The Talk Show Murders (16 page)

Patton’s real reason for walking away from their deal was a puzzler,
but it wasn’t my puzzler. “What can you tell me about Patton’s lawyer?” I asked.

“Huh?” Webber asked as his mind shifted gears. “His lawyer? A little—no, make that a big—weasel named James Clement Yountz. Of the firm Garaday, Hilton, Pendrake, and Yountz. On Boul’ Mich. Not exactly a shady operation, but they have their share of bent-nose clients, and this is Chicago.”

“The city that works?” I said.

“The city that works you over.”

“You’re not a Chicago boy?”

He smiled. “Close enough. About fifteen miles to the north. Winnetka. Alan’s from the land of the big wind, too. We were high school buddies. New Trier. Go Trevians!”

“Your family still there?” I asked.

We were nearing my hotel. He maneuvered into the right lane.

“Nope. My dad’s … gone. Mom lives in Miami with a retired city judge. Nice guy, I guess. Heidi, my younger sister, is in L.A., working for a talent agency. And my older sister, Roz, is in Weston, Connecticut, married to an ad exec. Got a couple of kids. She opted for the housewife bit over a career. Says she’s happy.”

“You happy?” I asked.

“I don’t give it much thought. I guess that means I am. You strike me as a happy guy, Billy. You a family man?”

We were at the hotel parking circle, where about a dozen cars were blocking all three lanes, either awaiting passengers or disgorging them. “No family,” I said. “Not married. Never have been.”

“Ever wonder what it might be like?” he asked.

“Not a day goes by,” I said. “What about you?”

“Down one. But I’m not totally against another try. Just have to see what the future brings.”

A lane opened up, and he pulled the Ferrari into it. Several valets rushed us. It was that kind of sports car.

“I’m having a little party tomorrow night at Restaurant Pastiche. Mainly business. Some media. People with money in the movie. But it should be fun. Drop by.”

One of the valets had my door open. “I’ll be tied up with the
Hotline
show until eleven.”

“We’ll still be partying.”

Stepping out of the vehicle, I said, “Will Adoree be there?”

“Sure,” he said. “Addie’s a knockout, isn’t she? And, being French, that makes her a little different from the American actresses I’ve … dated. But she
is
an actress. That means she’s more than a woman and can make you feel less than a man.”

I guess I frowned, because he added, “Hey, scratch that, huh? I’m … not exactly an expert on romance. Go for it, if that’s what you want.”

He held out his hand, and I slapped it.

I watched the Ferrari drive away and decided I agreed with Charlie Dann, the Puff Potato man, that Derek Webber was one of the good guys.

“Do you realize the time, Billy?” Cassandra Shaw, the manager of my Manhattan restaurant, said between yawns.

“I’m sorry. Your message said to call you as soon as I got in.”

“I left that message at … Oh, well, fuck it, I’m awake now. A.W. is awake. Perhaps I should go downstairs and ring all of my neighbors’ door buzzers and we can all be awake.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s only two-twenty-five there.”

“I had a very long day, Billy, handling my job and yours at the Bistro.”

“I wouldn’t have called, except that you sounded pretty desperate.”

“You really have to turn your phone on,” she said.

We’d had this conversation before. The problem, as she well knew, was that I have to deactivate the phone whenever I go on the air, and, no matter how hard I try, I can never remember to reactivate it when the show is over. I’d been greeted by the voice mail she left at the hotel, to wit: “Billy, where the hell are you? This fucking restaurant is about to self-destruct.”

“What’s happening to my restaurant, Cassandra?”

“Oh, Billy,” she said and moaned. This was not like her. She was as tough as she was competent. “It’s a mess. We had another blackout about an hour before the first serving.”

“Great. We should put the electrician on staff,” I said.

“He found one problem. But evidently not
the
problem. Anyway, the customers seemed amused by the prospect of dining by candlelight. The electrician restored the power, but by then we were running an hour or so late. I told the waiters to offer drinks or appetizers on the house.”

“Good.”

“So what with keeping everybody happy and answering dumb questions from the staff and cracking the whip on the electrician—who was charging us double for emergency service even though he’d obviously screwed up on Friday—and trying to calm down Maurice, who, it turns out, really doesn’t like the dark, I was ready to blow my own fuse.” Maurice Terrebone is our usually unflappable kitchen supervisor.

“So you took care of everything?” I asked.

She hesitated before replying, which was yet another worrisome thing. Cassandra is just about the most outspoken person I know. Finally, she said, “I don’t think the power outages were accidental.”

“Say what?”

“I think somebody’s trying to put us out of business.”

Considering that just hours before someone had tried to put
me
out of business, I was inclined to accept her theory. Still, I felt it deserved a devil’s advocacy. “Three blackouts do not automatically add up to a case of sabotage,” I said.

“It’s not just the blackouts, Billy. Yesterday we had a Ladies in Real Estate luncheon in the big private room. According to the servers, the guest speaker had just been introduced when a couple of gray rats crashed the party. The ladies were not pleased.”

“Rats? This is damned serious,” I said.

“Oh, really, Billy? Let me tell you what serious is: It’s spending an early part of the dinner hour trying to keep our customers oblivious
to the fact that in the kitchen, inspectors from the Department of Health and Hygiene are being threatened by a chef wielding a butcher’s knife.”

I groaned. “The real estate ladies called the health department?”

“One of their husbands worked at the health department. Judging by the speed with which the investigators descended on us, he worked very high up in the health department. They went over the building from cellar to attic, which is why they were still at work when the dinner crowd arrived.”

“But they didn’t close us down?”

“No. As you may recall, we’d had an inspection a little over a month ago,” she said. “No sign of vermin then. And they could find no sign of them now, other than the two corpses flattened by Silvio the busboy. We still have our A rating.”

“They uncovered no point of entry?”

“Not even any feces, other than some droppings in the private room. I think the rats were planted, and I think someone has been doing something to our electrical system.”

“Okay. What do you suggest?”

“We need professional help,” she said.

“Do we know anybody that does that kind of guard work?” I asked, mindful of the fact that her fiancé, A. W. Johansen, was the East Coast rep for an international security company.

“What about A.W.?” she asked, indignantly.

“Good idea. Hire him. But make it a barter deal if you can.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean barter. He keeps the restaurant secure, and in return he gets an open food-and-drink tab. Of course, there’s the conjugal use of my manager.”

“Asshole,” she said, and hung up on me.

True. But a funny asshole. No?

Having amused myself, I checked my watch. A quarter to two. I called the desk and asked for a six-forty-five wake-up. Because of my
new schedule, I wouldn’t be needed until seven-thirty. My plan was to read
Da Mare
for a while and then grab at least a four-hour snooze.

Using both hands, I picked up a copy of the massive book and toted it into the bedroom, where, properly pajamaed, comfortably ensconced in crisp, clean sheets and a thin coverlet, I began the usually satisfying process known as reading yourself to sleep.

The chirping hotel phone woke me from a nightmare in which I was lying in a graveyard with a cement headstone on my chest. In the real world, it was two-thirty a.m. and the headstone was my copy of
Da Mare
, which promptly slid onto the floor as I reached for the phone.

“Turn on the TV, Billy,” a female voice ordered.

“Carrie?”

“Channel eight.”

Still a little out of it, I shifted the phone to my left hand and used my right to grab the clicker. “What …?” was all I managed to get out before the flat screen on the dresser shelf activated with a blinking invitation to watch the hotel’s movies on demand.

“Quickly,” Carrie said. “Damn. Too late.”

I continued to struggle with the clicker, finally working my way to channel 8. Spencer Tracy was talking to Jimmy Stewart about a rubber plantation in
Malaya
. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why am I looking at an old black-and-white movie?”

“I called you about the news break,” she said. “You missed it.”

“Missed what?”

“The guy who tried to shoot us.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead. It was just on the news.”

“Yeah?” I was wide awake now, flipping through channels.

“He was wanted by the police,” she said. “His name was Aldanzo, something like that.”

“I’ve got the story,” I said. “Channel nineteen. A mug shot … definitely our baldie.”

The news reader was in the middle of his report. “… of Amos Alanz was found in an empty lot in the 3100 block of West Lake
Street. His neck was broken. According to CPD officer George Palaki, there is a strong possibility that the death was gang-related.”

“I just found the channel,” Carrie said. “Did he say ‘gang-related’? My God, is a gang out to get us?”

“It was the dead guy who was out to get us,” I said.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” she said, leading me to think I’d sounded more annoyed than I was.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t take pleasure in anybody’s death, but if somebody had to be murdered, I’m glad it was him.”

“Why was he murdered, do you think?”

“Maybe because he shot a building instead of us.” I yawned. “You always stay up this late?”

“No. But I can sleep in. And it’s morning in Paris, and I was hoping Gerard might … It’s not important.”

“Call him.”

“I don’t want to disturb him. His email yesterday said he’s meeting with his publisher today. And Madeleine sent him notes on the rough draft. I’m sure he’ll write me as soon as he can. Billy, it’s really selfish of me to keep you talking. You have to get up so early in the morning.”

“I’m glad you called,” I said. “But I’d better grab a few z’s before sunup.”

We said our good nights. I replaced the receiver, clicked off the TV and the lights. If I had even a hint of curiosity about Amos Alanz’s murder, I didn’t let it keep me up. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. And unlike the late, unlamented Mr. Alanz, I would still be getting up in a few hours.

The only thing worse than going on camera after four and a half hours of sleep and a pre-breakfast consisting of two cups of black coffee, two jelly doughnuts, and a Slim Jim is doing all that and then having to interview Elvita Dawes Hart. Ms. Hart was the spokesperson for the WBC reality series
Naked Housewives of Wilmette
. I guess you’d say she was the Barbara Walters of the show, though, at roughly eight-seventeen in the a.m., thankfully more or less clothed.

In her fifties, with hair the unnatural color of pitch; a face that bore the traces of Botox, a tanning parlor, and some nipping and tucking; and a body that had probably gone from voluptuous to overflowing without her noticing, Ms. Hart was not exactly the best advertisement for her show. Which may be why she’d brought along Lurleen Applegate, a petite platinum blonde wearing a thong and what looked to me like a Day-Glo tether reining in her surprisingly robust chest.

“Alas, Lurleen is about as naked as this network allows,” Ms. Hart said, “but during our stage performances we really let the dogs out, so to speak.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Maybe you could tell our viewers some of the other differences between the TV and stage shows.”

“Oh, it’s like apples and grapefruit, Billy,” Lurleen said, moving closer until her bare thigh brushed against me. “Here’s the thing. We’re not nudists. But we believe that a certain amount of nudity releases us from our inhibitions.”

“That’s right,” Ms. Hart added. “When we and our guests discuss a topic—like our country’s dependency on oil from the Middle East—we get a much freer-flowing conversation if we’re down to thongs and pasties. Or, in the case of the guests, who are all male, by the way, jockeys or briefs.”

“I bet we have a sling just your size,” Lurleen said. She smelled of vetiver oil.

I stayed game, finished up the interview, bid the housewives a forever farewell, and departed for the tent I was using as a dressing room/office. Kiki was seated at a makeshift desk. She was not alone. J. B. Kazynski, lady private eye, was occupying a campaign chair, talking on her phone.

She was dressed in what I assumed to be her working outfit, a dark gray suede jacket over an antique Cubs T-shirt, tight denims, and leather boots. She stood and held up her free hand with index finger raised, an indication, I assumed, that she would be only a minute.

I didn’t care if she took ten.

“What’s next on my schedule?” I asked Kiki.

“You’ve a meeting at eleven with Lieutenant Oswald, who’s supposed to have some new information on the monster’s murder.”

“That ‘monster’ stuff may be a little harsh, now that the man’s deceased,” I said.

“Po-
ta
-toes, po-
tot
-oes,” she said. “Here’s where you’ll find the lieutenant.”

She handed me a yellow note, which I stuck in my pocket.

“Stay as sweet as you are,” I said, and headed out.

“Hold it!” J.B. yelled, fumbling her phone shut. “We’ve gotta talk.”

“About what?”

“A shooting last night.”