The Morning Show Murders (1) (31 page)

A.W. insisted we stay in the hall while he checked the apartment for unwelcome visitors. Gin leaned against Ted and said, "Honey, ah'm so worn down ah'm not even considerin' havin' sex tonight."

"TMI," I said.

"Ah'm sorry, Billy. Ah didn't mean to offend. You find sex talk offensive?"

Thankfully, I was relieved of having to respond by the reappearance of A.W. giving us the all clear. We filed into the apartment. Gin and Ted wished us a good evening and retired to the privacy, one hoped, of their bedroom.

A.W. and I occupied the living room, staring at a television show about a smart-talking crime scene investigator who, judging by his choppers and the fact that he worked the night shift, made me suspect he was a vampire.

"Geez, they have all this realistic autopsy stuff," A.W. said, once the hero's penchant for blood was disclosed, "and they throw in a vampire."

"Yep," I said. "Hard to take the living dead too seriously. But zombies now ..."

My sore elbow shot a pain arrow up my arm and I winced.

"You okay?" he asked. "You got pretty banged up back at the old house. Maybe we ought to get you checked out."

"I'll heal," I said.

The InterTec agents selected to guard Gin and Ted arrived before the vampire forensics expert had sunk his teeth into the villain, but we got out of there anyway. I was anxious to see how the Bistro was faring on a Sunday night. And A.W. ... Well, he had a different kind of fare on his mind.

Cassandra was at her post just past the front door, presiding over a full house.

She'd been staring at the diners with a scowl that vanished as soon as she saw A.W. When she finally acknowledged me, the scowl returned in triplicate.

"My God, Billy. You look like you've been rolling in a gutter. Your coat's ripped and filthy, and you're limping."

"It's good to see you, too, Cassandra. Oh, and I fell down a flight of stairs," I said.

"Well, you certainly don't want to stroll through the dining room looking like that."

She was right. In spite of the twinges of pain, I'd forgotten how I looked. I left the two of them, ducked into the lounge, and took the hall exit that led past the kitchen to the rear stairwell. Heading up, my ankle reminded me of every step I took.

In my bedroom, I removed my tattered coat and slacks and shirt and limped into the bathroom to observe the damage. Nothing terrible. Just bruises. I washed my face, wrapped an athletic bandage around my ankle, and put on a fresh mock turtleneck and slacks. I
eased my sockless feet into a pair of black loafers and was ready to greet the evening.

I wasn't quite up to a waltz through the dining room, but I did work my way down the stairs to visit the kitchen, where the unexpected turnout of customers was testing the endurance levels of Maurice Terrebone and his staff.

The usually unperturbed Maurice paused briefly to say, "We must give the coq au vin a rest, Billy. Take it off the list of specials. Everybody wants coq au vin. The waiters tell me they call it the 'killer dish.' Can you imagine? They're crazy, these New Yorkers."

Maurice was a native of New Orleans. Swept to our Eastern shores by Katrina, he was one of those poor, displaced souls who weren't happy in their new environment but were too pragmatic to return to a place of such woeful impermanence.

He rushed away to count his remaining chickens, and I made my creaky and aching way back up the stairs to my office, feeling surprisingly alert, considering all that had transpired during the day.

I'd just eased my rear end to the chair cushion and was starting to check my e-mail when A.W. appeared to say that the building was secure. He'd also managed to get in a call to the hospital. Bettina's condition was unchanged.

"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.

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.