Al Roker

by The Midnight Show Murders

  “That toxic stuff sounds like something your great-uncle Clarence might have said.”

  He smiled. “He and I are related only by political and philosophic bent. I share his belief that people are not in prisons because they deserve to be. They, like the five thousand poor souls in this facility, are behind bars because of circumstances beyond their control. An accident of birth. A mental aberration.”

  “Would Roger Charbonnet be an example of the latter?”

  He gave me full benefit of those arched brows and icy blues. “Roger Charbonnet is an innocent man.”

  “The police have turned up a lot of evidence to the contrary.”

  “As the greater Darrow once noted, ‘The police are the real criminals.’ ”

  So Brueghel had been right about a planted-evidence defense. Considering the amount of it, that was probably the only way for the lawyer to go. Still, even though the average citizen’s paranoid distrust of authority seemed to be on an alarming upswing, judging by the vitriol permeating the Internet, playing to that struck me as not only desperate but disruptive. I didn’t like it. And I wasn’t all that crazy about Malcolm Darrow.

  I watched him tug a round gold watch from his vest pocket, glance at it, and tuck it back in place.

  “I understand your being simpatico with Clarence Darrow,” I said to him. “But isn’t the suit, the vest, the pocket biscuit, and the hairstyle carrying that a little far?”

  That earned me a shark’s grin. A lawyer’s grin. “When you appear on your cooking show, Mr. Blessing, or on the cover of your cookbooks, do you not wear a chef’s white jacket and toque?”

  “Jacket, yes. Toque, never.”

  “The jacket gives you the instant recognition of being a professional, an expert. You dress the part you play in life. In the dim, dark days when I was a very young lawyer competing against graduates from schools more prestigious than mine, I decided to take full advantage of my surname. Let them wear their Ivy League suits like a banner. I dressed the part of a Darrow. My suits and bow ties and pocket watch were and are instruments of what they now call ‘product branding.’ But I’m curious, Mr. Blessing, as to why you seem so averse to wearing a toque.”

  There was no harm in telling him the truth, that I thought it made me look too much like the guy on the Cream of Wheat box. I was about to do so when the door opened and a guard entered with Roger Charbonnet.

  The room was small, and the looming six-foot-three presence of Roger in a bright orange jumpsuit seemed to bring the walls and ceiling closer in. His brief jail time had changed him. Hands cuffed in metal, he had a wild and dangerous look about him, enhanced by a drastic case of bed head and eyes red-rimmed and frantic enough to belong on Dracula’s dog. His stubble had grown past the fashion-statement length.

  And unlike my über-chef buddy Mario Batali, orange just wasn’t his color.

  He glared at the guard, then at his lawyer, and finally at me. He nodded his head. “I knew you couldn’t stay away.”

  The guard dragged the empty metal chair out from the table, scraping its legs against the floor tiles. He used a key to unlock Roger’s left wrist, then, when Roger sat and dutifully moved both arms behind the chair, ran the empty cuff and chain through the metal spindles and reattached it to his right wrist.

  Satisfied that his charge was pretty well chair-bound, the guard stepped back.

  Roger continued to stare at me, nodding. I wondered if I was being set up as a witness for an insanity plea.

  Darrow thanked the guard in a manner that was also a dismissal.

  The guard didn’t move.

  “We can handle it from here,” Darrow said.

  The guard raised an eyebrow, as if in disagreement. He and the lawyer had a brief, rather low-key, face-off, at the end of which he said, “I’ll be right outside. Hit the buzzer when you’re through.” He glanced at Roger. “Or if you need me.”

  When the three of us were alone, Darrow asked Roger if he was being treated well.

  Keeping his eyes on me, Roger replied, “I haven’t slept since I got in here.”

  “I’ll get them to give you something to help with that,” the lawyer said.

  “Blessing’s going to be all the help I need. Right, Blessing?”

  I looked at Darrow.

  He said to his client, “We’d better get down to business, Roger. Mr. Blessing only has a few minutes.”

  “Right. Right, right,” Charbonnet said. “Busy man. Down to business.” He flared his nostrils and took on that bull-like presence he’d shown me at Stew’s. I supposed that Roger could stand with the chair and charge at me, for whatever that would get him. In any case, I slid my chair back a few inches and began to speculate on how fast the guard would respond to that buzzer.

  “The bottom line, Blessing, is that I had nothing to do with that fucking bomb, and I don’t know how all that crap got on my property. I mean, obviously it was put there to frame me. The only person I can think of who hates me that much is that whacked cop. Not even you hate me that much.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I said.

  “Roger, perhaps we should—”

  “I’m getting down to business, like you said. Okay?” He leaned forward as far as he could with his wrists secured behind him. When that proved too uncomfortable, he slumped back and said, “For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been thinking about this. And it doesn’t scan. There’s something I’m missing. Like I say, the cop hates me. But how the hell could he have collected all that stuff, the dynamite and whatever, and then put it in the shed so fast?”

  Darrow leapt to his feet. “That’s enough,” he said firmly. “This is not a topic for discussion.”

  Roger gave him a quizzical look. “Whose meeting is this?”

  “Yours, but—”

  “Mine. I know what I’m doing, Malcolm. Just chill.”

  The lawyer sat down again, slowly.

  “Let’s see now. Where was I? Brueghel getting the explosive stuff to plant. Let’s say he went out to buy it. A lot of people know him by sight. He’s supercop, for Christ’s sake, the detective who caught The Hairdresser. When that writer, whatever the fuck his name is, came out with his book, he and Brueghel were on TV every time I turned it on. If somebody sold him the dynamite, they’re gonna remember.”

  “Roger, I have to insist—”

  Charbonnet ignored him. “So assuming he was the one who planted the evidence, it seems to follow that he didn’t just go out and buy it the day before it turned up in my shed. You with me, Blessing? Brueghel had the bomb ingredients at hand. Which would also mean that he’s got to be the one who made the bomb and blew up the studio.”

  Okay, so Roger was now officially running for mayor of Crazy Town.

  “We should end this,” Darrow said. “Roger, you’re not yourself …”

  “You don’t stop interrupting, Malcolm, I’m gonna get my good friend Elmer the guard to kick your uptight ass out of here,” Roger said. He hit me again with those bloodred eyes. “Well? What do you think? Did the asshole detective want to put me away so bad he tried killing you to do it?”

  What did I think?

  There seemed to be two possibilities. Roger had won the mayor’s race by a landslide. Or, as I suspected, he was faking it.

  In either case, he’d made a serious mistake, as his lawyer had correctly realized. I’d be taking at least one useful bit of info away from the meeting. Even while feigning the loonies, Roger had admitted that the detective’s fame would have made it impossible for him to purchase the evidence to plant without being noticed.

  “Well, Blessing, would he have hated me that much?” Roger stared at me expectantly.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe Brueghel would try to blow me up just to have an excuse to put you in prison.”

  He nodded again. “It’s a stretch, I admit,” he said. “But who else would want to frame me? This guy’s been on my ass for twenty-two years. Nothing proactive. Nothing to merit a harassment complai
nt. But he keeps popping up in my peripheral vision. Having lunch in one of my restaurants. Or parked down the street near my house. The movie ends and the lights go on, there he is sitting five or six rows away. I’m at my tailor’s, standing on the box, and I see him in the mirror, looking at swatches. That goes beyond dedication. That’s insanity. Or am I wrong?”

  “It’s pretty weird,” I had to admit. “But not insane. And insanity is what it would take to commit a murder just so you could arrest a murderer.”

  “So lemme get this straight,” Roger said. “Victor lies about my alibi, so I’m a murderer. Brueghel spends the last twenty-two years stalking me, but he’s sane. You’ve got a weird fucking logic working for you, Blessing.”

  I looked at my watch. It was nearing one-thirty. Almost time for me to leave, thank God.

  Darrow had been paying attention. “We’re running out of time, Roger. Could we move on from Detective Brueghel to the original point of the meeting? The one you and I discussed?”

  Charbonnet glared at his attorney, then turned to me with a look that was almost plaintive. “What he’s talking about is … The only reason I’m being accused of killing a guy I never met is because a woman I loved got murdered twenty-three years ago. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay. Let me put it this way. I didn’t kill Tiffany. And if I didn’t kill her, then I sure as hell didn’t set off any bomb to try and kill you.”

  “Roger, I don’t understand what you want from me. I’m not going to be on your jury.”

  He looked at Darrow.

  “What Roger is having a hard time saying,” the attorney told me, “is that he needs your help.”

  “My help with what?”

  “Proving his innocence.”

  I wondered again if there wasn’t a camera hidden somewhere in the room. That ubiquitous entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher had to be lurking somewhere nearby, ready to punk me.

  “Why would I want to do that?” I asked Darrow.

  Roger spoke before the lawyer had a chance. “Let me ask you something, Blessing. Man to man. Back in the day, what was your deal with Tiffany? Were you giving her a little poke every now and then?”

  I stared at him, changing my opinion. Maybe he wasn’t faking craziness after all.

  “Naw,” he answered his own question. “Nothing like that. I doubt you even liked her. I cried at her funeral. What about you? Did you even go to the funeral?”

  “I went.”

  “Well, good. Good for you. But the fact of it is she was just a broad you worked with who had the bad luck to get in the way of a meat tenderizer somebody was swinging. Right?”

  “What’s your point?” I said.

  “Back then, you must’ve realized that by putting the cops on Victor and me you’d blow your job at the restaurant and maybe end your career before it even started. All for a dead woman you barely knew. Why would you do that?”

  “I worked with her for nearly a year,” I said. “For part of that time, she was living with a good friend of mine. But I didn’t go to the police because of her. I’d have done the same thing if the victim had been a complete stranger.”

  “Exactly,” Roger said, leaning forward on the table eagerly. “That’s why I wanted you here, Blessing. You’re the only guy I trust to do the right thing. The only guy I trust with my life.”

  Kutcher had to be nearby.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Roger continued. “I hate your ass. You set that cop on me, and I’ll never forgive you for that. But I know why you did it. You thought it was the right thing. You truly believed I killed Tiffany.”

  “I still do.”

  He surprised me by calmly asking, “Why?”

  “You know as well as I. Because Victor Anisette lied about you being with him the night of the murder.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you that. Victor lied like a rug.”

  “Roger, for God’s sake …” Darrow cautioned.

  “Relax, lawyer, we’re just guys talking.” Roger refocused on me. “So Victor lied. What else have you got? Witnesses? Evidence? Even material that couldn’t be used in court? Anything?”

  I was a little shocked to realize I had nothing else. “If you were … if you are innocent,” I said, “why did Victor think he had to provide you with an alibi?”

  “Because I asked him to,” Roger said.

  “Why?”

  He cocked his head to one side and grinned at me. “Suppose I not only answer that question to your satisfaction but also prove I couldn’t possibly have killed Tiffany. Then will you help me get out of this stinking shithole?”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-TWO

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at Roger. He did not wither under my glance. In fact, he seemed as bemused as a man can be with his arms chained behind a chair.

  “I’d be more inclined to believe whatever you’re about to tell me,” I said, “if you hadn’t threatened me with a gun back in the good old days.”

  “What can I say? I was an asshole.”

  “ ‘Was’? Just last week, you tried to deck me while my back was turned.”

  “I was angry and a little drunk. I thought you were telling Stew that same old bullshit about me murdering Tiffany.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  He shrugged. “So I’m still an asshole. That doesn’t carry a prison sentence.”

  “In your case, maybe it should.”

  “You know, Blessing, if you’re wrong about me, there’s a dynamiter walking free out there who wants you dead.”

  Was he being purposefully disingenuous by continuing to mention dynamite, or was he actually ignorant of the composition of a bleach bomb?

  “My guess is, the dynamiter is precisely where I want him,” I said.

  “Come onnn. Do I strike you as the kind of guy who’d build a bomb?”

  “I don’t know that much about you, Roger.”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” he said. “A: If I’d wanted you dead, why in God’s name would I think of dynamite when there are so many simpler and less-dangerous-to-handle weapons? And B: If it had to be dynamite, why would I risk blowing myself up when I could hire an expert?”

  I’d been trying to keep a straight face, but some uncertainty must have slipped past my filter.

  Encouraged, Roger unloaded one more argument. “Assuming I thought so little of my own safety, would I have kept all that crap in my shed for the cops to find? Especially after Brueghel’s visit the night of the crime?”

  “Okay,” I said, with the weariness of a man beaten down by what had at least the appearance of logic. “Tell me why you couldn’t have killed Tiffany.”

  He took a second or two to shift his concentration to the earlier crime, then replied, “I have a real alibi I’ve never been able to use.”

  Apparently convinced he’d hooked me, he leaned back in his chair and waited for me to ask what that real alibi was. I hadn’t seen a smile that smug since Bruce Willis won his first Emmy. I’m not a big fan of smug. I looked at my watch, yawned, and said, “It’s a little late, folks.” I turned to Darrow. “Will you buzz for the guard, or should I?”

  “Okay, Blessing,” Roger said. “I was at Palm Springs when Tiff … when she was killed.”

  I frowned. “That’s your alibi? I was at the restaurant that night, remember? When I left at about eleven, you were still there with Tiffany and Victor.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but just after you guys took off, Tiff started getting on my ass. Finally, she told me to go fuck myself. That didn’t sound like much fun, so I decided to fuck somebody else.”

  “Palm Springs is a long way to go for a booty call,” I said.

  “You go where the action is.”

  “It’s what, a two-and-a-half-hour drive?”

  “Maybe the way you do it. In that beautiful little Vette I had, at that time of night, I made it in just under two hours. We hit the sheets right away and kept it goin
g all night long.”

  “Too bad there wasn’t an Olympic category,” I said. “So let me guess why you couldn’t use this marathon boink for an alibi. The guy didn’t want it known you were his gay lover.”

  “Fuck you, Blessing. It was a woman I was with. But before I say any more, you’ve got to promise me something.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “That you won’t mention anything about her to the crazy cop,” he said. “Even if I wasn’t fond of her, I wouldn’t want that asshole to mess up her life.”

  I thought about it. “What good is the alibi going to do you if nobody in authority knows about it?”

  “You’ll know about it. That’s what I’m going for here. Promise me you’ll keep her identity a secret.”

  I shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it …”

  “And it’s a little late to be asking, but I’d appreciate it if you also didn’t tell Brueghel what I said about Victor lying. The old man had a stroke a couple years ago, and he’s still in pretty bad shape. But that hasn’t stopped the fucking cop from dropping in on him every now and then to give him a hard time. Brueghel may have even caused the stroke.”

  “I don’t see what the point of this meeting is, if I have to censor everything that has to do with establishing your innocence,” I said.

  “Humor me, please?”

  “It’s your freedom,” I said. “So what’s the story on your booty call that I’ll be keeping a secret?”

  “Like I said, she’s a good woman. Back in those days, she was quite a beauty. She’d made that New York supermodel–to–Hollywood starlet move. When that didn’t work, she got married, and that did work, for a while, anyway. I picked her up one night in Dan Tana’s. She was at the bar, crying into her martini. Over a couple of Tana’s red-sauce specials, she told me she and her old man were having problems. He was gone a lot, leaving her alone with too much time on her hands. She wanted to work. He wanted her to be a housewife. Ordinarily, I stay clear of married broads, but Glory’s special. And twenty years ago, well, any guy would have found her irresistible.”