Spiced to Death Page 4

  Love it or hate it, people say about New York. Its detractors say that Peter Minuit was robbed when he paid $24 for it but that’s unfair. Most—and especially European visitors—think it’s a fabulous city and so do I. But one facet of it appeals to nobody, and that’s the traffic. We crawled along the Long Island Expressway through the Queens Midtown Tunnel, then out into the creeping mass of cars, buses and trucks that edged through green lights and stood at red lights, fuming with impatience and the occasional faulty exhaust.

  Noise always seems louder in New York but there is that indefinable crackle of excitement that is almost tangible. Cartwright’s driving was expert and we made reasonable time down toward the financial district. Cartwright glanced anxiously in his rearview mirror every time we stopped at a light or signal but finally we turned into a ramp on the Avenue of the Americas. We went down a darkened tunnel where a guard stopped us. He had been alerted by phone that we were approaching and he promptly raised the barrier and directed us ahead.

  We went down another ramp and emerged into an area that was little more than a concrete box, not a lot larger than the van. Two bank guards appeared and stood guard by the van while we went inside.

  The conference room was lined with mahogany panels and portraits of former bank presidents, all Asians. Amber ceiling lights cast a mellow glow, which was reflected in the shiny top of the large table. Five of the bank staff were present, but the one who did all the talking was Ben Thuy, a wiry little man with a commanding presence.

  “We have everything prepared for you,” he said. He didn’t even have to snap his fingers before an aide came forward with a folder. Cartwright and Sam Rong produced their documents and they had a great time, shuffling and signing.

  Ben Thuy looked at Don and me. “You gentlemen have examined this Ko Feng,” he said, eyeing us intently. “You are satisfied that it is genuine.”

  “We have no way of establishing with utter certainty that this is Ko Feng,” said Don. He had told me how he had rehearsed various ways of saying this. “No one has seen or smelled or tasted any for at least five hundred years. But we have conducted as many meaningful tests as we can conceive and to the best of our expertise and experience, we can say that it has passed all of these.”

  Ben Thuy picked up a sheet of paper and studied it. “You are both considered as experts, I see. You have wide knowledge in this field.”

  I wondered what the paper said and who had written it but Don nodded, so I did too. I put on what I supposed was an expert look.

  “So to the best of your professional ability, you verify that the spice is truly Ko Feng.” He eyed us sharply as he said it.

  “I do,” Don said.

  “I do,” I said.

  One of Ben Thuy’s staff murmured something in an Asian language and slid a sheet of paper across the smooth desktop. It was a statement of authenticity. Don and I read it a couple of times, then signed it.

  Ben Thuy beamed. Cartwright produced his check and Sam Rong brought out the bill of sale. A few more signatures and it was all over. Ben Thuy leaned forward.

  “This must be very exciting for you,” he said to Cartwright.

  “Very” he agreed. Weariness showed in his face. Now that it was all over, he was probably feeling down after the tension.

  “It is exciting for me too,” said Ben Thuy. “You see, I was born not too far from the region where the Ko Feng was found.”

  Sam Rong arched his sparse eyebrows. “I did not know this.”

  “Oh, yes. And so—it is from a personal viewpoint that I ask this—can I see this Celestial Spice?”

  Sam Rong looked at Cartwright. “Is now property of Mr. Cartwright. I do not object.”

  Cartwright hesitated but the five eager faces across the table were hard to resist. Ben Thuy faced him, eye to eye. Cartwright grimaced but managed to turn it into a smile.

  “Of course.”

  Papers were loaded into briefcases and we went back to the underground parking area. The two guards stiffened—Ben Thuy was evidently a martinet for discipline and efficiency.

  Cartwright unlocked the back door of the van and slid it open. There was a low gasp of awe from a couple of Ben Thuy’s aides at the impressive sight of the teak case. Cartwright unfastened the padlock and lifted the lid with a proud flourish. Ben Thuy craned his neck to stare inside and his aides squeezed closer. Ben Thuy turned to look at Cartwright, who had a frozen expression on his face.

  Don and I took a step forward.

  The case was empty. The Ko Feng was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BEN THUY MUST HAVE carried a lot of clout in New York City. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes before two uniformed policemen came in, evidently called while on patrol in the neighborhood. It took them no time at all to decide that they were out of their depth and one of them promptly called the Wall Street precinct.

  We all sat at the big conference table. The lights didn’t look so mellow anymore. They were menacing and sinister. I was stunned and Don looked the same. Cartwright was haggard and even Sam Rong’s smile had gone. Ben Thuy moved as if he were wrapped in a thundercloud, furious that such a thing could happen under his roof. His aides walked softly and quietly, fearing his wrath. The two guards had the air of men about to walk down Death Row.

  A few miserable attempts at conversation died at birth. An uneasy silence still prevailed when a tough-looking black man came into the room. He wore a dark suit that didn’t fit very well. He had a clumsy way of moving that suggested it would not be a good idea to get in his way. His small black mustache had bristles rather than hairs and his face was in a grimace which changed all the time—and never for the better. It looked as though we were in for a rough ride.

  “Lieutenant Gaines,” he said in a dry, gritty voice. “Detective, Unusual Crimes Unit. All I got so far is a report about a missing sack of stuff.” He looked around the table and turned to Don who was nearest. “You first—who are you?”

  Gaines didn’t take notes but his frequent and unexpected interruptions showed that he had an alert and intelligent mind. Listening to our stories, I thought them weak and unconvincing. I could only wonder uneasily what Lieutenant Gaines was thinking.

  When we had all finished outlining, he started on Don again.

  “Spice Warehouse? Spices—you mean that’s all you sell?”

  “We sell spices and herbs,” Don said.

  “And this spice—this what do you call it? Ko Fang?”

  “Ko Feng.”

  “Whatever … that’s all that was in this sack?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All that’s missing is just this sack of stuff? The one sack?”

  “It’s a very rare spice. It’s been lost for centuries.”

  “And now it’s lost again …”

  Don was tight-lipped but I thought his self-control was admirable as he told the detective about the background of Ko Feng.

  “So all you did was see if you thought this Ko Fang was the real McCoy?”

  “I was hired to authenticate it,” Don said stiffly.

  Gaines turned to Cartwright. “And you’re the guy who bought this stuff, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This stuff worth a million dollars,” he repeated, determined to get it right.

  “Round figures,” grunted Cartwright, not willing to debate a million or two.

  The detective’s attention moved to Sam Rong.

  “And you—you’re the guy who sold it?”

  Sam wasn’t smiling anymore but he was amiable. When that interrogation was finished, the detective’s face contorted in a series of chewing motions. Some of them looked like they might be skepticism.

  He directed his attention to me.

  “You’re from England—right?”

  I agreed.

  “You came all this way just to smell and taste this spice?”

  “Not just that,” I said. “Don Renshaw was asked by the buyer to get another r
eferee to authenticate the Ko Feng and he proposed me. The sellers agreed. We tested the spice in a number of ways before declaring it genuine.”

  “Genuine …” He chewed the word, making it rhyme with wine. “You declared it genuinely worth a million dollars?”

  “That wasn’t part of my assignment—to estimate its value,” I said, “only to assess its authenticity.”

  “Assess its authenticity.” He was probably mimicking my accent but it didn’t sound anything like me so I wasn’t bothered by it. Whatever his shortcomings as a mimic, he was extremely good at his job.

  “Let me run through it the way I see it. This spice was never unattended, never out of sight except during the drive here from JFK. The van never stopped, there were no incidents on the way, no opportunity for anyone to open the back door—”

  “It was locked. I had the key,” said Cartwright. He was still shaking his head in disbelief. “The door was locked the whole time.”

  Gaines studied the two bank guards. “No one came in to that parking area while the signing was going on in here?”

  “No, Lieutenant.” One of the guards was a beefy man with bulging biceps. He was perspiring and stubbornly determined in his attitude. “Nobody came in. Del and me just stood there the whole time.”

  Gaines pierced him with an unbelieving look and the guard smiled uneasily. “Well,” he amended, “we strolled around a bit, stretched our legs—but,” he went on firmly, “we never left the area.”

  The detective’s gaze switched to the other guard, who was older, with graying hair and the weatherbeaten face of an old sailor.

  “No, sir. Neither of us.”

  “You went out for a smoke, to the john …”

  Both shook their heads.

  “One at a time maybe …”

  They shook their heads again.

  Gaines continued his interrogation but learned nothing further. The two men were unshakable in their stories. One of Ben Thuy’s aides described the geography of the bank building. The way we had come in from the closed parking area led to this conference room in one direction and into bank offices in the other. A stairway went up to the ground level and into the part where everyday, off-the-street banking was done. It didn’t sound as if anyone could have gone through there carrying a sack and not been noticed.

  The detective rubbed his chin, scratching the stubble as if he was wondering how it got there. He went back to Sam Rong and interrogated him about the spice, how it had been found, how it came to be sold to Marvell—all the way up to its disappearance. Sam brought all of his Asian stoicism into play, not letting the detective’s hectoring manner upset him.

  A pretty young Thai woman came in with a tray holding a thermos of coffee and some cups. Gaines eyed it and Don pushed it over to him. Cartwright was nearest the cups but didn’t even glance at them and Gaines had to get his own. He sipped the coffee and his face contorted as if it tasted awful.

  “Not bad coffee,” he said. He sipped again.

  “You guys are lucky,” he told us. “I don’t have much on right now so I can spend all my time on this case.” He twisted his face, rubbed his cheek. “We’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other.”

  “Gosh, that’s wonderful news, Lieutenant” would have been a fine response but nobody said it. He drank more coffee and his sour expression deepened. I realized now what it was and my guess was confirmed a minute late when he took out a plastic tube, shook a pill into his hand and swallowed it with coffee. He was dyspeptic. His facial contortions were genuine pain—gen-u-wine—and if I had needed further corroboration, it came quickly.

  “I’m a burger-and-fries man myself,” he announced. “Pizza sometimes—with the works. I love chili dogs, lotsa hot mustard. Black coffee by the gallon—though this brew here beats the stuff we get at the station.”

  He paused. He might have been waiting for comment but nobody really thought he was.

  “So you can see how the idea of a sack of pepper being worth a million dollars kinda sticks in my craw,” he went on. A thought struck him and he looked at the assembly. “Say, how would it be on pizza—this Ko Fang?”

  Our combined expertise was not up to the question. We didn’t even have to exchange glances. He nodded as if we had confirmed his opinion.

  “Wouldn’t help it none, huh? Well, you know your business, I guess,” he said, although his tone clearly said that he wasn’t convinced of that.

  “Now,” he resumed, invigorated by the coffee, “let’s go over all this again and this time, let’s see if we can make some sense out of it.”

  The interrogation was repeated. Cartwright controlled his tongue admirably, though a couple of times it was a near thing. Sam Rong had recovered his smile but soon lost it. Don was terse with his answers but kept remembering that he had to give them to help find the Ko Feng. I found the whole experience interesting even if it did get a little boring after going over the same points several times.

  In fact, it was only about this time that the bottom line was finally sinking in. Who had taken the Ko Feng? And how? It was impossible.

  “My sergeant is talking to all the bank people and getting statements right now,” said Gaines. He pushed his chair back from the table. “Now I’m going to see them and the sergeant is going to come in here and talk to you. You can go over it all again, maybe remember things you forgot.”

  The loud groan that went up was unmistakable in implication. Cartwright looked distinctly unhappy. I had no doubt that he wanted the Ko Feng recovered but his dislike for Gaines was obvious and it wasn’t hard to surmise that he didn’t have a great deal of faith in the detective’s ability to recover it. Don was squirming with suppressed sarcasm and Sam Rong was clinging valiantly to the frayed ends of his dignity.

  And what did we have to look forward to when the sergeant came in? More of the same—maybe worse. Another devotee of Ronald McDonald and Wendy or perhaps a loyal subject of the Burger King.

  Lieutenant Gaines left. There was no time to compare thoughts before the sergeant entered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY WERE CALLED INTERVIEWS but they were really interrogations. The lieutenant had evidently wanted all of us to be present when telling our stories so that he could catch us out in contradicting one another. The sergeant arranged to talk to us individually and we all sat in the conference room, waiting to be called into a smaller room. Cartwright went first, then Sam Rong and then Don. None of them came back but I tried not to read anything sinister into that. When my call came, the sergeant wasn’t at all what I expected.

  After asking me to sit facing her across the small table in a room that was a smaller copy of the larger one, she introduced herself.

  “Gabriella Rossini, Detective Sergeant.”

  She was about thirty and looked as Italian as her name. Her accent was strictly New York so she had most likely been born here of Italian parents. Certainly her looks were classical Italian. A strong nose, firm cheekbones and large expressive eyes gave her more the look of a budding actress than a detective. She had lustrous short dark hair but it was cut a little shorter than she would perhaps have preferred in order to conform to police convention. She probably had a lovely smile and even white teeth but her formal, almost severe manner prevented me from seeing either feature.

  She regarded my card and said in a disapproving tone, “I see you’re a detective. May I see your license?”

  “I’m not,” I explained, “I don’t have one. What I do is—I seek out rare food ingredients, recommend markets for exotic and uncommon foods, advise on food and wine, things like that. Somebody nicknamed me the Gourmet Detective and it stuck. It’s good for business and so—though I don’t like it—I keep using it.”

  “Hm,” she commented. She had some notes in front of her, written in a squiggly speedwriting in a black, spiral-bound notebook.

  “Donald Renshaw brought you over here from England.”

  It didn’t sound like a question so I didn’t say anything. />
  She looked up sharply. “Did he or not?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said hastily. “Yes, two referees were needed and Don suggested me.”

  “You know each other well?”

  “We had business contacts a few times over several years.”

  “You are friends?”

  “Business acquaintances.” I wasn’t sure how much detail she wanted but she apparently wanted more. She nodded for me to continue and her shiny dark hair bobbed up and down. I described the times we had worked together and how we had done it.

  “You were never partners? Never in the same business?”

  I could see what she was driving at—she was trying to determine if we were a team in the theft of the Ko Feng.

  “No. We have never been partners, never in the same business.”

  She glanced at her notes again.

  “You came over here strictly to do this—” She looked for the word and I supplied it.

  “Authentication. Yes.”

  “Don’t we have any people in this country qualified to do it?”

  “Oh, yes. In this case, Don—representing the buyer—suggested me and the sellers agreed. The old adage of an expert being nothing more than an ordinary fellow a long way from home probably applies. In England, we often call in American experts.”

  “So how long did you intend to stay?”

  Her use of the past tense wasn’t encouraging. “Two or three days was the arrangement. I have a flight booked for tomorrow on British Airways.”

  She might be a member of the police department but she took considerable pains with her appearance. Italian women’s eyebrows tend to be thick but hers were expertly tweezed and beautifully shaped. I noticed this because she had raised them while asking her question. I also noticed the gray, silky blouse which was all I could see of her clothes.