Dance of Death Read Free

immaculate as Hayward herself. Now the place looked like a war zone. The sink was overflowing with soiled pots. Half a dozen empty cans lay in and around the wastebasket, dribbling out remnants of tomato sauce and olive oil. Almost as many cookbooks lay open on the counter, their pages obscured by bread crusts and blizzards of flour. The lone window looking down on the snowy intersection of 77th and First was speckled with grease from frying sausages. Although the vent fan was going full blast, the odor of burned meat lingered stubbornly in the air.
    For weeks now, whenever their schedules allowed time with each other, Laura had thrown together-almost effortlessly, it seemed- meal after delicious meal. D'Agosta had been astonished. For his soon-to-be-ex-wife, now up in Canada, cooking had always been anordeal accompanied by histrionic sighs, clanging of pans, and- more often than not-disagreeable results. It was like night and day with Laura.
    But along with his astonishment, D'Agosta also felt a bit threatened. As a detective captain in the NYPD, not only did Laura Hayward outrank him, but she outcooked him as well. Everybody knew men made the best chefs, especially Italians. They blew the French out of the water. And so he'd kept promising to cook her a real Italian dinner, just like his grandmother used to make. Each time he repeated the promise, the meal seemed to grow in complexity and spectacle. And at last, tonight was the night he would cook his grandmother's lasagna napoletana.
    Except that once he got in the kitchen, he realized he didn't remember exactly how his grandmother cooked lasagna napoletana. Oh, he'd watched dozens of times. He'd often helped out. But what precisely went into that ragù she spooned over the layers of pasta? And what was it she'd added to those tiny meatballs that-along with the sausage and various cheeses-made up the filling? He had turned in his desperation to Laura's cookbooks, but each one had offered conflicting suggestions. And so now here he was, hours later, everything at varying stages of completion, frustration mounting by the second.
    He heard Laura say something from her banishment in the living room. He took a deep breath.
    "What was that, babe?"
    "I said I'll be home late tomorrow. Rocker's having a state-of-the-force meeting with all the captains on January 22. That leaves me only Monday evening to get status reports and personnel records up to date."
    "Rocker and his paperwork. How is your pal the commissioner, by the way?"
    "He's not my pal."
    D'Agosta turned back to the ragù, boiling away on the stove. He remained convinced that he'd gotten his old job on the force back, his seniority restored, only because Laura had put a word in Rocker's ear. He didn't like it, but there it was.
    A huge bubble of ragù rose from the pot, burst like a volcanic eruption, and spewed sauce over his hand. "Ouch!" he cried, dousing the hand in dishwater while turning down the flame.
    "What's up?"
    "Nothing. Everything's just fine." He stirred the sauce with a wooden spoon, realized the bottom had burned, moved it hastily onto a back burner. He raised the spoon to his lips a little gingerly. Not bad, not bad at all. Decent texture, nice mouth feel, only a slight burned taste. Not like his grandmother's, though.
    "What else goes in the ragù, Nonna?" he murmured.
    If there was any response from the choir invisible, D'Agosta couldn't hear it.
    Suddenly, there was a loud hissing from the stove. The giant pot of salted water was bubbling over. Swallowing a curse, D'Agosta turned down the heat on that as well, tore open a box of pasta, dumped in a pound of lasagna.
    The sound of music filtered in from the living room: Laura had put on a Steely Dan CD. "I swear I'm going to speak to the landlord about that doorman," she said through the door.
    "Which doorman?"
    "That new one who came on a few weeks ago. He's the surliest guy I've ever met. What kind of a doorman doesn't even open the door for you?