Roger glared at me with that angry bull frown. “You’re implying that twenty-three years ago, Victor and I colluded in a plot to kill Tiffany?”
“I am not implying that,” I said. “How do I put this? For the collusion plan to work, neither Stew nor Blaney could have a real alibi. If Stew, for example, had decided to spend the night at a bar or in a poker game—”
“I get it,” Roger interrupted me. “Anybody seeing him in the bar could have busted the fake alibi. And Blaney would have been left swinging in the wind.”
“What the hell are we talking about?” Brueghel asked.
“Essentially, that Victor killed Tiffany Arden.”
The old man still had a mean stink eye. He made some guttural sound that caused the nurse to shrug.
“That’s ridiculous,” Roger said. “Why would he …?”
“Well, let’s see. You and Tiffany had a fight that night. Maybe Victor thought he could take advantage of the situation. She rejected him. He goes a little wacko, things get out of hand, and he hits her with the tenderizer. Drags her out to the alley, tosses her into the bin. He cleans out the cash register and goes home, hoping everything will work out.
“Think of his relief when you call, panicked, in desperate need of an alibi. ‘Of course,’ I can hear him saying, ‘anything for a pal.’ ”
“Hul hint!”
“He said ‘Bullshit!’ ”
Roger stared at the old man, curious now but still not a believer.
“Did you know that back then, he forced … another girlfriend of yours to sleep with him by threatening to expose your affair to her husband?”
“Ayyyye!” Victor yelled.
“ ‘Lies.’ ”
“Your call, Roger. Do you believe him or her?”
“Jesus, Victor,” Roger said. “You did that, didn’t you? You son of a bitch.”
Brueghel moved closer, ready to try and stop Roger from snapping the old man in two. But Roger wasn’t showing anger. He looked beaten and betrayed, which was more disturbing, somehow.
“Whenever I showed any interest in a woman, Billy, he always took a shot at her. I used to think it was funny. And pathetic. But this … Why the hell didn’t she come to me?”
My guess was Gloria didn’t know how much he cared about her. Maybe he hadn’t realized it before. “You should ask her,” I said.
“Who’re we talking about?” Brueghel asked.
Roger looked at him. “I think Victor did kill Tiffany, detective. It coulda been like Billy said, him losing it after she rejected him. But there’s something else.”
Victor let out another of his indecipherable screams and began writhing on his chair. The nurse made no effort to assist him.
“Tiff welcomed diners to Chez Anisette. But she also kept the books. After her death, Victor told me there’d been a discrepancy of nearly one hundred and fifty grand that she’d stolen.
“I was such a dunce. Like if Tiff had been sitting on top of all that cash I wouldn’t have known it. But this man was like my dad. And he was such a swell guy, he even brought in an ‘accounting specialist’ to disguise the discrepancy. Leave Tiff’s name unsullied.
“I’m dealing with the handiwork of some ‘specialist’ now. Gina’s been going through our accounts, covering just the past ten years, and there’s over two million dollars unaccounted for.
“So I’m thinking now that Tiff didn’t take that hundred and fifty grand, but she might have discovered it was missing that night.”
“Christ,” Brueghel said. “We never even considered the bookkeeper angle.”
Both men converged on Victor. He twisted his lips into what may have been a sneer and said, “Yll nehe conhi a crihi.”
“He says you’ll never convict a cripple.” The nurse’s pretty face hardened, and she added, “But if it’ll help, I know where he keeps all of his records, business and personal.”
Victor’s claw shot up and clutched her wrist.
She pulled back his index finger until it popped. He released her, screaming in pain.
“I like this lady,” Brueghel said.
So I guess I had become his wingman.
Chapter
FORTY-NINE
My flight to JFK was delayed forty minutes for some reason. Drunken copilot. Monster on the wing. It didn’t matter, really.
I had forty minutes to kill. I could watch CNN, have a cocktail, buy a souvenir cap with a palm tree on it, but even if I hid out in the Million Milers Club, there’d be somebody wanting to know all about the Des O’Day murder.
I have discovered that the only place in an airport where you won’t be bothered, outside of a bathroom stall, is when you’re talking on a public phone. You can lean in, embracing the phone, turning your back on the rest of the world, and it would take a kamikaze celebrity stalker, operating on their own or under the aegis of TMZ, to invade your space.
There were only two problems with that plan.
It’s not that easy to find a public phone anymore. I uncovered one hiding behind a Burger King. Then I had to think of someone to call. Which is why I wound up returning Harry Paynter’s message from the day before.
“Yo, Billy, what’s the hap?”
“You tell me. I’m returning your call.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well. I was just checkin’ in.”
“You getting anywhere on the book?”
Silence on the other end.
“Harry?”
“Yea’, bro. You, ah, talk to Wally the Winger lately?”
“Not today. Should I?”
“Big changes, bro. Sandy’s refocused.”
“What’s that mean?”
“New project on the front burner.”
“What about mine?”
“You better talk to Wally. He and Sandy worked something out. I think you got points in the new project.”
“What is it?”
“The hottest property in town. Get this title: Blowout: The Stew Gentry Story. It’s got it all: sex, showbiz, violence, heart, and lots of CGI potential, including, wait for it, 3-D.”
“Stew’s cooperating?”
“Hell, yeah, he’s cooperating. Wouldn’t you for two million bucks? You can buy a lot of defense with that.”
“I thought there was a law against profiting from a criminal act.”
“Listen to yourself,” Harry said. “This is L.A., Jack. Five minutes after that rule went into effect, any contract lawyer worth his Century City address had come up with a half-dozen loopholes.”
“Well, they just called my flight,” I lied. “I’ve got to run.”
“And I better get back to the old word maker. Man, it’s great working on a project I believe in. What do you think sounds better, Blowout or Blowup?”
“How about Blow Me,” I said, and replaced the phone.
The plane was actually an hour and twenty minutes late. I never learned why. Stardust in the fuel tank, maybe. Lotus leaves on the runway.
My seat in first class was beside an eighteen-year-old girl with Day-Glo yellow hair and a ring in her left nostril who’d just won a fourteen-million-dollar California lottery and was hooking up with her Internet boyfriend in New York for a monthlong trip to, as she put it, “Paris and other countries.” She had a box of tiny rubber bands that were supposed to be for her braces, but every so often she’d shoot one at me and pretend it was a mistake.
A filter problem necessitated a shutdown of the AC, and things got a bit hot and clammy in the cabin. An attendant spilled half a Coke down my pants leg and into my shoe. And the movie turned out to be Ghost Rider Two with Nicolas Cage.
But I didn’t care. I was alive. I had my health. And every hot and sweaty, Coke-drenched, Cage-mumbling, rubber band–dodging minute I spent was taking me closer and closer to the one and only Capital of the World.
If you enjoyed
The Midnight Show Murders
you won’t want to miss the next thrilling,
hilarious Billy Blessing mystery.
Read on for an exciting early look at
The Talk Show Murders
Coming from Delacorte Press in 2012
Chapter
ONE
At roughly six-thirty on a Thursday morning that dawned bright and clear, members of the Chicago Police Department’s Homicide Division and Forensic Services were lured to the city’s Oak Street Beach by a body that had been deposited on the sand by Lake Michigan’s ebbing tide. A drowning in the lake, accidental or otherwise, was not exactly remarkable. But this one was clearly unique, though that fact was not presented immediately to the public.
The CPD had dropped a cone of silence over the discovery. Even the hapless early morning jogger who’d nearly stumbled over the corpse was being forced to pursue his cardio perfection in seclusion somewhere off the grid.
Surprisingly, in this era of instant information, where members of the media are as persistent as they are plentiful, the news blackout lasted for nearly thirty hours. It was broken by a gray-haired, ill-tempered former cop named Edward “Pat” Patton. Since his retirement, Patton had begun a second career with an online blog, Windy City Blowdown, devoted primarily to outspoken and often outrageous political critiques, right wing rants and, adding a much-needed patina of credibility to his efforts, an ex-lawman’s insider take on the city’s criminal activity.
Blowdown’s popularity had led to Patton’s frequent appearances on local talk shows and on a few network offerings such as Midday with Gemma, where the eponymous hostess Gemma Bright had just welcomed him to share a periwinkle blue couch with her previous guest, Carrie Sands, a young vibrantly blonde actress who was starring in a new motion picture filming in the city.
When the applause of the primarily female audience began to subside, Patton plopped down on the couch. He leaned in close to the actress and whispered something in her ear that caused her smile to lose much of its perk. Then he turned his attention toward the show’s hostess, adjusting his face in what he believed resembled a Gene Hackman–Popeye Doyle half-grin, The French Connection being his all-time favorite movie. “Okay, Gemma, I’m here,” he said in his familiar, gruff voice. “So what d’ya wanna talk about today?”
“Oh, I think you KNOW, Pat.” Gemma Bright’s Australian accent was elaborate, slightly nasal and made more distinctive by her odd habit of emphasizing words and syllables in a seemingly random fashion. This, combined with her forty-something, zaftig but stylish good looks, an extroverted personality, and an ability to convey what seemed like genuine interest, had positioned her as the second most popular television personality in the Second City. “We want some DISH on that mysTERious body that washed ashore yesterdye.”
“Dish, huh? Well, lemme tell ya, babe, it ain’t all that appetizing.”
“Death rarely is,” Gemma said.
“That’s probably why all those health-conscious wimps kept jogging past the body without stopping,” Patton said. “Or, could it be that they were just too caught up in their own petty little lives to wanna get involved?”
“That’s not fair,” Carrie Sands chirped, evidently feeling he was talking about her people. “When you jog, you get in the zone and you block out a lot of what’s happening around you.”
“That explains why most of you bubbleheads voted for our illustrious illegal alien president. You were in the zone.” Patton winked at the audience, which, surprisingly, rewarded him with scattered applause and laughter.
“Holy shit, Billy,” my assistant Kiki Owens said. “Who is this trog?”
“You know as much about him as I do,” I said, which was the truth at the time.
“I can’t believe this birther crap is still around. And being allowed on our network.”
“It’s that nasty First Amendment,” I told her.
We were in the studio six green room of Worldwide Broadcasting’s Chicago affiliate, WWBC, watching the midday show unfold while I awaited my turn on camera. We were sharing the space with a pale, undernourished-looking guy in his twenties. His black hair was bowl-cut in what may have been an homage to the late Moe Howard. His concave chest was wrapped in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the statement “Down is the New Up” in yellow letters. His faded black jeans had slipped low enough on his hips to show an inch or two of candy-striped boxers, which in its way complimented his oversized pink high-top canvas shoes.
“Patton’s a local celebrity,” he said. “A real asshole who treats his employees like dirt.”
“You work for him?” I asked.
He frowned. “Me? I’m Larry Kelsto. Why would I work …? I’m a comic,” he stated, adding defensively, “I’ve been on a bunch of network shows. Last Comic Standing, Comedy Brew, Later with Carson Daly. Anyway, if you want to know about Pat Patton …”
He then went on to provide a Wikipedia-lite explanation of Pat Patton’s semi-fame, concluding with, “The guy never met anybody he didn’t hate. He’s the opposite of Roy Rogers.”
“I think you mean Will Rogers,” I said.
“Who the hell is Will Rogers?”
“Roy’s father,” I told him, dismayed that a comedian, even a young one, would have to ask that question.
Larry Kelsto was not really interested in any of the Rogers, including, I assumed, Kenny or the late Mister. Lowering his voice, he said to Kiki, “You’re an actress or a model, right?”
Kiki stared at him. She’s an attractive, diminutive black woman who seems as fragile as an orchid but, as I once witnessed, she can make a six-foot-four, two-hundred-ninety-pound Russian mafia enforcer break down and cry like a baby. Her best weapon is a British accent with which she can draw blood faster than a buck knife. Judging by the look she was giving Larry, she didn’t seem to be into younger guys. Or maybe it was the candy-striped boxers. Or the shoes.
“Stick to comedy,” she told him and focused her attention on the monitor.
That didn’t seem to improve her disposition. “I’m picking up a really toxic vibe from Mr. Patton. We should leave now, Billy.”
“Are you kidding? What business are we in, again? Show business. And what’s the cardinal rule? The show must go on.”
“I can fill for you,” the comedian said.
“Thanks, Larry, but I think I can handle it.”
Kiki shook her head. “Big mistake, Billy.”
“Relax,” I said. “It’s just a talk show. After sharing a couch with Carrot Top, talking about weightlifting, and Sean Hannity, just being Sean Hannity, this will be a breeze.”
“Really? Listen to the guy. He’s rancid, Billy. He makes Hannity sound like Walter Cronkite.”
“Bite your tongue,” I said.
On the monitor, Patton’s face had turned a sanguine shade as he replied to something the young blonde actress had said. “Okay, I give you that, missy. Out of a couple hundred self-absorbed, gotta-stay-in-shape me-firsters, one little wimp shows some sense of civic responsibility by pressing a button on his cute little iPhone to call the CPD. Give ’im the friggin’ key to the city, why not?”
“We TRIED to get him for the show,” Gemma told Patton, ignoring the man’s vitriol and thereby undercutting it. “But the police are treating this as if Homeland SeCURity were being threatened. We couldn’t even find out his name.”
“All you had to do was ask me, Gemma,” Patton said. “It’s Shineman. Carl Shineman. They got him locked up tight in his million dollar high-rise apartment on Elm.”
“Why all the SEEcrecy?”
“Ah. If I told you that, Gemma, you’d know as much as me.”
“How is it, Pat, that you ALways seem to be in the KNOW on every CRIME story?”
“Honey, as I’ve told you before, I put in a lotta long, hard years with the CPD, and I was payin’ attention every minute. I understand how things work and where to go to get the info that citizens have a right to know.”
“Then maybe you should TELL us why the police are being so SEcretive.”
Patton hesitated, then said, “It’s … all about the corpse,
Gemma.”
“The CORPSE?” It was our hostess’s turn to address the camera. “This BAD boy will never even give me a CLUE about what he’s going to say once he’s out here.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Patton asked with a guffaw. “I get a kick out of seeing your reactions.” He faced the audience. “You like to be surprised, too, am I right?”
Applause and giggles.
“Point made, Pat. So what’s the big SEcret about the CORPSE?”
“The police don’t want to look like clowns, but the fact is, with all their state of the art computer toys, they’re having the devil’s own time making an ID.”
“Had the body been in the lake that long?” Gemma inquired.
“The water and the fishies did some damage to be sure. But that’s not the real problem.”
I noticed a tiny crease appear above Gemma’s right eyebrow. Love that High Def picture. She seemed to be getting a little peeved at the way Patton was drawing it out. “And the REAL problem IS …?” she nearly demanded.
Grinning, the ex-cop ran a thick finger across his neck. “The corpse’s head had been chopped off clean. And they can’t find it anywhere.”
Chapter
TWO
Gemma blinked.
I’d written off as nonsense her comment about not knowing what Patton was going to say. Even if Standards and Practices didn’t have their own often too-rigid rules of do’s and don’t’s, talk show hosts are usually control freaks, at least professionally. But from where I was sitting, it looked like genuine surprise on her elaborately pancaked face.
She waited for the gasps from the audience to subside. Then she asked, “You’re SAYing someone deCAPitated the victim?”
“He sure as heck didn’t do it himself,” Patton said. “His hands and feet were chopped off, too.”
“OhMyGod!” Carrie Sands exclaimed. “Then it had to be murder.”
Al Roker Page 29