The New York Times, 15th November 2005
As a private eye I'm willing to take a bullet for my clients, but it'll cost you five hundred Benjamins per hour plus expenses, which usually means all the Johnnie Walker I can knock back. Still, when a cupcake like April Fleshpot totes her pheromones into my office and requests servicing, the work can magically become pro bono.
"I need your help," she purred, crossing her legs on the sofa while her black silk hose took no prisoners.
"I'm all ears," I said, confident that the sexual irony in my inflection wasn't wasted.
"I need you to go to Sotheby's and bid on something for me. Naturally I'll foot the bill. But it's important I remain anonymous." For the first time I was able to see beyond her blonde hair, pillow lips, and the twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to breaking point. The kid was scared.
"What do I bid on?" I asked her, "and why can't you do it?"
"A truffle," she said, lighting a cigarette. "You can go as high as ten million dollars. Well, maybe twelve if the competition is keen."
"Uh-huh," I said, throwing her the glance I usually flash before dialling Bellevue hospital. "You must have a real craving."
"Oh, don't be crass," she snapped back. "You'll get double your usual fee. Just don't leave Sotheby's without it."
"Suppose I said anything over five million dollars seems a little suspicious for a mushroom," I needled her.
"Maybe—but the Bundini truffle went for twenty million, the highest price on record for a tuber at auction. It had been owned by the Aga Khan and was flawless white. And don't fail me… I was outbid recently on some foie gras by a Texas oilman who topped my seven million with eight. This was after I had sold two Chagalls to raise the cash."
"I remember seeing that foie gras in the Christie's catalogue. Seemed like big bucks for an appetiser-sized portion. But, if it made the oilman happy."
"He was murdered for it," she said.
"No."
"Hard luck," I said, staring at her.
"The joke was on him, though," she laughed. "The high-cholesterol treat he had killed for turned out to be a fake. You see, the count, in a gesture of love, laid the foie gras at the feet of the grand duchess of Estonia, and when she unmasked it as liverwurst, he took his own life."
"And the real foie gras?" I enquired.
"It was never recovered. Some say it had been noshed by a Hollywood producer at Cannes. Others said an Egyptian named Abu Hamid was so taken with it he packed it in a syringe and tried shooting it directly into his veins. Still others said it had fallen into the hands of a housewife from Flatbush who thought it was cat food and fed it to her tabby."
April opened her pocketbook, pulled out a cheque, and wrote my retainer.
"Just one thing," I said. "Why can't anyone know you want the truffle?"
"A network of gourmands originating in Istanbul and frantic to shave it over their fettucine has infiltrated our borders. They will stop at nothing to obtain the truffle. Any single woman possessing such a taste treat puts her life in grave jeopardy."
Suddenly I got a cold chill. The only prior case I'd ever had involving a pricey edible was a relatively simple business concerning a portobello mushroom. There had been charges of inappropriate behaviour towards it by a political aspirant, but the allegations proved baseless.
The deal was, I bring the truffle to Suite 1600 of the Waldorf, where, April said flirtatiously, she'd await me in something skin-coloured that God had designed for her.
Once she wiggled her award-winning posterior into the lift, I made a few transatlantic phone calls to Fortnum & Mason's and Fauchon. Their managers owed me for a little favour I did them once, by recovering six priceless anchovies purloined by a dacoit. When I got the skinny on April Fleshpot, I cabbed over to York Avenue.
The bidding at Sotheby's was spirited. A quiche went for three million, a matched pair of hard-boiled eggs fetched four, and a shepherd's pie once belonging to the Duke of Windsor sold for six million.
When the truffle came on the block, a buzz shot through the room. Bidding started at five million dollars, and once the weak sisters faded I found myself in a tennis match with a fat man who wore a fez. At twelve million smackers the porky plutocrat had enough and dropped out, visibly distraught. I claimed the 2.6-pound dingus, stashed it in a locker at Grand Central, and made a beeline for April's suite.
"Did you bring the truffle?" she asked, opening the door in a satin robe with nothing but well-dispersed protoplasm under it.
"Don't worry," I said, flashing a tough smile. "But first, shouldn't we talk numbers?"
The last thing I remember before the lights went out was a collision between the top of my head and what felt like a shipment of bricks. I awoke to the glint of a Saturday night special aimed at that little valentine-shaped pump I use to facilitate my blood flow. The fat man in the fez from Sotheby's was tickling the safety catch. April sat on the sofa, her pretty cheekbones buried in a Cuba Libre.
"Well, sir, let's get down to business," the fat man said, laying a baked potato on the table.
"What business?" I smirked.
"Come now, sir," he wheezed. "Surely you understand we're not discussing an ordinary ascomycetous mass. You have the Mandalay truffle. I want it."
"Never heard of the thing," I said. "Oh, wait—wasn't that playboy Harold Vanescu beaten to death with it in his Park Avenue apartment last year?"
"Ha ha, you amuse me, sir. Let me tell you the history of the Mandalay truffle. The emperor of Mandalay was married to one of the fattest, homeliest women in the land. When swine flu claimed all the pigs in Mandalay, he asked his wife if she would be willing to root out the truffles. The moment she sniffed it, its value was instantly clear to all and it was sold to the French government and put on exhibition at the Louvre. It remained there and was looted by German soldiers during the second world war. It's said Göring was seconds away from eating it when news of Hitler's suicide put a damper on the meal. After the war the truffle vanished and turned up on the international black market, where a consortium of businessmen purchased it and brought it to De Beers in Amsterdam in an attempt to have it cut so that the pieces could be sold individually."
"It's in a locker at Grand Central," I said. "Kill me and the best you'll ever decorate that spud with will be sour cream and chives."
"Name your price," he said. April had gone into the other room and I heard her place a call to Tangiers. I thought I heard the word "crêpes"—apparently she had raised the money for the first payment on a major crêpe but en route to Lisbon the filling had been switched.
Fifteen minutes after I named my price, my secretary brought over a package weighing 2.6 pounds and placed it on the table. The fat man unwrapped it with trembling hands and, with his penknife, sliced off a slim piece to sample. Suddenly he began hacking at the truffle in a wild rage and sobbing.
"My God, sir!" he screamed. "It's a fake! It's a brilliant fake, counterfeited to simulate some of the truffle's nutlike flavour, I'm afraid what we have here is a large matzo ball."
In an instant he was out the door, leaving me alone with a stunned goddess. Shaking off her dismay, April lasered her aqua orbs into mine.
"I'm glad he's gone," she said. "Now it's just you and I. We'll track down the truffle and split it. I wouldn't be surprised if it held aphrodisiac powers." She let her robe slip open a little. I came very close to surrendering, but my survival instinct kicked in.
"Sorry, sweetheart," I said, backing off. "I don't intend to wind up like your last husband, at the city fridge with a tag on my toe."
"What?" Her face went ashen.
"That's right, toots. It was you who killed Harold Vanescu, the international gourmet. It didn't take a quiz kid to dope it out." She tried to bolt. I blocked the door.
"OK," she said resignedly. "I guess my number's up. Yes, I killed Vanescu. We met in Paris. I had ordered caviar at a restaurant and had cut myself on one of the toast points. He came to my aid. I was impressed with his haughty disdain for red eggs. At first things were wonderful. He showered me with gifts: white asparagus from Cartier's, a bottle of expensive balsamic he knew I loved to dab behind my ears when we went out. It was Vanescu and I who stole the Mandalay truffle from the British Museum by hanging upside-down from ropes and cutting through the glass case with a diamond. I wanted to make a truffle omelette, but Vanescu had other ideas. He wanted to fence it and use the money to buy a villa in Capri. At first nothing had been too good for me; then I noticed the portions of beluga on our crackers were getting smaller and smaller. I asked him if he was having trouble in the stock market, but he pooh-poohed the idea. Soon I realised he had secretly switched from beluga to osetra, and when I accused him of using sevruga in a blini, he became irritable and noncommunicative. Somewhere along the line he had turned budget-conscious and frugal. One night I came home unexpectedly and caught him preparing hors d'oeuvres with lumpfish caviar. It led to a violent quarrel. I said I wanted a divorce, and we argued over custody of the truffle. In a moment of rage I picked it up from the mantel and struck him with it. When he fell, he hit his head on an after-dinner mint. To hide the murder weapon, I opened the window and threw it on to the back of a passing truck. I've been searching for it ever since. With Vanescu out of the way, I truly believed I could finally scarf it up. Now we can find it and share it—you and I."
I remember her body against mine and a kiss that caused steam to jet out of both my ears. I also remember the look on her face when I turned her in to the NYPD. I sighed over her state-of-the-art equipment as she was cuffed and led away by the fuzz. Then I beat it over to the Carnegie Deli for a pastrami on rye with pickles and mustard—the stuff that dreams are made of..
