“Just how much money are you willing to put into Luc’s dream, Ms. Varona?” Mike asked.
“I figure I’m good for five million.” Neither one of her false eyelashes blinked.
“And I’m impressed. That should score you a reservation any time you’d like,” Mike said.
“Vanity restaurant investments won’t make me a dime, Detective. I’m backing Luc because I’ve watched him run the classiest operation on the Riviera. He’s got the knowledge and style, and he’s always in his place-which customers count on. We’ve got Andre Rouget’s blueprint for a classic winner, and the three of us have figured out exactly what it’s going to cost to open Lutèce, to run it, and then for it to throw off some income. I plan on getting every nickel back-with interest.”
“How long do you figure that will take?” Mike asked, drumming his fingers on the table.
“Restaurants have a generally short life span,” Luc said. “Unless you really get lucky-like my father and some of the other greats.”
“Not that I don’t trust Luc to get it done for me,” Gina Varona said. “But I’d like to see the cash within the next five years.”
“Phew,” Mike said. “I guess the prices will be pretty steep.”
“As J. P. Morgan used to say, Detective, ‘If you have to ask how much it costs, I guess you can’t afford it.’”
“I’m a Shake Shack kinda guy myself.”
Peter Danton stood up, stretched, and started to walk around the end of the table to come behind us. As he moved, I saw him point to the floor with the forefinger of his good hand.
Mercer and I were watching him. Luc nodded in return.
“I’m getting to you in a minute, Mr. Danton,” Mike said. “What’s with the sign language?”
“It’s restaurant speak, Mike,” Luc said, laughing. He jiggled the knot in his geometrically patterned silk tie. “All dreamed up in the forties by the owner of the Stork Club. If he played with his necktie, it meant there’d be no check for the diners at that table. If he touched the tip of his nose, it meant the people being served weren’t important.”
“And Mr. Danton, here, pointing his finger at a spot on the floor?”
“All he’s trying to tell me, Mike, is that somebody ought to bring some cocktails to this table.”
“Point well taken. I’ll get the waiter. Just one more thing, Ms. Varona.”
“You must be smelling blood, Detective. Isn’t that what Columbo used to say when he was homing in on the killer? ‘Just one more thing’?”
“I’m light-years away from a killer at this point. Don’t get nervous yet.”
“I rarely get nervous. Just when my money’s on the line.”
“The girl who was killed in Mougins last weekend. Did you know her? Did you know Lisette Honfleur?”
Gina Varona put her hand on Luc’s forearm. “Lisette? Isn’t that the bitch who had the fight with Brigitte?”
Luc started to answer, but Mike spoke over him. “That’s right. You remember that fight?”
“I wasn’t there. I mean I wasn’t in town at the time. But Brigitte told me about it later. Or wait-maybe it was you, Luc, who mentioned it. Didn’t you tell me that they fought over-?”
Luc interrupted whatever Gina had been about to say. “Brigitte caught her stealing from us,” he said. “Don’t you remember? Lisette was stealing cash from my office.”
“Oh. Oh, I thought-” she said, stopping abruptly.
“What is it, Ms. Varona?” Mike asked. “What were you about to say?”
“Never mind, Detective. Luc’s memory about something like that would be much more accurate than mine. I really don’t know why Brigitte and Lisette had a fight.”
Mike looked annoyed. I could tell he thought she was holding something back, encouraged to do so by Luc. “But you do know why Luigi Calamari left his job at the Rifle Club, don’t you?”
“Now that, Detective, would be in the category of two more things you wanted from me, and I only promised you one. Let’s see how I feel about that subject after I’ve had a drink.”
THIRTY-TWO
Mike summoned the waiter to take an order from us. While he went around the table, Mercer tried to lighten things up with some general conversation.
“So where did people eat before there were restaurants in this city?” he asked Luc. “I mean, folks who were working in offices or foreign travelers.”
He had hit on one of Luc’s favorite subjects, something he had made a study of for his entire life. “Pretty grim fare, actually, served at boardinghouses and taverns and English-style chophouses scattered about. The first actual restaurant was created in a French pastry shop on William Street in 1827. It was called Delmonico’s-the only place in town to have an à la carte menu and an actual wine list. The Delmonico brothers introduced a whiff of elegant European dining into the rough-and-tumble of this city. The restaurant moved uptown from time to time, as the population did, but it remained the gold standard in the business for almost a century.”
“And the food came from-?”
“This city was blessed by nature, Mercer. My chefs today are envious of what this environment-forests and wetlands and rivers and ocean-provided every day. Venison from the plains of Long Island, fruits and vegetables from New Jersey, and the most amazing array of fish that filled the Fulton and Washington Markets every morning.
“Bear meat was plentiful, woodcocks covered the land that later became Central Park, and the thing that New York was best known for-like Boston for lobster and Baltimore for crab-was oysters.”
“No kidding,” Mike said. I knew exactly what had caught his attention.
Luc held up his hands and spread them apart. “Oysters grew as large as dinner plates in these waters. The inlets of New York Harbor, Long Island Sound, the Raritan River-they produced the largest and sweetest oysters in the world. I’ve told Alex there were oyster saloons all along Canal Street, just north of your courthouse, in the 1830s-all the oysters you could eat for six cents. They were as abundant and fresh as the waters at that time, until the harbor became polluted and the supply depleted.”
“And today?” Mike asked. “Where do you get oysters from? I don’t mean for France, but when you open here.”
“Any place but New York,” Luc said, giving that idea the back of his hand. “Hog Island oysters from Point Reyes Peninsula, Island Creeks from Duxbury, Alex’s favorites from the Tisbury Great Pond-nature’s perfect food, naked and delicious.”
“How about from the Gowanus Canal?”
“Once upon a time, Mike.”
“Do you know it?”
“Like I told the Brooklyn detectives today, I know the history. Used to be, you could get the best oysters in the world from that water. Such a specialty they were pickled and shipped to France. But that, Mike, was four centuries ago. And no, I’ve never been to your-may I say?-stinking canal.”
“What’s that mob expression?” Gina Varona asked. “Sleeping-?”
“With the fishes,” Mike said.
“And there was my poor friend Luigi,” she said, interlocking her fingers together and staring at the ceiling of the wine cellar, as though she were in church, “sleeping with the oysters.”
“You don’t sound too broken up about it.”
“Devastated, my dear detective. I just don’t wear my emotions on my sleeve, like your friend, Alexandra. But I know once we Italians get into the mix, you cops are bound to think the mob had something to do with it. Ethnic profiling and all that.”
This time two waiters appeared. One placed a cocktail in front of each of us, while the other set down on the table an array of appetizers, traditional fare from the fabled bar upstairs-‘21’ Club mini-burgers, crispy chicken wings, jumbo shrimp cocktail, and a large charcuterie.