silence greeted him, not the usual busy kitchen clamor. A lone guy with a bad complexion tended to a single order of Veal Chesapeake at the range. He wore not a chef’s cap but an old-fashioned black derby.
“You Georgie?” Paul inquired.
The guy turned, grinning. “That’s right. And you must be Paul, the scumbag motherfucker who shit all over Vera.” Georgie walked around the hot line. “And she was so upset, you know what she did, brother? She just up and left town, and she took the chef with her, and our best waitress and dishman. You got any idea how bad business crashed? You got any idea how hard it is to find a restaurant manager on no notice?”
“Uh, well, no,” Paul answered.
“We’re down thirty percent on our dinners, thanks to you.”
“Look, it’s not my fault that—”
“Hey, Dim,” Georgie called out behind him. “He’s here.”
A shadow emerged from beyond the cold line, a great big blushy fat guy with long greasy hair and a mole on his face. His grin looked pressed into his lips.
“Welly welly welly well,” this Dim fellow said, and stepped up to Paul’s side, mixing a bucket of whiskey cream sauce. “How goes, lover?”
Georgie went on, “See, me and Dim here gotta practically run the whole kitchen ourselves now, on account of poor business since Vera left. It’s part of the new way. How would you like to have to do twice as much work for less money?”
“Look,” Paul said. “The girl out front said you’d tell me where Vera is.”
“Oh, right, brother, and I will. You wanna know where Vera is?”
“Yes,” Paul said.
“Well, we’ll tell you where Vera is, right, Dim?”
“Righty right,” Dim exclaimed.
“Not here,” Georgie said. “That’s where she is. Not here.”
Paul should have known. Before he could even flinch, the bucket of whiskey cream was deftly plopped onto his head by this Dim fellow. Then somebody punched the bucket, amid a flutter of chuckles. Paul felt his head snap back. A second fist sent the bucket flying, leaving Paul’s head ladled in cream. Georgie, huffing laughter, put Paul in a full nelson, propping him up. “Let ’er rip, Dim!”
Paul could only half-see through the sheen of cream. Dim stepped up, brandishing fists that were the size of croquet balls, and probably as hard. And it was these fists that were next soundly rocketed, time and time again, into Paul’s rather soft journalist’s abdominal wall.
Each blow—and there were many—knocked the wind out of him and bulged his eyes, as whiskey cream flew in darts off his head.
“Evening is the great time, eh, brother?” Georgie questioned, still pinning Paul up like a moth on a board. “Had enough, have you?”
“Yes!” Paul wheezed.
“Give him one in the balls, if he’s got any balls.”
Dim’s big combat-booted foot socked up surely as a punter’s, and caught Paul between the legs. Paul
