Tick Tock - James Patterson [36]
At the opposite end of the wood-paneled room, Berger nodded with approval. Then he carefully tucked his damask napkin into his shirt, closed his eyes, and inhaled.
Invisible ribbons of hunger-inflaming scents from the vicinity of the swinging kitchen door behind him invaded his quivering nostrils. He detected nutty sizzling butters, meat smoke, soups redolent of mushrooms and leeks, decanted vintage wine. His palate was so sensitive, he felt he could actually distinguish the separate odors dissolving against the postage stamp–size tissue called the olfactory epithelium, high in his nasal cavity.
“Now, sir?” whispered the bug-eyed tuxedo-clad maître d’ at his back.
The arrangement was that only the maître d’ could serve or speak to him. Berger never spoke back, but rather indicated his wishes with a series of predetermined head and facial gestures. He had even asked that the shades be drawn to keep the dining space as dark as possible.
Berger waited a moment longer, holding in the glorious aromas, a junkie with a hit of crack smoke. Then he gave a subtle nod.
The maître d’s finger snap was like a starter pistol, and in came the white-jacketed waiters with the plates. They were actually more like platters. There were mounds of brioche, caviar, quiche, a roast duck, a crème brûlée, oysters, a gravy boat filled with a saffron-colored sauce, and more. It was hard to tell which meal was being served.
It was actually all of them, a montage of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Berger immediately tucked in. The first thing within his grasp was a still-warm baguette. He ripped off a hunk in a detonation of flaky crumbs, stabbed it into a tub of white truffle butter, and slammed it into his waiting mouth. More crumbs went flying as he chewed with his mouth open. He loudly slurped at a glass of Cabernet, spilling much of it. Arterial-red rivulets dripped unnoticed off his chin as he reached for the plate of oysters.
He was well aware that he was breaking every rule of table etiquette. No doubt about it, he had a soft spot for food. When it came to meals, he literally became overwhelmed, almost drugged, with all the smells and tastes and, lately, even textures. He was so unabashedly gluttonous, he didn’t even use silverware anymore but went at it with his bare hands like a savage in order to heighten his obsessive pleasure. The consumption of food had become something shameless, almost horrifying, and yet in a very real sense, somehow divine.
Like the famous killers Berger so admired, he possessed an intensity of desire for certain things that other people either couldn’t understand or were afraid to even consider.
The maître d’ cleared his throat.
“More wine, sir?” he whispered beside his ear.
Berger nodded as he ripped into the duck with his bare hands, fingernails tearing deliciously at the crispy, greasy skin.
More, Berger thought, filling his mouth until his cheeks bulged. My favorite word.
Chapter 40
IT WAS TWO IN THE AFTERNOON when Berger got out of a taxi in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Dapper as can be in a chalk-pinstripe Alexander McQueen power suit, he carried a brown paper bag in his right hand, and in his left his lucky cane. The razor-sharp saber inside it had a grinning pewter skull for a handle that he kept hidden under his palm as he strolled.
He arrived at Sixth Avenue and made a right. A block up the leafy, brownstone-lined street, he paused by the steps of a church. He made the sign of the cross as he glanced at himself in the window of a parked Prius. He unbuttoned his jacket to show off his Hermès tie and handmade single-stitched Turnbull & Asser shirt. Now was not the time for Christian modesty.
He counted the addresses until he came to 485. He stepped up the stoop and rang the doorbell with the cane.
The forty-something redheaded man who opened the door was wearing a Fordham T-shirt and shiny black