The Talk Show Murders

by Al Roker

  Dal grinned and said, “What do you think?”

  “You look like a million bucks.”

  “I look like my father,” he said.

  He turned his head in the direction of the teens, whose chatter and laughter I’d tuned out. In just three strides, he joined them, twisting the wrist of one of the boys and shaking an object from his hand. It bounced quietly on the carpet. A box cutter.

  The boy’s friends nearly stampeded me on their rush from the room, the gallery, the building. The trapped kid was in a panic, trying to twist free from Dal’s grip.

  “What kind of an asshole risks jail for this crap?” Dal asked the kid.

  He released the boy and watched, bemused, as the underage art thief followed his friends. He bent down and picked up the cutter. Then he looked at the art that the kid was getting ready to liberate. It was an oil painting of television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, signed by the actress.

  “Boy’s going to have a bare wall near his bed,” I said.

  Dal shook his head in wonder. “The price tag on this is nearly two thou. He’s risking a serious grand-larceny rap for a TV pinup? Kids today have no sense.”

  We walked to the front of the gallery, where a young black man in black chino pants and a dark green sweater with black piping stood near the door. Dal handed him the box cutter.

  “From those punks just run outta here?” the black man asked.

  “Right,” Dal said. “Oakley, you might want to walk through the place every now and then, see what folks are up to.”

  “Don’t tell me my business. I stay by the front door, they can’t leave with nuthin’.”

  Dal shrugged. “Your call.”

  He joined me, mumbling under his breath, “Asshole. Painting would have gone right past him, under the kid’s shirt, tucked in his pants. But that’s his problemo, not mine.”

  He adjusted his coat, straightened the collar of his shirt, and said, “Presentable enough for you? Mantata says I’ll be sticking with you for a while.”

  “You look fine. Fredrika clearly must be the makeover queen of Chicago.”

  “Naw. She’s just a good barber. Hairstylist, actually. I had these threads hanging in my closet. It’s what I wear when I’m not working. You know, when I go out nights, hitting the traps. The boss didn’t think the biker vibe would go down well with your showbiz crowd.”

  “Now we’ll never know,” I said.

  He consulted the gold-banded watch on his wrist. “We’d better head out to your meeting at WWBC.”

  I’d forgotten the fib I’d told Mantata. “It’s been canceled,” I said.

  “You mean I got a haircut and dressed up for nothing?”

  “We’ll be going to a dinner party later. Right now, we may as well head to my hotel.”

  “Yeah, about the hotel, what’s your setup there? Suite?”

  I nodded.

  “So I can tuck you in at night and come back for you in the morning, the very early morning. Or I can bunk on the couch in your suite. I’ve got a bag in the car.”

  “We’ll see how it goes,” I said.

  As we moved toward the gallery’s rear exit, I asked, “Shouldn’t we tell Mantata we’re leaving?”

  “He’s tied up with some shark,” Dal said. “Roxanne will tell him.”

  “Shark?”

  “Lawyer. I hate the bastards. This one was particularly slimy. Name of Yountz.”

  “He Mantata’s attorney?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen him before. You know him?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know him, but I knew of him. And I wondered what the late Pat Patton’s lawyer and Mantata had to talk about. Call it a hunch, but I doubted it was about art.

  Chapter

  THIRTY

  The car Dal used was a sporty little maroon two-seater he identified for me as a Nissan Z. As we approached the hotel in it, instead of turning into the drive leading to the front doors, he gunned the car and drove past.

  “Circling for a better landing?” I asked.

  “You didn’t see the blue-and-whites?”

  “The cop cars? Yeah.”

  “I prefer not to go running into buildings where the cops are doing their thing,” he said.

  “You wanted for anything?” I asked, almost biting my tongue when I remembered he’d just killed a guy the night before.

  “Nothing specific I know of,” he said. “But with all the new electronic and digital goodies they’ve got, you never know what little surprises they’re ready to spring.”

  “Well, it’s a cinch they’re not looking for you in my hotel,” I said.

  “Maybe they’re looking for you,” he said.

  I told him I thought that was unlikely and convinced him to take us back.

  But as we were walking across the lobby, a familiar voice called my name.

  The rumpled detective Hank Bollinger was walking our way. He started to say something to me, stopped, and gave Dal the stink eye. “Do I know you?”

  Dal was probably cursing me under his breath, but he looked blissfully innocent. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he replied.

  “Oh, this is Detective Hank Bollinger, CPD,” I said.

  “I’m Henry Hart Dalrymple,” Dal said, extending his hand, which Bollinger shook awkwardly. “A pleasure, detective.”

  Puzzled but disarmed, Bollinger turned to me. “I understand most of your group is staying here?”

  “The Wake Up, America! crew? Right. What’s going on?”

  Bollinger hesitated before answering, then said, “Pat Patton’s chauffeur was spotted in the hotel.”

  “Isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really think he killed Patton and Larry Kelsto?”

  “It’s not what I think, Mr. Blessing. It’s what the evidence tells us.”

  “What evidence?”

  Bollinger ignored the questions. “I don’t suppose you have any idea why Parkins might have come here?”

  I shook my head.

  The detective stared at me for a beat, then turned to Dal. He frowned, nodded, and made an awkward retreat.

  “That was fun,” Dal said, when they’d left. His eyes flicked from the departing detective toward the two uniformed cops near the front desk. “It’d be nice if we could get out of everybody’s line of sight. Like in your room.”

  “Sure,” I said, walking him toward the elevators. “But there’s no reason to be nervous.”

  “Speak for yourself. You’re probably not carrying an illegal concealed weapon.”

  Now I was nervous, too.

  The door to my suite seemed to be stuck.

  I put all my weight behind it and pushed through into the suite. That’s when I discovered the problem with the door. Somebody had tried to slide a manila envelope under it.

  The package rested on the carpet. I bent to pick it up, but Dal stopped me. I’m not sure when he drew his gun, but it was in his hand. Silently, he moved past me into the suite. He gestured that I was to return to the hall. I did that, and he closed the door quietly in my face.

  The next few minutes seemed like an hour. Finally, he opened the door and motioned for me to come in, handing me the envelope. “I don’t think anybody entered the suite,” he said, “unless it wasn’t you eating those chocolate doughnuts in bed.”

  “My pre-breakfast,” I said, indignantly.

  “Then not even housekeeping has been here. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I looked down at the envelope in my hand. It was heavily taped.

  Dal raised his right pant leg, whipped a knife from its scabbard. “Allow me,” he said.

  He took the envelope, inserted the tip of the knife smoothly through the tape holding down the flap, and made a very neat incision. “Just like cutting through a layer of flesh,” he said.

  Was he kidding?

  The envelope contained only one item, a copy of a film script. The Thief Who Stole Tr
ump Tower.

  “Disappointed,” Dal said. “I was expecting something a little more mysterious.”

  “Me, too,” I said, carrying it to the sofa.

  “Okay if I use the head?” Dal asked. “Cops make me nervous, and nerves make me need to—”

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  I searched the envelope for a note. Nothing.

  I fanned the pages of the script. Nothing dropped out.

  It was just a plain copy of the original. No cover. One hundred and ten pages, collected by two brass brads. First page contained the title, the screenwriting info, “by Madeleine Parnelle, adapted from the novel, Le Voleur Qui a Vole la Tour Eiffel, by Gerard Parnelle,” and, at the far-right bottom, the name and Winnetka address of the Onion City production company.

  The script might have been nothing more than morning show business, something Trina or Arnie wanted me to look at prior to an upcoming interview. I phoned Kiki to see if she knew anything about it.

  She didn’t.

  “Maybe the actress dropped it off,” she said.

  “Actress? You mean Carrie Sands?”

  “How many actresses in this city do you know, Billy? That’s who I mean. She probably thought you’d want a copy, since everybody is so bloody interested in the bloody movie.”

  “Wow. Two bloodys in one sentence. What’s up?”

  “Oh, it’s just … Everybody has an angle,” she said.

  “I’m not sure Mother Teresa—”

  “This isn’t funny, Billy.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “You meet a bloke. And you seem to hit it off. And then … bam, he’s just another hustling wanker.”

  I assumed she was referencing the guy she’d met in the hotel. “Want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “No, I do not. I want to sit here and stew and condemn him to the fiery furnace of hell.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Lord’s truth, Billy, I’m getting too old for this.”

  My phone suddenly made the unpleasant noise that accompanies a second caller.

  I checked the log and saw that it was a private number, possibly the same one that had called before.

  “Kiki, I’ve got another call waiting,” I said.

  “Oh, take it. Don’t mind me. I’m just feeling sorry for myself, like a bloody idiot.”

  “I’ll get right back to you,” I said, and took the other call.

  “Bill Blessing.”

  “You get the script?” It was a male voice with a hollow sound, as if the caller was in a tunnel.

  Dal entered the room, saw me on the phone, and raised his eyebrows bemusedly.

  “I got it,” I said into the phone. “Who are you?”

  “I … Nat Parkins. Look, I’m in deep shit, or I wouldn’t be doing this. But I need money to get out of town. I either get it from you or from the others.”

  “What others?”

  “The people in Patton’s red files. The ones he was blackmailing.”

  “How many were on his list?”

  “In total? Shit, I don’t know. Boxes full, going back thirty-forty years. We left nearly all of ’em. I guess the cops could have ’em now. Larry said we should just take the ones that are active. Four of them.”

  “When exactly did you and Larry take the files?”

  “When? Oh, I see what you’re getting at. I didn’t kill the old man. He was hard to put up with and gave me a lot of shit, but he paid me every week. And I’m sure as hell not into torture or murder. He was already dead when Larry and I got there.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Around one-thirty in the morning. Look, you want your file or not? Fifty Benjamins and it’s yours. If not, there are two other calls I got to make.”

  “You said you had four files.”

  “Yeah. But there’s one of ’em I’m sure as hell not callin’. Way I see it, he had the old man and Larry killed.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Maybe I’ll tell you. When I see the green.”

  “What’s the movie script you left got to do with anything?” I asked.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “The old man, Patton, had it in your file. I figured it’d prove to you I had the shit.”

  “Oh, I believe you’ve got it,” I said.

  “Good. Then we have a deal? Your file for five grand?”

  I wanted all the files.

  “Where and when do we meet?” I asked.

  “There’s a place near the L tracks on East Forty-seventh, Nero’s Wonder Lounge. Meet you there in an hour and a half. Bring the green. And come alone.”

  “I have a driver,” I said. “He’ll be with me.”

  Dal had taken a chair across from me, listening to my end of the conversation. He smiled.

  “He stays in the car,” Nat said, and hung up.

  When I’d brought Dal up to speed, he said, “Just as well I stay in the car. In that neighborhood, it’d be gone in less than sixty seconds.”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-ONE

  Dal was right about the neighborhood. Not exactly upscale. And me with a pack of hundred-dollar bills still in their Bank of America wrapper forming a bulge under my coat pocket.

  Nero’s Wonder Lounge was in the shadow of the L tracks, sharing the area with a beauty shop that specialized in “hair braiding,” a Western Union office that was proud of its ability to cash checks, a sandwich joint featuring hoagies and Philly steaks, a pawnshop, and, across the street, a drugstore that looked like it did most of its drug business on the sidewalk.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dal said, looking around, “I’m definitely staying in the car.” He slid the gun from its holster and placed it on the rubber mat near his right boot.

  I started to get out, but he stopped me. “Hold on, Billy. You really want to carry five grand in cash into that bar?”

  “I don’t know of any other way of getting the files.”

  “How about you tell him to go fuck himself and I go around this crap hole to the rear door and grab him when he comes out?”

  “The money seems less labor-intensive.”

  “You understand that when they catch him—and they will—they’ll ask where he got it. And he’ll give you up, and you’ll be arrested as an accessory after the fact.”

  “I’d still be better off than if we used your plan. At least now, when they pick him up, he’ll still be in one piece.”

  “We make a citizen’s arrest,” he said. “It’s the smart play.”

  “Let me just pay the two dollars,” I said.

  “Your call.” He reached across me to pop open the glove compartment.

  I was trying to think of a way to politely refuse the gun he was going to offer when he held out something that wasn’t any kind of weapon I knew. It looked like a plastic whistle on a white cord.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking it and dangling it by the cord.

  “Air horn, Billy. Keep it handy. First sign of trouble, give just a light blow. It’ll blast out a one-hundred-twenty-decibel honk that’ll scare the shit out of anybody not expecting it. And since it can be heard for nearly a mile, I’ll be in there in seconds.”

  I thanked him, got out of the car, slipped the air horn into my coat pocket, and walked toward Nero’s Wonder Lounge, where the deep-smoked windows were so dark and grimy there was no way of telling what I’d find inside.

  No surprise: What I found was more dark and grimy. Judging by the music, the jukebox was locked in the pre-rap heyday of Motown. The smell was stale booze and cooking grease and disinfectant. There was a long bar, where several old-timers sipped from straws stuck in a communal barrel. In another section of the large room, a weary caramel-colored woman wearing a soiled apron stood behind a glass partition, stirring what looked like a large pot of … something, maybe chili, maybe meatballs and tomato sauce. She looked like she was in her sixties. The stuff in the pot looked older.r />
  Of the twenty-five or thirty tables in the room, five were occupied by solo men. A sleeping man at one. Eating and drinking men at three. And at a table at the back of the room near the window, a glaring man, waiting for me.

  He stood, walked to the window, and looked through a small clear section of the smoked glass. Then he sat back down at the table.

  Nat Parkins wasn’t nearly as put together as he’d been when last I saw him. His slick hair was downright nappy, and that neat line of mustache had been removed. Great disguise. His eyes were bloodshot, and his clothes—a dark T-shirt and khaki pants—had that lived-in-for-three-days look. The smell coming off him was stronger than the eau de grease. But he was still big and powerful. And dangerous.

  “You look a little run-down, Nat,” I said, taking a chair.

  “I wonder why. That guy standing by the Z-car supposed to be your driver? He doesn’t look like a driver. He looks like muscle.”

  “He’s my driver.”

  “You got the money?”

  The only things on the table were a bottle of beer, a spiral notebook, a pencil, and his big hands. “I don’t see any red files,” I said.

  “Show me the loot and I’ll tell you where to get your file.”

  My file. What about the others? And I didn’t like the “where to get” part.

  “Gee, Nat, you see any dandruff in my hair?”

  “Dandruff? Hell, you don’t even have any hair.”

  “I don’t have any hayseeds sticking out of my ears, either. So don’t expect me to give you any—”

  He held up a hand and pointed behind me. The woman I’d seen ladling the food was shuffling our way. “Git you somethin’, honey?” she asked me. “Hey, don’t I knows you?”

  “You don’t know nuthin’,” Nat told her. “My homie here wants a brew in a bottle with the cap still on.”

  The woman shrugged off this implied critique of her draft beer. “ ’Nuther for you?”

  “I’m good.”