Feast or famine, p.3
Feast or Famine, page 3
“I will require a large staff,” Smith said stiffly, neither accepting nor rejecting the offer because he loved his country and if the President asked him, he would head up this CURE entity without reservation.
“You do it with next to no staff. If this gets out, it’s my backside and your neck. Or maybe the other way around. You are one of the top computer men over at Central Intelligence. You’ll sift though data, isolate the malefactors and arrange for them to be dealt with.”
“This is extralegal,” Smith warned.
“No. It is extra-Constitutional. Which is far worse,” the President said soberly. “But it’s this or admit the American experiment is an abject failure.” The President fixed Harold Smith with his warm, humorous eyes. They turned steely. “Not,” he added, pronouncing each word like a drumbeat, “on my damn watch.”
“Understood, sir.”
With a handshake, the secret pact was made.
Smith resigned from the CIA, ostensibly for the private sector. He took over Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, as its new director. From Folcroft, he quietly ran CURE. Funded by black budget money, using computers and confidential informants, it reached out to the cancers of American democracy and seared them dead.
In the early months of CURE, the President was cut down. Smith was on his own. The successor President, rattled by his abrupt and bloody ascension to power, signed on for the agency to continue operations.
“Indefinitely,” he said. The new Commander in Chief was afraid he was next.
Over successive administrations, Harold Smith had worked to salvage a foundering nation. But the forces of social instability were greater than one man could bear.
Smith was forced to recruit an enforcement arm. A former cop named Remo Williams. Vietnam vet. Marine. Expert rifleman. Skills he would have to unlearn if he were to do the work of a wounded world.
A beeping brought Smith’s reflective eyes to his computer screen buried in the black glass of his desktop. The hidden monitor connected to the mainframes and optical WORM-drive servers in the Folcroft basement, the information octopus that reached its tentacles out to cyberspace.
It was another AP report. The system was kicking it out as mission related. CURE’s mission, not necessarily Remo’s.
Sarajevo—Airport Altercation (AP)
Serbian authorities report a massacre at the airport at Sarajevo. As many as twenty-nine security forces were reported dead or wounded. A Serb jet has taken off. Destination unknown. It is believed the hijacker or hijackers are aboard.
Smith read this with a visible sign of relief washing over his lemony face. Remo. He had made it out of Yugoslavia. No doubt there would be a NATO security team waiting to take him into custody once he reached Kaszar.
Smith picked up the blue contact phone and placed a call to a U.S. Army major attached to NATO.
“This is Colonel Smith. Pentagon,” Smith said. “The hijacked aircraft due in from Sarajevo has been commandeered by a U.S. security agent returning from a sensitive mission. He is to be granted safe passage on a Military Airlift Command flight home.”
“Yes, Colonel. Where is he going? Specifically.”
“Wherever he wants to,” said Harold Smith.
“Understood, Colonel.”
Hanging up, Smith turned his cracked leather executive’s chair. Long Island Sound danced under the noonday sun. The first sails of spring were ghosting across its blue expanse. For more springs than he ever imagined back in 1963, Smith had looked out through the picture window of two-way glass.
How many more would Harold W. Smith, who had devoted his life to his nation’s security, enjoy before he finally laid his aging bones in the rocky soil of his native New England?
Heaven alone knew.
Chapter Four
As opening days went, this one was going to be a bitch.
“It’s going to be a bitch,” Perry Noto muttered.
“I still think it’s a risky idea.”
“We had to reconcept. We were going down the tubes,” he said as he walked through the deserted restaurant with its French-provincial decor.
“We did better than that last reconcepting of yours.”
“The novelty wore off. You can get people to try braised alligator or buffalo steak, but they get tired of it. Our clientele was getting bored. They want excitement. They want adventure.”
“They want a decent meal for under forty bucks. Why can’t we go nouvelle cuisine?”
“That’s too eighties.”
“Japanese is still popular. And with the small portions, we could make a bundle.”
“Insurance would kill us. Those damn knife jugglers flipping and flinging those heavy blades in the customers’ face—before long, someone’d lose a nose and we’d lose our restaurant. No, this latest reconcept will work.”
“People are finicky about what they put in their stomachs.”
“Hey, they eat blue cheese. And blue corn is big now. Whoever heard of blue food? Show me something edible that’s naturally blue. People eat Indian cuisine. That stuff tastes like rat in goat sauce. And Indian desserts might as well be sweetened rabbit pellets. Yet people flock to Indian restaurants.”
“People also understand the four basic food groups.”
“I thought it was five.”
“Four. They learn in school that you need so many grams of cereal grain, fruits, vegetables and meat.”
“Dairy products. That’s the fifth basic food group. Not that anyone drinks dairy anymore.”
“Five. Five basic food groups. I stand corrected. It’s five. Not four. Not six. But five.” She held up five fingers.
“Well, we just discovered the sixth.”
“People will not pay to eat bugs, Perry.”
“Not bugs. Arthropods. Or maybe insects. Don’t say bugs. You say bugs, you might as well say snots. Or boogers.”
“Might as well say boogers. That’s what we’re serving up.”
“No, we are serving fried grasshopper on a bed of romaine lettuce. Chocolate-covered fire ants. Sweet-and-sour crickets. Yellow jacket au jus. Perfect grazing food. We are not serving anything people don’t eat in other countries. This is L.A. We knock down cultural and culinary barriers every month. We’ll sweep east with this revolutionary restaurant reconcept, and by the turn of the century, we’ll be overseeing an empire of—”
“McRoaches.”
Perry winced. “Don’t say roach. Add it to the taboo list. We don’t serve roach in our restaurant. That’s going too far.”
“Maybe we should put that at the bottom of the menu in Florentine script. ‘Positively no roaches served.’”
“Not funny, Heather.”
“Not appetizing, Perry.”
Perry Noto looked at his wife, Heather. She was not hard to look at. Not after the tummy tuck, the boob job and butt lift. Her face had been spared the multiple plastic surgeries. It was a clean, sunscrubbed face and would be presentable for another three or four years even under the California sun. After all, Heather Noto was only twenty-six.
“You could be blonder,” he said, trying to change the subject.
“What?”
“Your hair. It could be blonder.”
“The next-lighter shade is platinum. Platinum blond went out with Jean Harlow.”
“Blonder.”
“Look. I’ve been ash blond, champagne blond, honey blond—all the way down to summer blond. I’m stopping here. My follicles can’t take all this dying and rinsing.”
“Image is everything. Especially in our business.”
“If we don’t imagine up a name for this latest wild hair of yours, our image will be guacamole.”
“I got just the thing.”
And from a shelf of New Age books—a relic of their failed macrobiotic plunge—Perry pulled down a red paperback, and opened it.
“What’s that?”
“Thesaurus.”
“My question stands.”
“It’s like a dictionary, except it shows you every possible variant on a word. Right now I’m looking up ‘food.’”
“You’re on the wrong page. Try ‘bugs.’”
“Shh.”
Suddenly, Perry Noto’s eyes flew wide. They became two white grapes under pressure with their seeds squeezed out.
“I got it! I got it!”
“What?”
“Grubs!”
“Grubs!”
“It’s perfect. ‘Grub’ is a synonym for ‘food.’ And a lot of perfectly scrumptious insects start off as grubs. We’re serving them up before they get out of the larval stage.”
“Why not just call it McMaggots?” Heather asked bitingly.
“Will you cut the shit?”
“Who in their right mind would pay forty dollars an entrée to eat in an eatery that calls itself Grubs?”
“It’s cute.”
“It’s death.” And with that, Heather Noto went to her own office bookshelf and took down a yellow book with a plastic cover.
“What’s that?” Perry asked suspiciously.
“French dictionary.”
“We’re not opening a French fucking restaurant.”
“And we are not opening a goddamn Grubs. Maybe a French name will take the sting out of the concept.”
“Sting. Good choice of words. What’s French for ‘grubs’?”
“Give me a sec, will you, please?”
Heather flipped though the pocket dictionary with peach-nailed fingers. “Damn. I mean maudit.”
“What?”
“A grub in French is larve. Too close to ‘larva.’”
Perry brightened. “I like it.”
“You would.” She turned her back on his curious face.
“Try ‘bugs,’” Perry prompted.
“I am.”
“Well?”
“‘Bug’ in French is insecte. Wait, there are synonyms galore.”
“I didn’t know the French had synonyms.”
“Shh. Bacille. No, sounds too much like ‘bacilli.’ Oh, here’s something interesting.”
Perry got in front of her and tried to read the page upside down. He got an immediate headache.
“There’s a French phrase for ‘big bug.’ La grosse légume.”
“I like the ‘gross’ part.”
“La grosse légume. It sounds like that stuff the French are forever putting in their consommé, legumes.”
“Are those bugs?”
“No, beans.”
“Let me see that.” He scanned the page. “Hey, here’s a perfectly good word. Punaise. What do you think?”
“Well, it rhymes with ‘mayonnaise.’”
Perry Noto shifted his gaze to an imaginary spot on the ceiling. “I can see it now. La Maison Punaise...”
“House of Bugs! Are you crazy?”
“Hey, who’s going to know?”
“Everyone, once the menu falls open and they see poached dung beetle,” Heather said archly.
“La Maison Punaise. That’s what we’ll call it.”
“I like La Grosse Légume much better.”
“If La Maison Punaise bites the big one, that will be our fallback name when we relocate.”
“If this thing fails, we’re not relocating. We’re reconcepting. Retro concepting.”
“If La Maison Punaise doesn’t go over, we’re maggot meat.”
“That better not be on the menu.”
Perry Noto smiled. “I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy.”
. . .
La Maison Punaise opened to an A-list crowd of invitees only. The press was there. The stars were there. Most important of all, the food was going down their throats without coming back up again.
“How are the chocolate-covered ants, Arnold?” Heather asked.
A Germanic voice rumbled, “Scrumptious. I can hardly taste the ants.”
“What are these?” a famous actress asked Perry, holding up a toothpick on which was speared a blackened morsel.
“That? Let me see, I think it’s Japanese beetle, Cajun style.”
“I love Japanese food.”
“How does it taste?”
“Crunchy.”
A ditzy blonde sauntered up and, with a serious face, asked, “I’m a strict vegan except for seafood. What can I eat?”
“Seafood. Seafood,” Perry repeated, his success-dazzled gaze wandering the room.
“Silverfish cakes are coming up in a minute,” Heather called over.
“Oh, thanks so much.”
“Bon appétit,” said Heather, steering Perry aside. “I take back every bad thing I said,” she whispered.
“How’s the kitchen?”
“Busy as a beehive.”
“We’re golden.”
“Don’t count your honey until it’s in the jar,” Heather said archly.
The insects and champagne flowed freely, washing down swarms of cinnamon chiggers and grubs in duck sauce. There was only one problem, and that was when the L.A. Times restaurant critic complimented Perry on the popcorn shrimp and Perry had, not thinking, corrected him.
“Those are locust larvae.”
“Larvae...”
“Grubs. You know, you’re eating grubs. Your grub is grubs. Hee-hee,” he added, giggling at his own joke.
The critic turned avocado and cured his suddenly active stomach by chugalugging a bottle of Château Sauterelle ’61.
“Let him go,” Heather urged.
“It’s three hundred bucks a bottle.”
“It’s a million dollars in free publicity if he’s spiflicated when he writes his stupid review.”
In the end, the grand opening was a smashing success. The petty problems, liquor-license troubles and health-examiner payoffs were forgotten by the time the last guest left just after midnight.
Perry turned to Heather, beaming. “We pulled it off. Admit it.”
“Okay, we pulled it off. Let’s see if it lasts.”
“Are you kidding me? Insects are forever. They’ll outlive us all.”
At that point, a weird humming came from the kitchen.
“What’s that?”
Perry smiled broadly. “Tomorrow’s profits exercising.”
They went to the vault door and through the traditional swinging doors into the kitchen. The building had formerly been a major bank. Instantly, their noses were assaulted by a plethora of odors. They had learned not to retch. Bugs tasted okay if they were sauced or simmered correctly. But they sure stank during preparation. Hence the vault door to protect the clientele’s delicate sensibilities.
The house chef was stooping over a wooden crate. It was buzzing.
“What’s this?” Perry demanded.
“Did you order bees?” he asked, frowning.
“I don’t remember ordering bees.”
“This box is filled with bees—if I know the sound of bees.”
“Bees aren’t on the menu,” Perry insisted. Heather concurred. Bee bodies contained venom that was impossible to clear out. They were worse than Japanese blowfish, which could kill if the wrong portions were ingested.
“Perhaps someone is making a suggestion.”
“No,” said the chef of La Maison Punaise, who was, of course, French. Just in case they had to reconcept overnight.
“Well, let’s open it.”
Remy the chef took a short pry bar off a shelf and attacked the crate. It was held together with black metal strapping. It wouldn’t budge.
Perry found a pair of wire cutters and went snip-snip. The strapping spanged apart and coiled back, snapping at him. A piece of strapping caught him on the cheek, producing blood.
“Be careful.”
Remy attacked the crate with the pry bar. The lid came off with a sharp screech of nails and the groaning of stressed wood.
When they got the box open, they all saw that it was empty.
But it was still buzzing.
“What the hell is making it buzz like that?” Perry wondered aloud.
“It sounds like abeilles,” said Remy. “Bees.”
“I know it sounds like bees. But it’s empty.”
At that point, the drone of the bees that weren’t there changed in character. It swelled. It seemed to fill the kitchen with an all-pervasive sound. It was all around them.
Perry smacked his right ear. It was a natural reflex. The sound seemed to have attacked his ear. Only it was short and sharp, like a mosquito.
Then Heather slapped her left bosom. It jiggled. And kept on jiggling. Silicone was like that.
Remy ripped his white starched hat off his head and began swatting the empty air around them and cursing in prickly French.
The buzzing swelled and swelled, and as it ascended the scale in an increasingly angry drone, adrenaline overcame the Château Sauterelle buzz and they all looked at one another.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Perry said.
“I’m with you,” said Remy.
They ran for the swinging doors. No problem. The insistent sound seemed to follow them.
They got to the vault door. It had fallen shut. No problem. Remy tackled the dog wheel.
That was when the buzzing began to attack them. In earnest.
They felt it as a pricking sensation on their skin at first. Then as heat. Hot heat. Painful heat. A million tiny red-hot needles might produce such a sensation.
But when they looked at the backs of their burning hands, they could see nothing except a creeping redness. Like a rash.
Perry looked up from his red palms to his wife’s shocked face. It was turning red, too. An angry, embarrassed blush. Before his eyes, her pouty red lips seemed to twitch. And from one corner dribbled something white and vaguely waxy.
“I think my paraffin injection is leaking,” she said.
Then she grabbed herself with both hands. “My boobs. They’re wet.”
“Oh, God! A silicone leak.”
Remy had his own problems. He was scratching himself like a man with a million fleas.
“Sacré Dieu! I am undone,” he screeched.
Then they couldn’t breathe. They gasped and they began to choke. One by one, clutching their swelling throats, they fell to the stainless-steel floor.
As his sight darkened, Perry Noto looked to his wife, and his last coherent thought was, She’s breaking out in hives...why is she breaking out in hives?
