by Al Roker
“Cassandra says there’s a book on your shelf about my namesake,” he said. “Okay if I check to see if my folks are mentioned?”
“Be my guest,” I said, gesturing to the slightly sagging bookshelf. I didn’t know which surprised me more—the fact that I didn’t remember owning a book on Warhol or that Cassandra knew that I had one.
A.W. was a professional detective, and it didn’t take him long to find The Warhol Papers. While I clicked through my e-mail, he stretched out on my prize couch, skimming through stories about Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Paul Morrissey, and, as it turned out, his mother and dad. He looked over and said, “Listen to this. ‘Piet asked Paul not to use Vera in Flesh for Frankenstein but wouldn’t say why.’ This is so cool. I bet I know why. It’s right around this time Dad was asking Mom to marry him, and he didn’t want her to be in Paul Morrissey’s movie because of the nudity. He wasn’t a prude, but she was going to be his wife.
“I’ll be right back, Billy.”
He hopped from the couch and headed toward the stairs.
“Take your time,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I got out my cellular phone and dialed Melody Moon’s number. Maybe her roommate had some new thoughts about Felix. No answer. Just before I was switched to voice mail I remembered that they’d gone somewhere … Sag Harbor, was it?
I sat back in mild frustration, glaring at the phone as if it were to blame. Then I picked it up again. I clicked to the image of the enigmatic scribbles from Rudy’s blackboard.
“Jewel for Berry9.” “Check: 1 or 2, F or OC?”
Check: Felix or OC? … Felix … or Other Cat? Then why OC in caps? Felix. And initials? Osgood Conklin? Otto? Orson? Let’s think about this a minute. Rudy was a TV guy.…
The solution that suddenly occurred to me was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it at once. And if I was on the right track …
I used the phone for its original purpose.
After several rings, Gin answered, sounding half asleep.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said.
“You didn’t wake me, Billy. It was the ringin’ of the phone.”
“Can I speak to Ted?”
“Sure. Hold on. Uh. No.” She sounded fuzzy. “Oh, that’s right. He went out about twenty minutes ago.”
“Any idea where?”
“No. He jus’ said he was goin’ out fo’ a while.”
“He signs his columns ‘TOP.’ What’s his middle name, Gin?”
“He hates it,” she said. “Oscar.”
I thanked her and clicked off the phone. I grabbed my coat and opened the middle drawer of my desk, where I kept a pistol, a Smith & Wesson 625 that I’d purchased after a break-in long ago and never used.
It wasn’t there.
There wasn’t even a bare spot in the drawer to suggest it had been there. I tried to remember if I’d moved it. But I didn’t have time to waste thinking about it. A.W. had a gun and knew how to use it.
I hop-walked downstairs to the main dining room. Cassandra was guiding a couple toward an empty double. A.W. was standing near the entrance, holding his book and watching her. Waiting for her to return.
“Close the book, Romeo,” I said. “We’re going to the hospital.”
“Something up with Bettina?” he asked anxiously.
“I hope not,” I said. “But we’d better get there fast.”
In his car, heading for Manhattan Presbyterian, he tried to phone the InterTec agent who was supposed to be guarding Bettina.
The agent didn’t answer.
Chapter
FIFTY-TWO
We burst from the elevator onto the hospital’s third floor. Well, A.W. burst. I hobble-walked.
“Room three-seventeen,” he shouted at the group of startled hospital attendants gathered at the nurses’ station.
“Hold up,” one of the men said.
A.W. paused to show him his ID.
On the wall beside the elevator was an arrow pointing to rooms 301–321, and I limped in that direction.
A.W. was several paces behind as I rounded the corner. I was aware of visitors and patients in robes walking in the corridor, gawking at us, and people shouting. But I was focused on finding room 317.
It was on the left, near the end of the corridor, just off the stairwell. An empty chair was beside the closed door.
“We’re too late,” I said.
But as I pushed through the door, I realized that wasn’t the case.
Ted Parkhurst was standing beside Bettina’s bed, holding a pillow with both hands. “Billy?” he said, only mildly surprised. Considering the situation, he was way too cool for anyone but a true sociopath.
“Back away, Ted.” A.W. had joined us.
“I was just going to give her another pillow, make her more comfortable.”
I noticed with relief that the monitor near Bettina’s bed was registering regular heartbeats.
“What’s all this about, guys?” Ted asked, the picture of innocence.
“You’re in a no-visitor hospital room, beside an unconscious woman, holding a pillow you were going to use to suffocate her,” I said. “The best con man in the world couldn’t smooth-talk his way out of this.”
“I swear, Billy, I just—”
“Stop it, Ted. You’re caught. It’s over.”
A.W., gun drawn, moved past me. “Keep holding the pillow, Mr. Parkhurst, but turn around and face the wall, please, sir.” His words were almost a parody of politesse, but there was an angry edge to them that Ted obeyed. A.W. pressed his gun against the back of Ted’s head and reached past his shoulder to take the pillow from him. He tossed it on the empty bed against the far wall. Then he searched Ted and found a thin leather-covered object about six inches in length, with a loop strap on one end.
“Is that a blackjack?” I asked.
“A palm sap,” A.W. said. “Fits in your palm so people can’t see it, but when you slap somebody with it, they sure as heck feel it.”
“That must have been what the bastard used on Gin and me at Rudy’s apartment.”
Ted was looking at the object in A.W.’s hand in wonderment, as if he’d never laid eyes on it before. “Did you see that, Billy?” he said. “He tried to plant that on me.”
A.W. ignored the comment. “Mr. Parkhurst, please turn and exit the room slowly, sir.”
Ted offered no objection, just did as he was told.
I looked down at Bettina. Her head was wrapped in a neat white bandage. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Thank God.
I left the room to find a mildly disturbing tableaux—A.W. and Ted surrounded by a group of orderlies or possibly male nurses, bull necks and muscled arms protruding from their pale-green scrubs. Past them were female nurses and a few odd visitors and patients, all alarmed but also fascinated.
“This man’s got a gun and he’s crazy,” Ted was shouting. “He’s trying to kill me.”
“Drop the gun, bud,” one of the orderlies growled.
A.W. kept the gun right where it was, pointed at Ted. “I’m a security agent with InterTec,” he said. “This man—”
“He’s lying!” Ted shouted over him. “He’s a hired killer.”
“That’s the lie,” I said. “He’s the killer. The man with the gun is a security agent.”
The orderly who was the spokesman for his group gave me that “how do I know you?” look that never goes out of style.
Another of the men in scrubs said, “It’s the guy from the morning show.”
“What the devil is going on here?”
This came from a middle-aged dark-skinned woman in a crisp white uniform. The head nurse, was my guess. She marched through the others to park her wiry five-foot-five body in front of me.
“We just caught this man trying to harm our friend in three-seventeen,” I said. “Could you check to see if she’s okay?”
“I take my orders from doctors,” she snapped. She turned to A.W. “Mister, you got identification
to go with that gun?”
A.W. used his free hand to find his wallet. Continuing to keep his eyes on Ted, he flipped the wallet open and held it in the direction of the nurse.
She glanced at it and said, “You can put it away. Where’s the fella from your company supposed to be guarding my patient?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” A.W. said. “I’m sure this man does, but he’s not talking.”
She gave Ted a disgusted look, then faced the assembled crowd. “You people have work to do, right?”
When the group started to disperse, she gave me a fierce glare, then moved past me into Bettina’s room.
Several orderlies remained, still unconvinced of who was lying about whom. But they didn’t object when A.W. ordered Ted to face the wall, extend his arms, and press his hands against it. Before obeying, Ted managed to brush his errant hair out of his eyes.
“I … I called the police,” a nurse at the rear of the group said.
Ted turned his head to me, his lank hair flopping down again. “You’re making a big mistake, Billy,” he said.
“Shut up, Ted.”
A red-faced young man, sweating profusely, entered from the stairwell and pushed through the crowd. He had a plump hand pressed against the back of his head.
“Where the hell have you been, Sistrom?” A.W. asked angrily.
“I … somebody called for help out on the stairs,” Sistrom said. “I went to see and … whammo. This the bastard who hit me?”
“He tried to kill Bettina,” A.W. said.
“Shit. Is she …?”
“She seems to be okay,” I said.
“Thank God,” Sistrom said. “Then you won’t have to make too big a deal about me leaving my post, right, A.W.? I mean, it sounded like somebody was real hurt. I had to go see, right?”
“You’re on your own on that,” A.W. said.
Ted was still staring at me. “I did nothing wrong,” he protested.
“Just for starters, attempted murder and assault,” I said.
“You’re nuts,” Ted said. “I came here to see how the lady was doing. Everything else is in your head, Blessing. I’m not even going to need a lawyer on this.”
I turned to the sound of footsteps hurrying our way. Lee Franchette, beautiful even while frowning. She strode past the still-curious nurses, then suddenly wheeled to face them. “I know some of you can’t wait to phone your favorite gossip hotline or blogger scum about what you’re seeing here tonight. Try it and I assure you you’ll be joining the growing unemployment line so fast it will make your heads swim. Be sure to pass the word.”
Then she turned her attention to us, mainly to Agent Sistrom, who still had his hand pressed to his head. “What’s your story?” she asked, in a way that suggested she wouldn’t buy it, whatever it was.
He was saved from having to explain himself by the head nurse exiting Bettina’s room and closing the door behind her. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said, “but the condition of the patient in that room is unchanged. From this moment, she is to remain undisturbed, pending the arrival of her doctor. Do I make myself clear?”
“Of course,” Lee said.
“It’s about time the police were notified,” the head nurse said.
“One of your nurses said they’re on the way,” I said.
“Good.” The little woman stared at me. “You know, you look a lot like that man who’s on TV in the morning. The one who’s always grinning like a hyena.”
“I get that a lot,” I said.
“Ah, Nurse …” Lee said, studying the nameplate pinned above her right breast. “Nurse Cuttler, is there someplace we could wait for the police in privacy?”
“And who might you be?”
Lee slid a black leather ID case from her coat pocket. It had a tiny metallic Prada inverted triangle stuck into the leather that impressed the nurse about as much as a used bedpan. She seemed to find the information on the ID only slightly more impressive. “Miss Lee Franchette. Then you would be the lady I talked with on the phone, arranging for the guard over there with the red face.”
Lee nodded.
“Okay, I’ll show you to a room the interns use when they’re on call overnight. Then maybe my people”—she glared at the orderlies and nurses still lingering in the corridor—“can GET BACK TO WORK!”
Chapter
FIFTY-THREE
The intern room consisted of two cots and a washbasin. It smelled of disinfectant and something funky but unidentifiable. Intern perspiration, maybe. I sat on one of the cots, taking the weight off of my ankle. My shoulder felt stiff.
Sistrom was holding a wet paper towel to his wounded head, looking at Lee eagerly to see if she had bought his tale of woe.
“Is this the man who attacked you?” she asked, pointing to Ted, who was lying on one of the cots, his wrists and ankles handcuffed together so that they forced his body into what might have passed for a new yoga position. He looked uncomfortable and angry, and tossed his head in an unsuccessful attempt to flip his bangs away from his eyes.
“I didn’t see who it was, but it musta been him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sistrom,” she said. “Now please go and get your head examined.”
“Uh. Then you want me back on guard, ma’am?”
“Definitely not,” Lee said. “A.W. can handle that. And when the NYPD finally arrive, I imagine they’ll have their own ideas.”
Sistrom rewarded us with an attempt at a brave smile and made his awkward exit.
“That idiot didn’t see me hit him because I didn’t hit him,” Ted said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You were in Bettina’s room,” A.W. said, “moving in on her with a pillow in your hands.”
Lee stared at Ted, who repeated his absurd excuse that he was only trying to make Bettina more comfortable.
She turned to me. “Well, chef?”
“Well what?” I said, rubbing my shoulder. “Like A.W. just told you, we caught the guy in the act.”
“But what made you rush here, thinking Bettina might be in jeopardy?”
I told her about the blackboard note I’d seen in Rudy Gallagher’s apartment.
“‘Check: 1 or 2, F or OC’?” she said. “And from that you surmised that Mr. Parkhurst would try to kill Bettina?”
I didn’t blame her for being skeptical.
“There’s a little more to it than that,” I said. “What I think the note means is that Rudy saw or heard something that made him wonder if F, the assassin Felix, was working alone or with a partner, forming an OC, Odd Couple.”
She seemed puzzled. Too young and too European. “You mean gay?” she asked.
“It was a play, and a movie,” A.W. said. “A comedy about a prissy guy who gets divorced and moves in with a divorced friend who’s a slob. We put it on in high school. I helped make the sets.”
“It was also a long-running TV show in the 1970s, before you were born,” I said. “Rudy loved old TV. He would have known the names of the odd couple. You remember them?”
“I should,” A.W. said. “I heard those guys practicing every day for about a month. The neatness freak was Felix. And the slob was … Oscar, but I don’t see how that name fits in.”
I looked at Ted. “You want to tell him?”
He closed his eyes and said nothing.
“Ted’s byline on his articles is TOP,” I said. “Theodore Oscar Parkhurst. OC, Odd Couple, was Rudy’s shorthand for Felix and Oscar.”
“So it is your assumption,” Lee said, “that Gallagher was about to explore the possibility of Ted being Felix’s little helper?”
“It might have been what got Rudy Gallagher killed,” I said.
“That makes me a hit man, my middle name?” Ted said. “What bullshit.”
“It plays,” I said to Lee. “Like a fool, I told Ted that Phil Bruno had video footage of the night in Kabul. Less than an hour later, poor Phil was burned to death and whatever his video could have disclosed ab
out that night was gone forever.”
“This man is delusional,” Ted said. “I was with him every minute of that evening. When could I have set fire to the building?”
“Not you. You phoned your partner, Felix, who did the arson job.”
“That’s just fucking crazy. I’m not the friend of a killer. I’m not a killer. If anything, I’m a victim. I was kidnapped, for God’s sake.”
“You’re a liar,” I said. “And I can prove it.”
“Good, that would be appreciated,” Lee said. “But first, the one thing we know for certain is that Felix is still out there somewhere. A.W., please go see to Bettina’s safety.”
The young agent nodded. He leaned over Ted to make sure he hadn’t slipped a cuff, then left the room.
“Now, about that proof …” Lee said.
“There is none,” Ted said. “It’s fantasy.”
“Let’s see if I can run it down,” I said. “First, the kidnapping. How could the kidnappers have known you and Gin would be there that night? How did they get past the doorman? Why weren’t they on the security tape?”
“I can only guess,” Ted said. “There are crooks who specialize in looting the remains of the recently deceased. Gallagher’s address was spread everywhere by the media. The robbers had to be in the apartment before we arrived. They came out of hiding, knocked us out, recognized Gin, and decided to kidnap us.”
“And one of them happened to be the same guy you had dinner with in Kabul,” I said. “It makes much more sense if you were the kidnapper. All you had to do was call in your mercenary buddy Steve Gault to drive a car to the alley behind the building to help you cart Gin off to a secluded hideaway.”
“Why would I do that, Blessing?”
“Ignoring the fifteen million bucks for the moment, I’d say the main point was to stop her from interviewing Goyal Aharon on Tuesday morning. For some reason I haven’t quite figured out, this was a necessary part of Felix’s plan to assassinate Aharon.”
“Aharon being Felix’s target because …?” Lee asked.
“I’m no political strategist,” I said. “But I’m thinking that Felix has a benefactor who isn’t too keen on Aharon trekking across the U.S. with his new novel, tarnishing the Israeli image by spilling the beans on the Mossad’s darker deeds.”