Al Roker

by The Midnight Show Murders

  “Why would I?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know you or what kind of friend you are to Stew. You might think he should be told. But it wouldn’t be good for him or me, or Dani. And it wouldn’t do much for your friendship, either. He’d never forgive you.”

  “I wasn’t planning on mentioning it,” I said. “Did you know he had a background check done on Roger?”

  She froze. “When was this?”

  “When Roger started going out with Dani,” I said.

  She laughed. “ ‘Going out’? That’s priceless. But it’s so Stew. Always worried about the wrong things.”

  “Roger strike you as Mr. Right?”

  “Hardly. But why wouldn’t Stew ask Dani about their relationship instead of …? Well, he is what he is.”

  I wondered if it wasn’t she who should have that talk with Dani. But it was none of my business.

  She slipped gracefully from the stool. “Will that about do it?”

  I stood. “Thanks for seeing me. I hope it wasn’t too …”

  I stopped talking because I’d lost her. She was staring at something behind me, hugging herself, as if caught by a sudden draft of frigid air.

  I turned to see an amazingly old man, his frail, twisted body seated on a wheelchair so streamlined and full of bells and whistles it might have come from the latest Michael Bay movie. He was even more interesting than the chair. Bald, except for a few long strands of yellow-tinged white hairs pasted to his scalp. His left eye was closed in what appeared to be a permanent wink, and his nose and chin were just an inch or so from an embrace.

  He was wearing a bowling shirt of pale blue and white stripes with the team name “Frush Strike Kings” on the right pocket. Spindly bare arms were crossed over his sunken chest. Matching bare legs dangled from white baggy shorts. The toes of his bare feet were constricted and pawlike. His flesh was bottle-tanned. Too even and with a hint of green in the mix. He looked like a Southern California surfer dude version of Ebenezer Scrooge.

  In any less bizarre company, his “assistant” would have commanded my attention first. She could have been in her early twenties, a cap of gamine-cut red hair surrounding a pretty face with the standard Irish green eyes and full lips and freckles. The freckles extended at least as far as the deep V-neck of a thin, starched white short-sleeve shirt that came within a few threads of transparency. Her white slacks were so form-fitting that it was not until the white soft-sole shoes that I realized she was wearing a nurse’s uniform, albeit a fetishist’s version.

  “Hello, Billy,” the old man said. Only his lips didn’t move and it sounded more like “Her-row, illy.”

  I stared at him and saw, hidden in that aged, Punchlike, semiparalyzed face, a hint of the arrogant, energetic man I’d known twenty-two years ago.

  “Hi, Victor,” I said. “How’s tricks?”

  His reply was wet and slurry.

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t get that.”

  The nurse wrinkled her nose in annoyance. “He said he hoped he wasn’t intruding.”

  I turned to Gloria. She was staring at a corner of the room.

  Victor Anisette lifted a withered arm off his chest. His fingers were like a spider’s legs wiggling in the air until they came in contact with the nurse’s thigh and began to rub it in a circular motion. The fact that she was not repulsed suggested she’d grown used to the familiarity.

  He issued another comment, indecipherable to me but not to the nurse. “He says Roger asked him to stop by, to make sure you got everything you needed.”

  “Roger’s a very thoughtful guy,” I said.

  “I’d better get back to work,” Gloria said.

  “ ’Onc go. I lih looking ah ya lo’e tes.”

  “He says, ‘Don’t go.’ He likes looking at your lovely tits,” the nurse translated.

  Gloria did not bother to reply. She gave them both a wide berth as she left the room.

  “So haugh’y … for a slu.”

  “He says she’s so—”

  “I got it,” I said. “Nice seeing you, Victor. Kinda made my day.”

  I started to go.

  “Wai’!”

  I stopped, stared at him.

  “Yah gnna hel’ Haya?”

  “ ‘You going to help Roger?’ ”

  “I doubt I can,” I said. “I don’t think he killed Tiffany. But I don’t know if what I think will matter to the police.”

  “Onna her.”

  “ ‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ ” the nurse translated.

  “No hah elly a hah ah he yee?”

  I looked at the nurse for assistance.

  “ ‘No hard feelings after all these years?’ ”

  I smiled at the old man. “You tried to destroy my reputation and end my career before it started,” I said. “It probably shows a weakness of character, but I still hate your guts, Victor.”

  The half-frown on his partially mobile face might have seemed more sincere if he weren’t caressing his nurse’s buttocks. “Uh a aye you uh han hu ake huhan ah ha hel.”

  “He says he gave you the chance to make something of yourself.”

  I laughed. “That’s very good spin, Victor. Stay healthy, now.”

  He burbled something else as I left the room, but I wasn’t curious enough about it to spend another minute with them. I collared one of the movers and asked where I might find Ms. Ingram. He gestured upstairs with his thumb.

  She was in the master bedroom, supervising the removal of a mirror from the ceiling over the huge, round bed. “Are they gone?” she asked.

  “Maybe leaving,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

  She moved to the window. I joined her and saw that it looked out over the front of the house, including the drive. The nurse was pushing Victor in his wheelchair toward an immaculate vintage silver Rolls-Royce Wraith parked behind my rental. It was a glistening machine with cream side panels and gangster whitewall tires.

  “I had nothing to do with him coming here,” she said.

  “I picked up on that,” I said.

  We watched the nurse open a rear door. As she lifted Victor from his chair, he pressed his face between her breasts. The nurse didn’t skip a beat. She swung him onto the backseat of the Rolls as if he were made of straw, buckled him in, and slammed the door on him.

  She got behind the wheel and, with little effort, made a U-turn and drove away.

  “What a loathsome creature that man is,” Gloria said.

  “You’re preaching to the choir,” I said.

  She asked me the same question the old man had: Was I going to help Roger? I gave her the same answer, then asked, “Why would Roger send Victor here, knowing how you feel about him?”

  “I’ve never given Roger reason to think I feel any way about Victor, pro or con. They’re partners and friends, though I can’t imagine how Roger puts up with him. They’re so different in every way.”

  I thought they were as alike as cuff links, psychologically and philosophically, but I kept that to myself, preferring to part on, if not exactly a friendly note, at least a polite one.

  Before driving off, I phoned Detective Brueghel and was directed to his voice mail. I left a request for a callback, pocketed the phone, and put the car in drive. As I departed, I glanced back and saw Gloria still at the window, looking off into the distance, as if trying to convince herself that Victor was truly gone.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-NINE

  Having lunch in Hollywood isn’t exactly a problem, unless you’re an easily recognizable figure currently involved in a front-page murder investigation. That rather limits your choice of restaurants. I had no desire to dine in any of the flash places where the paparazzi roam, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish a meal in peace in even the less-celebrated venues.

  I decided traditional was my best bet and headed to Hollywood Boulevard and Musso & Frank. Neither the grill nor the menu had changed much in twenty-two years. Just the personnel and the prices.

&nb
sp; I settled into a dark red leather booth, my back to the rear door, the main entryway, and managed to polish off a pounded steak with country gravy, lyonnaise potatoes, creamed spinach, and two glasses of iced tea, with just one tourist couple stopping at the table to gawk. And that was only until I looked up and winked at them.

  Sated, and having nowhere else to go, I arrived at the Worldwide lot twenty minutes early for the afternoon meeting. I sat in the Lexus with the top up and the AC on high, wondering if I should go in or just fly back to Manhattan and pretend the trip had been a dream, like that infamous season of Dallas.

  Detectives Brueghel and Campbell made the decision for me.

  Their black Crown Vic entered the lot, drove right past me, and slid into a no-parking space about ten vehicles away.

  I closed down my AC and engine and met them on their way to the main building.

  “What’s up?”

  “Damn it, Blessing,” Brueghel said. “Why don’t you ever answer your goddamned phone?”

  Thanks to Cassandra’s heads-up, I’d turned the thing off rather than risk inadvertently bugging myself. “Sorry,” I said.

  “I been trying to reach you for the last hour,” he said. “No good deed …”

  “You have to excuse him, Mr. Blessing,” Detective Campbell said. “Man hates to be wrong.”

  “Not wrong,” he snapped. “But even if I am, my wrong doesn’t make you right.”

  Detective Campbell giggled at that. She was much more attractive in giddy mode.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, as we entered the building.

  “My partner had to kick Charbonnet loose,” Detective Campbell said.

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause the prick …” His sentence drifted into an undecipherable mumble.

  “The prick what?” I asked.

  “He didn’t do it,” Brueghel groused, and, ignoring the approaching elevator, pushed through the door leading to the stairs.

  Campbell and I followed.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “Couple things. First, we finally got the report on the explosive used. It was a little more sophisticated than a Clorox bomb. Not much, but enough to make the stuff we found at the Brentwood house useless as evidence.”

  We were double-timing it up the stairs, Brueghel nearly a level ahead and widening the gap. “There’s more,” Campbell said, not even breathing hard, “but we should wait for Pete to give that out, him being the lead.”

  She was grinning.

  “You’re getting a big kick out of his discomfort,” I said.

  “Pete’s the best partner I’ve ever had, and he’s an excellent detective. Except when he’s got Charbonnet in his sights. I’ve been telling him all along he’s been misreading this one.”

  Carmen was not alone in her office. Whisper was seated on a chair to her right. Max and Trey were standing nearby, shaking hands with Brueghel. After an introduction to Detective Campbell, Carmen gave Brueghel the floor.

  A scarlet flush was spreading upward from his neck, and his jaws were clenched so tight that little knots protruded from the sides of his face. “There have been …”

  He paused, his right hand going to the back of his neck. I was concerned that he might be experiencing a seizure of some kind. But he just made a head roll accompanied by neck pops and launched into his announcement. “As I mentioned on the phone, Ms. Sandoval, Chief Weidemeyer, ah, suggested this heads-up because your network is directly involved in our investigation. We’re doing it in the spirit of mutual cooperation. The chief will be making an official statement to the media in just about two hours. I want to make it clear that this is off the record.”

  “Our evening news anchor, Jim McBride, is flying in from D.C. to attend the chief’s briefing,” Carmen replied. “That will be the source of our coverage.”

  “I assume that pertains also to Ble—Mr. Blessing’s appearance on The Midnight Show?”

  Carmen hesitated, then nodded.

  “Fine.” The detective and his partner exchanged glances, and he continued. “We have become aware of certain facts regarding last week’s fatal explosion that have made us reopen the investigation.

  “Initially, because the explosive had been ignited on a section of the stage where Mr. Blessing had been scheduled to stand, we had assumed that he, and not Mr. O’Day, had been the intended victim. Our primary investigation … proceeded from that assumption, the result being the arrest of Mr. Roger B. Charbonnet, a suspect who not only had a history of … animosity toward Mr. Blessing but was in possession of materials used in the creation of a bomb.”

  Campbell had an unreadable smile on her face.

  “This morning, however, we have learned considerably more about the explosive and the device used to trigger it, information that indicated our original assumption had been in error. It appears more likely that Mr. O’Day was the assassin’s target. Consequently, we have released Mr. Charbonnet and refocused our investigation.”

  “What’d the techs tell you about the bomb that changed your mind?” Max asked.

  Brueghel’s face registered only a hint of annoyance at being interrupted. He was doing his best to maintain his good-cop mode. He got a small spiral notepad from his inside coat pocket, flipped a single page, and read, “It was a ‘cast-loaded composition B burster’ about the size of a couple of cigarette packs.” Closing the notepad and putting it away, he continued, “The materials we found in Mr. Charbonnet’s shed could have created a bomb but are not consistent with this particular one.”

  “There’s something I’ve never understood, detective,” Carmen said. “The theater’s stage was built on solid cement. For the bomb to claim Mr. O’Day, it must have been in plain view. But no one remembers seeing anything unusual, not even something as small as a couple of cigarette packs.”

  “Right. Well, a tiny piece of plastic, found in the rubble, helps to explain that, ma’am. It was identified as a portion of a wheel, one inch in circumference, from a kid’s toy called a Zapmobile. It’s like a little automobile with a wireless control. We think it had been rigged to hold the explosive. When Mr. O’Day took his final position on the stage that night, the killer sent the Zapmobile in his direction and then used another wireless device to detonate. The whole operation could have been done in less than thirty seconds.”

  I remembered the whirring sound I’d heard. And there was something else that seemed relevant. A comment someone had made? Maybe on that night? I couldn’t get a fix on it.

  “That’s the main reason we released Mr. Charbonnet,” Brueghel was explaining. “The killer had to be present and could see, without doubt, that Mr. O’Day would be his victim. To our knowledge, Mr. Charbonnet had no motive for killing Mr. O’Day. The focus of our investigation now is to find out who did.”

  “We will assist you in any way we can,” Carmen said.

  Max turned to Trey. “You’re the expert on Des,” he said. “Maybe you should sit down with the detectives, give ’em whatever you’ve got.”

  “Actually, I provided Detective Campbell with my files on Des and all the other members of the cast and crew days ago.”

  “Oh?” Max turned to look questioningly at the detective.

  “Mr. Halstead has been very cooperative,” Campbell said.

  “I’m surprised to hear you were looking into Des’s background before today,” Max said. “How long have you had the information about the bomb?”

  “As Detective Brueghel said, we just found out about the bomb today. While our primary focus has been on persons of interest with motive to do harm to Mr. Blessing, it was Mr. O’Day who died in the explosion, and we could hardly ignore the possibility he might have been the intended victim. I’ve been working on that possibility.”

  “Come up with anything?” Carmen asked.

  “Tons about his career as a performer, beginning with his first paying job on the radio in Dublin. That was in 1997. Before that, not much. Born in Dungannon on January se
venth, 1972. Father and mother were both merchants. Now deceased. No siblings. Attended Saint Mary’s University in Belfast but dropped out after a year for some unknown reason. That’s about it.”

  “You should talk to Jimmy Fitzpatrick,” I said. “They grew up together.”

  “That’s where I got what little information I have,” Campbell said. “I’ve spoken with him a couple of times. He’s pretty vague. Or maybe he’s been stonewalling me. I tried reaching him today, but his phone’s off. What time does he come in?”

  “He’s not coming in,” Max said. “He walked out on the show yesterday. After manhandling our star.”

  That caught Brueghel’s interest. “He was violent?”

  Max turned to Trey. “I’d say so, right?”

  “Yeah,” Trey said. “Definitely violent.”

  “I want to know more about this.”

  Before either Max or Trey could put Fitz even further under the bus, I said, “Fitzpatrick told Max he intended to take Des’s remains home to Ireland for burial,” I said. “Gibby made some pretty insensitive jokes about the body parts and then called Catholics mackerel-snappers, and Fitz slapped him around a little.”

  Brueghel nodded and seemed a little less intrigued. He turned to his partner. “They released the body?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Fitzpatrick asked me to let him know, and so I did. Yesterday. But as of an hour ago, the remains were still unclaimed.”

  “And Fitzpatrick’s not picking up his phone,” Brueghel said. “Anybody here have any contact with him after the … slapping incident?”

  “He dropped by my place last night,” I said.

  Once again, I was the center of interest.

  “And …?” Brueghel asked.

  “He’d been drinking and seemed a little … stressed.”

  “Jeeze, Blessing, don’t make me drag it out of you. Details, please.”

  I was beginning to feel like those mastodons who’d paused to take a sip of water and wound up trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits. Ever since I’d arrived in L.A. I’d been stuck and slowly sinking. Opening up with everything that Fitz had told me would only put me in deeper.