Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror (31 page)

“Cumin?” I asked Mr. Le Renges.

“Aha. That would be telling. But you like it, don’t you?”

I cut off another piece. “Okay, I have to confess that I do.”

Mr. Le Renges whacked me on the back so that I almost choked. “You see, John? Now you know what I was talking about when I told you that I was called to enrich people’s lives. I keep small farmers in business, and at the same time I give the people of Calais a very important community venue with the best food that I can economically serve up. Well, not only Calais. I have Tony’s Gourmet Burgers in Old Town and Millinocket and Waterville and I’ve just opened a new flagship restaurant in St. Stephen, over the river in Canada.”

“Well, congratulations,” I coughed. “When do you want me to start?”

* * *

I dreamed that I was sitting by the window of Rocco’s restaurant on Drusilla Lane in Baton Rouge, eating a spicy catfish poboy with a cheese fry basket and a side of brown gravy. I had just ordered my bread pudding when the phone rang and the receptionist told me in a clogged-up voice that it was 5:15 in the morning.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked her.

“You asked for an alarm call, sir. Five fifteen, and it’s five-fifteen.”

I heaved myself up in bed. Outside my window it was still totally dark. It was then that I remembered that I was now the
chef de petit dejeuner
at Tony’s, and I was supposed to be over on North Street at 6 a.m. sharp to open up the premises and start getting the bacon griddled and the eggs shirred and the coffee percolating.

I stared at myself in the mirror. “Why did you do this to yourself?” I asked me.

“Because you’re a nitpicking perfectionist who couldn’t turn a blind eye to three mouse droppings at the Cajun Queen Restaurant, that’s why. And they probably weren’t even mouse droppings at all. Just capers.”

“Capers schmapers.”

It was so cold outside that the deserted sidewalks shone like hammered glass. I walked to North Street where Chip had just opened up the restaurant.

“Morning, Chip.”

“Yeah.” He showed me how to switch off the alarm and switch on the lights. Then we went through to the kitchen and he showed me how to heat up the griddle and take out the frozen bacon and the frozen burgers and mix up the “fresh squeezed” orange juice (just add water).

We had only been there ten minutes when a young mousy-haired girl with a pale face and dark circles under her eyes came through the door. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Anita. You must be John.”

“Hi, Anita,” I said, wiping my fingers on my green apron and shaking hands. “How about a cup of coffee before the hordes descend on us?”

“Okay, then,” she blinked. From the expression on her face I think she must have thought I said “whores.”

But they were hordes all right, and once they started coming through that door they didn’t stop. By a quarter after seven every booth and every table was crowded with businessmen and postal workers and truckers and even the sandy-haired cop who had first flagged me down as I walked into town. I couldn’t believe that these people got up so early. Not only that, they were all so
cheerful
, too, like they couldn’t wait to start another day’s drudgery. It was all, “Good morning, Sam! And how are you on this cold and frosty morning!” “Good morning, Mrs. Trent! See
you
wrapped up warm and toasty!” “Hi, Rick! Great day for the race—the human race!” I mean, please.

They not only looked hearty and talked hearty, they ate hearty, too. For two hours solid I was sizzling bacon and flipping burgers and frying eggs and browning corned-beef hash. Anita was dashing from table to table with juice and coffee and double orders of toast, and it wasn’t until 8:00 that a sassy black girl called Oona came in to help her.

Gradually, however, the restaurant began to empty out, with more back-whacking and more cheery goodbyes, until we were left with nobody but two FedEx drivers and an old woman who looked as if she was going to take the next six months to chew her way through two slices of Canadian bacon.

It was then that one of the FedEx drivers put his hand over his mouth and spat into it. He frowned down at what he had found in his burger and showed it to his friend. Then he got up from the table and came over to the grill, his hand cupped over his mouth.

“Broken my darn tooth,” he said. “How d’you do that?” I asked him.

“Bit into my burger and there was
this
in it.”

He held up a small black object between his finger and thumb.

I took it from him and turned it this way and that. There was no doubt about it, it was a bullet, slightly flattened by impact.

“I’m real sorry,” I said. “Look, this is my first day here. All I can do is report it to the management and you can have your breakfast on us.”

“I’m going to have to see a darn dentist,” he complained. “I can’t abide the darn dentist. And what if I’d swallowed it? I could of got lead poisoning.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll show it to the owner just as soon as he gets here.”

“This’ll cost plenty, I bet you. Do you want to take a look?” Before I could stop him he stretched open his mouth and showed me a chipped front incisor and a mouthful of mushed-up hamburger.

* * *

Mr. Le Renges came in at 11:00 a.m. Outside it was starting to get windy and his hair had flapped over to one side like a crow’s wing. Before I could collar him he dived straight into his office and closed the door, presumably to spend some time rearranging his wayward locks. He came out five minutes later, briskly chafing his hands together like a man eager to get down to business.

“Well, John, how did it go?”

“Pretty good, Mr. Le Renges. Place was packed out.”

“Always is. People know a good deal when they see one.”

“Only one problem. A guy found this in his burger.”

I handed him the bullet. He inspected it closely, and then he shook his head.

“That didn’t come from one of our burgers, John.”

“I saw him spit it out myself. He broke one of his front teeth.”

“Oldest trick in the book. Guy needs dental work, he comes into a restaurant and pretends he broke his tooth on something he ate. Gets the restaurant to stump up for his dentist’s bill.”

“Well, it didn’t look that way to me.”

“That’s because you’re not as well-versed in the wiles of dishonest customers as I am. You didn’t apologize, I hope?”

“I didn’t charge him for his breakfast.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, John. That’s practically an admission of liability. Well, let’s hope the bastard doesn’t try to take it any further.”

“Aren’t you going to inform the health and safety people?”

“Of course not.”

“What about your suppliers?”

“You know as well as I do that all ground beef is magnetically screened for metal particles.”

“Sure. But this is a bullet and it’s made of lead and lead isn’t magnetic.”

“They don’t
shoot
cows, John.”

“Of course not. But anything could have happened. Maybe some kid took a potshot at it when it was standing in a field, and the bullet was lodged in its muscle.”

“John, every one of our burgers is very carefully sourced from people who are really
evangelical
when it comes to quality meat. There is no way that this bullet came from one of our burgers, and I hope you’re prepared to back me up and say that there was absolutely no sign of any bullet in that customer’s patty when you grilled it.”

“I didn’t actually
see
it, no. But—”

Mr. Le Renges dropped the bullet into his wastebasket. “Attaboy, John. You’ll be back here bright and early tomorrow morning, then?”

“Early, yes. Bright? Well, maybe.”

* * *

All right, you can call me a hairsplitting go-by-the-book bureaucrat, but the way I see it any job has to be done properly or else it’s not worth getting out of bed in the morning to do it, especially if you have to get out of bed at 5:15. I walked back to the Calais Motor Inn looking for a bite of lunch, and I ordered a fried chicken salad with iceberg lettuce, tomato, bacon bits, cheddar and mozzarella and home-made croutons, with onion strings and fried pickles on the side. But as comforting as all of this was, I couldn’t stop thinking about that bullet and wondering where it had come from. I could understand why Mr. Le Renges didn’t want to report it to the health and safety inspectors, but why didn’t he want to have a hard word with his own supplier?

Velma came up with another beer. “You’re looking serious today, John. I thought you had to be happy by law.”

“Got something on my mind, Velma, that’s all.”

She sat down beside me. “How did the job go?”

“It’s an existence. I grill, therefore I am. But something happened today … I don’t know. It’s made me feel kind of uncomfortable.”

“What do you mean, John?”

“It’s like having my shorts twisted only it’s inside my head. I keep trying to tug it this way and that way and it still feels not quite right.”

“Go on.”

I told her about the bullet and the way in which Mr. Le Renges had insisted that he wasn’t going to report it.

“Well, that happens. You do get customers who bring in a dead fly and hide it in their salad so they won’t have to pay.”

“I know. But, I don’t know.”

* * *

After a double portion of chocolate ice-cream with vanilla-flavored wafers I walked back to Tony’s where the lunchtime session was just finishing. “Mr. Le Renges still here?” I asked Oona.

“He went over to St. Stephen. He won’t be back until six, thank God.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

“He gives me the heeby-jeebies, if you must know.”

I went through to Mr. Le Renges’ office. Fortunately, he had left it unlocked. I looked in the wastebasket and the bullet was still there. I picked it out and dropped it into my pocket.

* * *

On my way back to the Calais Motor Inn a big blue pick-up truck tooted at me. It was Nils Guttormsen from Lyle’s Autos, still looking surprised.

“They brought over your transmission parts from Bangor this morning, John. I should have her up and running in a couple of days.”

“That’s great news, Nils. No need to break your ass.” Especially since I don’t have any money to pay you yet.

* * *

I showed the bullet to Velma.

“That’s truly weird, isn’t it?” she said.

“You’re right, Velma. It’s weird, but it’s not unusual for hamburger meat to be contaminated. In fact, it’s more usual than unusual, which is why I never eat hamburgers.”

“I don’t know if I want to hear this, John.”

“You should, Velma. See—they used to have federal inspectors in every slaughterhouse, but the Reagan administration wanted to save money, so they allowed the meatpacking industry to take care of its own hygiene procedures. Streamlined Inspection System for Cattle, that’s what they call it—SIS-C.”

“I never heard of that, John.”

“Well, Velma, as an ordinary citizen you probably wouldn’t have. But the upshot was that when they had no USDA inspectors breathing down their necks, most of the slaughterhouses doubled their line speed, and that meant there was much more risk of contamination. I mean if you can imagine a dead cow hanging up by its heels and a guy cutting its stomach open, and then heaving out its intestines by hand, which they still do, that’s a very skilled job, and if a gutter makes one mistake
floop
! everything goes everywhere, blood, guts, dirt, manure, and that happens to one in five cattle. Twenty percent.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Oh, it’s worse than that, Velma. These days, with SIS-C, meat-packers can get away with processing far more diseased cattle. I’ve seen cows coming into the slaughterhouse with abscesses and tapeworms and measles. The beef scraps they ship out for hamburgers are all mixed up with manure, hair, insects, metal filings, urine and vomit.”

“You’re making me feel nauseous, John. I had a hamburger for supper last night.”

“Make it your last, Velma. It’s not just the contamination, it’s the quality of the beef they use. Most of the cattle they slaughter for hamburgers are old dairy cattle, because they’re cheap and their meat isn’t too fatty. But they’re full of antibiotics and they’re often infected with
E. coli
and salmonella. You take just one hamburger, that’s not the meat from a single animal, that’s mixed-up meat from dozens or even hundreds of different cows, and it only takes one diseased cow to contaminate thirty-two thousand pounds of ground beef.”

“That’s like a horror story, John.”

“You’re too right, Velma.”

“But this bullet, John. Where would this bullet come from?”

“That’s what I want to know, Velma. I can’t take it to the health people because then I’d lose my job and if I lose my job I can’t pay for my automobile to be repaired and Nils Guttormsen is going to impound it and I’ll never get back to Baton Rouge unless I fucking walk and it’s two thousand three hundred and seven miles.”

“That far, hunh?”

“That far.”

“Why don’t you show it to Eddie Bertilson?”

“What?”

“The bullet. Why don’t you show it to Eddie Bertilson. Bertilson’s Sporting Guns and Ammo, over on Orchard Street? He’ll tell you where it came from.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. He knows everything about guns and ammo. He used to be married to my cousin Patricia.”

“You’re a star, Velma. I’ll go do that. When I come back, maybe you and I could have some dinner together and then I’ll make wild energetic love to you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I like you, John, but no.”

“Oh.”

* * *

Eddie Bertilson was one of those extreme pains-in-the-ass-like people who note down the tailfin numbers of military aircraft in Turkey and get themselves arrested for espionage. But I have to admit that he knew everything possible about guns and ammo and when he took a look at that bullet he knew directly what it was.

He was small and bald with dark-tinted glasses and hair growing out of his ears, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt with greasy finger-wipes on it. He screwed this jeweler’s eyeglass into his socket and turned the bullet this way and that.