Free Not Exactly a Brahmin by Susan Dunlap Page B

my suppliers are tainted. They’re spraying grains with commercial herbicides, putting Malathion on their tomatoes. Look!” He thrust a newspaper at me. “Look—‘So-Called Health Food Contaminated.’ ”
    I glanced through the article. “But it says you couldn’t have known they were using sprays.”
    “Customers don’t care whether I know or not. This isn’t an honesty contest. The fact that I didn’t know their milk comes from cattle who’ve been fed antibiotics doesn’t make that milk any less dangerous for them. This place was packed two weeks ago. Now look at it. I’ve had to lay off three waitresses.”
    “Surely in time—”
    “In time what? It would be one thing if I had known I was serving non-organic food, but I didn’t know. Now even if I mount a campaign and say I have all new suppliers whom I’ve checked out myself, who’s going to believe me? They’ll say ‘He didn’t know before, why should we believe him now?’ ”
    “And if you’d gotten Ralph Palmerston’s information a week ago, before this story came out?”
    “I could have broken the story. I could have denounced my suppliers. I could have been the one who was protecting Berkeley from tainted food, instead of someone who is foisting it on them.” He slumped down in the chair.
    “What will you do now?”
    “Wait. What else?”
    “Do you think this will pass?”
    He looked down at his desk calendar. “I don’t know. I’ve got a year’s lease, so that gives me another six months to sit and count customers.”
    “And if things don’t get better?”
    “I’ll close.”
    “You’ve put a lot of money into Sunny Sides Up.”
    “I’ll lose a lot of money. Probably have to sell my house and go to work for someone else.” Now he stared directly at me. “I waited nearly five years to open this restaurant. I’ve only been here six months. Do you know how awful it is once you’ve had your own place, created each entrée, made it the best, to have to take orders, to cook commercial eggs with fake cheese and canned mushrooms? Do you know what it’s like to do your best and realize it makes no more difference than your least? Creating a superb breakfast isn’t like doing dinner. People don’t reserve months in advance even for the best eggs Florentine. The only chance at expression is in your own restaurant.” He dropped his gaze. “So you see, money is a small part of it. And any gifts I could have received are a week late.”
    But, I thought, as with Ellen Kershon, had it worked out, Ralph Palmerston’s gift to Adam Thede would have been perfect.
    I asked him where he had been yesterday afternoon—home, alone—then handed him my card and told him to call me if he recalled anything about Ralph Palmerston.
    I walked out through the dining area, which now held only four people, and down the avenue to Herman Ott’s building.

CHAPTER 8
    “S OMEONE BEAT YOU TO it,” I said.
    Herman Ott looked exactly as he had last night, only more rumpled. If there had ever been a question of what he slept in, it was now answered to my satisfaction. He had come stumbling to the door on my second knock, his eyes half closed, his yellow-and-brown shirttail now completely out of his pants. But behind him on his desk I spotted a mug of coffee and two crullers. It made me think better of him.
    “I thought you came to bring me my money.” His sarcasm was not veiled.
    “By the time Thede got the same information you gave Ralph Palmerston, it was already in the newspaper.”
    “So?”
    “So someone was quicker than you were in checking on the growers. Who was that?”
    He started to shrug and stopped before his shoulders lifted half an inch. I could see that the question bothered him. It impugned his professional competence.
    “Did the people you talked to say someone had been there asking the same questions?”
    “No. Listen, there are a dozen places you could get that information. You don’t just go up to the grower and say,