Bloodless

25

Francis Wellstone Jr. sat in a rear corner banquette of Lafitte’s restaurant — one of Savannah’s most historic eateries, situated just off Warren Square. He always ate lunch promptly at noon, and when he was on assignment, he usually ate out and was careful to make his meals brisk, without wine or cocktails, and solus. Writing and researching were hard work. A freelancer such as himself had no boss to motivate him, no one checking up on his whereabouts, and it was all too easy to have a few martinis and let the afternoon and evening slide away. He’d seen it happen many times to other writers, and he was determined it would never happen to him.

As luck would have it, the maître d’ at Lafitte’s was a voracious reader of nonfiction and happened to recognize Wellstone. While he hated to admit it to himself, this was tremendously gratifying. With great ceremony, the man ushered Wellstone to a prize table, and then — unexpectedly — returned a few minutes later with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Wellstone was about to refuse it until he noticed it was a Beaucastel: a princely gift, and one of his favorite reds of the Rhône Valley. Under the circumstances, there was no choice but to have one glass. One. It might well be gauche for him to take the rest of the bottle with him, but it would be even more gauche for the restaurant manager to repossess it. So he’d still be able to do a full afternoon’s work, then reward himself with the rest of the bottle after a light dinner.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. The sommelier, after uncorking the wine, immediately decanted it. So much for taking home the rest of the bottle. But the wine was excellent: earthy, almost leathery. As he was looking over the menu, Wellstone found that not only had he finished the glass, but a second had been poured for him. What the heck — he could take an afternoon off. He ordered an appetizer of escargots à la Bordelaise and then, feeling expansive, Lafitte’s famous oysters Rockefeller. But by the time he’d finished the two courses, and three glasses of wine, an uncomfortable satiety, combined with a dismaying lunchtime buzz, made him feel both guilty and discomposed. Not a good idea, after all.

What was he doing here, anyway? The book was almost finished, and it was an excellent piece of reportage. He had more than enough extra material to put together a prologue and an epilogue. Christ, the book was already a scathing indictment of paranormal charlatanism, and he really didn’t need a final exposé to cap it.

He’d spent — wasted — nearly five days already. Even this unexpected vampire story, which had materialized out of the blue, wasn’t worth the candle. He might be deluding himself that this was a good investment of his time. Learning that his old nemesis Barclay Betts would be filming a documentary here had no doubt goaded him on — that, and Betts’s damnable libel suit against him. He shouldn’t have allowed that to cloud his judgment. He was meeting with Daisy later this afternoon; he would find out if she had anything solid and incriminating on Betts, and if not, he might just wrap this up, call it quits, and head north to Boston to put the final touches on the manuscript before turning it in to his publisher.

As he’d been musing, he noticed the sommelier had crept up and refilled his glass. Well, he didn’t have to drink it.

At that moment, the restaurant’s front door opened and he saw none other than Barclay Betts stroll in, followed by his cinematographer and half a dozen or so hangers-on. Bloody hell. Wellstone reached for the dessert menu as a shield, but realized it had already been taken away when he’d ordered an espresso. He’d drain that and be gone.

He raised the fresh glass of wine to his lips.

Betts’s loud voice and braying laugh were disturbing the restrained atmosphere of the restaurant. Heads turned as the party made its progress. As it did so, Wellstone realized that the only tables capable of supporting such a large group were the banquettes along the back wall — and the only free one was directly next to his.

He half stood, preparing to raise his hand and ask a waiter to forget the espresso and bring his check instead, but at that moment — just as one waiter was seating Betts & Co. with a cacophony of scraping and tinkling — his own waiter, accompanied by the maître d’, approached, carrying something on a platter beneath a domed silver lid.

They slipped it in front of him and, before Wellstone could protest, the maître d’ whisked off the lid to reveal a white ramekin with a jiggly yellow mass spreading out above it like a miniature mushroom cloud.

“Et voilà!” the maître d’ said as he slipped a sauce boat onto the table beside the plate. “Since Monsieur Wellstone will not order dessert, we have taken the liberty to prepare one for him. Soufflé a l’orange, with the compliments of Lafitte’s!” And again, before Wellstone could protest, the man took two serving spoons, dug out a large mound of soufflé—the remainder quickly sinking back below the edges of the ramekin — placed it on the dessert plate, and drizzled some of the warm sauce artfully over it, putting the sauce boat to one side.

Both the waiter and the maître d’ now stood back proudly, and there was nothing Wellstone could do but murmur thanks.

“Smells good!” said one of the goons from Betts’s table. They were now all seated, whipping open napkins and picking up the oversize menus.

Wellstone ignored them. He’d eat the soufflé as quickly as decorum allowed, then leave before the laughter and conversation arising from the next table spoiled his lunch. The afternoon was shot. This whole trip was a waste of time. If he chose, he might be back in Boston as early as tomorrow, ending his book with another, more elegant flourish. But first things first — he always carried a book or two of his in his briefcase, and he made a mental note to sign one to the maître d’ with an especially thoughtful inscription.

Just as he was raising a spoonful of the dessert to his mouth, the bray of Betts’s nasal laugher sounded from the adjoining banquette. “Well, well!” he said. “Look who it is. Horace Greeley himself. Trip over any lawsuits recently, Frankie?”

The resulting laughter washed over Wellstone, his table, and his dessert. He put the spoon down and picked up his wineglass instead. “Barclay Betts,” he said, the wine making his voice strangely attenuated in his own ears. “That explains the smell. And here I thought someone had tracked in dog shit from the street.”

Betts laughed good-humoredly. “What are you down here for, anyway? Have New York and Boston run out of creeps and perverts with law degrees for you to blackmail?”

This, of course, was a snarky reference to his first book, Malice Aforethought. Wellstone took another, deeper sip of wine. Swearing at Betts had felt good. He had no reason to be polite to the man. Encouraged by the wine, he said, “Thanks, but there are quite enough creeps right here at the next table,” he replied.

Betts laughed again, with a little less humor this time. “Is it possible I’m speaking to a new Francis Wellstone? I thought you saved all the tough talk for your books and were only timid in person. Don’t tell me you’ve grown a pair.”

Wellstone drained his wineglass. “Why don’t you go back to your sycophants and toadies? At least they will laugh at your puerile, stunted attempts at witticism. You remind me of that charming description of S. J. Perelman: Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Piltdown Man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence.”

“Well...!” Betts said, inhaling, temporarily stunned but preparing his next sally.

“Well, well!” interrupted Wellstone, mimicking Betts’s pompous, theatrical voice. The wine had muzzled his internal traffic cop. “Speaking of wells, how is that well of yours? Find any corpses down there after all?”

The Well had been a pet project of Betts’s two years before. Traveling through Dutchess County, he’d heard about a farmhouse that belonged to a man who — according to local lore — had killed drifters and hitchhikers and thrown the bodies down his well. Betts decided the stories were true, even though the authorities didn’t think so and had never investigated. Betts leased the property and raised money for a special live television event in which the well was dug up to uncover the foul crimes. Nothing was found, Betts was embarrassed, and it set back his career a few years. Rumor was he never allowed the project to be mentioned in his presence.

“Watch it, Frankie boy,” Betts said. Wellstone could see, with a rising sense of triumph, that Betts was losing his cool.

“Now who needs to grow a pair?” Wellstone replied, imperially and drunkenly disdainful from the safety of his banquette. “You can’t sue me for what I say to your face, especially if it’s true. But don’t worry,” he went on in a sarcastic voice, encouraged even more by seeing Betts’s face darken with anger. “My critique of your Well project, which I shall shortly publish, is only three words long — brief enough for even your infantile attention span. Care to hear it?” And he leaned a little unsteadily toward the leather curve of the banquette. “Al. Capone’s. Vault.”

At this mention of the most ridiculous special ever to air on TV, Betts put his napkin aside and stood up. He moved slowly, however, and Wellstone felt in no physical danger — until the producer plucked the sauce boat from Wellstone’s table and poured warm crème anglaise all over the writer’s pants, shirt, and tie, paying particularly careful attention to the crotch, which he decorated in large, inelegant loops as Wellstone sat there, momentarily thunderstruck. But only momentarily: he launched himself over the edge of the banquette toward Betts, who skipped backward with a harsh guffaw. A musclebound crew member leapt up and deflected Wellstone’s charge with a shove of outstretched palms, and he half rolled, half tumbled back into his own banquette, falling across his table — which promptly collapsed. As Wellstone hit the floor, and before he could process the full indignity of what had just transpired, he became aware of two things: the unpleasant musky smell of the carpeting pressing against his nose, and the inverted plate of soufflé that now lay against the nape of his neck, its contents sliding down his back in a sticky warm stream.