Wurst wasn’t a criminal, exactly. He was a saboteur of culinary reputations .

I laughed. Then I found a note tucked under my windshield wiper that night. It read: “You use Folgers crystals. You pretend to like IPAs. Your mother thinks you’re a real estate agent.”

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.

He paid me in uncut amethysts that time. I haven’t heard from him since.

I’d been a private investigator for twelve years, but I’d never had a client like 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.

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

So I’m waiting. Briefcase packed. Mustard in the fridge. And I still don’t know who—or what—Wurst really is. But I know one thing: when the Sausage King calls, you answer. Because if you don’t, you might end up ground into something you never wanted to be.