The Chef - James Patterson Page 0,25

the café’s rear service entrance, I see it’s propped open with an empty wooden vegetable crate, and so I head inside.

Like most professional kitchens, this one is a swirl of heat, noise, and chaos. Prep cooks and sous chefs in a rainbow of skin tones are chopping and dicing—and sweating buckets in the process. I wend my way through, keeping my head down and acting like I belong there, hoping I can spot the fellow I’ve come to see—if he even still works there, that is.

But after reaching the end of the kitchen, I don’t. So it’s time to open my mouth.

“You’re trimming those pork chops real nice,” I say to one of the prep cooks nearest me. He’s African American, looks about twenty-five, and wears a red, black, and green bandana over his thick mane of dreadlocks.

He makes a quizzical expression and grunts, “Thanks.”

“Hey, lemme ask you, does a guy named Ibrahim Farzat still work here? Mid-thirties, black hair, beard, accent. He washed dishes. Maybe he—”

“Naw, man. And I got work to do.”

I can’t tell if this guy really doesn’t know Farzat, if he’s too busy to talk to a stranger, or if he’s hiding something. I decide to try someone else.

“’Scuse me,” I say to a tough-looking Hispanic fellow in his forties, julienning a pile of carrots. “Do you know a dishwasher who works here named Ibrahim Farzat?”

Without stopping cutting, he flashes me a suspicious look.

“You a cop or something?”

“More like a private eye.”

“Is Abe in some kinda trouble?”

“No, nothing like that. But I really have to speak to him. It’s a family emergency.”

The man shrugs, ignoring me.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I say. “I just want to talk to him. When’s the last time you saw him here? Does anybody have an address, or a number I can—”

“You don’t want any trouble, huh?” the cook says, his voice thickening with menace. He finally stops his chopping, but tightens his grip on his knife. “You come in here in your little chef costume, start bothering people, asking questions. Get out.”

I glance around the kitchen. A few other sous chefs nearby have stopped their work, too, to watch this brewing confrontation. They also seem to be readying their blades. It’s been decades since I worked in a brick-and-mortar restaurant like this and I forgot how strong the brotherly bonds among kitchen staff can be.

“You’re making a mistake here,” I insist. “The man you used to know might be—”

“Luis said get out,” says another sous chef on my left. He takes a step toward me, holding his cleaver just above waist level. I see it’s damp with fresh cow’s blood.

This whole thing is going south fast.

I really wish I had my sidearm right now, and I think of grabbing one of the knives or cleavers and beating a hasty yet armed retreat.

But I don’t want to make a scene, I don’t want any violence, and most of all, at this point and as a fellow chef, I don’t want to screw up the prep work for Bea’s hardworking and loyal crew.

So I hold my hands out and say, “Sorry to disturb you guys. Have a great night, okay?”

Then I get the hell out of there.

Back to my car, I’m pissed I didn’t get any info on Farzat, but then again, maybe there was no info to get from that crew of cooks and sous chefs.

At this point, I just don’t know.

I strip off my chef’s apron in disgust, open up the trunk of the car, and toss it in with a well-earned swear word.

My first attempt at getting a lead on this threatened terrorist attack on my hometown has just failed. I’m glad Cunningham wasn’t around to witness it.

I slam the trunk.

But I’ll be damned if I’m giving up.

I speak into the darkness.

“I don’t know who you are or where you are,” I say. “But I’m coming after you.”

Chapter 20

THE NEXT morning I slide into work with the muscle-memory of hundreds of cooking shifts, but my mind is elsewhere after last night’s failed attempt to get information out of Bea’s cooking staff. As I cut, chop, and prep, I run through last night’s events, wondering if I should have tried something else, like talking to Bea herself instead of the suspicious kitchen staff.

Marlene speaks to me twice and on the third time, she kicks me in the shin.

“Hey!” I yell out.

“Hey, yourself,” she says, wiping her hands on a cloth. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing, I’m working here. What’s