by Al Roker
I put in a request for the biggest omelet on the menu, two servings of crispy bacon, toast, and hot coffee, and plenty of it. Then, confident that the ball was rolling, I leaned back against the sofa cushion and began working the TV’s remote control. I flipped through a morass of brightly colored kids’ cartoons; of live, recent, and classic sporting events; movies that I hadn’t liked the first time I saw them; sincere-looking hucksters peddling cosmetics and cures; and screaming-head news channels. Finally, I arrived at a relatively calm oasis, the repeat of last night’s Charlie Rose interview.
Charlie was talking to a Democratic congressman whom, I’m sorry to say, I did not recognize. Charlie asked him if he thought the Dems would reclaim the House in 2012. And—surprise, surprise—the congressman’s response to that lobbed puffball was: “Heck, yes.” From that point, he and Charlie engaged in a somewhat laid-back battle for control of talking points. I’m not sure who won, because a gong announced what I assumed was my breakfast waiting at the door to the suite.
I could almost taste the omelet as I danced across the carpet. Reaching for the doorknob, I exhaled, intending to breathe deeply of the comforting aroma of coffee and eggs mixed with melted cheese, peppers, and onions.
Instead, my nostrils were filled with the overpowering scents of Old Spice mixed with morning cigarette breath.
Eddie “Pat” Patton was at my door, wearing dark gray slacks, a matching gray jacket, a gray Kangol cap, and a nasty grin. He reminded me of an evil Disney rat, specifically, the one threatening the baby in Lady and the Tramp. (If you’ll pardon the digression, it’s always struck me as odd that a company built on the popularity of a mouse would be so quick to demonize rats.)
“Morning, Billy,” he said, taking a step forward, so that his right shoe blocked me from slamming the door in his face. A move perfected by door-to-door salesmen. And cops. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping by. I phoned, but you didn’t pick up.”
“You phoned?”
“About a half-hour ago,” he said. “Right, Nat?”
“About then.” Nat had been standing to Patton’s left, out of my line of sight. The young muscle with the slicked-down hair who’d been with him after the midday show telecast. Today, he was wearing tan poplin slacks and a cocoa-brown T-shirt that fit him like a second skin. He was clutching a bright red folder in his huge right hand.
“Guess you mighta been on the throne,” Patton said.
“I was asleep,” I said, realizing now that the bird chirp had been coming from the hotel phone.
“Well, I’m glad I took a chance you might be here,” Patton said. He turned to Nat. “Gimme the file, boy. And go wait for me in the car.”
The big man’s mouth tensed. He handed his employer the folder. Then, with some reluctance, he drifted away, presumably to do as he was told.
“This won’t take long, Billy,” Patton said, walking past me into the suite. “Not that you seem to be in any hurry to greet the day.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked, closing the door and following him into the sitting room.
He did a 360 of the room, took in the floor-to-ceiling windows, the French provincial furniture, the Degas prints on the pale blue walls, and the average-size TV monitor. “Looks like an expensive French whore’s boo-dwarr,” he said.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “What do you want?”
He lowered himself onto the sofa with a combination grunt and sigh, emitting a softer grunt when he leaned forward to place the folder on the coffee table. “You wanna go put on knickers, be my guest,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.”
“I repeat: What do you want?”
“You gonna stay in your robe, Billy, close it up and park.”
He took out a pack of cigarettes and looked around for an ashtray.
“Nonsmoking room,” I said, tightening the robe’s belt and taking the chair near him.
“You fucking with me? You payin’—what?—four or five hundred bucks a night to stay in this antique showroom and they don’t let your guests light up?”
“You’re not exactly my guest, and even if you were, I wouldn’t want you lighting up here. Kill yourself if you want. But don’t take me with you.”
“I’m surprised you’re so gullible, Billy,” he said, slipping the cigarettes back into his jacket pocket. “It’s all bullshit scare tactics, you know. Secondhand smoke. Global warming. Cholesterol. From the white-coat whackjobs who brought us the bird flu pandemic.”
Oh, yeah, he’d be a cherished font of information for our morning show. I indicated the red folder. “That for me?”
He nodded, edging it toward me with one finger. “It took me a while to dig the original out of the boxes of case files I got stacked away. Then getting it all copied.”
He checked his watch. “Aw, hell. I don’t think I got time for you to order up some coffee for me.”
“That is too bad,” I said.
“Price of being a busy man. Just look that over,” he said. “Nothing you don’t know, of course. Just a kinda show-and-tell that I know, too.”
Chapter
FIVE
He was right: There was nothing in the red file’s newspaper clips that I didn’t know.
On April 19, 1986, one William “Billy” Blanchard had been arrested in Detroit, Michigan, for “obtaining money by fraudulent means.” As the printout in Patton’s folder detailed, the specific crime was an attempt to sell a controlling interest in what was then known as Motown Records, a company with which Blanchard had no legitimate association.
By then the owner of record, Berry Gordy, had moved from Motown to Showtown, Hollywood and its environs, and it had been well reported by the media that he was thinking of divesting himself of his holdings in the music company. According to the printout, Blanchard and an unknown associate, posing as representatives of Gordy’s organization, had convinced a local African American businessman, Marcus Aurelius “M. A.” Kibbler, to “acquire for a specific purchase price” a majority interest in the corporation and “bring Motown back to the real Motown.”
Until then, I’d been assisting my foster father, Paul Lamont, in his cons. But I had researched Kibbler, discovered his unwavering pride in the city of his birth, and created what Paul called the playbook for the job. As a sort of rite of passage, he had suggested I take the lead position in the scam.
High on adrenaline and the self-confidence of youth, I’d closed the deal by providing the mark with a reason even more potent than Detroit pride. “Though Mr. Gordy would want his money in cash as clean as your baby sister’s soul,” I’d told the mark, “a successful record company would provide an ideal legitimate enterprise through which one might freshen funds, should one happen to have any such funds in need of freshening.”
Kibbler, owner and operator of the largest illegal drug dealership in the Michigan-Ohio-Indiana tristate area, took less than a minute to make up his mind. “I’ll have the money for you in two days,” he said, shaking my hand.
The upside of taking a mark like Kibbler, I remembered thinking at the time, was that he could not go running to the law. The obvious downside was that my life wouldn’t be worth a scratched Motown CD if we ever met again. Which was why Paul and I planned to depart the USA for a long while, as soon as we got our hands on Kibbler’s cash. Europe, we were thinking. Paul had always wanted to spend time on the Spanish island of Ibiza, telling me he would be “in his element” at a place that had been home to the infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory and the even more infamous author of the fake Howard Hughes autobiography, Clifford Irving.
I often wondered what my life would have been like if we’d taken that trip. But it was not to be. Hours before the loot was to be exchanged for totally bogus shares of stock, Kibbler was arrested by an undercover DEA agent. Even more unfortunate for me, the agent had not only been present for my pitch, he’d been wearing a wire.
Kibbler was sentenced to a couple of decades at Milan Federal Correctional. Because no money had changed ha
nds and especially because I’d lucked out appearing before a judge with a sense of humor, I went away for only a year and a day to Marquette Prison on Lake Superior. And Berry Gordy, never knowing the part he’d unwittingly played in the whole affair, sold Motown to Universal MCI for considerably more money than I’d dare try to con out of even an easy mark like Marcus Kibbler.
“I’ll need that back,” Patton said, holding out his hand for the folder. “It’s just copies. I’ve got the original newspaper clips in a safe place.”
I presented him with the folder.
“I don’t know when you turned yourself into Billy Blessing,” he said. “I know you were still Blanchard in April of ’87, when you came out to Cicero to claim the body of your con-man buddy Lamont.”
I stared at him and remained silent.
“You’re right about us not meeting. But I was there at the mortuary. Know why?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t care. But that didn’t matter to Patton.
“I’d heard Lamont had been trying to game some dangerous locals, and it looked like Louis Venici, one of my favorite goombahs, had done the job on him. Probably with his cousin, one Sal Bassillio. But I had no proof. Then this ex-con kid shows up out of nowhere to roll Lamont’s bones home to the Big Apple. I was hoping Louie and Sal might try to take you out, too. But unlike Lamont, you did not dawdle getting out of town.”
“If you’d told me your plan, I might have stayed longer,” I said. “Worn a target on my back.”
“Mox nix,” he said. “Not long after you went on your way, the two punks wound up out at O’Hare, stuffed in the trunk of Sal’s famous yellow Caddy. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”
I was never aware of the specifics, only that Paul’s boyhood friend, New York City original gangsta Henry Julian, had told me he’d “taken care of the situation.”
“Enough of the history lesson,” I said. “What’s your point?”
“Just a friendly drop-by.” He used the sofa’s armrest to lever himself upright. “Sorry I gotta run. Things to do. Later today I’m taping a promo at WWBC for Monday’s show. I guess you heard you and I are going to be working together.”
“Hard to believe,” I said, accompanying him to the door. I opened it, expecting him to leave. Hoping.
He stopped just short of the threshold.
“For the record, Venici and Bassillio may have put the bullets into your pal, but the goombah who ordered the kill is presently enjoying what I would call a very enviable, very visible life, just a few miles away from this hotel.”
The news hit me like a sucker punch. I tried to pretend it had had no effect, but not well enough, apparently.
“Didn’t mean to shake your tree,” Patton said. “But think about it. You and Lamont played your games with scumbags. Probably thought of yourselves as some kind of urban Robin Hoods. Bullshit like that. Venici was a qualified scumbag, without doubt, and he lived high, but he didn’t have the smarts to figure out he was being conned by a real pro like Lamont. That took brains.”
“Who killed Paul?”
“A very interesting member of the Italian brotherhood named Giovanni Polvere. A subtle crumb-bum who made it his business to stay off of everybody’s radar. Except mine, of course. Shortly after Lamont’s death, he went into the wind and reinvented himself. Did a lot better job of it than you. Of course, he had more money than you. And more motivation. I’m not just talking about your pal’s murder, or Venici’s and Bassillio’s. Polvere made some serious enemies here in town. But they’re all behind bars now, allowing him to come back with his makeover.” He chuckled. “Funny thought. He changed his face and now he’s here doing that on a grand scale.”
“Stop all this cat-and-mouse bullshit,” I said. “What is it you want?”
“Like you, I’m in the information business,” Patton said. “But a lot of my work involves providing my information to private parties on a more limited basis.”
“Just spell it out,” I said.
He pushed the door shut, as if there were paparazzi lurking in the corridor. Maybe there were.
Lowering his voice, he said, “If you’ve got any interest in knowing what Gio Polvere’s calling himself these days, I can provide that for a consultant’s fee of just fifty grand.”
“Good day, Mr. Patton. You’re a little too late and much too expensive.”
I reached past him to open the door, but he placed a hand on my arm. “That’s your call,” he said. “But it’ll force me to work the other end of the street.”
“If that’s a threat, I don’t quite get it,” I said. “I’m a little out of practice dealing with lowlifes.”
Patton stared at me for a beat, then grinned as if humoring me. “You’re upset, so I’ll ignore the insult. Here’s the situation in a nutshell: If you won’t take advantage of my services, I’m sure Gio Polvere will, especially after I point out how your connection to the late Paul Lamont might prove a threat to him.”
“And why won’t he think you’re a bigger threat?” I asked. “You’re the guy who knows about his past.”
“Oh, hell, Blessing, if I haven’t learned how to handle situations like that by now, do you think I’d still be around to—”
A sturdy knock on the door not only interrupted Patton, it made him jump.
“Room service,” someone announced through the door.
Patton frowned, and his hand moved under his coat before he stepped aside.
“I don’t think you’ll need that,” I said, and opened the door for the attendant to wheel in my breakfast, complete with a yellow tulip stuck in a slender glass vase.
Patton relaxed and let his arm drop.
The attendant looked at both of us and said, “I’m sorry. They said service for one. I can go—”
“No problem,” I told him. “This … gentleman was just leaving.”
Patton lifted the lid on my breakfast. He reached over the buttery omelet, plucked one strip of bacon, and made his exit, nibbling it.
And for the first time, I watched a pig eat bacon. Kind of lost my appetite.
Chapter
SIX
“I’ve never heard of Gio Polvere, Billy.” Henry Julian’s deep croak was crisp and clear in my ear. “Which makes me doubt he was a big boy in Chi-town. As for the other two punksters, I’m aware of their fate, but I was not responsible for it. Not that I shed any tears for ’em, unnerstand.”
My phone call had found him at Glory’s Doughnut Shop in Brooklyn. Henry owned the shop and the building in which it stood. His mother, Glory, had turned the place into a local landmark. It was presently run by his sister and her pretty daughter. Since his retirement, Henry spent most of his mornings there, at a table in the rear, dressed in a coat and tie, sipping coffee and catching up on the news of his city and the world.
“Back then, after Paul’s funeral,” I said, “when I told you I was going to hunt down the men who murdered him, you said you’d taken care of it.”
“I beg to differ, young man. I said it had been taken care of.”
I closed my eyes, ashamed of the serious mistake I’d just made, accusing him of murder on an open phone line. “My big mouth,” I said. “I’m sorry, Henry.”
He chuckled. “I’m almos’ flattered you’d think my phone might be tapped, Billy. The Feds don’t give a damn about this ole man anymore. ’Specially when they got a budget tighter than my socks an’ terrorists to deal with. The killin’ of that rat Osama didn’t make things any easier for ’em. What I’m sayin’ is, no sooner I’d found out from a source on the ground that Venici an’ the other one had done for Paul, I sent a few of my guys to Chicago to … talk to ’em. By the time they got there, the I-ties already were occupyin’ the trunk of their sedan. My source informed me they’d been offed in a territorial dispute. Nothin’ to do with Paul. So my guys came home. And that was that.”
“Sounds like your source was wrong,” I said.
“Could be. Polvere is somethin’ I’m gonna h
ave to look into.”
“Just look, right, Henry?”
“You think what? That I’m gonna send a hit squad out there?”
“Well, Henry, you did send—”
“That was then, Billy. I’m in full retirement now. The most I do is just look into things. Maybe make a few phone calls. Like that.
“Enlighten me more about this ex-cop. But lemme get this gizmo workin’ first.”
“Gizmo?”
“I got an iPad,” Henry said. “Birthday gift from my gran’daughter, Rasheeda. She said my newspapers were too messy. And I got this whatcha-call-it, this app lets me type up notes. Okay, I got it goin’. Give.”
As soon as I recovered from the news that Henry had joined the Steve Jobs generation, I told him everything I knew about Pat Patton.
“That his name, huh? Like Dick Tracy’s old partner?”
“Beats me,” I said. “But this Patton’s real first name is Edward or Eddie.”
“By any name, soun’s like a man needs takin’ down a peg. But I’m curious why he’s bullshittin’ you about Gio Polvere.”
“Maybe he’s not,” I said.
“Think about it, BilIy. The man’s smart. His story about Polvere is his plan B. He lays it out aforehand in case you say no to the blackmail. He gets you scared of the boogeyman, you’ll pay up. An’ you won’t try to get ahead of the scandal by goin’ public yourself.”
“But suppose Polvere really did order Paul’s death.”
“All I’m sayin’, Billy, is if this Patton, who don’t soun’ like a virgin blackmailer, has been sittin’ on a secret about a major player for twenty-five years, it’s probably because of fear. Highly unlikely he’s gonna suddenly get the courage to go chat up a super-dangerous son of a bitch like he says Polvere is.”
“Patton doesn’t strike me as having a rich imagination.”
“That’s what needs lookin’ into. He was on the job when Paul was murdered. He mighta found out somethin’. But like I said, he didn’t do nothin’ with it then, and I don’t see him doin’ anything with it now. Still, I’ll look into what he’s got.”