by Al Roker
“I’m ready, Billy. I really wanna work, to keep busy. That way, I don’t think about … you know.”
Like most recovering romantics, I was familiar with what he was going through. But unlike most of us, he wanted to do it in my bar. “What happens tonight when Bridget comes in with her first drink order?”
He took a deep breath. “I suck it up and fill the order,” he said. “The next time, and the next, and the next, it’ll get easier.”
“And when you start feeling sorry for yourself, or you see her being nice to a customer? You call her a puta again?”
“No, sir,” he said. “I got control now. I can do this, Billy. I’ll be strong. I’ve handled worse things.”
Indeed he had.
“Okay, Juan, let’s see how it goes,” I said, and watched him make his exit with the awkward lurch of a man whose right leg was metal from the thigh down.
A few minutes later, with nothing on my mind except the profit-and-loss numbers dancing across my computer monitor and the haunting melody of Billy Strayhorn’s “Waters of March” on my iPod, I looked up in surprise to see Cassandra standing a few feet from my desk with two burly strangers.
I blacked out the monitor screen and popped out the ear buds in time to hear her say, “… detectives Joshua Solomon and Norman Butker.”
Solomon was in his late forties, a few inches shorter than his partner, with a gray bulldog face and full lips that looked incomplete without a chewed cigar. Near his right eye was a scar containing black specks that might have been the result of gunpowder burns. He was wearing a dark-brown leather driving jacket over his shirt and tie.
Butker, a decade or more younger, was a black man with an un-pruned mustache, matching eyebrows, and a scalp full of shiny, curly hair. He was wearing a dark suit that fit him well. He stayed a half-step back from Solomon, clearly identifying Solomon as the alpha dog of the partnership.
The alpha dog flashed his badge but showed no interest in any pleasantry like shaking hands, so I remained seated. I assumed that their visit had been prompted by the Juan-Bridget spat, but I couldn’t imagine who’d made the complaint. I put a curious look on my face and asked, “Detectives, what can I do for you?”
“We’ve got some questions about you and your restaurant here,” Solomon said matter-of-factly.
I felt a twinge of annoyance but kept my face blank. “Don’t tell me they’ve passed a law against serving gourmet meals?” I asked.
“Interesting you should bring up your meals,” Solomon said. “We’re not the Food Police, Mr. Blessing. We’re from Homicide West.”
“Who’s dead?” I asked, Juan and Bridget still on my mind.
Solomon looked at Cassandra and said, “Thanks for your help, honey. We can take it from here.”
“Ms. Shaw is my trusted assistant, detective,” I said quickly, before Cassandra had a chance to respond. “I’d like her to hear whatever you have to say.” One of the life lessons I’ve learned is that when conversing with homicide detectives, it’s always a good idea to have a witness who’s not on their team.
Solomon shrugged and said, “We understand you were an associate of one Rudyard M. Gallagher?”
“Were?”
“Yeah. That association went past tense last night when somebody murdered Mr. Gallagher.”
No matter how hard you try to remain cool, there are times when you just can’t keep your jaw from dropping.
“When did you see him last?” Solomon asked.
“He wasn’t at work this morning.” I paused to think. “Yesterday, I guess. Around ten or so.”
“Ten at night?” Butker asked.
“No. In the morning, just after our show went off the air. When did it hap—?”
“You didn’t see him last night?” Solomon interrupted me to ask.
“No.”
“He wasn’t in this restaurant last night?” Butker asked.
“That I don’t know,” I said. “If he was, I didn’t see him. Cassandra?”
She shook her head no. “He comes in … came in from time to time,” she said. “But not last night.”
“Where were you last night, Mr. Blessing?” Butker asked. “Between six and, let’s say, midnight?”
“Here. I was in the building from about four p.m., when I got back from various errands. I was downstairs or in this office until about ten-thirty, when I went to bed. I’m on television very early in the morning.”
Solomon turned to Cassandra. “That about right?”
She nodded. I could tell by her frown that she was still simmering from his referring to her as “honey.”
“You testify to that?” Solomon asked her.
“Hang on for a minute,” I said. “I’m a suspect?”
“Like they say in every crappy cop show on the TV, we’re just trying to eliminate everybody we can,” Solomon said. “So, ma’am, was Mr. Blessing in this building between six and midnight?”
“Yes. I did not actually see him go to sleep, but I can and will testify that I did not see him leave the building during the hours you mentioned.”
“How’d Rudy die?” I asked.
“He was …” Butker began, but stopped when the alpha dog nearly bit him.
“How would you have killed him, Mr. Blessing?” Solomon asked.
“I don’t kill people,” I said. “Murder’s a crime and a sin.”
“Good answer,” Solomon said. “Oh, I almost forgot to mention: We’re closing your restaurant down, as of now.”
“What are you talking about?”
He pulled a folded sheet of paper from an inside breast pocket of his jacket and dropped it on my desk. “This is a warrant for us to search the building, stem to stern,” Solomon said.
“Why, in God’s name?”
“Because, according to Mr. Gallagher’s fiancée, you and he weren’t exactly the best of friends. And according to the plastic carryout containers at his condo, which is where a cleaning lady found his body this afternoon, he was probably poisoned by food from this joint.”
Chapter
TEN
I spent the next couple of hours in a sort of nightmarish stupor, watching uniform and plainclothes cops and a cadre of technicians, geeky and coolly impersonal, trooping through my restaurant. Some probed the nooks and crannies, while others eagle-eyed members of the staff who were doing what they could to refrigerate the unprepared ingredients and foods that would have been used for the night’s servings—servings that were now officially canceled.
Once the salvage operation was complete, the interrogations began. First the kitchen staff, and then, as they arrived, the waiters, bartenders, and busboys.
Solomon and Butker focused on me.
They took me through an hour-by-hour chronology of how I’d spent the previous night, which they would later compare to similar chronologies taken from Cassandra and the others. Then the detectives moved on to more specific questions.
Could I have left the building for just a few minutes? Long enough to hand-deliver Gallagher’s dinner?
“Neither I nor anybody working here hand-delivers dinners to anybody,” I informed them.
Did I have any idea how the food could have been transported from the restaurant to Gallagher’s apartment?
“We do offer a takeout service,” I said. “I suppose Rudy might have come in without Cassandra noticing. Or maybe he had a friend pick it up for him. Did it look like he had a friend for dinner?”
“Naw, looks like he ate by himself,” Butker said. “But somebody made a mess of the condo. Place was seriously trash—”
“We ask the questions, Mr. Blessing,” Solomon said, scowling at his partner.
“Okay, ask away,” I said.
“You ever been in the victim’s apartment?” Solomon wanted to know.
“No.”
“Weren’t there last night, throwing books around, cutting up the furniture, looking for something?”
“I’ve never been in his apartment,” I
said. “‘Never’ would include last night.”
“Think of any reason why your fingerprints might have been found there?”
“They could have been on some object I touched at the studio that Mr. Gallagher took home. Did you find my prints on something?”
“You kill him, Mr. Blessing?” Butker asked, ignoring my question.
“No.”
“That’s it for now, then,” Solomon said.
“Great,” I said. “No apologies?”
“For what?” Solomon asked.
“You have any idea how many thousands of dollars you’re gonna cost me in food and customers?”
“I’d be worrying about other things, I was you.”
“Like what?”
“Like the rat poison we found in your kitchen,” Solomon said.
“We use traps,” I said. “Not poison.”
“Yeah, well, this stuff was taken off the market a while ago, so maybe you haven’t been using it lately. Least not on rats. The fact that it’s so old should help the lab figure out if it’s the same Squill that spiced up Gallagher’s last meal. That’ll be when you got real worries.”
“What was his last meal?” I asked.
Solomon hesitated, then said, “No harm in tellin’ you, I guess. Looked like chicken in some kinda gravy, what was left of it.”
“Coq au vin,” I said, remembering it was one of last night’s specials.
“If that’s what you call it,” Solomon said.
“What was he drinking?”
Another pause. “Red wine.”
“Couldn’t the poison have been in the wine?”
Solomon frowned. “Hell, I don’t know. Won’t, until the lab tells me.”
“But you’re assuming it was in the food from my restaurant,” I said.
“Who’s to say the wine didn’t come from here, too?”
“How long before you’re finished in my kitchen?”
“We won’t be able to free it up for another … I don’t know, twenty-four hours.”
“In other words, no lunch or dinner tomorrow, either,” I said.
“Could be worse,” Solomon told me. “Oh, by the way, not that it’s any big shocker, but there’s no record of Gallagher’s takeout. No credit card receipt at his place. You didn’t happen to see it when you tore up his apartment?”
I didn’t bother to respond to the question. “Check our receipts here,” I said.
“We did. Nothing with his name on it from last night. Nobody remembers seeing him in the restaurant. We’ve got the hard drives from your security-camera setup. We’ll check the footage for people coming in for takeout. Maybe we’ll see a familiar face. Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Blessing.”
As soon as they left, I went looking for Cassandra. She was in the bar area, being ogled by two uniformed cops who didn’t seem to have anything better to do with their time. She was ignoring them while phoning customers who’d made reservations for dinner that night.
I informed her that she’d have to add tomorrow’s lunch and dinner reservation holders to the list. She gave me an annoyed look, then turned to the cops and gave them the finger. Misplaced aggression.
Cutting through the main dining room, I saw that the police had finished interviewing about half the staff. The remaining members were seated at tables, waiting to be called.
Juan and Bridget were sitting side by side. He gawked at her lovingly. She seemed either distracted or apprehensive. I watched him reach over and take her hand. She didn’t seem to mind. Even gave him a sweet smile. For a reward like that, I guessed he’d be willing to have a police interrogation every day.
When I got back to my desk, the digital clock indicated it was a little after six, but I put in a call to my attorney anyway. Wallace A. Wing picked up on the second ring. His assistant probably left at five. “Yo, Billy,” he said, motormouthing as always. “Like I told you, don’t worry about the pilot. Way I structured the contracts, even if the son of a bitch decides to try, he can’t dump you or Lily without paying some heavy coin.”
“The son of a bitch isn’t going to be dumping me or anyone, Wally. He’s dead. Murdered. And they’ve locked down my restaurant.”
“Murdered? Holy shit. And they locked you down? Why? It can’t have anything to do with him kicking you from the pilot?”
It’s funny the way people get stuck on a subject, especially when they get ten percent of that subject. “Forget the pilot, Wally. I don’t think the detectives know anything about it. At least, they didn’t mention it.”
“Then …?”
I told him what little I knew about the situation.
“That’s it? You and Gallagher weren’t best buds and it was your takeout the killer doctored? Doesn’t sound like much of a case.”
“They don’t have any case that I can see,” I told him. “But they’ve closed me down tonight, and they want to keep me closed all day tomorrow. Is there anything you can do?”
“Call you back,” he said.
Half an hour later, Wally returned the call.
“You only gave me half the story, dude. It’s not just a couple cops closing the restaurant. DA Philip Rodell is riding herd on this, and he is one angry buckaroo. How’d you piss him off?”
“Short story not worth mentioning,” I said. “How much trouble am I in?”
“If they get anything remotely resembling hard evidence, Rodell will move to indict. Billy, I’m out of my depth in a criminal case. Why don’t we put Fritz Brocton on standby?” Brocton, Barger, and McAllister was the firm of choice for top-of-the-news murder suspects.
“How much will it cost me?”
“Not much. Unless you have to use him. Then you can dust off your white jacket, dude. Because Fritz does not play for pennies. You could wind up out on the street, or working in my dad’s kitchen.”
“I’ve seen your dad’s kitchen. The street is cleaner.”
“You got that right,” he agreed. “I’ll alert Fritz. What you do now is sit tight and put your faith in truth, justice, and the American way. And Fritz.”
The hell with that, I thought as I replaced the receiver. I’m not about to let some half-smart killer and a pissed-off DA stick me with the tab for a murder I didn’t commit.
I grabbed the phone and dialed a number I knew by heart. When a familiar voice answered, I said, “Hi, Gretchen. How are you holding up?”
“What do you want, Billy?” The words were as cold as gazpacho.
“To offer my condolences.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“Gretch, you told the police that Rudy and I didn’t get along.”
“Well, you didn’t.”
“We had disagreements,” I said, “but they weren’t the kind of things that lead to murder, for God’s sake. I don’t have a violent bone in my body. But now the cops are all over me. They closed down the Bistro.”
“The police, a boorish detective named Solomon, said that the poisoned coq au vin came from the Bistro,” she said. “That seems reason enough for them to close it down.”
“They’re not even sure it was the food that was poisoned,” I said. “And even if it was, anybody could have done that after it left here. Maybe somebody who was with him.”
“Rudy dined alone last night.”
“How do you know that?”
“I … I called him earlier in the evening. Maybe six-thirty. He’d just arrived home. He said he was worn out, that he was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.”
“He didn’t say anything about his plans for dinner?”
“No. Just that he was exhausted. He’d been feeling tired ever since he returned from the Middle East. And then there was the pressure from all the damned agents wanting to renegotiate contracts. Which he blamed on you, with good reason.”
“Gretch, you can’t really believe I murdered Rudy.”
There was silence on the line for a few beats. Then: “No. Of course not, Billy. I just
don’t want to think about it at all. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m going to stay with Dad at the manor house for a while. It’s not good my being here alone.”
“I’m really sorry you have to go through this.”
“I … I shouldn’t have told that detective about you and Rudy,” she said. “It was spiteful.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just take care of yourself. I’ll be fine.”
I cradled the phone and considered what I should do to make that last statement ring true.
Gretch’s comment about her fiancé feeling tired every night prompted me to drag the Food School 101 file from the desk drawer. I’d been keeping it handy ever since Rudy said he was going to can me from the pilot. I flipped through it until I found the address I wanted.
I was putting the file away when Cassandra entered the office. “This place is a frigging mess, Billy. And it’s like low tide out on the street. Paparazzi and reporters and gawkers.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Just the kind of publicity we need. How’d things go with the reservation crowd?”
“I caught most of them. A lot of unhappy customers. The ones I couldn’t reach are going to be even more unhappy when they arrive. Especially when they find unwashed paparazzi instead of dinner.”
“I guess you’ll have to stay at the door,” I said. “Tell the customers who do make it past the press gauntlet that we’re sorry. And try to sound like you mean it.”
“Everybody’s asking why we’re closed. I’ve been stonewalling them, telling them I don’t know.”
“Might as well tell them the truth. You can bet it’s already on TV and the Web. And the papers will have it by morning. Just say we’re cooperating with the NYPD on a criminal investigation. If they ask for specifics, refer them to the cops and your buddy District Attorney Rodell.”
“Rodell? Oh, shit. Is it my fault they closed us down?”
“Not unless you poisoned Gallagher,” I said. “Rodell is just a self-important little weasel, taking advantage of the situation. I don’t suppose you made a copy of that front-door footage with him and the hooker?”
“No copy. But it’s on the security disks.”
“The detectives took the disks,” I said, standing and grabbing my coat. “I want you to do a couple of things. I need an exact count of how many coq au vin dinners were served last night and a list of who paid for ’em. Meanwhile, keep trying to reach the reservation holders you missed.”