by Al Roker
“If I make a big thing about it with the police, some sleazy individual will find a way to steal it or copy it, and in the blink of an eye it will wind up on every gossip website in the world. I’ll just hang on to it, if you don’t mind. In fact, I’m thinking of burning the damn thing.”
“You’re joking, right? The cops are convinced I killed Rudy,” I said. “That black book might put just a tiny doubt in their minds.”
“How can you be so sure they haven’t looked through it?”
“Because it’s the kind of thing they love to dig into. And I know it didn’t come with the DVDs.”
“Really? Suddenly you’re the Mentalist? Then how did it get here?”
We had finally arrived at the real point of my visit.
“My guess is you took it from Rudy’s apartment the night he died.”
Gretchen paled. “That’s ridiculous, Billy. I was nowhere near … How desperate do you have to be to make a statement like that?”
“How did you know his last dinner was coq au vin?” I asked.
“How? That detective. Solomon. He told me when he called with the news of Rudy’s death.”
I shook my head. “Solomon came to the Bistro almost immediately after he’d talked with you. When he and I got into a discussion of Rudy’s last meal, he’d never heard of coq au vin. It was just chicken and gravy to him. Then, only minutes later, during our phone conversation you identified the dish by name.”
“I guess I assumed—”
“What? That since it was from the Bistro, it had to be coq au vin? Why not Chicken Florentine or Pompadour or Fricassee?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You were seen at his place, Gretch. Right around the time of the murder.”
“Oh, God.” She backed against the desk, using it to give her the strength to continue standing. “Billy, he was already dead when I got there, I swear.”
“What the hell were you doing there?”
“Behaving like a fool. A jealous fool. It had been over a week since we’d spent any time together. That night, I insisted. He told me he had a business meeting. Said it was something he had to do for my father and then it was dinner and bed. He’d call me the next day.”
“What was he doing for the commander?”
“I phoned Dad to ask. He said he didn’t know what Rudy was talking about. The last task he’d entrusted to him was a fait accompli. And a very unsatisfactory one, he said.
“I wanted to get to the bottom of this, so I called Rudy back. This time I got his voice mail. I sat around simmering, dialing him every so often and growing more and more infuriated. Finally I drove over there.”
“How’d you get past the doorman and the lobby camera?” I asked.
“There’s a thing Rudy did. If he was expecting someone he didn’t want the doorman or anyone else to see, he’d leave the alley door unbolted.”
“And you discovered this how?”
She hesitated, then said, “Once upon a time, I was his back-door romance. If you recall, Rudy was still engaged to that British bitch Samantha Prentice when he and I started up.”
Recall? Hell, that was back when I harbored the foolish notion that Gretchen and I were still a couple. I didn’t linger on that. “So the night he died, you found the rear door open?”
“Yes. I cut through the walkway beside the building, entered through the unlocked door, and went up the service stairs to his condo. I knew he kept an extra key under the carpet at the far end of the hall. But I didn’t need it. His door was ajar.
“I went in, expecting to find him in bed with some tramp. Instead he was … God, it was horrible! His face twisted and grotesque. He’d relieved himself and that smell, with the vomit …”
“But you were able to find the black book and take it.”
“I went to call the police. The black book was on the table beside the phone. I looked through it and …”
“And you realized how bad it might look for the fiancée of a sleep-around guy to be in his apartment with his dead body.”
“I’m not that cold and calculating, Billy. I didn’t dream he’d been murdered. I assumed he’d had a heart attack. Rudy was beyond anything I could do for him. I didn’t see any reason not to remove the black book and save him from seeming like the letch that he was. I took it and left the way I’d come in.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re standing there with the carpet ripped up and the books pulled off the shelves and the place an unholy mess, and you think he’s had a heart attack?”
“What are you talking about? There were no books on the floor, no torn carpet. With the exception of the space where Rudy died, the apartment was as neat as always.”
“The detectives told me it was a mess,” I said.
“A mess they made,” Gretchen said firmly.
“Maybe,” I said. I had a pretty good idea who’d made the mess, but I was having trouble working out the chronology. Rudy was poisoned by a person or persons unknown. Gretchen arrived and the place had not been searched. But by the next day, when the housekeeper found Rudy’s corpse and the cops got there, the place had been ransacked, probably by Clove Boy. Ergo, Clove Boy had not killed Rudy? Or maybe he had and then was sent back to find the secret thing. The black book, maybe?
“I suppose you think I should tell the police the truth,” Gretchen said.
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner, I thought. What I said was “It’s your decision.”
“I don’t want to,” she said. “But what if the person who saw me tells the police?”
“I sorta fudged on that,” I said. “You weren’t seen in the building, just in the neighborhood. If the cops don’t know that by now, they probably never will.”
She seemed relieved for about five seconds, then tensed and said, “Unless you tell them.”
“Did you kill him, Gretch?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then what’s to tell?” I said.
I moved around her desk, opened the drawer, and took out the little black book. “I’m going to hang on to this,” I said.
“W-why?”
“I wouldn’t want it burned,” I said. “If the DA and the police have their way and I wind up defending my life, it’ll be something we can throw at the jury to confuse them.”
“I don’t believe it will come to that, Billy, but if it does, I’ll be in your corner.”
“Good to know,” I said, slipping the book into my pocket.
Chapter
SIXTEEN
When I arrived at the Bistro, my new BFFs from the media were snarling and snapping at me like a pack of rabid dogs and I had Milk-Bones in my pockets. In their midst, I spied a reluctant Worldwide Broadcasting cameraman in khaki who actually was a friend. Phil Bruno was one of the guys you wanted on your team—smart, inventive, even-tempered, who always knew precisely how to get the best shot.
I waved him in, prompting even louder howls from the rest of the pack.
“Sorry about this, Billy,” Phil said as I led him through the restaurant in its second day of commercial inactivity. “I wanted to call you to tell you I’d been assigned to get footage for tonight’s evening news, but the new honchette, Trina, said no calls. She believes in the confrontational approach, even when it comes to friends and coworkers.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Shoot whatever interiors you need. But do me a favor: Keep what’s about to take place out of the frame.”
My reference was to Solomon and Butker, who were heading our way from the rear of the building.
“It wasn’t your rat poison that was used on Gallagher,” Solomon said, ignoring Phil.
“Then why are you people still here?”
“We’re back to square one, Blessing,” the detective said, with a grin that wrinkled his face, hiding some of the black scar. “This time we’re looking for … What is it, Butker?”
“Benzethonium chloride,” his bored partner replied. “A deterg
ent used to clean cooking equipment, among other things. Very toxic.”
“My guess is: If we use it, it’ll be right in the open with the other detergents,” I said.
“Nothing’s ever that simple,” Solomon said. “Your help says they only use standard stuff. But if they did use the benzo-whatever on your ovens, then I guess you wouldn’t have used it on your pal Gallagher. Anyway, it’s gonna take us all day at least, pokin’ around. So many hidey-holes. And you never know, we might just turn up something else that’ll hook you up to the murder.”
With a sinking feeling, I realized I had Rudy’s little black book in my pocket. That’s all the connection Solomon would need. Keeping a poker face, I asked, “I don’t suppose you left one of your officers here last night?”
“No. Why?”
“A guy with a cop suit was seen on the premises.”
“Seen by who?”
“Me.”
“What bullshit story are you leading up to, Blessing? This ‘policeman’ tell you he killed Gallagher? Something like that?”
“No,” I said.
“Then what was he doing here? Fill me in. I love stories.”
I knew it would be a mistake to bring up the incident to Solomon. Telling him why the fake cop had dropped by would be futile. Or worse. Either he wouldn’t believe me or, if he did, he’d assume I really had taken something from Gallagher’s apartment and initiate an even more detailed search. He might even find the little black book I had in my pocket. And that would be a Go Directly to Jail card.
“You’re too clever for me, Detective,” I said. “Forget I mentioned it.”
Solomon stared at me. “Now you’re starting to piss me off. Was there somebody here impersonating one of my men or not?”
“Maybe it was just a bad dream.”
“Well, if you change your mind again, I’ll be around, seeing if the benzo-whatever turns up.”
“I suppose this means the restaurant will be dark another night.”
“Afraid so, chef,” Solomon said.
“Some of the food will be going bad. I can’t refreeze it.”
“Butker and I and the other officers would be happy to help you out with that. I saw some mighty fine porterhouse back there, all thawed and nice and bloody.”
“Bon appétit,” I said, heading for my office with Phil Bruno.
“You really have a break-in here last night?” Phil asked me.
“No big deal,” I said. “I should just keep my mouth shut around Solomon.”
“He’s a sweetheart, for sure,” Phil said. “He reminds me of Rudy, may God rest his black soul.”
“You didn’t think much of our late executive producer?”
“You should have seen him in Kabul, Billy, in his Abercrombie and Fitch great-white-hunter garb.”
“I didn’t know you’d made that trip.”
“Oh, yeah. Me and”—Phil deepened his voice theatrically to imitate the WBC evening news anchor—“Jim Bridewell.”
“Sounds just like him,” I said. “Who else was over there?”
“Rudy brought a couple of crew guys in from the L.A. bureau. Damn, but he loved to throw his weight around. In just a few days, he had the noncoms hating his ass and the officers going out of their way to avoid him. I wished I’d had that luxury. Bridewell is like a Calvinist or something, but he doesn’t bother anybody with it. Rudy was a demanding, rude-as-hell asshole.”
“What was that trip all about, anyway?” I asked. “There wasn’t any special story, as far as I could see.”
“It was the commander’s idea,” Phil said. “At least it was according to the late unlamented. Our first night there, Rudy got plowed at dinner. He told me Commander Di Voss had sent him there on a special mission.”
“He say what the mission was?”
“No. Made out like it was a big secret, strictly need-to-know. Then why bring it up, asshole?”
“He didn’t even drop a clue?”
Phil thought about it. “You know, I’ve been wondering if it could have had something to do with this thing that happened the next night when a bunch of us were in an Irish pub near the Mustafa Hotel. These Afghanis showed up at the pub, looking for trouble. They picked a fight with two of our security guards. A third guard got us out of there pronto and back to the hotel. The next day we found out that one of the remaining guards, a guy named Deacon Hall, got his throat cut.”
“Rudy mentioned that,” I said. “But he claimed he was there when it happened.”
“No way.” Phil shook his head. “Rudy was with me, safe and secure back at the hotel. But he freaked big-time when he heard about Hall. Took it surprisingly hard. In fact, he caught the next flight out. Bridewell and the rest of us had to stay and finish up the week. In that heat. With bombs going off. Still, conditions improved one hundred percent without Rudy.”
“What makes you think the bar fight might have had something to do with Rudy’s so-called mission?”
“After they brought us the news about Hall, and Rudy got over his freak and decided to head for home, he said, ‘My business here is finished anyway.’ Since he hadn’t been planning to leave before he heard about Hall, I guess that made me think Hall might have had something to do with his ‘mission.’”
His failed mission, according to the commander.
“They catch the killers?” I asked.
“Billy, that sort of shit goes on all the time over there. Those guys don’t know from Law & Order. My guess is the surviving guard took care of the two Afghanis. Those Touchstone mercs don’t take it well when you kill one of their buddies.”
“There must have been some talk about it.”
“Talk? Yeah. The Army general’s office informed us we were to keep the murder off the newscast until Hall’s relatives could be notified. The Touchstone security rep would tell us when we could run the story. That didn’t happen while we were there. Far as I know, it never happened.”
“You shoot a lot of footage?”
“That’s how I roll, Billy.”
“What about off-duty action? Like the night in the Irish pub?”
“I got some stuff. Nothing on the murder, though, since they dragged us out of there.”
“I’d still like to see what you shot,” I said.
“Anytime, Billy.”
“How about after you’re finished here?”
“Sure,” Phil said.
“I’ll see if I can sneak a few of those steaks away from the cops,” I told him.
While Phil roamed the restaurant with his camera, I shut the door to my office, then took Rudy’s black book from my pocket. I started at the first page and worked toward the last, looking at the initials of the dead man’s sexual partners. I wondered what their full names might be and if any of them might have caused Rudy’s death and sent Clove Boy to my building to retrieve the black book.
I briefly considered picking up the phone and starting to dial numbers and see who answered. But there were hundreds of entries. Even if I had the time and the patience to run the numbers through a reverse directory, I’d come up with only a percentage of the names. And then what? The bottom line was that I simply hadn’t the heart to invade the privacy of so many women, especially since I doubted it would accomplish anything. The odds of my discovering a homicidal needle in this haystack of one-night stands and best-forgotten seductions and broken affairs were too long.
I was about to toss the book back into my desk drawer when the office door was flung open and Solomon and Butker sauntered in.
“Whatcha got there, Blessing?” Solomon asked. He quickened his pace to the desk and snatched the black book from my unresisting fingers.
I felt like screaming, but developing a mental method of staying cool under stress had been the first thing my mentor Paul Lamont had demanded of me before he took me on the road. “Thanks to you, I’ve got the night off, Detective,” I said. “I don’t plan on spending it alone.”
Solomon flipped a few pages. “Damn
, Blessing. You’re the original sexist pig, aren’t you? Look at this, Butker. He even grades the dumb broads who fall for his crap.”
Butker gave the book a quick once-over. He seemed impressed.
“Can I help you, Detectives? Maybe you need a date for tonight?”
“Hardly,” Solomon said. He grabbed the book from Butker’s fingers and tossed it onto my desk. “There are some locked cabinets downstairs. Before we tear the doors off, I thought I’d ask if you had keys.”
I picked up the phone, dialed Cassandra, and asked her to provide the detectives with whatever keys they needed. “Anything else?” I asked Solomon.
His answer was to leave the room. Following, Butker did not bother to shut the door.
I sighed and looked at the little black book. If Rudy’s name had been in it, I’d have been cooked. But while Solomon was pawing through the damned thing, I’d calmed my panic mode with the thought that a player who’d used only the initials of his conquests probably wouldn’t have put anything in the book that might identify himself.
“My God,” Cassandra said from the door, “a little black book, Billy? I’d never have taken you for an ass man. When do you have the time?”
“We ass men make the time,” I said, opening a desk drawer and tossing in the book. Now that the detectives believed it to be mine, I suppose it was, officially.
“Those insufferable cops are driving me crazy,” she said. “You think you’re rid of them, then they return. They’re like the silverfish in my apartment.”
“What can I do for you, Cassandra?”
“You wanted a report on the coq au vin dinners?”
“Right.”
“It is one of our most requested meals. And as Maurice reminded me”—Maurice Terrebone being the kitchen supervisor—“it’s all but impossible to account for every single entrée if it’s on the specials list.”
I understood what she was saying. Because the specials are often partially prepared in advance, and because it is impossible to accurately predict how many will be ordered on any given night, even with the waiters pushing them a bit, there may be as many as five or more left over at the end of the evening. These are often devoured by staff.
