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‘No screw-ups tonight!’

Hell’s Kitchen

‘No screw-ups tonight!’

‘Get it in now!’

All this damn yelling and clattering. Same as always – busy nights. Near-on a full house through there, filling their faces.

‘Eighty-six that!’

‘Over here, Slughead. Here. Here!’

Yeah, average mid-shift in the kitchen, me just a lowly soo-chef, flogging myself, busy as hell – Hell’s Kitchen alright. All hollering and good nature – the hell it is. The higher you are, the more foul your temper. We soos down the bottom just follow, ignore, and drink after-shift.

Got eight tables on my rota, so it’s the usual riot in there and we were up to our necks in shouting and cursing and laughing and getting it all done as usual. I do as much ranting as anybody, just to myself and the deep-fat fryers, like, ‘Just get them frigging fries done golden, huh?’ to Number four fryer – which is temperamental as a pitbull.

Or, ‘You gon ask Juanalina out tonight? Y’ done chicken out once too damn often,’ to Rico Sanchez.

Yell like that enough and it feels like nobody’s picking on you excessively.

Mate Dee was coming in, mouthing off at somebody who was following in after him. Yer tuned in to his voice, so you listen out when you hear it. Lightning glance up – some loud-mouth bigshot who shouldn’t be in here: he don’t own the place. Even if did, he don’t come in the kitchen.

They were rowing, and Mate Dee’s turning and walking backwards, and knocking the cook guys about. Then standing there rowing and arguing, middle of all the busy-busy; pushing and shoving each other, and us trying to get the orders out among it all. And keep the plates and trays out their damn way.

Some other guy comes in, even more mouth on him, yelling at Mate Dee. And he’s Big, very ominous. Complete with bulge in jacket pocket.

So, I’m thinking straight off, he’s weaponed-up and likes folks to know. You see’em in the main Dine’n’Wine Hall on occasion, at the side tables, kinda watching while their bosses do the business. So I’m edging back and trying to get the goulash off the back ring before it crusts, and the Crepe a Twa’s gotta go in the pan like now.

‘Watch your back, Rico,’ I heads-up him. ‘They’re gonna start scrapping any sec.’

Mate Dee’s all courage in his own damn kitchen, of course, and he’s pushing them back into the restaurant, all red face and sweat balls.

We’re carrying on like there’s nothing going on – it happens. Ten seconds after they got evicted back into the dining hall, we hear shots fired through in there.

So we’re all turning and looking shocked and meeting eyes for a second. Recovering fast and getting stuff off the grids. My four meals were midway-done right then.

‘The shots weren’t in here,’ Mijji yells across the grills. ‘We seen nothing.’

‘We know nothing; see nothing,’ I’m telling this pan of frittrolls. ‘Right? I’m getting on with it before any of you lot’s unconsolably cooked up.’

Crashing at the swing-doors— the two guys bursting back. The big feller with the bulge at full speed heading down the aisle towards me That a gun? Except we’re all keeping well back and watching the pans. Yeah, he’s waving a pistol and shouting. So, of course, I never look at his face – with one yellowed eye, and a scar across his nose. And he’s shoving down past us all, and there’s pans and food flying all over the place.

I get brushed back against the cooker and don’t spill anything, so I don’t care – They gotta get away, haven’t they? Fair’s fair – they didn’t ruin anything of mine.

Mate Dee is back in, ‘We got blood ever’where in there.’

‘Pan-dee-monium,’ as Leena said.

But we’re two staff short already, and I’m trying to get my dishes done and not thinking about anything else till a minute or two later we hear New York’s Finest blaring down Delmont. Sure enough, bursting in the front.

Two minutes later, and Mate Dee is flustered and doing his Willy Wobbler act, ‘They shutta us down. Friday Night!’ He’s saying. ‘Two guys gotta shotta ina the diner room. One dead; the other… he’s’a not so good.’

Another five minutes and in the cops come elbowing into the kitchen. Guns first, snarly looks close behind, like we’ve done it. Beady Burly Cop in the lead takes one look at the loading door out to the back, and he decides to go charging through us. This is like ten minutes after the event and they’re probably holed up in Applebee’s or some-such by now.

I see it on the cop’s pox-ugly face – He’s gonna knock us all out his way.

He does, he’s charging Petri and Boris aside one way; bouncing into Leena; elbow into Pikki the Squid; and me a solid shove. You could see the nasty poxy look – he was doing it on purpose alright, and I went off-balance backwards – hand into the double deep fat burner.

Out in like one second flat. Instant reaction – straight into the cold rinse bath in the centre. It’s always there for burns and scalds, and always empty of anything except cold water. It’s saved many before me.

I get my own ambulance to Mercy – second degree burns. I might need grafts. ‘Certainly it ain’t gonna be right ever again,’ the ambulance guy tells me. ‘But I seen worse.’

‘Not stop hurting, either. Y’ gonna need the painkillers long term,’ says the black-hair nurse at Mercy.

The two Finest guys come in the fixing clinic while my hand’s getting skin-picked and gauzed-up. Beady Poxy had this snarly look again, like he had in the kitchen. ‘Did you see the gun guy?’

‘No.’

‘Describe him.’

‘I can’t: I was tending my dishes till you shoved me.’

‘Wha’d he say?’

I told them again: straight, ‘I never looked up. Saw nothing.’ The survival rate’s better if you never saw anything.

I said that again, as well: ‘You done this to me on purpose. I’m gonna sue the city.’

He elbows Black-Hair out the way and gets my hand in a grip like a rottweiler, and he says, ‘You sure about that?’

I lost a lot of twisted-off skin with him doing that, and Yikes it frigging hurt, so I dropped my eyes, like, and maybe hadn’t seen how that happened, either.

So I’m back in the kitchen next morning. Yeah, I know – they ain’t even open till noon.

‘My spot needs cleaning up,’ I tell’em. ‘It’s not been taped or sealed off nor anything.’ Couple of the others are in there, too. Same dedication to duty, I expect. Plus a couple of guys cleaning up in the dining room – spilled blood all over Number Four booth, and dinners everywhere. ‘Aw, shucks, even that beautiful Margareet au Bordo I made is on the damn floor. And all the broken glass. Won’t take long, Chef,’ I assures him.

 ‘Yeah,’ one of the guys says, ‘Forensics finished hours ago. Made more mess than the cops and the bad guys put together.’

My fat burner had cooled down. I poked a good-hand finger into it. Room temp. In I reached… ‘Ah, yes…’ I knew it had to be there from the millisecond touch last night – it was a gun. The gun, from the shooting. ‘I’ll get all this lot cleaned up, Dee,’ I called him, slipping it into a P-waste bag. ‘Might need to have the evening off, though, don’t think the hand’ll take a full shift yet.’

He was good about it, said he’d clear up and I’m saying, ‘No, I made the mess, I clear it up. My spot.’ He’s understanding like that – we got our own territories. Ten minutes, and I’m all cleared away and wiped down. Gun’s in a food bag, side pocket of my satchel, alongside my Sakuto knife set, and I’m telling Dee, ‘I’ll be fine in a coupla days. ‘Tuesday, maybe. I reckon I’ll be okay then,’ waving the padding and wrapped-up hand at him. ‘Got to get it re-bandaged Monday.’

And yeah, it was three days, I suppose, that I missed, before I was back on the job – very carefully. Too soon, really, but I can’t do without the dough. Besides, Leena works there and I can’t do without seeing her most days. Don’t suppose she’ll… not now, with my hand like this.

Now me and a couple of the guys found out about Yellow Eyes, and where he hangs out; the place he's got. But not the cops: they haven’t caught the shooter that I couldn’t identify from Al Capone. Sure, they’re working on it, and got some ideas on his ID and haunts. So they’ll get him afore long. Tomorrow, most likely.

Just in time for him to take the rap for a little revenge I got in mind. Like tonight, when I catch Beady Poxy Cop getting back to his apartment on Forty-second. He won’t be pushing anyone else’s hands into the double deep hot fryer ever again. Not with twin 45 holes in the back of his head.

Not now I’ve got Yellow-Eye’s gun, and the murder squad cops are gonna get this tip-off about looking for it in the alley, right outside his apartment.

Thirty shades of yellow-eyed vengeance are on the way