New Cuisine

By

Parhelion

Someone once said every man is the hero of his own story. Maybe it's true. But if your friend and fellow P.I. is a hot-shot author who writes up his exploits for the reading public, that public doesn't even know you have your own stories.

The Saul Panzer everyone knows is Archie Goodwin's Saul Panzer. Usually, I don't mind. Archie's sharp enough to see most of what there is to be seen. He has an ego, but he gives me plenty of credit as a street operative: I get good jobs because of his books. But his Saul Panzer still isn't me. From time to time, Archie misses details.

He misses details about other guys, too. I'm not talking about Nero Wolfe, Archie's boss and the smartest detective in New York. Archie has lots of reasons to blur his portrait of Wolfe although I'd never hash them out with him. No, a better example is Fritz Brenner, Mr. Wolfe's chef and major domo of the brownstone they all share over on 35th. Another of Archie's close friends. A good friend of mine, too.

Fritz and I always got along, but there was a moment when that became friendship. A moment triggered by the biggest detail Archie ever missed.

***

"This is, perhaps, too petty a task for your talents?" Fritz asked me on a raw Sunday in April of '52. It was his day off. We were having a cup of coffee at a little bakery he'd suggested, down by the Village. I hadn't argued. When it comes to food and drink, Fritz is the man who knows.

"No. Better checking up on housekeeping services than another wandering husband."

"Good." Fritz smiled. Sweet, but it seemed to come from far away. "I will pay your usual fee." To him, this job was worth twice the going rate for a Manhattan P.I., which is what I charge.

Fritz cooks like I detect. That doesn't leave much time for scrubbing the brownstone's floors. Wolfe used to pay a firm for cleaning, but he didn't like the stringers who came in. Then they hired a single guy for the job and he boosted an orchid from the greenhouses on the roof, no good. Fritz didn't want any more mistakes. He also didn't want anyone jostling his elbow this time around. So he'd come to me.

Given the background, I had to warn him, "I'll check their employees. But I can't guarantee the future."

"But of course. However, I think that if they are careless about today's workers, they will also be careless about tomorrow's."

He was as sharp as I'd always thought. "When I have results, I'll call. I can make sure you're the one who picks up the phone. Nice to keep it quiet in the brownstone." He smiled again. I did, too. We both got the joke. Then I asked him about some of the baked goods in the cases, which turned out to taste as good as they looked.

The next Saturday, I telephoned when I knew Archie would be out and Wolfe would be up on the roof with the orchids.

"Mr. Wolfe's residence," Fritz answered from the kitchen.

"It's Saul. Can we meet tomorrow?"

"Of course. Would you prefer the bakery or some other locale?"

The Gazette was predicting rain for Sunday. I hesitated. Then I asked, "How about my place?" After all, we'd known each other for years. Long enough for a small risk.

There was a pause on his end, too. "I would be honored."

"Do you know the address?"

"I know of an address, but I do not think it is the correct one."

Seems I wasn't the only guy in our crowd who'd read Archie's case reports. With a grin he couldn't see, I gave him the real number and street for my apartment, not the fake ones Archie made up for his marks.

When Fritz showed up around noon the following day, it was pouring. I hung up his raincoat to drip, and he handed me a bottle of wine. The bakery had been all business. He wanted to show that he knew anything happening in my apartment was partly social. Once more, we were playing in the same key.

I went to get a corkscrew and some glasses. When I came back into the living room, he was over at the grand piano in the far corner. He was interested but too polite to touch.

"Go ahead."

"We have work." He gave the keys the regretful look of a guy who knows something about what to do with them. "Perhaps later." Then he took the corkscrew and pulled the cork with a grace I could never have matched. "This is a vin du pays from California, a local red that is better than one might expect. It does not need long to breathe. I hope you will like it."

I did. We sat down on the couch. I passed him a folder. Then we went over my notes on the top three firms.

"These guys were the best," I concluded a good while later. "Just one problem turned up that might be a strike against them."

Fritz looked at me, inquiring.

"The boss is likely a homosexual."

His noise of dismissal sounded like "pffft." His shrug was expressive, too. Sometimes you can tell he's from the French-speaking side of Switzerland.

"I thought you might want to know." I kept the words calm. "Or am I wasting your time?"

"And how," he said, the only U.S. slang he uses. I allowed myself half a smile. Looking back down at the notes, he said, "So that is decided." He closed the folder. His expression went earnest. "I owe you a favor, Saul."

Since he took it seriously, I did, too. "I'll remember, thanks."

"You are welcome." He finished off his glass. "Now, would you like something to eat? I have kept you from your lunch long enough. Perhaps I may help?"

"You have to ask? Although I'm amazed you'd descend."

"I understand you keep a few supplies. And Saul Panzer's kitchen will be acceptable."

I knew a compliment when I heard one. So I shut up and let him go in there and rummage. I passed the time fooling around with some Debussy. Fritz asked.

Lunch was amazing, and he left a check on my coffee table. As far as I was concerned, accounts between us were balanced. But Fritz had his own ideas.

***

Here, I have to pause for a short intermission from my tale. Also, some explanations.

I had two good reasons for telling Fritz about the owner of the housekeeping service. First, by the standards of the day, that guy was supposed to be a monster. Any male who looked at another man in a certain, special way, even once, was a monster if you believed fifties society.

Different guys reacted differently to the news they were monsters. Some denied everything, not only the monster part. Some found brutal ways to make sense of the news, like actually becoming monsters or taking up habits that'd kill the monsters they thought they were. The Junior Senator from Wisconsin was trying out both those alternatives in '52. Some had fancy reactions that weren't brutal but didn't make much sense except to the guys who chose them. Mr. Wolfe or Archie might be able to tell you more about that sort of thing than I can. But some guys just kept their heads down and lived their own lives, and to hell with society. That was my other reason for telling Fritz about the housekeeper. I wanted his reaction.

In his books, Archie never dug at why I wasn't married. Something about my being a bachelor did make him restless enough to stick me with an imaginary wife in one case report. The razzing I gave him afterwards made him go back to the truth. But he stayed mystified by my single life. Back then, I think he wanted to be.

Fritz was different. He was steady in a way most men weren't. He kept his eyes open but had nothing to prove. If he saw, he would know what he was seeing. I had to check his reaction to so-called deviance before deciding if we could be friends. After that rainy day, I knew he was fine. We spent some time. We even took in a few Sunday concerts together, nothing exciting and nobody's business but ours.

***

Then I worked a case that needed an omelet.

"If I can stand in for the chef, I'll hear what they say," I told Fritz. "Bates always has one of three dishes. Mushroom omelet, herb omelet, or scrambled eggs. I've seen Wolfe make scrambled eggs."

The nod was thoughtful. "His technique is acceptable if perhaps a touch too dramatic."

What a surprise. I raised my eyebrows at him. He pursed his lips a little, the expression that meant he was swallowing a grin.

For a second, I wondered who had forced him into doing that, back before the brownstone. I'd like to have a quiet talk with whoever it was. Fritz was kind, calm in a style I enjoyed. I doubted he'd ever deserved guff. "Where I'd run into problems would be with the omelets."

"Ah. There, I can help." He took me into the kitchen and looked my pans over, tutting. I rolled up my sleeves.

He was unrelenting, which was fine. You really don't want to make a mistake when you're trying to fool a guy who once worked with the Five Families. I was glad I'd bought three double cartons of supplies, even if my choice of vendors did earn me a fifteen minute lecture on our friend the egg.

Later, Fritz shook his head. "No, you are twisting your wrist again. Do not whisk so. No, no, not like that." Finally, he came up behind me and grabbed my wrist to show me what to do. He had a good, firm grip, the trim, whippy build you'd expect from a guy who ate well, worked on his feet in a kitchen, and didn't like to drive. He knew how to wear cologne. He'd shifted in close to get the proper angle on the whisking. I tried to concentrate on the lesson, but couldn't help being amused.

"Saul," he said, reproachful. I turned to look, and his blue eyes were twinkling a foot away. In real life, twinkling's rare. "You are not concentrating."

"Sure. It's a classic set-up."

"Yes, but not for what makes an omelet. And you have already broken your eggs."

That easily, the matter of my preferences came and went. Three hours later, I could make a decent omelet by brownstone standards. I knew a better way to chop mushrooms, too.

None of this would have mattered, except to me, if the agency I'd been working for on the Bates case hadn't employed a clerk who liked the ponies. Bates found out who'd passed along the information that warned off his latest mark and decided he was upset. His message about that caught up with me almost a month later on another Sunday afternoon. I was out with Fritz.

We both like books. He collects books about cuisine, so we were down in one of the used bookstores on Fourth Avenue, over by Union Square. In a way, we were each in luck. Fritz had his nose in some massive old cookbook. An outsider would think he was on his own. I was trying to get the owner to sell me something when the muscle came in. So I spotted trouble.

Two mistakes: no chance the guy read books except for the kind of curiosa this place didn't sell, and his gaze slid across me too slowly. I moved deeper into the store, away from the owner and the old lady waiting in line to buy a beat-up copy of an Elswyth Thane title. He followed. From the corner of my eye, I saw the owner grab my book before I could threaten to buy it some more.

I was trying for the door to the back. I'm not dumb enough to start a fight between tight-spaced, tight-packed bookshelves eight feet high. I am smart enough to finish one, though, even when my opponent comes at me with a blackjack. I had his feet out from under him and the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, volumes three through twenty-two, on top of him in short order. Then I heard noises that weren't the owner yelling. I ducked down a side aisle and up to the front of the store.

My guy had rushed. His buddy came in late and ran into Fritz. I arrived just as this one got it across the neck with French cuisine. The way the guy was crouched over, hands cupped low, something more vulnerable had gotten it first.

"My books!" the owner yelped. "I'm telephoning the police!"

"Do you have Kissing Kin?" the old lady asked him.

"You'd better go," I told Fritz across the fallen thug. "This is under control." He raised his eyebrows at me. "Mostly. And you don't want to talk to the cops. They'll ask for your address." Relations between Nero Wolfe's household and the police ranged from cease-fire to all-out war and back again.

I saw him consider. "True," he admitted. Then he stepped back, turned around, and walked to the front counter. With a thump, he put down the book he'd used.

"Not for sale," the owner said. It was a spinal reflex.

"This abridgement of Le Cuisinier Royal is dreadful," Fritz said, voice frosty. "It has omitted the bean soup." With that, he swept out the front door.

Scowling, the owner started moving books to get to the phone. "I want another romance," the old lady said. I heard stirring back in the encyclopedias, and went to take care of that before he could tell the old lady romance was not for sale.

It took me hours to shake loose from the cops. But I did. Then I headed back to my apartment, meaning to call the brownstone and make sure Fritz was okay. He was waiting outside the door to my place with some shopping bags.

"Waiting long?" I asked when I stopped being surprised.

He rolled his eyes, and then indicated the bags. "I was busy." Vegetables and meat, mostly. I let him in.

As I washed my hands, I listened to the noises from the kitchen. In the mirror over the sink, my reflection was smiling. "What are you grinning at?" I asked it, but got no response. Then I went out to the piano and played some Liszt. It had been that kind of day.

When we'd cleaned up after the meal, I parked on the couch with a snifter of brandy. So did he, which was unusual. Fritz likes to sit in an armchair and put his feet up on an ottoman. They still hurt sometimes from the trenches.

"You're all right from this afternoon?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "Perhaps a trifle startled."

"Sure. That was something you'd expect during a murder case, not out shopping."

"Oh no, not startled by those ruffians. I was surprised by myself."

Now I was startled. I put down the snifter. "I'd heard you could handle a scuffle."

His glance was reproachful. "Any man who was in the war..." He trailed off with a shrug. "And one expects such occurrences around Mr. Wolfe and Archie because of their business."

"Mine, too."

"Yes." He took a sip of brandy, considered. "I was not surprised to be attacked, but that I was so concerned for my company. I am always concerned, of course, but not like this. Not so passionately. Not when I know there could be complications in the household as a result."

If I followed his drift—"Lovin' babe."

At my favorite exclamation, Fritz giggled. Given the context, I couldn't blame him. Then he sobered, and said, "I pondered while I shopped and again while I cooked. Any revelation that endures preparing aubergines must be taken seriously."

I wasn't sure what to say. I tried, "What about your widow who works down in the antiques district?"

"You have been talking with Archie." His voice was indulgent. "Certainly, she is a friend. We were introduced by her cousin, my bon ami who is a steward on the Liberte. Archie did not tell you that." For a moment, his face was sad. "I do not share such details with him. It would be cruel."

"True," I said. I couldn't find anything else to say.

"Now you seem to be the one surprised."

"Not so much about—" I made a gesture with my hand, low down. He smiled. It was sweet but no longer distant. The opposite. "Maybe about the object of your concern. I'm not Bogart."

"And I am Jean Marais? You native-born fuss too much over the wrappings of your presents." He'd moved in. Turned out his hands were practiced, as firmly confident as if he were in a kitchen.

"I guess we do," I admitted. Then I stopped wasting my breath.

***

I can't really blame Archie for missing any new details about Fritz and I. To ward off complications in the household, we played our cards pretty close to our chests. And it's hard for a guy to kibitz two-handed cribbage when he insists he only plays seven card stud.

Given all that, I think I'll let him off for not telling this tale. This one is mine, mine and Fritz's. Between detection, dancing, and Mr. Wolfe, Archie has plenty of tales to tell, including ones where we appear. But if he wants this kind of case account, he can find his own. Our romance is not for sale.

 

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