Client: Wurst

When I asked Wurst why he did it, he replied: “Because pâté is not sausage. And anything that is not sausage must be pure, or it threatens the sanctity of the tube.”

Wurst gave me one more job last spring: tail a man known only as “The Bratislava Butcher” who was supposedly smuggling illegal pâté de foie gras across state lines. I followed a冷链 truck from Milwaukee to Gary, Indiana. At a rest stop, the driver opened the back and found not foie gras, but three dozen live geese wearing tiny life jackets. Wurst had tipped off the USDA an hour earlier. The Butcher was arrested. The geese went to a sanctuary. client wurst

His first case for me: “Find out who’s putting sawdust in the artisanal bratwurst at Schmidt’s Old World Meats.” Three weeks of dumpster-diving behind gourmet delis, tracing spice shipments, and interviewing disgruntled butchers. The culprit was Schmidt’s own nephew, cutting costs. Wurst paid me in cash, plus a jar of his homemade mustard that made my eyes water and my soul ascend. When I asked Wurst why he did it,

“The casing is breaking, friend. New enemies. New meats. Stay by the phone.” At a rest stop, the driver opened the

I stopped digging.

But the deeper I looked into Wurst, the stranger it got.