Toxin by Robin Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

respond.
    â€œHello?” Kim said. “Are you still there?”
    â€œYeah, I’m still here,” Ginger said.
    â€œDid you hear what I said?”
    â€œOf course I heard,” Ginger said. “I haven’t eaten, and I’ve been waiting. You haven’t called, and besides, you promised me we’d eat at Chez Jean tonight.”
    â€œListen,” Kim growled. “Don’t you give me a hard time too. I can’t please everybody. I was late picking up Becky, and she was starved.”
    â€œThat’s nice,” Ginger said. “You and your daughter have a nice dinner together.”
    â€œYou’re irritating me, Ginger!”
    â€œWell, how do you expect me to feel?” Ginger asked. “For a year your wife was your convenient excuse. Now I suppose it’s going to be your daughter.”
    â€œThat’s enough, Ginger,” Kim snapped. “I’m not going to get into an argument. Becky and I are eating here, and then we’ll come by and pick you up.”
    â€œMaybe I’ll be here and maybe I won’t,” Ginger said. “I’m getting tired of being taken for granted.”
    â€œFine,” Kim said. “You decide.”
    Kim cut off the connection and jammed the phone back into his jacket pocket. He gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath. The evening was hardly progressing as he would have liked. Kim’s eyes involuntarily strayed to the face of a teenage girl waiting for one of the wall phones. Her lipstick was such a dark red it bordered on brown. It made her look like someone who’d succumbed to the elements on the north face of Mount Everest.
    The girl caught Kim staring at her. She interrupted her cowlike gum-chewing long enough to stick out her tongue. Kim pushed off the wall and went into the men’s room to splash water on his face and wash his hands.
    Â 
    T he level of activity in the kitchen and service area of the Onion Ring was commensurate with the number of customers in the restaurant proper. It was controlled pandemonium. Roger Polo, the manager who regularly worked a double shift on Fridays and Saturdays, the Onion Ring’s two busiest days, was a nervous man in his late thirties who drove himself and his staff hard.
    When the restaurant was as busy as it was while Kim and Becky awaited their order, Roger worked the line. He was the one who gave the burger and fries order to the short-order chef, Paul; or the soup and salad orders to the steam-table and salad-bar worker, Julia; or the drinkorders to Claudia. All the restocking and the routine, ongoing cleanup was done by the “gofer,” Skip.
    â€œNumber twenty-seven coming up,” Roger barked. “I want a soup and salad.”
    â€œSoup and salad,” Julia echoed.
    â€œIced tea and vanilla shake,” Roger called out.
    â€œComing up,” Claudia said.
    â€œRegular burger and medium fries,” Roger ordered.
    â€œGot it,” Paul said.
    Paul was considerably older than Roger. His face was leathered and deeply creased; he looked more like a farmer than a cook. He had spent twenty years as a short-order chef on an oil rig in the Gulf. On his right forearm was a tattoo of a gusher with the word: Eureka!
    Paul stood at the grill built into a central island behind the row of cash registers. At any given time, he had a number of hamburger patties on the cooktop; each one was in response to an order. He organized the cooking by rotation so that all the burgers got the same amount of grill time. In response to the most recent wave of orders, Paul turned around and opened the chest-high refrigerator directly behind him.
    â€œSkip!” Paul yelled when he realized the patty box was empty. “Get me a box of burgers from the walk-in.”
    Skip put his mop aside. “Coming up!”
    The walk-in freezer was at the very back of the kitchen, next to the walk-in refrigerator and across from the storeroom. Skip,