The Nasty Business of a Bodyguard by Elijah Douresseau (top books of all time TXT) 📕

bizarre sense of desperation, he longed for trace flavors of spicy, brown mustard and mayonnaise. With some Coke to wash it all down with. Might as well throw that in there.

***

It worked. Alvin was soon in his guest room that was bigger than his apartment. After one of the most satisfying meals he had had in a while, he was excited – ecstatic for some shuteye. He was so tired the last few days, he was not dreaming. Nothing. Just a black, velvet curtain growing increasingly into solid nothingness. Worked for him. He could not lend anything else out from himself. And—

“Now we’re here.”

“When did that happen?”

“You tell me.”

“Did you do it?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Did you keep an eye on the final moments?”

“No. You’re supposed to help me.”

“I asked you to do one thing.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“You’ll never be allowed at Olive Garden again.”

***

The day came. The big day. The biggest day of Alvin’s life. Maybe not. Hopefully, not. His career could go up or down a few pegs. He could handle the latter. He had no idea what kind of future the former presented. Did super villains take their cooks with them? Certainly, their mothers. But not their personal chefs.

Dinner was definitely Coco’s make-it-or-break-it moment. The most important day of her life? Her career? The kind of commitment it took for Alvin’s boss to get to the mountaintop she summitted, it scared Alvin that he had not actually seen anything all that terrible yet. Crime so organized, it was out of sight, even at its headquarters.

Was there a distinction between Coco’s life and her career?

She lived a life that most others would never dream of. And she was never in anyone’s face about it. The richest people were always humble like that, in Alvin’s limited experience of working for several.

Wealthy meekness. In material, the right affluent person was free. Not hindered by anything. If she wanted to do something, money was just the means to get it. To explore it. To get to the bottom of it.

In Coco’s case, what was she going to take? What was she manipulating? Questions to gaze upon the other side of, after the dinner.

Much of the cook’s day was unchanged. He had gotten all the dishes down to a science. He especially had his workstation quiet to prepare the plates, the day of the gathering. He half-expected his new, mysterious friend to sneak into the kitchen with another cryptic warning, but he probably did not want to take any chances on such a crucial day. If the reason for gathering weren’t so illegal, the dinner party would have had some media coverage.

What was bothering Alvin so much was what the guest guard told him. He had been told to stay on the lookout. Stuff was going to go down, but ‘keeping an eye on the final moments’ would suggest something was going to end abruptly. And the more Alvin thought about it, the less he felt secure about a decade-defining bust from the federal law.

Where was the fish? That was the hardest hitting question of all. But Alvin was a cook. Not a fisherman.

He was cooking for a high-valued criminal. Check. No bite there.

Matts knew things he was not telling Alvin. That bothered him, but he understood that choice. The agent did not want the chef to unfasten the lid to the operation. Okay, fine.

Coco had recently gained membership to an organization. She thought she would be so busy with her new job that she felt she might neglect nourishing herself. So much so that she hired someone to be the primary purveyor of food in her massive household.

She was an ambassador to her organization of – villainy, but she had been maintaining some junior-level status in conducting business on their behalf.

Alvin’s boss was up to something the larger organization may or may not have known about. That was the glimmer in the water. The murky scales were nimble, but visual contact had been made. The line to something much heavier than he anticipated tugged on the fishing line.

Where was Gorton’s Fisherman when someone needed him? He was always stuck at sea in the commercials, in the middle of storm.

Coco’s plan. That’s what made the chef uneasy. Whatever it was. She was not winging it. She was not working on some hobby. She calculated everything. And only the culinary help sensed it.

The guards had to know. They saw more than he did. They were always everywhere on the premises.

It was almost time.

Your world could be crumbling all around you, and even with paid time off, there was still pressure to come in and not get so sidetracked that you could not do your job. The show had to go on. It was always almost time. That was work.

There was a slow build to the sound, but the banquet hall grew increasingly loud with chatter and music. It amazed Alvin how close he was to something he never knew existed until extremely recently.

“Hey. Showtime.”

A henchman appeared to take Alvin to serve the food. Seemed even he was aware of the stakes that day. He could have called for service in a much less dazzling way.

Something was going to hit the fan. The cook just was not sure if the excrement hitting the cold steel of the blades, the feces produced from his food, was an elevation of his special creations or more of a send-up of his culinary efforts. Either way, Alvin could not just run out of there. He could not send a server away with product; only to roost in the back of the house and move on to the next plate of something someone would not remember too much by the end of the night.

“You okay?”

“What?”

“You’re looking a tint past healthy.”

“I’m fine.”

Alvin had to get a hold of himself. Hard to do that when sleep was grasping at him like he was a utensil, and it was about to dig into a wholesome, rainy night meal.

He picked up the last of his