by Al Roker
He said “Yeah” a few times, interspersed with a “You’re sure?” He ended with an “Abso-fucking-lutely we go for it. But wait for me.”
He slipped the phone back into his pocket; said, “Hold on”; and, without hesitation, made a U-turn on the Pacific Coast Highway that was no doubt as surprising and frightening to other motorists as it was to me.
“What’s happening?” I managed to get out, once my heart had started beating again.
“No need for you to pack and move out now,” he said, his eyes shiny with excitement.
“Why not? And where are we headed?”
“To something a chef like you will appreciate, one of those increasingly rare events where justice will be served with all the trimmings.”
Chapter
TWENTY-FIVE
Our destination was a house on Carmelina Avenue in Brentwood. Actually, calling it a house was a little like calling Moby Dick a fish. It was a big, sprawling affair, set far back on the lot and separated from the street by a stone fence and foliage and palm trees and, from what I could see of it standing beside Brueghel’s Crown Vic, a lush garden.
It was just a few blocks away from O. J. Simpson’s old place, a connection brought to mind by the scene before me. That would be Roger Charbonnet, hands cuffed behind his back, being perp-walked from his home by Detective Mizzy Campbell and two uniformed cops. They hurried him past the arriving media mob and his grim-faced neighbors to one of several parked police vehicles.
Brueghel stood off to one side, obviously enjoying the moment. Then he strolled back to where he’d insisted I remain, beside his car. “Better twenty-three years late than never,” he said.
The detective was speaking in a normal tone, and, with the press shouting questions and the general hubbub, I doubted Roger could have heard him. But he turned his head suddenly in our direction and saw me.
He glared, did that flaring-nostril thing, and stood otherwise frozen until one of the cops used a head push to coax him into the patrol car. He sat in an awkward position, with his manacled hands behind him, as the cop slammed the door. He continued to stare at me through the side window until the vehicle drove away.
“Time to roll, Blessing,” Brueghel said, as the gentlemen and ladies of the press, having lost their main attraction, began to fan out in search of someone of lesser interest to harass.
He backed the Crown Vic away from the approaching horde, made another of his famous U-turns, and took off down the avenue.
“Media got here pretty fast,” I said.
“Sometimes they fill a need,” he said. “Especially when there are certain scenes you want captured. So you can cherish them forever.”
He made a few turns until we were headed back in the direction of Hollywood.
“Were you expecting an arrest today?” I asked.
“No. But sometimes you get lucky. Or maybe God provides the luck.”
“What exactly did He provide?”
“In this case, I’d say it was a combination of arrogance and overconfidence. Maybe Charbonnet didn’t think we could get a search warrant so quickly. Or maybe he assumed we were so stupid we’d ignore all the crap he had in his garden shed out back.”
“What did they find?”
Brueghel gave me a sharp look. “You’re an okay guy, Blessing. But you are a member of the tribe.”
I blinked, not certain I’d heard him correctly. “Say what?”
“The tribe,” he repeated. “The media.”
“Oh.”
“If the chief wants you guys to know the details of Charbonnet’s arrest, he’ll hold a press conference.”
“ ‘You guys’? Do I look like Brian Williams to you? Maybe Woodward or Bernstein? I’m asking you not as a member of the tribe. I’m the guy Charbonnet tried to light up, remember?”
He nodded. “Hell, I don’t suppose it’s gonna be any big secret, anyway. They found the materials used to make the bomb in Charbonnet’s shed.”
“Dynamite?”
“Nothing so hard-core. An empty container that smelled of bleach, distilled water, imitation salt, and camp-stove gasoline.”
“How do you make a bomb out of that?”
“Well, you need a container, a scale, a battery hydrometer, all of which were in the shed,” Brueghel said.
“Okay. You get all that stuff, then what?”
“Then you punch up any one of a couple dozen websites that tell you how to make the bomb.”
“How difficult is it?”
“I’d say if you can cook a soufflé, making a plastic explosive from bleach should be a breeze.”
“And these materials were still on his property?” I asked. “After your visit last night?”
“Like I said, arrogance. Probably figured we’d think they were just household items. In any case, he screwed the pooch and left them there long enough for us to find ’em. And the DA told Mizzy to bring him in.”
Roger was arrogant, yes, but stupid? Or careless? For that matter, was he enough of a nutburger to mix up a bomb, put on a ninja suit, and sneak into a theater with it, just to get rid of yours truly? Well, maybe. In any case, the idea of him being behind bars certainly appealed to me. And when the detective deposited me at the parking lot next to the renamed but now boarded-up Di Voss Theater on Fountain, I was feeling almost upbeat about extending my L.A. stay.
“You’re sticking around awhile, right, Blessing?” Brueghel asked from the car. Reading my mind, apparently.
“A couple of weeks,” I said. “Why?”
“The DA assigned the case may want a sit-down with you,” Brueghel said. “You’ll have to come back for the trial, too, of course. But that could be as long as a year from now.”
Brueghel’s eyes seemed to lose focus, and he mumbled, mainly to himself, “Charbonnet’s going to have a lot of time to think about his sins. To sit in his tiny cell, where he’ll be visited by Tiffany and Des O’Day and who knows how many of the departed he’s wronged over the years.”
The detective was creeping me out a little. “I’ll be at the trial,” I told him, backing away. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Justice demands you be there, Blessing,” he said, focused on me again. “You understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t question me on it.
“In addition to what you can tell the jury about your run-in with Charbonnet a few weeks ago, I expect the prosecutor will use your testimony to try and introduce information about the Tiffany Arden murder. Specifically, that Charbonnet’s alibi was bogus.”
“His lawyer won’t object?”
“Once the truth is said, he can object all he wants. The jury will have heard.”
“Good point,” I said, backing away farther.
“Tiffany Arden will be in that courtroom, you know, just as she has been with me for twenty-three years.” He was drifting away again. “She and all the other victims whose killers have never been made to pay for their crimes. In my dreams they circle around me like a whirlpool, dragging me down …”
He shook his head suddenly. If the motion had been an attempt to clear his mind, it didn’t quite work. “Remember, Blessing, Tiffany is still here with us. With me. And, I think, with Charbonnet. And none of us will be free until he joins the six-four-eight.”
“I don’t know what that means, the six-four-eight,” I said.
“The six hundred and forty-eight prisoners on death row in the state,” Brueghel said.
He put the Crown Vic in drive and roared away, leaving a three-foot-long trail of rubber on the asphalt.
An interesting guy, the detective. An honorable cop. A dedicated and dogged cop. But when the Good Lord was serving the entrées for a sane and happy life, Brueghel must have wandered off the buffet line to search for clues.
Chapter
TWENTY-SIX
“Listen up,” Max Slaughter ordered from his position at the head of the table. Actually, it was a round table, following the example set
by the planners of international sit-downs seeking to avoid the problem of choosing one attendant poobah over the others to sit at the head (or conversely, the foot). But television rehearsals are not known for their diplomacy, and anywhere the portly producer of the newly rechristened The Midnight Show chose to deposit his pear-shaped rear end automatically became the head.
To his left was his gofer, the pale, deadpan assistant producer, Trey Halstead. Beside Trey, Whisper Jansen was leaning forward, her scrubbed, unadorned face frozen in concentration as she aimed a Sony TG1, billed as the world’s smallest camcorder, at the producer, hoping to capture every syllable of his words of wisdom for her boss, Carmen Sandoval, and, after that, posterity, I suppose.
Next to her, Fitzpatrick slumped, his beard pressed against his chest, looking as if he’d had another rough night and exuding a boozy-sweaty musk that had prompted me to move my chair as far away from his as I could without bumping into our director, Tessa Ruscha.
Her sullen silence made me wonder if she was catching a Fitz whiff, too. Or maybe she was reacting to the not-so-funny two-lesbians joke Gibby Lewis was telling to a stand-up pal of his named Howard something, who was helping him with the opening monologue.
Howard laughed like a howler monkey even before the punch line, but the joke definitely wasn’t playing too well with floor manager Lolita Snapps, who’d been damaged in the bombing and was shaking her bandaged head at the comic’s choice of material.
If our final table mate had heard any of Gibby’s utterances, she wasn’t showing it. April Edding, whom I’d met at the villa the night of the rat, rested languidly on her chair, eyes active behind her large aviator glasses, as she studied her iPad.
“Zip it, Gibby,” Trey Halstead said, identifying the room’s main disruptive element and, from the look on our new, possibly temporary star’s pliable mug, making an instant enemy. Not that Trey cared. The pale young man’s only concern seemed to be satisfying Max’s every whim. Any other thoughts or deeds he kept under wraps.
“First, in case some of you may not have heard, I have some good news,” Max said. And April’s attentiveness was suddenly matching Whisper’s and Trey’s. “The police have caught the bastard who murdered Des. Not some druggie or fruitcake, as you may suspect. A well-known restaurateur, Roger Charbonnet. I know the guy. I’ve played cards with him at Hillcrest.”
“Christ, I know him, too,” Gibby said. “What was the deal? Why’d he do it?”
Max shrugged. “Cops haven’t said. Or what led them to him.”
“There’s going to be a news conference any minute,” April informed us. “I’ve been checking my L.A. Times alerts. Nothing yet.”
“Keep us posted,” Tessa said. “We all want to know what’s going on.”
I considered enlightening them. “It’s all because of me,” I could have said. But in spite of the occupational road I’d taken, I wasn’t really that “it’s me” guy. In fact, I should have known better than to even harbor that thought. I’d seen enough evidence of mental telepathy to believe in it.
“Billy.”
It was April who’d called my name. She was staring at me, smiling. “I must be slow today,” she said, holding up her iPad. “The Smoking Gun made the obvious connection.”
“What?” Max asked. “Lemme see.”
“The fight at Malibu,” April said. “Remember. It was all over the Internet. Billy tossing Roger Charbonnet into the pool.” By now, I had given up playing the “didn’t toss him in the pool” card.
“That’s right,” Gibby said, staring at me, mouth hanging open in a mixture of surprise and amusement.
They were all staring at me. And not in a totally friendly way. With the exception of Gibby’s pal, they’d all been affected by the explosion, and they no doubt felt I’d been hiding something they deserved to know—why Roger had gone from iron chef to behind-iron-bars chef.
What the heck. Brueghel said the news would be out soon enough.
“The detectives believe Roger Charbonnet meant that bomb for me,” I said.
“It wasn’t … Des wasn’t …?” Fitz sputtered, trying to process what I’d just said.
“At the villa, the rat!” April exclaimed. “Tell them about the rat.”
“By all means,” Max said.
“Somebody broke into Des’s place, where I’ve been staying, and left a rat cooking in the oven,” I told them. “I thought it was just a bad joke. I should have taken it more seriously.”
“That can’t be,” Fitz said, shaking his shaggy head in obvious confusion. “The rat was …”
“Was what?” I asked.
He stared at me, glassy-eyed. Then he got it together. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m about as sharp as a beach ball today. Still bolloxed from last night.”
That’s when the ringtones started.
First was “Ode to Spring” on April’s iPhone. She answered, said a few words I couldn’t hear, and signed off. “Police Chief Weidemeyer is meeting with the press at the new headquarters at First and Spring.”
Max ordered Trey to turn on the TV set in the corner of the room.
Trey was complying when the lilting sounds of “Frim-Fram Sauce” issued from my pocket.
“Enough with the goddamn cellphones,” Max yelled. “Turn ’em off. This is supposed to be a rehearsal.”
My caller was Carmen Sandoval. “Hello, Billy,” she began.
“Carmen, I’m sorry,” I said, “but Max wants us to turn off our phones.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself.”
I passed the word on to Max.
“Give Carmen my best,” he said.
“Okay, back on again,” I said.
“Bravo. Are you on, too, Whisper?”
I looked across the table and saw that Whisper had a phone to her ear. “Yes, I am, Carmen,” I heard her say through my phone.
The network veep summarized the Smoking Gun announcement in a few succinct words before asking me if the website was correct in assuming I was Roger’s intended victim.
“It looks that way,” I said.
“When I have more time, Billy, I would love to know why you’ve kept this information from the news-gathering network that’s paying you so handsomely. But right now, there are more important things to cover.
“You are about to be besieged by every media outlet in the free world. I’d like to remind you that as a WBC employee, you owe us a certain exclusivity on this fast-breaking story.”
I was not at all certain that was true. But if I wanted to continue working for the network, there was little point in discussing it.
“When we’re through talking, I want you to turn off your phone. Avoid the other media at all cost. If any of them manage to get past the gate, call security immediately.
“Now, Whisper, I’ll be phoning Wanda in D.C.”—Wanda Lorinski was the producer of the network’s half-hour News Tonight!—“to tell her Billy has confirmed the Smoking Gun rumor and that we, by that I mean you, Whisper, will have him ready in a studio here for a Q-and-A with Jim, as early in tonight’s show as Wanda can arrange.” Jim McBride anchored the nightly news half-hour from the nation’s capital.
“While I clear things with Wanda, please inform Max that he’ll have to shift things around on tonight’s show to make room for a more in-depth Billy interview. I’ll make sure that it will be plugged on the news.”
“Ah, about Billy’s Midnight interview?” Whisper asked, lowering her tiny voice even more than usual. “You don’t want Gibby to do it, right?”
“God, no. He’d pause mid-question for a fart joke. Get Marcus Oliphant.”
That was a name from the past. Marcus Oliphant had been the late-news anchor for the net’s L.A.-owned-and-operated station KWBC back when I’d lived in the city.
“But watch out for the old boy,” Carmen cautioned Whisper. “Telling him he’ll be guesting on a network show is liable to give him wood.”
“I’ll phone him,” Whisper said, without a hint
of irony.
The conference call was over. Never once was I asked if I wanted to talk about my history with Roger Charbonnet in front of 8.5 million viewers.
“We have to rush, Billy,” Whisper said as she circled the table. “We’ve less than twenty-seven minutes to get you sponged and in the chair.”
As we headed to the door, Max bellowed, “Where the hell are you going, Billy? This is a rehearsal. There’s blocking …”
Whisper, her voice reedy but clear, evoked the name of Carmen, mentioned my News Tonight! appearance, and promised to have me back within the hour.
“No later,” Max said, trying to save face.
But Whisper wasn’t finished with him. “Oh, and about tonight’s show,” she said. “You’ll have to make a change in the lineup.”
“At this hour, that’s fucking impossible,” Max said, his face reddening. “Forget it.”
“Carmen will be very disappointed,” Whisper said.
For a second or two, Max pursed his lips and relaxed them, staring at the table in front of him. Then he stopped that and asked, “What is it she wants, exactly?”
“A longer interview with Billy. Conducted by Marcus Oliphant. It’ll be promoed on the evening news.”
“Makes sense, I suppose,” Max mumbled.
I could feel him glaring at our backs as we left the room. Closing the door behind us, I asked, “How often does Carmen put you in the middle like that?”
“This was the first time,” Whisper said, with more than a hint of wonder. “She likes to order people around herself. And now I know why. It’s fun.”
Chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Jim McBride interview went smoothly enough. Fortunately, the press conference at LAPD headquarters had provided an abundance of footage in which Police Chief Clarence Weidemeyer, the latest in a revolving door of short-termers to occupy the position, explained the official theory: “We have arrested local restaurateur Roger Charbonnet in connection with the explosion that claimed the life of comedian and television talk-show host Desmond O’Day and destroyed portions of the Harold Di Voss Theater in Hollywood. It is our belief the explosive device was, in fact, intended to kill another performer on Mr. O’Day’s late-night show, William Blessing, whom Charbonnet considered a rival.”