Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

There was a drumroll, and then all at once, the waiters pulled up the domes. Underneath on a white plate was a nouvelle-cuisine-looking dish with raspberry-colored sauce over what looked like pork.

As I stared at it, suddenly all of it, the whole night, the old woman, the sway of the boat, and especially the sight of the mystery meat on my plate, hit me like a sledgehammer.

I screeched my chair back just in time to puke my three light beers between my shoes.

CHAPTER 80

THE ASIAN CULINARY ADVENTURERS at my table started complaining loudly in a language that wasn’t English as I sat there bent over, dry heaving.

“Are you OK, Mike?” Brooklyn said at my back.

“Not even a little,” I said as I stood, wiping my mouth.

When I turned around, Frosty was at the front of the room holding a microphone.

“The wine for our first course—” he began as I grabbed the tablecloth in front of me and pulled like a magician. But I guess I was no David Blaine, because instead of just pulling out the tablecloth, I sent everybody’s dinner sailing. There was an enormous clatter as plates and silver went into laps and across the dance floor.

The jazz quartet honked to a dead-silent stop as everybody stared at me. I took out my gun and my shield as I stepped forward.

“NYPD! Nobody move!” I said.

“Ha

nds on tables now!” Brooklyn cried as she followed me.

“What in the hell are you doing?” the evil Frosty wanted to know.

I shoved him down into his seat.

“You’re under arrest, scumbag,” I informed him.

“I know my rights! This is not illegal!” he shrieked, red-faced. “Cannibalism is not illegal!”

What he said was shockingly true. Noah had told me that though there were laws against the desecration of bodies, as of yet cannibalism wasn’t technically illegal. Though after tonight, I was definitely going to write my congressman.

“Are you listening to me?” brayed the pudgy sap. “No crime is being committed here. What’s the charge?”

“I’ll think of something,” I said as I lifted him up, no mean feat, and hauled him out the dining room door to the outside deck. The cool, fresh air off the water was wonderful after the humid cafeteria stench of the dining room. I immediately felt a thousand times better.

“You have no idea who you’re talking to, do you?” Frosty screamed in a high voice. “Ever hear of PRG Trucking? Maybe not. My family’s firm is not the biggest trucking company in the country, it’s just the third biggest! When my army of lawyers is done suing you and your department, you’re going to wish you’d never been born!”

“I already wish it after tonight’s festivities, you roly-poly sack of puke. Now, who killed her? Was it you?”

I shoved him against the side of the boat.

“You feel like going for a swim?”

Frosty fell to his knees and started blubbering.

“No, no, no. You’re wrong. It’s a mistake. The meat we have is from a cadaver, someone who donated their body to science. We bought it off a lab rat at a car company. They use bodies for crash dummies. We’re epicurean cannibals, not sexual sadists or serial killers. This is just the final frontier of culinary experimentation. We didn’t kill anybody. I swear to you!”

I let out a breath as I watched him blubber. I knew he was telling the truth. Noah had told me all about the different types of cannibalism from his research: sexual cannibalism, aggression cannibalism, spiritual and ritual cannibalism, epicurean cannibalism. It was obvious now that the group here tonight wasn’t a pack of budding Jeffrey Dahmers. Sick, amoral assholes who needed a beating and some lessons on how to be human, maybe, but not actual killers.

It looked like we had come upon cannibals in the city, only they were the wrong type of cannibals. Super.

I went in and spoke to some of the waiters. When I stepped back out onto the deck, they were behind me, pushing rolling carts with all the “food” on them. One by one, I started Frisbeeing the plates into the harbor. Brooklyn came out and started enthusiastically helping me.

“What are you doing?” Frosty the Jackass wanted to know.