The brunette was aroused or repulsed. Hard to tell which. With some Angelenos, those two emotions were as inextricably entwined as the viscera of inoperable Siamese twins. Anyway, she departed the actor-addict’s table and drew up a chair to sit with the two men in leather jackets.
Joe wondered how interesting things would get when the wasted actor returned—no doubt with a white dust glowing around the rims of his nostrils, since current heroin was sufficiently pure to snort. Before events could develop, the waiter, Gene of the twinkling eyes, stopped by to tell him there would be no charge for dinner and that Demi was waiting for him in the kitchen
Surprised, he left a tip and followed Gene’s directions toward the hallway that served the restrooms and the cookery.
The late summer twilight had finally arrived. On the griddle-flat horizon, a sun like a bloody yolk cooked toward a darker hue.
As Joe crossed the restaurant, where all of the tables were now occupied, something about that three-person tableau—the brunette, the two men in leather jackets—teased his memory. By the time that he reached the hallway to the kitchen, he was puzzled by a full-blown case of deja vu.
Before stepping into the hall, Joe turned for one look back. He saw the seducer with fork raised, savouring a speared shrimp with his sad eyes, while the brunette murmured something and the nervous pink-faced man watched.
Joe’s puzzlement turned to alarm.
For an instant, he could not understand why his mouth went dry or why his heart began to race. Then in his mind’s eye he saw the fork metamorphose into a stiletto, and the shrimp became a sliver of Gouda cheese.
Two men and a woman. Not in a restaurant but in a hotel room. Not this brunette but Barbara Christman. If not these two men, then two astonishingly similar to them.
Of course Joe had never seen them, only listened to Barbara’s brief but vivid descriptions. The hound-dog eyes, the nose that was “bashed red by decades of drinking,” the thick-lipped mouth. The younger of the two: pink-faced with the ceaselessly flickering smile.
Joe was more than twenty-four hours past the ability ever to believe in coincidence again.
Impossibly, Teknologik was here.
He hurried along the hallway, through one of two swinging doors, and into a roomy antechamber used as a salad-prep area. Two white-uniformed men, artfully and rapidly arranging plates of greenery, never even glanced at him.
Beyond, in the main kitchen, the heavy-set black woman in the voluminous muumuu was waiting for him. Even her bright dress and the cascades of glittering jewellery could not disguise her anxiety. Her big-mama, jazz-singer face was pretty and lively and made for mirth, but there was no song or laughter in her now.
“My name’s Mahalia. Real sorry I couldn’t have dinner with you, Presentable Joe. That would’ve been a treat.” Her sexy-smoky voice pegged her as the woman whom he had named Demi. “But there’s been a change of plans. Follow me, honey.”
With the formidable majesty of a great ship leaving its dock, Mahalia set out across the busy and immaculate kitchen crowded with chefs, cooks, and assistants, past cooktops and ovens and griddles and grills, through steam and meat smoke and the eye-watering fragrance of sautéing onions.
Hurrying after her, Joe said, “Then you know about them?”
“Sure do. Been on the TV news today. The news people show you stuff to curl your hair, then try to sell you Fritos. This awful business changes everythin’.”
He put an arm on her shoulder, halted her. “TV news?”
“Some people been murdered after she talks to them.”
Even with the large culinary staff in white flurries of activity around them, they were afforded privacy for their conversation by the masking clang of pots, rattle of skillets, whir of mixers, swish of whisks, clatter of dishes, buzz, clink, tink, ping, pop, scrape, chop, sizzle.
“They call it somethin’ else on the news,” Mahalia said, “but it’s murder sure enough.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I’m talking about the men in the restaurant.”
She frowned. “What men?”
“Two of them. Black slacks, white silk shirts, black leather jackets—”