French Pressed

precision.

Precise, the killer thought, I must be precise. No flinching. No hesitation. Thrust down fast. Plunge hard and true…

Vinny turned his back, and the knife went in smoothly, past skin, through muscle, avoiding bone. The flailing was minimal, the noise a weak howl. It was done now—over. And so was Vincent Buccelli. The boy was just another piece of meat.

One

“Ugh,” I murmured. “This coffee’s absolute poison…”

No, the lukewarm ebony liquid sloshing around my bone china cup wasn’t actually lethal, just bitter, old, and lifeless—the kind of adjectives I would have been mortified to hear uttered about my coffee, God forbid my person.

“It can’t be that bad,” Madame said. “Let me give it a try.”

Sitting across from me at one of Solange’s linen-shrouded tables for two, my ex-mother-in-law lifted her cup and sipped. “Oh, my…” With a frown, she brought a napkin to her gently wrinkled face, closed her eyes, and discreetly spat out the offending liquid—a routine gesture for an industry cupping, not for one of New York’s finest French restaurants.

Up to now, the meal had been astounding. My appetizer of oysters had been poached in champagne, lovingly sauced, and placed back in their shells with a flavor and texture that defined delicate. My entrée of butter- browned lobster—artfully arranged around a flan of porcini mushrooms and earthy foie gras—had danced across my taste buds with savory succulence. And for desert, a modern execution of a traditional tarte Tatin, with spicy-sweet cardamom-laced apples and a drizzle of ginger-caramel coulis, had been presented in a pastry so tender it melted on my tongue like newly spun cotton candy.

The entire experience had been orgasmic, a seduction by color, taste, and sensation, with bite after bite making me shiver. Not that I was a restaurant critic.

I, Clare Cosi, middle-class working stiff, was the manager of a landmark coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, and although my experience with food was long-standing—from my childhood years making stove-top espressos in my grandmother’s Pennsylvania grocery to my part-time catering work and culinary writing—it was small-time stuff in light of this four-star establishment.

In short, I was a cook, not a chef. I didn’t have the authoritative status to officially declare whether or not Solange’s particular take on nouvelle cuisine deserved its place alongside Per Se, Le Bernardin, and Daniel, the highest-flying stars in the Big Apple’s culinary circus. But even a long-haul trucker could have judged that Solange’s food was exquisite, while its coffee had all the appeal of Mississippi swamp mud.

“It’s like a seduction gone wrong,” Madame proclaimed. “A princely suitor who shows up with impeccable manners, romances you all night, and escorts you gallantly to the door, then lunges at your breasts with octopus hands and breath foul enough to choke a horse.”

A knee-jerk cackle bubbled up in my throat; considering the mannered dining room, I promptly choked it down. “Don’t hold back, Madame. Tell me what you really think.”

My former mother-in-law rolled her eyes to the chandeliered ceiling. “There’s no point in mincing words past your eightieth birthday. What good is being subtle when you might drop dead midsentence? If you’ve got a point to make, make it, for goodness’ sake!” She lifted her hand, and our waiter instantly appeared. “Please take this away. I’m sorry to tell you, it’s undrinkable.”

René, a somber Haitian gentleman with a heavy French accent, bowed slightly. “C’est dommage. I am profoundly sorry.” He snapped his fingers, and another uniformed staff member—a young Latino man—swept in to remove the coffee service.

“Perhaps I can suggest a dessert wine,” René said.

Madame glanced at me, but I tapped my watch and shook my head. “I’ve had enough wine. More will just put me to sleep. I still have to lock up downtown.”

“Just another bottle of water,” Madame told René.

“Of course. Please enjoy it with my compliments.”

The young Latino busboy returned to pour our comped container of twelve-dollar water, and we sank back into the buffed leather upholstery to sip our palates clean again.

By now, the hour was late, and few tables around us were occupied. Most of the restaurant’s chic clientele had cleared out already: The older couples were making their long drives back to estates on Long Island and north Jersey. The CEOs and brokers were strolling toward their Park Avenue pieds-à-terre to check overseas markets. Even the Yuppsters were gone, running up bar tabs at the Second Avenue pickup marts or the artisanal gin mills of the Meatpacking District.

Observing the now-serene dining room, I could see why Solange had become so popular. Aside from the abysmal coffee and typical astronomical prices of a New York house of haute cuisine, the restaurant truly was adorable. The interior was based on Paris’s famous Les Deux Magots café, where Simone de Beauvoir liked to write. There were maroon banquettes topped by polished rails of brass, crystal and copper chandeliers, columns the color of crème fraîche, and even a bit of whimsy in the form of carved wooden gargoyles affixed high on the sunny yellow walls.

The corners held cherrywood end tables with vases of fresh lilies, and the plain white signature china displayed the word Solange, handwritten by the restaurant’s acclaimed executive chef, Tommy Keitel. According to a note on the menu, the signature had been reproduced from a cloth napkin, taken from a legendary restaurant on the west bank of Paris, where the American-born Keitel had trained and first envisioned his own New York establishment.

Also according to the menu, the name of the restaurant had its roots in a French religious legend: Saint Solange had pledged her chastity to God, then lost her young life fleeing a smitten abductor.

I actually blanched when I’d read that tragic tale, given what I’d recently learned about my own daughter’s love life.

“On balance, a marvelous experience,” Madame said, interrupting my reverie. “You should be quite proud of Joy.”

Of course, I was proud of my daughter. I’d watched her progress from a young teen, struggling to master Martha Stewart’s recipes, to an accomplished student at a challenging New York culinary school. The typical intern in a kitchen wouldn’t do more than assist a prep cook: wash and cut vegetables, clean chickens, peel shrimp, crack dozens of eggs, and generally fetch and carry. But because of her “special friendship” with Tommy Keitel, Joy excitedly told me that for two dinner services a week she’d been promoted to legumier; she was to prepare the menu’s vegetables.

Unfortunately, that fact failed to make me proud, because the “special friendship” with her boss was a euphemism. Joy was carrying on an affair with Chef Keitel, a man who wasn’t just thirty years her senior but also happened to be married with children.

The subject reminded me of why I was here in the first place: to snoop.

“Speaking of Joy,” I said, setting down my leaded crystal goblet of water, “I was hoping I might slip into the kitchen and pay her a visit. Since starting her internship year, I’ve hardly seen her. Would you like to come along?”

Madame raised a silver-white eyebrow. “So I can referee your next mother-daughter knock-down-drag- out?”

“We’ve called a truce.”

“The terms?”

“We’ve agreed to disagree about her affair.” I shrugged. “If I don’t bring it up, she won’t—and she’ll keep talking to me.”

“Is that so?”

“Joy’s an adult now,” I said with a profoundly distressing sigh, “and, as her father pointed out to me—several times—judging her won’t do much more than push her away. Frankly, I’m expecting her to be let down badly by