The Morning Show Murders

by Al Roker

  We both were still grinning as he took the right turn at Eighth Avenue, then a left on West Thirty-ninth Street. But as we followed a huge beer truck into the Lincoln Tunnel, the grin left my face.

  In the moments before we lost daylight, I decided to just close my eyes until we could see the slate-gray skies of Weehawken. With the windows open, the noise was intense. The air was close. I felt the pressure, real or imagined, from being underwater and wondered how long it would be—and I was sure of the inevitability of it happening—before the tunnel would crack and cave in.

  I was entertaining myself with that thought, my eyes squeezed shut, when Joe said, “Billy, anybody else from show going to see this turkey man?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Why?”

  “Hummer following us. Been there from the museum.”

  I opened my eyes to a nightmare of car headlights reflecting off the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. Horns blaring. Big rigs zooming. Angry traffic.

  I twisted in my seat to look through the rear window. More headlights. But I saw the vehicle Joe had mentioned. A bloodred Hummer about two car lengths behind us. It was difficult to see into the Hummer, but I could make out the image of a big man behind the wheel and at least one figure on the rear seat.

  I told Joe I saw nothing to cause any alarm.

  It was frightening enough just being in the tunnel. The whole tube full of cars seemed to be traveling at warp speed, but maybe the noise had something to do with that.

  I noticed a slip of paper on the rubber mat near my feet—unusual, because Joe kept the interior spotless. I picked it up, knowing it would contain another cat sketch. In this one, the stick-figure cat was accompanied by a little friend, a skunk, radiating squiggly lines that cartoonists use to indicate odor.

  “He coming up fast,” Joe said.

  As point of proof, the Volvo was suddenly bumped from behind. I was jerked forward as far as the seat belt allowed. If the bump had been any harder, the airbags might have gone off.

  Joe was yelling in Vietnamese. I assume he was cursing the guy in the Hummer.

  I looked back. The big vehicle had returned to its previous position. Then, with absolutely no warning, it leaped into a small space in the left lane, causing the suddenly alert driver of a Mercedes sedan to risk a pileup by tapping his brakes.

  The Hummer was coming up on our left. Its side windows were dark-tinted.

  Joe gunned the Volvo, but thanks to the big rig in front of us, there was no place for him to go.

  When the Hummer was side by side with us, its right rear window lowered. Then the bad freakiness began and I stopped worrying about being in a tunnel under the Hudson.

  A full-size cheetah glared at us from the rear seat of the Hummer. Not a cheetah, of course. Cheetahs don’t ride in Hummers. They don’t wear gloves. They don’t point space guns out of car windows.

  The cheetah aimed its weird-looking gun at Joe. I suddenly realized the significance of the cheap perfume and the cat drawing.

  “Shut your win—” I began.

  Too late.

  The back of Joe’s head seemed to erupt in red, and he was thrown toward me. He continued screaming as the Volvo veered to the left and kissed the side of the Hummer with a grinding screech, the cheetah leaping back from the window. I reached over and grabbed the wheel, bringing us back into the right lane.

  Joe pushed me away and regained control of the wheel. “I got it, Billy,” he said.

  “You okay? The blood …”

  “Head hurt like hell,” he said. “No blood. Paint.”

  Paint?

  “Got some in left eye. Right eye okay.”

  The Hummer was ahead of us now. The cheetah shot at us again. This time the Volvo’s windshield went red, cutting off the view from even Joe’s good eye.

  He popped his seat belt and, keeping his right foot on the gas, stuck his head out of his window, screaming as he steered us forward.

  The Hummer swerved again, this time into our lane, ahead of the big rig.

  Joe maintained his awkward position until we emerged from the tunnel and he was able to pull over to the far left, past the safety cones, into a non-traffic area underneath a giant American flag that was occupied by the vehicles of the tunnel crews.

  One of the crewmen was kind enough to provide us with solvent and a rag to clean most of the paint off the windshield, and rubbing alcohol to clean Joe’s face. He carried his own bottle of water that he used to wash out his eye. But my diminutive driver remained in despair over the damage done to the side of the car and the dent in the rear bumper. He stared at the long scratches and gouges. Then he ran his hand over them tenderly, as if soothing a wounded animal.

  “I see that Hummer again,” he said, “I destroy it.”

  “You see that Hummer again, it’ll be in a police impound yard,” I said. “It’s bound to have been stolen.”

  “Then I destroy woman in catsuit.”

  “You sure it was a woman?” I asked.

  “You not know difference?” he said. “I explain. Women got these, but much bigger.” Joe was holding his hands out in front of him. “Even Mrs. Joe, though not that much bigger.”

  “It wasn’t just a catsuit,” I told him. “It was a Cheetah costume, stolen from the Glass Tower.”

  “Then you know who woman is?”

  “Not a clue,” I said.

  “Car a mess,” he said. “Interior got paint, too. Like my jacket.”

  I noticed splotches of red on my jacket, too.

  “You still want to see turkey man?” Joe asked.

  I wasn’t that wild about it to begin with. “No way,” I said. “Get me back to Manhattan as soon as you can, even if we have to take the Tunnel.”

  “Then we need to get car repaired,” he said.

  “Well, it won’t be a total loss. They’ll have to wash it, too.”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  I let Kiki handle the whole car-repair thing.

  While she made the calls and the arrangements, I slumped on the only soft chair in my office, brooding as I dabbed at the red spots on my jacket with lighter fluid. That’s where Arnie found me.

  “Your presence is requested in Gretchen’s office,” he said.

  “What’s up?” I asked, getting to my feet and following him through the door.

  “Something about a car accident.”

  “How’d she find out about it?”

  “She passed your car on the way back from lunch,” Arnie said, leading me to the bank of elevators.

  “It’s not that big a deal,” I said.

  “Gretchen said the car looked like crap,” he said.

  “What’s the big deal? It always looks like crap,” I said.

  Gretchen was at her desk, a coffee mug at her elbow and a concerned look clouding her handsome face.

  “Sit down, Billy,” she said. “I want to hear what happened.”

  During my brooding, I’d more or less decided that as Henry Julian and Cassandra and, especially, Felix had been telling me, it was not in my best interest to continue to annoy the killer. Yes, mine was still the only name on Detective Solomon’s suspect list. But that was something I could live with, at least until the cop realized the error of his ways or Rudy Gallagher’s murder became an official cold case.

  So I told Gretchen that we got sideswiped in the Tunnel. “The other car got away. End of story.”

  “What about the costumed figure shooting paintballs at you?”

  “How in God’s name do you know about that? Don’t tell me Joe—?”

  “Joe … tell me anything? Of course not. Billy, this is the era of information. Nothing goes unreported.”

  She spun her desk monitor around. There was a grainy but clear-enough photo of the Volvo being fired upon by the Cheetah in the Hummer.

  “Damn,” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought there’d been enough light.”

  “Your car has been identified by the plate,” she said, “and the
re has been speculation on two of the gossip sites that the cat person is a fan of Rudy’s, attempting to avenge him.”

  “Did I hear you say ‘cat person’?” Trina Lomax asked from the doorway.

  “Trina, come in,” Gretchen said. “I heard there was some problem at your apartment this morning? Everything okay?”

  “False alarm,” Trina said, taking a chair. “What’s this about a cat person?”

  Gretchen showed her the photo.

  “Fascinating,” Trina said. She turned toward me, her blue eyes shining with delight. “I definitely underestimated you, Billy. Playing paintball in the Lincoln Tunnel with a cat. Hard-core.”

  “I wasn’t playing anything,” I said. “Gretchen, has anybody checked the plate on the Hummer?”

  “Owned by a Scarsdale dermatologist,” she said. “He claims it was stolen sometime during the night.”

  “A cat shooting at you,” Trina said. “Ring any bells, Billy?”

  I gave her my best blank look.

  “You know something about this, Trina?” Gretchen asked.

  “I know about a very dangerous man who calls himself Felix the Cat.”

  Could Joe have been mistaken about the Cheetah being a female? The wardrobe guy, Simon, had said it was a woman’s costume, and the cartoon character had been a woman. But Trina seemed convinced Felix was a man. Perhaps an androgynous one?

  “You remember the assassination of a drug kingpin named Tumetello in Bogotá four years ago?” Trina asked.

  “Vaguely,” Gretchen said.

  “My memory is a little more vivid,” Trina said. “I was working on a story about the Moleta cartel for International News and got to the crime scene early enough that the body was still warm. Tumetello wasn’t what you’d call a wonderful guy, and his death eventually brought about the end of the cartel. But his killer had disemboweled him. And left a calling card of sorts on a wall beside the body. He’d cut off Tumetello’s finger, dipped it in the dead man’s blood, and used it to draw a stick figure of a cat on the wall beside the body, signing it ‘Felix.’

  “Six months later, another cat drawing turned up in Nablus near the headless body of a Hamas heavy who’d reputedly organized, but not attended, a suicide attack on Israeli security forces. That’s when I talked my boss at INN into putting me on the Felix story.

  “What I discovered was amazing. The name and/or the stick drawing were connected to at least nine key assassinations in a three-year period. But Felix remained a total enigma.”

  “No witnesses?” Gretchen asked. “No clues?”

  “A few months ago, I heard about a Paris Match reporter who’d told friends he was about to expose Felix as a Frenchman with a mistress in Marseilles.”

  “I assume you contacted the reporter,” Gretchen said.

  “I didn’t get the chance,” Trina said. “He and an unidentified woman were burned to death in a car crash.”

  “The woman being Felix’s mistress?” I asked.

  “That’s as good a guess as any,” Trina said. “It seems the reporter’s files had also been burned in the crash. That fire ended my investigation as well as his. The big dogs at INN sent word that I was to concentrate on subjects that were less dangerous and offered a quicker yield. It wasn’t my welfare that concerned them. They just didn’t want to throw a lot of money into a project that could wind up as ashes, along with a reporter whose death would probably result in higher insurance rates for the company.

  “So I quit. And thanks to Felix, here I am.”

  “Billy, is it possible the person in the Hummer …?”

  “Was this Felix?” I asked. “Why would an international hit man waste his time on me?”

  “That’s funny,” Trina said. “Gin told me you were very concerned about Felix.”

  I had to give her props. It was the perfect interviewer move. You hold out key information, let your interview subject crawl out on a limb of lies, then use it to cut the limb.

  “She says you called her attention to one of Felix’s personal touches, the stick drawing of a cat on the sidewalk near Phil Bruno’s burning building. She also said you took a picture of it. I’d love to see it.”

  I wondered if she’d already seen it. Perhaps even drawn it while we were in the building almost getting burned with Phil. Something about her Felix vignettes bothered me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it left me with the feeling that I shouldn’t trust my life to Trina Lomax.

  “I don’t have the picture anymore,” I said. “I had no reason to keep it. And I’m not even sure it was a cat.”

  “You told Gin it was and that the person all of you saw leaving Bruno’s building probably was Felix.”

  “Let’s just slow down and review the bidding,” Gretchen said. “We’re talking about an international assassin who may have killed one of our cameramen and who now has his sights set on you, Billy? Are you in some suicidal state of denial? Or is it some equally suicidal macho I-can-handle-it pose?”

  What the hell! Felix the Cat was out of the bag.

  I got out the card Maureen “Tigra” Bettenhaus had given me at the museum and placed it on Gretch’s desk. “Is this the kind of drawing you’re talking about, Trina?”

  “My God, yes,” she said. “And this comment about your one life. Billy, this is a threat you should take very seriously.”

  “I’ve got a driver with red eye and a car with its side bashed in,” I said. “I take it seriously.”

  “Do you know why he’s threatening you?” Trina asked.

  “He may have the mistaken idea that I want to cause him trouble,” I said, staring at her. “That is something I definitely do not want.”

  “Rudy,” Gretchen said, her normally full-throated voice going up an octave or two. “My God, this Felix may have killed Rudy. Rudy and Phil and … he attacked you and poor Joe. We have to do something.”

  “Just hold on,” I said. “Let’s not …”

  But Gretchen had rushed from the room.

  Trina looked at me. “Where’d you get this card?”

  Why ask that question if, as I suspected, she knew the answer? Would a lie or obfuscation suggest I hadn’t given up the Felix hunt? Would the truth cause Tigra/Maureen harm? My head was starting to hurt.

  Fortunately, I was saved from Trina’s inquisition by Gretchen’s return. Her father was with her. And Marvin, dressed in his usual warm-up outfit and flying-dolphin cap. He gave me a wink and stayed in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

  The commander looked pained. “Gretchen has just apprised me of the situation, Billy. I’m damned sorry, but I may have brought this on you.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Against the good advice of the smartest man I know”—he nodded to Marvin—“I did a very foolish thing. I can’t do anything to undo what happened to Rudy and Phil. But I can get someone to see to your safety.”

  “Thanks, Commander, but if this Felix wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have used paintballs. I don’t need a bodyguard.”

  “Yes, you do,” the commander said. “Gretchen, call InterTec. Talk to that woman VP who’s handling the Mossad guy’s security.”

  “Lee Franchette,” Gretchen said.

  “Whatever. Tell her we need a twenty-four-seven on Billy.”

  The beautiful and exotic Lee Franchette? 24/7? The combination had its appeal. Still … “I really don’t think it’s necessary,” I said. “I’ll just be careful and mind my own business and—”

  “What do you think, Marv?” the commander asked.

  “I think a protector’s a fine idea,” the old man said. “Get Billy somebody like Robert Vaughn in that series he did in England.”

  “Make it happen, daughter,” the commander said, and marched out of the room.

  Marvin stayed at the door, observing.

  Gretchen picked up her phone, but before she could dial, I said, “I don’t get it. How could your dad have anything to do with Felix?”

  She hesitate
d, her eyes shifting to Trina, who seemed to be on ultra-alert.

  Marvin said, “Why don’t you and I take a walk, Billy, and leave these executives to their multitasking?”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The walk was a short one, just down the hall to an office nearly the size of my entire restaurant, only with more expensive carpeting and the look and smell of wax-polished pale wood. To my right was a wall covered by a loooong floor-to-ceiling bookcase with a matching rolling half-ladder, the better to reach even the highest glass-covered leather-bound scripts and books. The wall to my left featured two large oil paintings—of a crusty old bird in a general’s uniform that seemed to be giving me the stinkeye no matter where I stood in the room, and a truly handsome dowager in a pale-blue ballgown who looked remarkably like I imagined Gretchen would in her sixties. The commander’s father and mother.

  Farther down the room was a waist-high cabinet constructed of the same wood as the bookshelf, its surface jam-packed with shiny industry awards, along with framed accolades and certificates of merit.

  At the far, far end of the room off-white draperies had been drawn, exposing a bank of six windows. The commander sat at his massive desk with the windows to his back. He was staring at a framed photograph in his hand.

  He raised his head suddenly and said, “That you, Marv?”

  Marvin gave me a stay-there hand gesture and walked toward the commander. “Billy’s with me,” he said, “but we can come back later.”

  “No, it’s okay,” the commander said. He placed the photograph on his desk, pulling his display handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his eyes.

  Marvin waved me forward.

  I dragged my feet, trying to give the commander more time to pull himself together. He blew his nose and put the handkerchief away. He managed a wan smile, but his eyes were red and wet as he looked at us expectantly.

  “I think we owe Billy an explanation for putting him in the crosshairs,” Marvin said. The metaphor sent a chill down my spine, and I quickly scanned the multi-window space with some apprehension. All I saw were empty rooftops and workers in their offices going about businesses probably more conventional than ours.