“Don’t do anything till I get home,” I pleaded. “This requires a little skull session.”
“You better ratiocinate on the double, sugar. She’s up to page three hundred.” With that, the light of my life smashed the phone down into its cradle with photon velocity, causing my ears to ring with the ominous tolling of that damn bell in Donne’s poem. Feigning Whipple’s disease, I bailed out of my work early, pausing at the corner hops emporium to placate my jangled ganglia and review the crisis.
Our history with nannies had been a roller-coaster ride at best. The first one was a Swedish woman who resembled Stanley Ketchel. Her demeanor was succinct, and she achieved discipline amongst the brood, who began showing up for meals well mannered but with inexplicable contusions. When our hidden TV camera caught her in the act of bouncing my son horizontally across her shoulders in what wrestlers call the Argentine backbreaker, I queried the woman on her methods.
Obviously unused to interference, she lifted me out of my loafers and pinioned me to the wallpaper a good three feet off the floor. “Keep your schnozz out of my rice bowl,” she advised, “unless you’re happy to wind up in a reef knot.”
Outraged, I sent her packing that night, requiring the assistance of only a single SWAT team.
Her successor, a nineteen-year-old French au pair named Veronique, who was all wiggles and cooing, with blond hair, the pout of a porn star, long tapered legs, and a rack that almost required scaffolding, was a far less truculent type.
Her commitment to our issue, unfortunately, lacked a certain depth, preferring as she did to loll about on the chaise in a slip and vaporize chocolate truffles while thumbing the pages of W. I adjusted to the creature’s personal style more flexibly than my wife did and even attempted to help her relax with an occasional back rub, but when the ball and chain noticed I had taken to wearing Max Factor and bringing the little frog breakfast in bed she tucked a pink slip into the folds of Veronique’s poitrine and deposited her Louis Vuitton on the curb.
And then came Velveeta, a pleasant drone pushing thirty who ministered to the children and knew her place at table. Moved by her strabismus, I had treated Velveeta more like a family member than a servant, yet all the while as she accepted second helpings of trifle and access on her off-hours to the comfy chair, she was secretly amassing an unflattering portrait of her benefactors.
Upon arriving home and perusing in secret her libelous narrative, I was rendered dumb.
“A bitter cipher who takes credit for his colleagues’ work at the firm,” the succubus had written. “A raving bipolar who at once spoils his children and then beats them with a razor strop for the slightest infractions.” I leafed through the vile compilation and was mortified by the smorgasbord of blasphemies.
Harvey Bidnick is a witless boor, a motormouthed little proton who fancies himself amusing but numbs his guests with relentless one-liners unfunny even on the borscht circuit fifty years ago. His imitation of Satchmo causes the bravest souls to flee screaming from the room. Bidnick’s wife is no bargain either. A portly ice queen with tapioca thighs, she is unable to process any references intellectually more complex than Manolo Blahnik and Prada. The couple fight incessantly, and on one occasion when she had run up a bill of six figures for a specially constructed Wonder Bra, Bidnick refused to pay it. Enraged, she snatched the toupee from his head, threw it to the floor, and fired several shots at it with a revolver they keep in case of burglars. Bidnick gorges himself on Viagra, but the dosage makes him hallucinate and causes him to imagine he is Pliny the Elder. His wife, aging like Maria plucked from Shangri-La, has had every inch of her body tweaked with either Botox or a scalpel. Their favorite topic of conversation is the denigration of friends. The Birdwings are “corpulent penny-pinchers who serve small portions with the mutton inevitably underdone.” Dr. Diverticulinsky and his wife are a “team of incompetent veterinarians who have been responsible for the death of more than one goldfish.” And the Offals are “that French couple whose depravities include sexual intimacies with the figures at Madame Tussaud’s.”
I put down the pages of Velveeta’s tell-all screed, went to our bar, knocked back a series of potently configured highballs, and resolved then and there to kill her.
“If we burn her pages, she’ll just run off a duplicate,” I prattled to my wife in speech starting to loosen like a vaudeville drunk’s. “If we offer her hush money, she’ll include the bribe in her memoir or pocket the jack and publish anyway. No, no,” I said, morphing into all the blackguards that populated the noir celluloid I grew up on. “She must be made to disappear. Naturally it should look like an accident. Perhaps a hit-and-run.”
“You don’t drive, blue eyes,” the steely minx opposite me clarified, draining her own personal beaker of gin and vermouth. “And our chauffeur, Measly, couldn’t hit the side of a barn with that triple-length white stretch Lincoln you make him tool around in.”
“Well, what about a bomb?” I fonfered. “A precision device carefully timed to go off just as she boards her StairMaster.”
“Are you kidding?” the light of my life croaked, succumbing a bit more to her grain concoction. “You couldn’t make a bomb if they handed you the plutonium. Remember Chinese New Year’s when you dropped that lit Roman candle down your trousers?” The little woman started laughing hoarsely. “Christ, the way you suddenly rose off the ground and passed over the garage roof in Quogue. What a trajectory!” she howled.
“Then I’ll push her out the window. We’ll forge a note or, better yet, dupe her into writing one herself under some clever pretext utilizing carbon paper.”
“You’re going to hoist a hundred-fifty-pound nanny up to the windowsill and force her out while she struggles? With your biceps? You’ll wind up in Lenox Hill Emergency with a myocardial infarction that’ll make Krakatoa seem like a hiccup.”
“You don’t think I can dispose of her?” I said, marinating rapidly from my fifth grasshopper and dissolving into an Alfred Hitchcock character. “She will be free to move about, but she will be on a chain. She will gradually grow more and more ill.” I visualized the out-of-focus camera that made the audience at Notorious feel Ingrid Bergman’s weakening point of view as Claude Rains’s poison took its toll. My own focus had gone a little soft too as I rose and teetered to the medicine cabinet, my fingers closing around the bottle of iodine. As if on cue, the door burst open and Velveeta entered.
“Hey, Mr. B, you’re home. Get fired? Ha ha.” The rodent smiled at her own insolent sally.
“Come in,” I said. “Just in time for coffee.”
“You know I don’t drink coffee,” she demurred.
“I meant tea,” I corrected, staggering to the kitchen to put on the kettle.
“Are you plastered again, Mr. B?” the judgmental wretch inquired.
“Sit here,” I directed, ignoring her churlish familiarity. By now my wife had collapsed and was snoring on the floor.
“Mrs. B’s got to get more sleep,” the smug babysitter chided as she winked. “What do you jaded plutocrats do all night?” With a mastermind’s cunning I glanced over my shoulder to see that she was not looking and emptied the remains of the iodine bottle into Velveeta’s cup. Then, festooning a plate with succulent petit fours, I presented the arrangement to her.
“Gee,” she piped, “this is something new. We never tore a herring at eleven-thirty in the A.M.”
“Hurry,” I said, “let’s drink up before it gets cold.”
“Isn’t this a little dark for chamomile?” the perfidious fink whined.
“Nonsense,” I explained. “It’s a rare blend, just in from Lashkar Gāh. Come, drink up. Umm, how smoky and piquant.”
Perhaps it was the stress of the morning, perhaps it was the concatenation of confidence builders I downed before noon; all I know is somehow I managed to siphon the mickeyed teacup by mistake. Instantly I jackknifed and began to flap around on the floor like a snagged trout. I lay on the carpet clutching my stomach and moaning like E
thel Waters singing “Stormy Weather” while our alarmed nanny commandeered an ambulance.
I remember the faces of the paramedics, and the stomach pump, and I remember most clearly, when I came to fully, the notice Velveeta handed in. She said in her letter of resignation that she had become bored being a nanny, and had toyed with writing a book but chucked the idea because the lead characters were too creepy to hold the interest of any reader with an IQ in the normal range. She was leaving to marry a millionaire who picked her up one day at the Alice statue where she often took our kids. As for the Bidnicks? We don’t plan to hire another nanny until there’s a huge technological breakthrough in robotics.
HOW DEADLY YOUR TASTE BUDS, MY SWEET
The snob value of the rare white truffle hit new heights in London on Sunday with a 2.6-pound specimen selling at auction for $110,000. It went to an unidentified buyer in Hong Kong.
—The New York Times, November 15, 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 blond hair, pillow lips, and the twin dirigibles that stretched her silk blouse to the 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 dialing Bellevue. “You must have a real craving.”
“Oh, don’t be crass,” she snapped back, clearly miffed. “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—although the Bundini truffle went for twenty million, the highest price on record for a tuber at auction. Of course it had been owned by the Aga Khan and was flawless white. And don’t fail me, because 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 appetizer-sized portion. But, if it made the oilman happy.”
“He was murdered for it,” she said.
“No.”
“Yes. A count from Romania, for whom nothing but the taste of sublime goose liver would suffice, slipped a dirk between his shoulder blades and pirated the moist patty,” she said, lighting another cigarette from her first.
“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 inquired.
“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 check, 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 fettucini 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 behavior toward 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-colored 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 favor 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 directly 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 for my amusement. 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 World War II. 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 DeBeers in Amsterdam in an attempt to have it cut and then sell the pieces 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! And while it’s a brilliant fake, counterfeited to simulate some of the truffle’s nutlike flavor, 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 just enough. I came very close to surrendering to all the absurd gymnastics nature programs the blood for, 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 omelet, 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 realized he had secretly switched from beluga to sevruga, and when I accused him of using osetra 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 lungfish 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 onto 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.”