The Grave Gourmet (27 page)

I
t was almost a year later and smack in the middle of the handful of days at the end of August that sound the death knell of summer. The golden season had been officially over since the fifteenth, and Parisians were trickling back from the five weeks of annual vacation that they cling to so desperately both as an inalienable right and in the belief that that is what life is really meant to be. They showed off their tans, hinted knowingly at the unimaginable sexual, culinary, and cultural prowesses they had manifested over the summer, and prayed that fall, and the burden of responsibility that comes with it, would never arrive.

Alexandre and Labrousse were ensconced at the long table in the window of a shabby chic restaurant on the rue du Bourg Tibourg at the very edge of the Marais, the part where black-leathered-biker-gay yields with a surly sneer to slumming wannabe intellectuals from Saint-Germain who come to buy grossly overpriced tea at Mariage Frères. The restaurant had the apposite name of Le Verre Qui Fuit—“The Escaping Glass” or “The Leaking Glass” if you were feeling pessimistic. The walls were covered in yellowing cartoon murals satirizing some long-forgotten and incomprehensibly arcane literary rivalry. An un-Parisianly pneumatic girl polished glasses behind the deserted bar, smiling sweetly at a felicitous secret. At the very back of the restaurant a man with a blond goatee sat with a bottle of red wine making changes to a manuscript, bleating with rage each time he dramatically crossed out a word. At each ejaculation the barmaid shot him an anxious glance before returning to her private bliss.

Alexandre and Labrousse had not seen each other for over ten months and had agreed on a plan to drink a swath through the long hot afternoon and emerge at the far end faced with a deeply satiating meal, say a thick
pavé
of foie gras followed by a leg of lamb that had been slow braised for seven hours.

Their table overlooked the narrow street, all but deserted in the late afternoon. A remarkably thin and epicene young man in a pastel polo shirt and artfully crumpled linen trousers glided by on a venerable Dutch bicycle, resplendent in the sunshine, peering intently into the store windows. He glanced disdainfully at Labrousse and Alexandre and pedaled lazily on.

They had eschewed the three-star restaurants for their reunion. Even if well masked by rigidly disciplined faces, the staffs' adulation of the doyen of restaurant critics and the most celebrated of chefs would have ruined the tranquility of their reunion. At the Verre Qui Fuit no one had the slightest clue who they were other than that Alexandre look vaguely like some sort of man of letters and so was to be indulged.

“Is it as bad as they say?” Alexandre asked.

“New York? No. It's not bad at all. It's difficult to do it justice. It's very fast. One can never think. One has to rush around and do extraordinary things all the time. But in a way that is good.” Labrousse paused. “In France we suffer from an excess of reality. We serve the god of authenticity. In New York the god is the exceptional, however unreal that may be. Their favorite word is ‘extreme.' Everything is ‘extreme.' Extreme sports. Extreme sex. Extreme socks. Extreme everything.”

“And you wanted extreme?”

“Of course. All serious chefs want extreme. Haute cuisine has to be extreme. But in Paris I was forced to be conventionally extreme. Almost the only titillation my rigidly bourgeois clientele permitted itself in their rigidly conventional lives was my cooking. I was like a tiger pacing back and forth in a tiny cage of conventional living. Très bien. I could live with that. But the first time something genuinely shocking happened, my conventional clientele all abandoned me. I had no choice but to leave. I was driven out. Life would have been impossible after their defection.”

“That can't be true. I heard that the wait for a reservation was over six months after the arrest was made.”

“Of course it was, but who was trying to come? My patrons had abandoned me. I had only tourists! Americans. Japanese. They all came to gape and point at the table where it happened. They didn't even look at the food, so great was their desire to stare at the spot where they thought a famous man had died. If there had been a chalk outline of a cadaver on the floor, I could have doubled my prices. So I made my choice. If I had been condemned to cook for Americans I might as well cook for them in a place they would pay full attention to the food. The answer was obvious. Americans only take America seriously. So I packed my knives and a clean shirt and became yet another New York immigrant. And I had to be—at my age, if you please—humble again. You know what young chefs say about naming a restaurant? Better have it begin with an ‘A' so people will see you first when they open the guides. You know, that's why so many three-star places begin with an A. Like Archestrate, Arpege, Apicius, Astrance. So I called my new place ‘Aubade.' It's the perfect name. A song sung at dawn. My new dawn.”

“And it really is better in New York?”

“Of course. These people have never eaten. It's all new for them. Here, in Paris, a man comes into a three-star restaurant and carries all the baggage of his heritage. His grandmother cooked. His mother cooked. His wife cooks. His mistress cooks. He has eaten in excellent restaurants ever since he was a small boy. He defines his culture in terms of food. He defines himself in terms of food. Then he eats my food and he has to overcome all that baggage while still remaining faithful to it. It's asking a lot of him.

“The French patron is knowledgeable, but he is cynical, too, and that's what makes him difficult. In America they know nothing. They eat foie gras for the first time when they are already rich adults. They have no childhood memories of it. Can you imagine what a joy it is to cook for people who have no prejudices at all? People who come to your table naked? People who like your food for what it is and not because it evokes something else? Bocuse says we must not try to make a carrot taste like what it is not; we must make it taste more like what it is. So be it, but in France we have become obsessed with making that carrot taste like what we remember it to taste like, unlike the Americans who come to the table wide-eyed, pure, open to anything, and ready for adventure.”

“And you've freed yourself of the French heritage?”

“Of course. Now they speak Spanish in my kitchen, and”—Labrousse leaned confidentially across the table, putting his finger to his lips—“are actually far better chefs than most of the French. My new
chefs de rang
are Mexicans or Colombians who were so poor as children that McDonald's was their astral gourmet treat. But they do superb work. The prep chefs are the best I've ever seen. It's extreme!” He burst into loud laughter that verged on the edge of hysteria.

“And then there's the money, too. Do you know that when I was here I made less than what one of my waiters now makes. Can you imagine that! Less than a waiter! The owner of the best restaurant in Paris!”

“So you're happy.”

“Happy!
Quelle idée!
Well, maybe sometimes I actually am. But I miss afternoons like this. Also, I'm a little afraid that if I drink too much one day I'll be tempted to open a restaurant in Las Vegas. That scares me. Or even have a TV show. They make me offers all the time. That scares me even more.” He shook his head violently as if to dispel an evil spirit, stopped, and waved the girl behind the bar over. “Do you have any champagne?”

“
Evidemment
, Monsieur!” she said with a fetching smile. A rapid conversation ensued and a bottle of Krug was promised. When it came Labrousse rose, buttoned his jacket, and raised his glass to Alexandre. He was already a little tipsy. “I just heard this morning.
Mes hommages
to Madame le Commissaire.”

“Yes, that.” said Alexandre. “That's a bit of a mixed blessing, too. Capucine insisted on sitting for the commissaire's exam just after the case was closed. Her boss agreed even though she was officially two years too young. Of course, she passed brilliantly. She's now finishing up her training period in the Twentieth Arrondissement and will take charge of the Police Judiciaire branch there at the end of next month.”

“And she's happy?”

“You know the Twentieth, it's one big malevolent ghetto. She's awash in violence. Brutality is the norm. Anyway, as she puts it, she was more concerned with becoming a real flic, which she unquestionably now is, than getting promoted to commissaire.”

“You would think she would hate that. So unlike dear, sweet Capucine.”

“My sense is she's cauterizing her spirit. She always said it was necessary for her to become more firmly attached to the world. There will be a next phase. She has blossomed, as they say, but the bloom is not yet resplendent.”

“And what was the denouement of the story? The famous project. ‘Typhon,' wasn't that what it was called? The mythical Greek giant sleeping under Mount Etna, who would be wakened to change the face of industry. What happened to him?”

“Still sleeping the sleep of the bloated, I gather. Capucine has family in the DGSE and collects rumors from them. When things got out of hand the whole project was transferred to the CNRS so it could be controlled by the government. It seems to have disappeared into the bowels of that labyrinthine organization. Capucine was told that the current CNRS view is that it's technically impossible. The chemicals seem to work all right, but they cannot be injected into the engine without the risk of a cataclysmic explosion, and the injection device envisaged by Renault simply will never work.”

“And what happened to those appalling people who murdered one of my clients in my very restaurant?” Labrousse shuddered and poured himself another glass of champagne.

“Well, Delage's lawyer—remember, they caught him running off to Guadeloupe with his girlfriend in his boat—turned out to have nothing to do with the murder. But the minute the case went to court he sailed off to Antigua, where he still is, shuffling around in flip-flops with his woman, running a small yacht charter business. I can't make up my mind if he discovered fulfillment as an island bum or he was afraid they would arrest him for something even more nefarious.

“The Korean went to trial. Just at the time you left. His government turned his back on him and he went to court as an ordinary citizen. So now he's doing life without possibility of parole. He wouldn't have had parole in any case. He's already killed a man in prison.”

“Good Lord! What an animal. So he was the real villain? Is he the one to blame for all this?”

“There's no question that the Korean injected the poison into Delage and then locked him in the walk-in to die. But I think he was just a tool. He can be no more blamed than a pit bull. The real murderer is Guyon, the executive. He was the prime mover. He hated his president because Delage did not share his vision. So he initiated the sequence of events without having the slightest idea where they would wind up. He felt he was nothing more than a victim of circumstance, but it all started with his goal of eliminating those who did not have his enthusiasm. He used the Korean agent as a tool in exactly the same way you use a knife in the kitchen. There's no question, he was the one ultimately responsible.”

“But he was never convicted.”

“Nor could he have been. There was no evidence at all. In fact, all he really did was plant a rumor about his own project. It was that rumor that triggered everything.”

“And he's still on the job at Renault?”

Alexandre smiled and shook his head. “No, that would have been too much. He's in Seoul, working in some vague administrative capacity for their association of automobile manufacturers. Charitably, they took him on after the Renault debacle. It's one of these jobs with a very exalted title but devoid of content. Actually, it sounds pretty much like he's no more than some sort of consultant without a client. It's hard to imagine he's very happy. In any event, he'll never be able to work in French industry again. France is over for him.”

Labrousse stared down at the table, making imaginary patterns on its spotless surface with his finger. After a few seconds his reverie broke and he caught the eye of the girl behind the bar. She queried with one barely raised eyebrow. He half nodded back. She appeared promptly with another bottle. Labrousse shook his head sadly. “Paris is over for me as well.”