First Thrills Page 6

  “You know a lot about cooking.”

  “Spent eight years planning my last supper. I deserve to die, no question about that, but I also deserve a good home-cooked meal before I go.”

  “Might be tough to pull off something fancy in the kitchen here.”

  “But you could cook it for me, Preacher.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure. Please?”

  “No, Preacher can’t,” is all I say. I want to add: “Especially not for the bastard who murdered my wife,” but the good Lord holds my tongue in place.

  It’s almost dawn. I can’t sleep. The Puff monster didn’t recognize me; guess I had changed a lot in eight years. How easy it is for some people to forget the taste of murder. I pull the Smith & Wesson Model 60 out from under the bed, stumble down to the kitchen, and place it on the counter next to the 9-inch Switchblade Stiletto CarbonFiber. The gun is dull, chunky, and awkward, but the silver blade dances smooth and fit under the kitchen lights. Yin and yang, male and female.

  I sell the Double Action .38 caliber for $495 on eBay; the auction takes seven minutes.

  I’m not going to shoot Puff, not now, not after how much I’ve grown, evolved. Mary wouldn’t want that; the man she married is a priest, not some common thug.

  That day I beg Peter Radin to do everything he can to grant Judd Perkins a clemency. I pull the Bishop Neal card, too. My campaign begins: an eye-for- an-eye makes the world go blind.

  And I decide to cook Puff’s last supper.

  The most delicious meal of his entire wretched life.

  Formaggi

  Two weeks left for Puff.

  I’m in the visitor’s booth at Huntsville, working through the menu. “I researched deadmaneating .com,” I report. “You’re right, not one death row inmate ever asked for mushroom pâte.”

  “So you’ll do it?” he asks.

  I pull out a pad and a pen. “I was thinking we’d start off with puff-ball soup, you know, given your nickname and all that.”

  “No, no. I wrote it all out for you already.”

  “So you knew I would agree to cook for you?”

  Puff grins a yellow smile. “Make sure you get only the freshest ingredients, local and organic, like Martha says.”

  “Like Martha says,” I repeat, now relegated to a sous chef to Death Row’s very own Julia Child. A guard passes me the slip of paper filled with perfect handwriting:

  Country Duck and Hen of the Woods Pâte

  Lobster and Wild Mushroom Risotto with

  Basil Mascarpone Crème

  Porcini-crusted Lamb Loin with

  Sautéed Chanterelles and Fava Beans

  Candy Cap Mushrooms Pots de Crème

  Six bottles of Yoo- hoo

  The Yoo-hoo I was expecting, the rest of the dishes I was not.

  “Sure have a thing for mushrooms,” I say.

  “Eight years I’ve been planning. I can imagine every one of ’em dishes too . . . the textures, the smells, the complexity . . .” Puff closes his eyes and moves toward the visitor booth glass, his mouth dangerously close to where the previous inmate had cow-licked or spat. “It was the last thing I saw before they locked me up.”

  “What last thing?”

  “Mushrooms, I saw mushrooms. Last thing I saw on the outside.”

  I want to scream that, no, it was my beautiful wife gored and dying beneath him, that was the last thing he saw. But all I say is:

  “Mushroom it is.”

  Frutta

  The shopping takes more time than the cooking, but I don’t mind; Mary would have wanted me to do right by Puff. I’m at the farmer’s market on the Rice University campus, inspecting fava beans and asparagus, when Peter calls.

  “Texas Board of Pardons is almost sewn up,” he reports. “Cost me a ton of markers. Your letters helped a lot; nobody’s gonna make a fuss on this one if you don’t. You sure about this?”

  “Mary and my unborn child would have wanted it this way.”

  As I’m thumping an organic cantaloupe, Bill Reater, owner of Texas Mushroom Farms, presents a bag full of fresh Morchella esculenta as if holding out a newborn.

  “Dug ’em up thirty miles east of Austin; going back this afternoon to find me some more,” Reater says. “Mighty healthy walk out by the Pedernales River. God’s country. Helps work stuff out.”

  Somehow he knows I need stuff worked out in the worst way.

  Maybe the old farmer sees the sin whirling in my brain, smells the most wicked fantasy I’m baking. It was impossible, but yet I cannot let go of the puzzle:

  How do I get my beautifully efficient switchblade on the table for Puff’s last supper?

  I agree to go mushroom hunting with Reater.

  We spend the afternoon drudging through an elm forest, noses down, eyes glued to the undergrowth. Reater talks in a low whisper, as if he might spook the mushrooms and they would fold up their caps and slurp themselves back into the soil. He peppers our hunt with juicy morsels: “mushrooms are like people; some good, some bad, some downright poison” and “all you need for shiitakes is olive oil, salt, and pepper.”

  Puff may have been obsessed with mushrooms, but Reater was in love with them.

  “There, a fungus among us!” he shouts at one point.

  “What are those?” I ask, ever the obedient student.

  “Highly caespitose,” Reater reports, pulling fresh specimens from under a juniper bush. “Those gray ones are forest mushrooms, and these are clamshells.”

  “Look the same to me. I can never tell them apart.”

  The afternoon ages and soon my basket is stuffed with strange, twisted, alien fungi: morels and meadow mushrooms and what not. An owl hoots above in the elms. I sit on a fallen tree and bury my face in my hands.

  “ Told you,” Reater says, giving me space. “ ’Shroom hunting works stuff out.”

  The old farmer is dead right. The tears are there but the revenge is gone, the hate is gone, the emptiness, gone. For the first time since Mary passed, I feel whole, I feel alive. I look up into the sun streaming through the forest canopy, clasping my hands in prayer.

  “Took me eight years, Mary,” I mutter, eyes wet. “But I finally got those mushrooms you asked for.”

  The old man of the woods shouts from a clearing: “D’you know one Portabella mushroom has more potassium than a banana?”

  I stand up, a great weight lifted off my shoulders.

  It was time to cook.

  Dolce

  Puff’s last day.

  Peter calls three times that morning, apologizing profusely, the Board of Pardons hasn’t gotten around to the appeal. I tell him that he did all that he could do.

  I pass through security and into 12 Building at Huntsville at dusk pushing a luggage dolly loaded with two thermally insulated plastic bins. The guards follow me, anxious to inspect the chef priest’s meal. I pass them a grocery bag filled with cookies.

  “Two dozen with cinnamon and walnut, two dozen plain,” I announce.

  “Will go nice for our party,” the shift captain says. The guards always threw a party the night before an execution.

  “There’ll be plenty of leftovers, too,” I say. “I made twelve servings of everything.”

  As the guards inspect my bins, I encourage them to sample the cookies. My distraction fails. One of the guards hands the captain my 9-inch Switchblade CarbonFiber knife.

  “Can’t take this in, Reverend.”

  “How’s he supposed to cut the lamb?”

  “We’ll give you a plastic knife.”

  “Plastic? That will just shred the meat and make a mess. Can’t I just cut it for him?”

  “Nope. State reg.”

  “It’s not like I’m gonna try to kill him or anything.”

  The captain shrugs. “But he might try.”

  At last I’m allowed into the dining cell. Puff is wearing all white, smiling like an angel. “I could smell it cooking all week,” he says, pining over the warm bins. He catches hi
mself, embarrassed, then shuts his eyes and prays. While he recites obscure scriptures even I can’t recall, I cover the table with plastic utensils and paper plates and a rainbow assortment of Tupperware bowls.

  I join Puff in grace. We bow our heads together, for a moment, brothers.

  “First, an aperitif,” I begin when he is ready. I pass him a plastic shot glass filled with brown liquid. “Kombucha, a mushroom- infused tea to cleanse your palette, best served cold. Compliments of the chef.”

  “Yum. Tastes like apple cider.”

  I take the empty cup and slide Puff a small plate.

  “Next, a wild duck and mushroom pâte served on a fresh bed of baby greens and arugula . . .

  One by one I present each course. Puff eats like a horse, bare-toothed. His appetite is unstoppable. Between bites he chants: “Puff in heaven. Puff in heaven.” I worry that there won’t be leftovers for the guards’ party.

  At last maple sweetness fills the air and he’s shoveling his way through the candy cap mushroom dessert. That’s when I make my confession: “Mr. Perkins, I tried to stay your execution. I have friends in Austin and I thought they could get a clemency granted. But they couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Puff drops his spoon. “Why the hell you do that?”

  “So you wouldn’t die, of course.”

  “But I wanna die! Been waiting eight years to see Joe Bryd! And this is exactly how I want to go, too, with a belly full of the best food ever cooked!”

  I don’t know what to say. I ask Puff if he wants to join me in prayer.

  He says no.

  “Preacher, you don’t make no sense. I don’t know why you wanted to cook for me like this, and I don’t know why you’d stop my injection after what I did to you. All I can figure is that the good Lord is deep inside you.”

  “What you did to me?” I ask.

  “Well, not you. Your woman.”

  “You know who I am?”

  Puff wipes a dab of pots de crème from his charcoal lips. “Won’t never forget. I’m sorry about your Mary. I pray for that woman every night. Heard she was with child, too. Damn shame. I could never be the man you are, Preacher . . . a forgiving man, a man that don’t take revenge. I had to kill that Turk bastard for taking my son from me, but you, you’re strong. I’m twice your size, but I could never be as strong as you.”

  The silence that follows isn’t awkward, it’s music. As I stack the discarded plates and Tupperware back in the bins, Puff rubs his belly, grinning and burping like a sleepy child.

  “Good-bye, Puff. God be with you.”

  Digestivo

  I’m not hungry after watching a man eat like that. I drive home, exhausted. Five messages are waiting for me on my answering machine, all from Peter.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Peter shouts when I call him back.

  “At Huntsville, had my phone off. What’s up?”

  “I got your clemency, that’s what’s up! Two parts expert politicking and one part Miracle of God but the governor signed it. Your boy Judd Perkins is off Death Row. State won’t be killing that one.”

  “Thank you, Peter. Can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  I go straight to bed. Funny thing about that night: I don’t recall sleeping that well in years. Slept right through dawn, right through breakfast. If the phone hadn’t rung, I might have slept all the way through lunch.

  “Reverend? You coming in today?”

  It was the warden at Huntsville calling.

  “Thought I’d take a day off after last night,” I reply, my voice all gravel.

  “Damn bizarre night, I agree. We got your dishes all cleaned up. Your fancy knife, too.”

  “I’ll pick it all up next week, thanks.”

  “You got a minute? Dr. Klausner needs to ask you a couple of questions.”

  I heard the warden whisper, place his hand over the receiver. Dr. Klausner was the medical examiner for Huntsville. I sat up in bed.

  “Morning, Reverend. This is John Klausner, the ME over here. Need to ask you a couple things, procedural stuff.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’m trying to nail down the cause of death of one Judd Perkins. From what I can gather—”

  “Puff is dead?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s not possible,” I interject. “The attorney general called me last night, the governor granted clemency.”

  “That’s right, he did. Perkins never went to the gurney; he didn’t die from injection. He just, well, near as I can figure, he just up and died in his cell last night.”

  “Died? How?”

  “Not sure. I’m thinking it was the stress of the execution, that and maybe some overeating—”

  “You’re not suggesting that my dinner caused him to—”

  “No, not at all. The guards ate your leftovers and not one had so much as a bellyache. There was nothing wrong with your food. I heard what you did, pulling strings to try to get the governor to stay the execution.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Reverend, this inmate had a history of kidney problems. He was a diabetic. I’m just wondering if I should pull a full autopsy and order extra blood work.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Was Perkins complaining of any stomach pains last night?”

  “No, nothing. He ate like there was no tomorrow.”

  A pause. “For him, there wasn’t.”

  “So you gonna run a full autopsy?”

  “Not if it’s just kidney failure, which I suspect it is. It’s the warden’s call. It’s his budget.”

  I clear my throat. “Doctor, for what it’s worth, Perkins was looking forward to the execution. Speaking strictly as a spiritual counselor, I knew he was prepared, even willing, to die.”

  “Thank you, reverend. Can I call you if I have more questions?”

  “Sure.”

  I hang up the phone and roll back to bed. The sun fills my bedroom with light. I imagine Mary lying next to me, the honeyed taste of her lips, the toasty softness of her body, the smell of her sweet blond hair.

  And I can’t help smiling.

  Dr. Klausner would never perform a full autopsy. Would cost too much, and nobody cared about old Puff. Even if he ordered advanced blood work, he wouldn’t dream of testing for alpha-amatoxin, not for someone with a preexisting kidney condition.

  So he would never conclude that Puff died from mycetism.

  That’s what Amanita bisporigera did to you. The destroying angel mushroom was such a gorgeous fungus: plump, round volva for a base, pure white gills, a smooth porcelain cap . . . truly angelic, sent down from heaven.

  Just one bite and within hours came the cramps, then the nausea and delirium, and then death by kidney failure. Not even a bite was required: the destroying angel could easily kill as an emulsified blend in Kombucha mushroom tea.

  The empty plastic shot glass is still in my black jacket pocket. I need to dispose of that.

  Honey, the soup is ready.

  I can picture Mary inventing her quirky phrases . . . a cleric who kills . . . a monk who murders. Now I have one, too.

  An angel that assassinates.

  Doesn’t have the same alliteration, but I know she’ll love it. Funny how angel mushrooms look just like meadows, just like buttons.

  I could never tell those damn things apart.

  *

  RIP GERBER’S first thriller, Pharma (Random House), was a bestseller in Germany in 2007. His second thriller featuring the Food and Drug Administration will be released by Random House in October 2010. Rip received his biochemical degree from the University of Virginia and his master’s from Harvard Business School. Rip lives in San Francisco, California, and does make a run to the market when asked. Over forty varieties of mushrooms and one hundred cooking terms are mentioned in his story. Happy Hunting!

  ALEX KAVA and DEB CARLIN

  Madeline Kramer slammed on the brakes inches from the Lexus bumper in front of her.


  “Calm down, Maty,” she scolded herself and watched the Lexus driver give her the finger from out his window. She balled up her fist, disappointed that she wasn’t able to return the gesture. She could have avoided rush hour traffic if she hadn’t stopped by the office. Her first day of vacation was wasted, and for what? Gilstadt wouldn’t even look at her marketing proposal the entire time she was gone. And now she’d never make it to the cabin before dark.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. Why did she let the job take so much out of her? The lines under her eyes were becoming permanent. She raked her fingers through her hair, trying to remember the last time she had it trimmed. Were lines beginning to form at the corners of her mouth? How did she ever let herself get to this point?

  A honking horn made her jump. She sat up and grasped the steering wheel in attention.

  God, how she hated rush-hour traffic.

  They were stopped again with no promise of movement. She glanced at her copy of the marketing proposal sitting in the seat beside her. Forty-two pages of research, staring up at her, mocking her. This was the hard copy, the stats and Arbitron ratings. What she left with Gilstadt included a five-minute video presentation. Six long days’ worth of research and preparation, and Gilstadt had barely glanced at it, simply nodding for her to add it to one of the stacks on his desk. By the end of the day all her hard work would probably be buried under another stack.

  Story of her life. Or at least, that’s how it had been lately. Nothing seemed to be going right. One of the reasons she needed this vacation before she simply went mad.

  Her cell phone blasted her back to reality. God, her nerves were shot. She let the phone ring three more times. Why hadn’t she shut the damn thing off? Finally she ripped it from its holder.

  “Madeline Kramer.”

  “Maty, hi, I’m glad I caught you.”

  Her entire body stiffened on impulse. “William, is everything okay? Where are you?”