The Morning Show Murders

by Al Roker

  “Hmmm,” I said, wondering what I’d missed.

  Ted filled me in. “You really think it could still be hidden in Rudy’s apartment?”

  “Let’s go see,” Gin said.

  “Bad idea,” I said.

  “Why?” Gin asked. “The cops are through with the crime scene by now. If they’d come across anything like a recording of somebody settin’ up a hit in Iraq, they wouldn’t still be on your case, Billy.”

  “But they are. And they’re saying a prayer each night for a reason to arrest me. Finding me at the scene of the crime would be like Christmas for them.”

  “Okay, you stay here and be a good boy,” Gin said. “We’ll go find the flash drive, won’t we, Ted?”

  “I don’t know, Gin. I can see the headlines now: ‘Fifteen-Million-Dollar Woman Arrested at Crime Scene,’ and in much smaller type, ‘Hack Reporter Boyfriend Also Apprehended.’

  “You guys are wusses,” she said, getting up too quickly and wobbling a little. “I’ll go by myself.”

  Ted and I watched her weave toward the door. “I can’t let her do this alone,” he said, and went after her.

  Sighing, I got up and joined them.

  “Here’s the deal,” I said. “We go to the apartment. If there’s still police tape on the door, we turn around and call it a night. No police tape, we’ll go in and look around.”

  “We’d still have to break in,” Ted said.

  “Not literally,” I said. “I know where Rudy kept a spare key.” Thanks to Gretchen.

  “Well, that’s perfect, then,” Gin said and hiccuped.

  The dining room was nearly deserted. Just the busboys trying not to look daggers at the couples at two tables who were lingering over their after-dinner drinks.

  As we headed toward the front door I spied A.W. sitting at the bar with Cassandra. I’d decided to bring him along, just in case we were to run into a shadowy, self-promoting hit man. But as I took a step toward him, both he and Cassandra, totally engrossed in each other, suddenly roared with laughter over something she’d just said.

  It was the first time I’d ever heard her laugh.

  Instead of disturbing them, I led Gin and Ted away from the happy couple to the exit at the rear. I considered my decision romantic, but, as I would learn, sneaking out on my bodyguard was an act of wine-induced hubris and sheer stupidity.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-NINE

  Maxwell Sucony was at his post near the front door of the late Rudy Gallagher’s building. He had a shiny, silver-colored thermos in one gloved hand and a plastic coffee cup in the other. When he saw us approach, he put both on the tile floor behind a pillar and walked toward the door, grinning. His uniform looked as neat as if he’d just put it on.

  He unlocked the door, opened it wide, and said, “This a real surprise.”

  “Hi, Maxwell,” I said. “Could you join us out here for a minute?”

  He looked puzzled, but he went along with it, letting the door swing shut behind him. “What’s goin’ on, chef?” he asked.

  “These are two friends of mine, Maxwell,” I said, and introduced Gin and Ted. He allowed as how he’d seen Gin on WUA! once or twice. “I’m usually asleep that time of morning, but I sure been reading about you in the papers.”

  “I’m going to ask a big favor, Maxwell,” I said.

  “Must be big, you not wanting to discuss it in view of the lobby camera.”

  I hadn’t wanted to discuss it at all, but the service door had been locked.

  “We’d like to take a look at our late associate’s apartment.”

  Maxwell frowned. “That’s one big favor, chef. There’s a lot of back-and-forth been going on about six-D. Tenants on that floor been complaining about the condition of the apartment. Management wants to clean it up, but the police say they gotta wait until they finished.”

  “The police are still going over the place?” Ted asked.

  “Not so I noticed,” Maxwell said. “Maybe during the day. Must be some reason they don’t want it messed with.”

  “Is it still taped shut?” I asked, hoping he’d say “Yes” and we could all go home.

  “I know it isn’t, ’cause one of the managers got me to go in there with some air fresheners. It’s one creepy place. I figure whoever inherited it is gonna have some trouble unloading it, no matter how much they fix it up.”

  “Think you could look the other way for a minute and let us go up?” I asked.

  “Why you wanna go up there?”

  I put my arm around his shoulders and moved him away from Gin and Ted. Softly, I said, “Ms. McCauley thinks she may have left something of hers up there a while back. She works with Ms. Di Voss. It might be embarrassing if Ms. Di Voss should find it.”

  “I understand,” he said immediately. “The man surely was a playa.”

  I took a previously folded fifty-dollar bill from my pocket and slipped it to him. He started to object, but I said, “She asked me to give you this.”

  He took the bill. “The apartment’s locked. You gonna need my key.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got a key.”

  “Then excuse me, chef, but I got to go to the office. That security camera’s been actin’ up. I’m gonna turn it off and then back on to see if that helps.”

  We waited by the front door. In just a few minutes, the red light on the camera flickered off and we went in.

  Initially, I figured the occupants of the sixth floor must have had more sensitive sniffers than I. The hallway near Rudy’s apartment smelled of nothing more unpleasant than carpet cleaner and air spray. As Maxwell had noted, the door to 6D was bare of police tape.

  The key that Gretchen had mentioned was under the carpet. I used it to unlock the door, then wiped it with my handkerchief and replaced it where I’d found it.

  I’d left the door cracked only an inch or two, but it was enough for me to get a whiff of what the neighbors had been complaining about. We got the full blast when I pushed the door open. Rudy’s body and his bodily fluids had been removed weeks ago, but there remained a ghastly smell of sickness and spoiled food and general mustiness that the sweet aroma of lemon air freshener could never dissolve.

  I ran my hand along the wall beside the door until I found the light switch.

  The place was a shambles. To our right was a small dining room where Rudy had expired, judging by the taped outline of an upper body. The doors to an antique cabinet were hanging open, displaying the broken pieces of what had once been expensive glassware and dinnerware.

  To our left, in the living room, a knife or razor had sliced open the cushions and the back of a maroon love seat, a cream-colored stuffed chair, and an assortment of throw pillows that rested on the carpet like little gutted animals. Next to them were books that had been tossed from a now-empty case.

  A bearskin rug lay rumpled on the carpet in front of a fireplace that, judging by the stirred ash and disturbed logs, had also been searched. I pointed at the sliced and ripped bear head and said, “If there was something here worth finding, it was probably found.”

  “Well, this is still pretty damned excitin’, isn’t it?” Gin said.

  “If that’s what you want,” I said, “try bungee jumping. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Oh, don’t be a poop,” she said.

  “Where do we begin, Billy?” Ted asked.

  “I don’t think it matters,” I said.

  “I’ll check out this room.” He hunkered down to look under the ruined love seat.

  “Well, ah’m gonna find the bedroom,” Gin said. “That’s where ah hide mah valuables.”

  “Good to know,” I said, and headed for my favorite room, moving gingerly past the kill site.

  The smell of rotten food was much stronger in the kitchen. Maxwell hadn’t thought to give it the benefit of one of his air fresheners. It was not the kitchen of a man who did much cooking. The gas stove was too small and looked like it had barely been used. The refrigerator was small,
too. I used my handkerchief to open its door. It was dark and warm inside. Unplugged. The shelves were empty. Ditto the freezer.

  Like the other rooms, the kitchen had been powdered for prints and, one presumed, thoroughly searched by both the unknown trasher and the police. Drawers were pulled out, their contents emptied on the black rubber–matted floor along with pots and pans. The cabinet doors were open, exposing empty shelves. Dishes, cups, and saucers were on the counters. One dish rested alone and unused beside an empty frozen-food carton with a familiar smiling face on it. Mine. It had contained Blessing’s Own Complete Tex-Mex Dinner for One.

  Curious, I used my handkerchief to pop open the microwave’s door. The bad food smell nearly put me down. As cooked beans will after a period of time, those in the Tex-Mex Dinner had erupted inside the machine, coating its walls with not just odiferous bean paste but particles of taco and chicken enchilada now mottled with green fungus.

  Using my elbow, I slammed the microwave door shut on the mess, my duck-breast dinner starting to come alive in my stomach. But I now knew that Rudy had planned on a frozen-food dinner that night and ignored it in favor of a take-out meal he hadn’t been expecting.

  On my way out of the kitchen I noticed a framed blackboard, approximately one foot square, screwed to the wall just to the right of the entryway. Next to it was a piece of blue chalk on a string. The board was filled with scrawled blue notations, apparently a running list of things Gallagher was reminding himself to do. “P/U hed let, pk cher tomats.” “Omeg o, lipo at drug.” “Furn polish and air fresh.”

  Yep, a little more air fresh would have come in handy.

  The list was long enough to suggest that Gallagher hadn’t gone shopping since his return from the Middle East. I struggled through every abbreviated note. Only two stumped me, the bottom entries on the board, “Jewel for Berry9” and “Check: 1 or 2, F or OC?”

  I got out my phone, planning to take a snapshot of the board, but it began to vibrate in my hand. The call was coming from the Bistro. A.W. or Cassandra, or both. I let the call go to voice mail. Then I took my snapshot of Rudy’s bulletin board and exited the odiferous kitchen to see how the others were faring.

  The apartment seemed a little too quiet.

  “You guys off somewhere necking?” I asked.

  No reply.

  I moved down the hall. The light from an open door brightened the far end. Approaching the door, I saw a portion of a stripped bed. And then … Ted sprawled on the pale green carpet, facedown.

  I rushed to him.

  He was breathing effortlessly. I was about to try and revive him when my attention was drawn to Gin in the corner of the room, draped gracelessly across an overstuffed chair. The collar of her blouse was bright with blood.

  I moved past Ted and went to her.

  She had a steady pulse. The skin behind her right ear was broken and starting to swell. It had been the source of the blood. As gently as I could, I lifted her from the chair and placed her on the carpet, being careful with her damaged head.

  That was when I sensed rather than heard movement directly behind me. A shifting of air, a shadow. Something. Then I experienced the sensation of my skull being pierced and the room was thrown into darkness.

  No. Not the room.

  Chapter

  FORTY

  I was alone in a milk-white kitchen. It was immaculate. The counters were spotless. The pots and pans shined. The black and white tiles on the floor glistened. A small door at the far end of the room opened, and a black-and-gray alley cat sauntered into the kitchen, trailing muddy footprints across the tiles.

  It was joined by another cat, a cinnamon tabby, its fur fluffy from a recent bath.

  The cats moved apart. The scruffy feline rubbed against a polished chrome cabinet, leaving a trail of dirt. It grinned at me and leaped up suddenly onto the counter, landing gracefully. Purring now.

  I was shocked to see that its paws were covered not in dirt but in blood.

  So intently was I focused on the gray cat that when the tabby leaped upon my back, sinking its claws into my flesh, it caught me off guard and off balance. I stumbled, my feet slipping on the polished tile floor. I was barely able to raise my hands to guard my face as I fell forward, hitting the tile floor with a solid thud.

  The tabby’s claw was caught in the material of my coat. The cat tugged at the coat, trying to free itself.

  To my surprise, it began talking in a human voice. “C’mon. C’mon now, chef. Wake up.”

  It was Maxwell Sucony, his round, black face looking stressed. “C’mon, chef. No time to snooze. You gotta get out of here. Cops on the way.”

  Somebody had stuck a razor blade in a tennis ball and was bouncing that around in my skull. But I was awake enough to go along with Maxwell’s effort to get me to my feet.

  I was still in Rudy’s bedroom.

  Just me and Maxwell.

  “The couple who came in with me. Where are they?”

  “Beats the hell out of me, chef. All I care is they gone. And that’s where I want you before the cops show and we have to explain how you got in here.”

  I was woozy. Staggering. Maxwell was all but dragging me to the front door. “Jesus, the smell of this place could gag a maggot,” he said. “All my wasted effort.”

  Somehow we made it to the hall. Maxwell closed the door to Rudy’s apartment and used his master key to lock it. “What exactly’s been goin’ on up here?” Maxwell asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Your friends didn’t leave past me. They musta used the service stairs. You’d better do that, too. The cops’ll be coming through the front, if they’re not down there already. You navigate the stairs by yourself?”

  I nodded. A mistake. That razored tennis ball started bouncing again.

  “I better get down to deal with the cops,” Maxwell said, moving to the elevator he’d locked there with its door open.

  “Why did you call ’em?” I asked.

  “I didn’t. They phoned me on the night line. Said they got an anonymous call reporting a break-in at six-D. Did I know anything about it? I told ’em I didn’t know nothing, and they said to keep an eye out but not to go investigate myself. They were sending some officers to check it out.

  “Gotta go, chef,” he said, running to the elevator. “Good luck.”

  I thanked him, then slid along the wall to the door leading to the service stairwell.

  It was dimly lit and smelled of disinfectant.

  I grabbed the handrail and descended the stairs slowly and carefully. I felt like such a fool that if I’d had a spare foot, I would have used it to kick my own ass on every step. Down all six floors.

  Chapter

  FORTY-ONE

  A.W. was in my office at the Bistro.

  “He just walked in,” he said into the cell phone pressed against his ear. He stared at me while whoever was on the other end of the line had their say, then added, “Okay, Lee, I’ll take care of it.”

  He closed the phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket. His expression showed more disappointment than annoyance. “You put me on the bad side of my boss,” he told me.

  “That’s because he’s an inconsiderate bastard,” Cassandra said. She was sitting to my left in the corner of the room. Her eye makeup was smudged.

  “Have you been crying?” I asked.

  “You didn’t answer your phone. I thought you’d been killed, you asshole.”

  “Well, I did get my skull cracked, if it’s any consolation.”

  “Damn you, Billy,” she said, rising quickly from the chair and walking toward me. Studying my head, she added, “You could have a concussion. Move under the light.”

  I moved near the light, and she stared into my eyes for a few beats. “Looks okay, but you can’t always tell. You feeling dizzy?”

  “I’m feeling pain.”

  “Turn,” she ordered. I obeyed, and she examined my wound. “There’re two lumps here, one small and one big and blee
ding slightly.”

  “People seem to like hitting me on the head lately,” I said.

  “I’m next, you pull another stupid stunt like this,” she said. “Where the hell is your first-aid kit?”

  “Down the hall in the bathroom,” I said. “Under the washbasin. And some aspirin, please.”

  Watching her go fetch, A.W. asked, “What the hell happened, Billy?”

  “Aspirin first,” I said. I sank to the nearest chair and waited for Cassandra to return. When she did I took the pill bottle, knocked a couple into my palm, and slapped them down with tepid water that had been sitting in a pitcher on my desk for at least five days.

  While Cassandra poked at my scalp with a peroxide-soaked Q-tip, I told them of my misadventures of the past several hours, at least the conscious portion.

  “Think it was Felix who took your friends?” A.W. asked.

  “I don’t know. Getting two unconscious bodies out of that building was at least a two-man job,” I said. “I only got a glimpse of Felix that night at Phil Bruno’s, but he seemed a little too slight to be able to handle any heavy lifting.”

  “So Felix and a helper,” A.W. concluded. “Your fake cop?”

  “Maybe.” I felt something greasy on my scalp. “What’re you doing up there?” I asked Cassandra.

  “Neosporin. I put it on everything, just in case,” she said. “The finishing touch.”

  She returned the various oils, unguents, and no-stick strips to the plastic box and placed the box on the desk. “You can put this away, Billy,” she said. “I’m going home. I’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

  “Thanks for being my administering angel,” I told her.

  “Fuck you, Billy,” she said. Then she turned to A.W. and, to his surprise, kissed him hard on the lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Andrew.”

  We both watched her strut from the office.

  A.W. was in something of a daze, as well he should have been.

  I snapped my fingers an inch from his ear. “Back to reality, Andrew,” I said.

  “Right. Uh, reality. You should try to phone Ms. McCauley.”