Al Roker

by The Midnight Show Murders

  The Midnight interview was another matter altogether.

  In the first place, the whole show seemed off. Gibby’s opening monologue was neither clean enough to pass Bill Cosby’s standards nor vulgar enough to be distinctive. Most of it was of the “I shouldn’t even be doing this!” variety, none of it capable of eliciting more than a few errant chuckles from a studio audience that expected more, having been put through a tougher security check than it takes to get into the Pentagon.

  Due to the low wattage of our celebrity guests—a TV hero from the seventies who was running for governor of Arizona, a starlet who took time from plugging her upcoming movie and her “naughty new website” to teach Gibby how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue, and Gilberto, the new Guatemalan singing sensation—my interview was kept till last.

  By then the show seemed to be dragging on longer than the Academy Awards. Even more vexing, when the time finally came for our dog-and-pony routine, Marcus Oliphant seemed to think he was auditioning for 60 Minutes. Or maybe FOX News.

  “Tell us how you felt, Billy, when the universe suddenly exploded in a white flash of destruction and death?”

  I stared at him, trying not to focus on how the thick pancake makeup was making his age-wrinkled face resemble a raised relief map of the Great Smoky Mountains. “A little like I feel now, Marcus,” I said. “Only not as vulnerable.”

  His questions, though overly dramatic and verbose, were on target enough to get me to respond with a detailed account of the minutes leading up to the explosion.

  “But how fortunate that was for you, up there above the chaos and madness. Tell us exactly what you were going through.”

  “I was pretty uncomfortable, hanging twenty feet in the air. Des was singing. I remember thinking that when he finished his song I’d be lowered to the ground, so I was wishing he’d hurry it up. And …”

  At that point, I realized I’d forgotten something about last night. Something possibly important that I should tell Detective Brueghel. Making that mental note, I committed one of television’s cardinal sins. I froze on camera. Not for very long, but enough to cause Marcus a few anxious moments. His eyes were starting to bulge, and he was turning pale under all that makeup.

  Lolita, standing just to the left of the camera, reacted to the sudden silence by whipping her bandaged head in my direction. She placed a cupped hand behind one ear and wiggled it, glaring at me.

  “And”—I repeated, trying to recall where I was in the answer—“Des stopped singing and said his goodbye to the audience. And that’s when the explosion took place.”

  “You were knocked unconscious?”

  “I think so,” I replied. “A lot of things were happening all at once.”

  “And Desmond O’Day died?” Marcus said.

  “That would be an understatement,” I said.

  “You two were close, you and Des. I believe you were living together.”

  Huh? “Hey, Marcus, just because two guys barbecue a few steaks in their bathrobes, it doesn’t mean …” I stopped because the perplexed look on Marcus’s face reminded me with whom I was dealing. “Actually, to answer your question seriously, Des and I first met less than two weeks ago on a flight out here from New York. He mentioned that there was an empty guesthouse on his property and asked if I wanted to use it during my short visit. So I guess you could say we were living together.

  “Des seemed like a nice enough guy, and his death is certainly a tragedy. But we were not what I would call close friends.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, let’s move on to the presumed villain of the piece, Roger Charbonnet. He hated you for something that happened in the past. Tell us about it.”

  It was a very broad question that required a slippery answer. “You’d have to ask him why he hated me, if indeed he did.”

  “Can’t we assume that? He tried to kill you.”

  “Maybe we should let a jury decide what Roger Charbonnet did, or tried to do,” I said.

  “The evidence seems pretty conclusive. But you’re correct, Billy. Innocent until proven, and all that that implies. So how do you suppose the killer managed to get the explosive into the theater?”

  I was a little surprised to realize I had an answer. That rear door that, for some reason, wasn’t as guarded as it should have been when Fitz and I made our exits. But it was another strike against the network’s security arrangements, so I answered, “I wouldn’t want to speculate.”

  “According to the L.A. Times website, Char … the killer was disguised as a stagehand,” Marcus said, “wearing a black bodysuit similar to that worn by the legitimate stagehands. Those outfits were unique, weren’t they?”

  I went into a semi-elaborate description of the ninja suits and how they fit into the set and lighting designs of the show. The designs and the black suits were not being used in the show’s present iteration.

  “The situation was made to order for him, wasn’t it?” Marcus said. “He puts on the suit and becomes … the invisible man.”

  “That’s a likely assumption,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s more than that,” Marcus said. “He was definitely dressed in the black bodysuit.”

  I gave him a patronizing smile. “Unless there was an eyewitness or a confession, I don’t see how even the savants at the L.A. Times could know without doubt what the killer was wearing.”

  “The police found the black bodysuit at Roger Charbonnet’s home,” Marcus said. “He’d tried to hide it in his closet.”

  As surprising as that revelation was, I remained aware of the little red light on the camera and refrained from letting my jaw drop, at least not too far. “Well, let’s hear it for the police,” I said, before getting another of Lolita’s “Speak up” signals.

  “It’s believed the bomb was some form of homemade plastic explosive,” Marcus said. “Possibly as small as a cigarette pack or a man’s wallet. Did you see anything like that?”

  “No,” I said, not daring to challenge him on the “It’s believed.” I hadn’t heard a thing about what the bomb had looked like. The info had probably been in that same damned L.A. Times report.

  “If it was that small, it seems logical he had hidden it under his clothes,” Marcus speculated. “He had access to the stage area. Am I right that there were strips of tape to indicate where you—or as it happened, Des O’Day—were supposed to be standing at the close of the show?”

  I answered in the affirmative.

  “Then it was just a matter of the killer walking out and leaving the bomb near the tape strips,” Marcus concluded.

  “It could have happened that way,” I said. I didn’t really think so, but this wasn’t the ideal time or place to hold a discussion of how the bomb was positioned or triggered.

  “Well, I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us when I say, of Desmond O’Day”—he turned to face the camera—“good night, sweet comic prince. May flights of angels sing you to your rest. And to our own Billy Blessing, bravo, sir. Blessed are we to have you with us still.”

  Lolita was giving him the “hurry, hurry” arm windup.

  “This is Marcus Oliphant, discussing last night’s tragedy with one of its near victims, WBC’s own Chef Billy Blessing. Stay tuned. There’s much more to come on The Midnight Show.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The hour ended not with a bang or even a whimper. More like a thud.

  Specifically, it ended with Gibby’s decision to replace the final joke he’d told at rehearsal with one about a guy whose golfing partner drops dead from a heart attack on the twelfth hole. You probably remember it. Back at the clubhouse, somebody asks him what happened after that. “Not much,” he replies. “From there on in, it was pretty much the same. Hit the ball, drag Charlie. Hit the ball, drag Charlie.” In itself, a good joke. Old but good. It would probably have prompted a wave of laughter at almost any time other than immediately following a discussion involving the death of the show’s previous host.

&nbs
p; Oblivious to his lapse in sensitivity, Gibby was thrown off cue by the lack of audience response. Still, he gamely waved the show’s few lingering participants back onstage for a group goodbye. Then he performed what he hoped would become his under-the-credits signature, a standing backflip, ending with a semi-grotesque little-boy grin and a wiggling-fingers wave.

  As soon as the camera’s red light went off, he rushed to the wings. I had him pegged as the kind of despotic twit who’d start blaming everyone in sight for the shambles he himself had made of his first show. Instead, he brushed past us and went directly to his dressing room without a word.

  Marcus Oliphant turned to me with a surprised look on his pan-caked face. “Did you see that?”

  I nodded.

  What we had both seen was Gibby Lewis, not only looking like an unhappy baby but crying like one.

  Twenty minutes later, he knocked once on my dressing room door, opened it, and came in. I was on the phone, talking with Detective Brueghel. I’d called to tell him about hearing a whirring sound just before the explosion, and he’d insisted we get together immediately. Since I had no more information, I was about to ask him why a face-to-face would be necessary. But Gibby picked that moment to barge in.

  His eyes were red, his cherubic face blotchy. He was still wearing his on-camera suit, but he’d removed the tie and his shirt collar was unbuttoned. He flopped onto the only other chair in the small room and glared at me, nodding his head, tapping his foot, and showing just about every known sign of impatience.

  I asked the detective where he wanted to meet, told him I’d get there as soon as I could, and clicked off the phone.

  Gibby immediately lapsed into “Give it to me straight. Am I fucked?”

  I stared at him, not quite sure what he was asking or how I was supposed to answer. I decided to wait him out.

  “I know the show was a monu-fucking-mental disaster,” he said. “I mean, after tonight, forget Cop Rock. Forget the Iraq War even. Are they gonna can my ass, Billy?”

  “What have you heard?” I asked.

  “Max says it’s not his call, that the decision will come from the East Coast. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you I’m not New York’s rep out here? They’ve already got someone they rely on, a vice president with a nice, big office in the main building. Carmen Sandoval. You may have noticed how just the sound of her name causes Max to deflate.”

  “Aw, shit. Carmen is not a fan,” he said gloomily. “Max had to do handsprings to get her to give me a shot. I really fucked the duck tonight. I just didn’t … I couldn’t get a fix on the studio audience. I couldn’t get into the zone.

  “No! You know what it was? I lost faith. That’s it. I lost faith in the material and was trying to edit on the fly. That takes real cool and real smarts, and, let’s face it, I’m not a guy gets too intellectual, you know?”

  Why couldn’t he have lived up to my expectations and been a blame-everybody-else weasel? Then I could have just given him the usual three-word suggestion of what he could do to himself and walked away. Instead, he was wallowing in self-pity and self-recrimination, which, while not exactly my favorite traits in an adult, tapped into one of my less protected pockets of sympathy.

  “Gibby, at our lunch you mentioned Conan O’Brien. Like you, a comedy writer moving up to show host.”

  “So?”

  “Remember what his first shows were like?”

  He brightened a little. “Yeah. You’re right. They were awful. Even as bad as ours, maybe.”

  “And he kept improving.”

  “Yeah. He improved so much, he wound up getting booted off The Tonight Show.”

  “But now he’s thirty million dollars richer and he’s got a show on TBS,” I said. “People love CoCo.”

  “You’re right, Billy,” he said. He lowered his head in a gesture of faux humility. “Do you think you could mention the bit about me being the new Conan to your contact at the network?”

  I sighed. “I’ll add it to my morning report,” I said, hoping it would satisfy him and get him to leave.

  “You’re a mensch, Billy,” he said. “And your segment with the alter cocker? The only part of the show that didn’t suck.”

  “Thanks, Gibby.”

  He stood and started for the door. Then he stopped and turned, looking as despondent as he had when he’d entered. “Shit, I was fucked from the git-go. If Carmen was expecting the show to be any good, she’d have had April go full-out on the publicity.”

  “What makes you think April didn’t?”

  “Did you see anybody shooting backstage promo footage for the website?”

  “No.”

  “She had a guy doing it for Des’s debut. I saw him. I realize Des had the big contract and I’m just trying to prove myself. But how much would it cost to have a publicity guy with a camera?”

  “Ask April about it,” I suggested. “Maybe somebody was there and you didn’t notice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said. “Ah, well, fuck it. It’s only a career.”

  When he left, the atmosphere in the room brightened considerably. I felt so relieved to be rid of him that I did not give his story about the backstage photographer a moment’s thought.

  My foolhardy lack of awareness didn’t end there.

  I completely overlooked the black BMW sedan that had to have been waiting for me as I exited the lot.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-NINE

  It wasn’t until I’d started on my way up Calvin Coolidge Drive that I noticed the car, and only then because ignoring it was impossible. It was the only other vehicle on the winding drive, and its headlights flashed in my rearview mirror at every twist and turn.

  Even then I didn’t suspect it was following me.

  Brueghel’s house was near the top of the drive. A work in progress. Just half of the front of the small cottage had been recently painted. The gate was new, but the wood was bare and, even in a city with minimal rainfall, cried out for some kind of stain or varnish.

  As I entered through the gate, the BMW drove past, traveling neither fast nor slow. Nice car, I thought. But I never quite understood why people liked those dark tinted windows.

  I turned and followed a short brick walkway to the front door of the house, passing a paint can that rested on a patch of scrub grass that constituted the front lawn. The lid of the can was missing, and the paint had solidified around a brush that Brueghel or somebody had left in it. I wondered how long ago he’d been called away from working on the house and how long it would take him to get back to it.

  In response to the buzzer, a light went on over the front door and, after a second or two—the time it would take to press an eye to a peephole—the detective was framed in the doorway, wearing a blue warm-up outfit. He gave the surroundings a quick scan, then invited me into a tiny entrance area that smelled of turpentine, though I saw no evidence of it.

  There were baseball caps, a hat, and several jackets, of cloth and leather, hanging from pegs on a wooden block bolted to the wall next to a closet door. A handsome bleached-pine floor seemed to run throughout the house.

  “Have any trouble finding the place?” he asked, leading me down a short hall to a living room that a neatness freak would call messy but that struck me as comfortable.

  “Nope. My rental’s GPS led me right here.”

  “Good. How about a beer after that drive?”

  “Sure,” I said, wondering, not for the first time, what I was doing there.

  He disappeared for about as long as it took me to move a stack of paperback mysteries from a chair and sit down. He returned with a frosty bottle of Cerveza Pacifico in each hand.

  “Maybe you’d prefer a glass?”

  I told him I didn’t, and accepted the offered bottle. He clinked his against mine, and we both drank. The icy beer was just a few degrees shy of a brain freeze and had a nice sharp edge.

  “I’m out of limes,” he sai
d.

  “You drag me all the way up here and you don’t even have limes?” I said.

  It took him a second or two to realize I was kidding.

  “What can I say, Blessing? I’m not used to playing host.”

  “I’m surprised you suggested we meet here at your house,” I said. “Don’t you guys usually draw the line between your work and your home?”

  “Ordinarily I’d have suggested a bar,” he said. “But knowing how you hoard information, I don’t see you blabbing my address to just anybody on the street. And the fact of the matter is it was too late for me to get a sitter for the kid.”

  Only then did I notice the little transformer toy resting on the floor near the dark TV set. “A boy?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Just turned four. A real handful. In his bed, hopefully asleep.”

  “I didn’t take you for a married man,” I said.

  “I’m not. Little Pete’s mother and I never … well, she’s out of the picture now.”

  He raised the beer bottle to his lips. I waited for him to either explain why she was out of the picture or to move on to another topic. When he remained silent, staring at the floor, I, used to filling in awkward silences while on camera, said, “A homicide detective raising a young boy. Can’t be easy.”

  “No. I wouldn’t call it easy. But it has its moments.” He smiled. “And Pete’s making a better man of me. At least this guy who’s a pretty good observer of human nature thinks so.”

  “A fellow detective?”

  “No. He writes books. Ever heard of a crime novel called The Manicurist?”

  “Of course,” I said. It had been a bestseller. The story of a tough L.A. homicide detective on the trail of a serial killer who murdered hookers and then painted their fingernails pale green. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me …?”