Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(22)
“Filets de Poisson Bercy aux Champignons,” he declared with a small flourish. “Or, more correctly, Filets de Sole Pendergast, since under the circumstances I was forced to take several shortcuts in both ingredients and technique. Now, Mr. Sheraton: Do you think you could reproduce this preparation with the greatest exactitude, for my future dinners in this establishment?”
“It’s simple enough,” Reggie said shortly.
“That’s the beauty of it.”
“But…for every dinner?”
“For my every dinner.” Pendergast reached into his pocket, extracted a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to the cook. “This is for your trouble today.”
Reggie stared at it, the look of resentment changing to surprise.
“Do you regularly work lunches as well as dinners?” Pendergast asked in a hopeful tone.
“Only twice a week,” Reggie replied.
“Ah, well. Let us then content ourselves with dinner, for the time being. Filets de Sole Pendergast for the foreseeable future, if you please. You have my thanks.” And with that, Pendergast scooped up the plate, turned, and left the kitchen.
Adderly turned to Reggie, laughing, and slapped him on the back. “Well, well, Reggie, it looks like we have a new item on our menu. What do you think?”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll add it to the chalkboard.” And Adderly exited the kitchen, chuckling to himself, leaving Reggie and the rest of the staff staring at each other in openmouthed surprise long after the double doors to the restaurant had stopped flapping.
12
Benjamin Franklin Boyle sank the clam hoe into the muck and turned over a big, fat beauty. As he plucked it out it squirted in protest, and he tossed it into the hod, took a few steps forward—his hip waders sucking loudly in protest—sank the hoe in again and pulled open a new gash in the muck, exposing two more clams. A few more steps, another swipe with the hoe, a few more clams into the hod, and then he rested, leaning on his hoe while looking across the mudflats toward the river mouth and the sea beyond. It was slack low tide and the sun was setting behind him, purpling some thunderheads on the sea horizon. It was a lovely fall evening. Boyle inhaled the smell of the salt air, the ripe scent of the mudflats—a scent he loved—and listened to the cries of the gulls as they swept and wheeled over the Exmouth marshes.
Five years ago, at age sixty-five, Boyle had given up fishing and sold his dragger. That was hard work and the scallops just seemed to get smaller and harder to find, and in the last few years mostly what he’d pulled up were useless starfish that wrecked his nets. He was glad to have gotten rid of the boat, he got a fair price for it, and he’d saved up enough money for a penny-pinching retirement. But clamming gave him something to do, brought in a little extra money, and kept him close to the sea he loved.
Having caught his breath, he looked about the shiny flats. He could see the holes of the soft-shell clams everywhere. This was a good flat and nobody had clammed it for a while, because it was so hard to get to, with a walk through sharp marsh grass and a weary trudge across another, closer flat that had already been pretty much clammed out. Getting out wasn’t so bad, really, but returning with a forty-pound hod full of clams was a bitch.
He sank his hoe into the shiny, quivering surface of mud, then pulled back, exposing more clams. He kept up the rhythm, moving a few steps forward each time, swiping, overturning, plucking, tossing, then repeating the process. As he worked, his line approached the edge of the marsh grass, and once he arrived he paused to look about for another good line. He stamped his foot on the shivering mud, and saw a bunch of squirts go off to his right. That would be a good place to dig. But as he bent down to begin his line, he glimpsed, off in the twilight, something odd: what looked like a bowling ball with hair sticking up from it. It was attached to a lumpy form, partly sunken in the murky channel that snaked through the mud.
He put down the heavy hod and moved over to investigate, his waders making an unholy noise with each step. It didn’t take long for Doyle to realize he was looking at a body, lodged in the muck, and a few more steps brought him up to it. It was a naked man, lying facedown, legs and arms splayed out, face and lower portion of the body buried several inches in the mud. The back of the head was partially bald, with a big shiny spot in the center of a ring of salt-encrusted hair. A tiny green crab, sensing motion, scuttled across from one hair patch to the other and hid cowering in the comb-over.
Boyle had seen plenty of bodies drowned and washed up, and this looked like most of them did, even down to the holes piercing the flesh here and there where ravenous sea life—crabs, fish, lobsters—had begun to feast.
He stood there for a time, wondering if he knew who this person was. He couldn’t recall the bald spot offhand, but a lot of people had bald spots, and without clothes he just couldn’t come up with a possibility. Of course he would have to call the police, but curiosity got the better of him. He still had the rake in hand, so he bent over the corpse and slid the rake into the muck under the belly. With his other hand clutching the corpse’s upper arm, he gave a pull. The body broke free of the grasping muck and flopped over with a hideous sucking-popping sound, the stiff arm smacking down hard into the mud.
Impossible to see anything; the face and torso were completely covered with black mud. Now what? He needed to rinse the mud off the face. Moving around the body, he waded into the shallows of the stream channel, cupped his hands, and began splashing water on the body. The mud ran off quickly, the stark white flesh exposed in rivulets and then sheets.