“Maureen Gross told us she volunteered to deliver those papers. What if she was going with Williams by then, saw the address on the documents, and took the opportunity to combine business with pleasure?”

“When Kathy dumped Kleffer she told him she needed someone more stable. What, Williams convinced her his cuisine was more haute?”

“More likely Williams conned her the same way he conned Fellinger.”

He frowned. “Yale, playwright. Yeah, that would work.”

“For all we know he had her believing he was a bona fide attorney. Working at the firm, Williams would’ve picked up more than enough jargon to be convincing. We need to talk to Kleffer again. I just tried to reach him, no success. But let’s give it another shot.”

This time, the chef answered and I asked if he knew Jens Williams.

“That fucker, that fucking asshole fucker! Tell me before you find him, give me fucking five minutes alone with him in a fucking locked room, I bring my Japanese cleaver, I turn him into fucking paste, I grind his bones in a fucking duck press, I—!”

I held the phone out to Milo.

He took it and said, “Darius, when’s your next break?”

CHAPTER

32

Kleffer met us in the cut between Beppo Bippo and the furniture store. We found him smoking and stamping each foot in turn. His back was to us. One palm was pressed to the wall, pushing stucco hard enough to raise sinews on his arm. Dime-store Samson out to topple the world around him. When he saw us, he shoved his phone at us. “Look!”

The tiny screen shook in his grasp, a rectangle filled with movement and sound. The scene was white-garbed people, slicing, sautéing, deep-frying. The soundtrack was clatter.

Kleffer jabbed the mini-movie. “See?”

Milo said, “See what?”

“Shit—look—shit, I lost it, hold hold—shit okay, here, this is me. With the sausage. And over there, in the back—what the fuck—okay … there. That’s him!”

Enlarging a corner of the image, he indicated a tall, thin figure behind a stainless-steel counter. Dark hair streamed from under the man’s snood. Heavy-rimmed eyeglasses stood out against pale skin but even at max size, features weren’t discernible.

Hands worked fast. Chop chop chop.

Milo said, “That’s Jens Williams?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Kleffer. “He was called J.J. A better name is Asshole.”

“You worked together?”

“The New York food scene, people move between the same places.”

“Which restaurant is this?”

“No, no,” said Kleffer. “This is no restaurant, this is a show. Mega-Chef Slice-Dice.”

“For TV?”

“Yeah, yeah, The Gourmet Network. This was the pilot, it didn’t get picked up. I got on the A-team because I was already sou-ing for Mr. Luong, he knew I had talent. Asshole got on Billy Slade’s team, wanted to sous but only got prep.”

“Prep being—”

“You slice raw vegetables over and over. That’s like you suck.”