“Et voilà!” the ma?tre 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 ma?tre 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 ma?tre 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.”