in the argument, grunting so inscrutably that it was impossible to know what he was really thinking, decided to weigh in.

“
Écoutez
,” he said, getting both’s attention. “If I screw up, I pay,” he said to Rosen. “But if
you
screw up,” he added, turning to Kiers, “
I
pay!” His argument seemed unassailable, yet his contribution imposed only a fragile peace.

It was left to Kiers, his face flushed, to thank Gauffroy and excuse himself.

“Great work,” I said to Rosen. “That ought to produce some positive press.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “What do
you
know?”

He had a point. The only thing I knew for sure was that the Pitots had made their unsettling presence felt at the tasting and that I needed to report my impressions to a certain colonel in the
gendarmerie.
Given the hour, I thought I might check in with Sackheim’s California counterpart as well. I doubted that Ciofreddi was stationed by the phone, waiting to hear from me, but that hardly damped my eagerness to report in.

Bayne and I helped Rosen haul the leftover wine to his car.

“Look,” he now said by way of apology, “I let myself get too into trying to psych Jacques out. I don’t think he’s going to score the wines very well. But you tasted them. How did you find them?”

“Well, it’s not the kind of tasting I prefer—a hundred wines in a single go—but I thought they were pretty impressive.”

“Hey, I’m sorry I told you to fuck yourself. I really wanted to tell Kiers to go fuck himself.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it. But he was on your side. I was just trying to save you from yourself.”

Ignoring my nobler intentions, he said, “So, you’ll join us?”

“I need to make a couple of phone calls first. Just give me the address, and I’ll find my way there. A phone number, too, if you have one. I’ll catch up with you.”

Dusk had settled,
a light rain beating against the windows of my hotel room. The moon, one night from full, blinked on and off through swiftly racing clouds. I found Ciofreddi’s card. I’d try to keep it short.

I lucked out: The good lieutenant’s day was only just starting.

“I was wondering if I’d hear from you,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I just finished a five-hour tasting with Jacques Goldoni. You’d never know his boss had been murdered. ‘The king is dead; long live the king.’”

“Meaning?”

“The whole thing stinks. And Eric Feldman’s missing.”

At first he didn’t respond. Then he said, “Does Sackheim know?”

“I called him this morning.”

“You might suggest he establish Goldoni’s whereabouts.”

“Yeah, but the problem is, where
isn’t
he?”