Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [0]
IN THE
THROAT
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Fiction
Gone Bamboo
Non-Fiction
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
BONE
IN
THE
THROAT
Anthony Bourdain
BLOOMSBURY
Copyright © 1995 by Anthony Bourdain
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
eISBN: 978-1-59691-723-1
Originally published in hardcover in 1995 by Villard Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.
This paperback edition published by Bloomsbury in 2000
13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14 12
Printed in the United States of America by R.R. Donnelley & Sons,
Harrisonburg, Virginia
To Nancy
. . . Mise-en-place is also
a state of mind. Someone
who has truly grasped the
concept is able to keep
many tasks in mind
simultaneously, weighing and
assigning each its proper
value and priority. This
assures that the chef has
anticipated and prepared
for every situation that
could logically occur
during a service period.
— The New Professional Chef
by the Culinary Institute of America
(Fifth Edition)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Acknowledgments
Thanks to: Gordon Howard, David Rosenthal, Tad Floridis, Beth Pearson . . . and the testimony of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
BONE
IN THE
THROAT
Prologue
THAT A DEAD body should be found washed up on the beach was not so unusual. Sandy Hook had had more than its share of floaters over the years. Hog-tied union officials in advanced stages of decomposition, crab-eaten torsos, discarded pets, missing children, drug dealers in oil drums; they came down with the current. Carried out of New York Harbor, down the Jersey coast, they filled with gas and popped to the surface before coming in with the tide.
Dr. Russel Breen, the Sandy Hook medical examiner, called away from his breakfast at the Tips for Tops Luncheonette, took one look at the latest, saw the duct tape around the wrists and ankles, the ligature marks under the chin, the welts indicating blunt force trauma, and the bullet holes in the back of the head, and declared him a city boy.
"No way he's local," he said. Another present from the Big Apple, he thought. He took X rays of the dead man's teeth (what was left of them) and some photographs (front and side view) and faxed them to the city.
He couldn't get any prints. The skin fell away from the fingers en masse. The hair was long gone, and the face, or what was left of it, was distorted beyond hope of recognition. The mans belly, swollen by the gas, had an umbilical hernia; the navel extruded like a turkey thermometer. When Dr. Breen turned his attention to the man's mouth, running a gloved finger around inside the cavity, he wondered at first if somebody had built a fire in there. The tongue was charred, and there were bits of red and brown paper embedded in the palate. Most of the teeth were gone, and the cheeks, blackened and torn, hung in spongy strips over the ears, as if somebody had tried to pull the mans face inside out and failed. Dr.