by Al Roker
“I’d have thought the crowd would be bigger,” she whispered.
“You’re thinking of those movies with half the church filled with the deceased’s mistresses in black, weeping,” I said.
“No. I’m thinking of Red Skelton’s quip at Harry Cohn’s packed funeral: ‘Give the people what they want …’”
“I hear our Food School pilot has been given an Incomplete,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lily said. “I got the call yesterday. Just as well. At the risk of speaking ill of the departed, it was a frigging boneheaded concept.”
We were about to slink into an empty pew when the commander spied us and waved us to his, urging Gretchen and the row of other executives to squeeze together to make room.
“Feeling better, Billy?” he asked.
An odd question, but I replied, “Feeling fine. And you?”
“Tip-top. So you’ll be back at work tomorrow?”
Gretchen was observing us anxiously, and I realized she must have told the old man I’d been absent because of my health.
“Back tomorrow, with bells on,” I said, smiling at his daughter.
“Good, good. That young hippy with the long hair, Slater, or whatever his name is, was supposed to be reviewing a book this morning, and he was holding the goddamned thing upside down.”
“Dad, please,” Gretchen said. “We are in church.”
“Well, I don’t like the little cretin,” the commander said. I suspected he knew Chuck Slater was sitting right behind us, turning a lovely shade of crimson.
The funeral mass was delivered by a monsignor. Gretchen had probably tried for the new archbishop, then the rector, and then settled for a monsignor. He wasn’t a bad choice, tall, graying, and stately in his white vestments, which, according to the handout, symbolized the Resurrection of the Spirit. Good luck with that, Rudy.
The monsignor moved the service along smartly, allowing only one chorus of “The Hymn of Saint Patrick” and the Offertory hymn, “There Is a Wideness in God’s Mercy.” His sermon, in which he praised Rudy’s “lifetime of service to a community that depended on him for entertainment and information,” lasted twelve minutes by my watch. Very few mourners took Communion. It wasn’t that kind of crowd.
According to the handout, we were asked to save our eulogies for the more private gathering at the gravesite, which took care of Wally’s concern about karma and made the whole service—from “Welcome” to “Requiescat in pace!”—clock in at just under forty-five minutes. If there had been commercials, we could’ve sold it as an hour. Rudy would’ve been pleased.
As I left the pew I caught sight of another outcast heading to the door. Melody Moon, in a simple light-gray dress with long sleeves and a white collar and cuffs, had been sitting at the rear of the church.
“Isn’t that the cutie from the pilot?” Lily asked.
I nodded.
Accompanying Melody was her cartoonist roommate, Rita Margolis, dressed in her bright-yellow pea jacket, gray slacks, and a gray beret. Rita saw me, scowled, and took Melody’s arm, moving her quickly from the church.
“Who’s the girl in yellow, Billy?” Gretchen asked, before Lily could.
“Just another fan,” I said.
“Was she one of Rudy’s?”
“How would I know?”
“She seemed to know you.”
“I’m on TV, Gretch,” I said.
“Her friend’s beautiful.”
I stared at Gretchen, wondering if she was a better actress than I thought.
“Let’s not dawdle,” the commander said behind me.
Outside, he asked Lily and me if we wanted to accompany them in their limo to the cemetery. Lily, caught off guard, accepted the chauffeur’s hand and entered the vehicle. I thanked the commander and begged off, saying I had work to do at the restaurant, which was true. While he waited for his daughter to get into the limo, I asked, “Commander, why did you send Rudy to Afghanistan?”
He blinked in surprise, hesitated, then said, “I don’t know why it would be of any interest to you, Billy. It was just a father’s foolish mistake. Nothing more.”
Before I could think of a follow-up question, he was in the limo. The chauffeur closed the door with a click and moved swiftly to his position behind the wheel.
I watched the limo glide down Fifth, then pause at the corner for Melody Moon and Rita Margolis to cross the street. There may be eight million people in the naked city, but paths keep crossing all the same.
I was reminding myself to pick up some of Rudy’s DVDs for Melody, when Gin shouted my name. She was with her traveling boyfriend, Ted Parkhurst, who offered a hearty handshake and asked if I needed a ride to the cemetery.
Once again, I declined the chance to see Rudy get buried six feet under. “But I would like to sit down and have a talk, at your convenience,” I told him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Not going to ask me about my intentions, I hope.”
“Everybody’s been wondering,” I said. “But no. I’d like to hear about the night you spent with Rudy in Kabul.”
“God, yeah. Weird night, especially with that merc getting killed. Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Why don’t you have dinner with us at my place, Billy?” Gin suggested. “Can you get away from the Bistro, around eight-thirty?”
“I’ll make a point of it,” I said.
Chapter
TWENTY
I won’t bore you with the myriad details of getting the Bistro open for dinner that night. Let it suffice to say that, what with instructing the staff that Maurice Terrebone, my kitchen master, had assembled, planning a limited menu, checking the restocking operations, observing the restaurant scrubdown, phoning customers, and keeping Cassandra’s acerbic attitude in check, my work was cut out for me.
We opened the doors at five-thirty p.m. By then, thanks to a Manhattan-based movie starlet who’d hired an undercover cop to murder her socialite husband, the restaurant and I were old news and the sidewalk in front of the Bistro was relatively media-free. Regrettably, as the hour progressed, it was also customer-free.
Eventually they began to trickle in, some to drink, some to dine. By eight, the main dining room, the only one we’d opened, was at about one-third capacity. Which I suppose wasn’t bad, all things considered.
“I’m outta here,” I told Cassandra.
“The rat deserts the sinking ship,” she said.
“The ship is not sinking,” I said. “And, I should note, this rat doesn’t desert. Further, he pays your very handsome salary.”
“But for how long?”
“Until you start to lose that happy glow,” I said.
She rolled her eyes and asked if I remembered my cellular. I showed it to her, and she said she’d give me a call if anything disastrous occurred.
It was fortunate that Gin McCauley was now filthy rich, because, while she may have been a good comedienne and a fair newswoman, the only way anything edible would emerge from her kitchen was if she paid for it. It was even more fortunate that the loot she lavished on a large Cuban cook named Estella was money well spent. We enjoyed shrimp and saffron rice, black beans, and fried plantains, served with a crisp white wine so chilled it nearly caused brain freeze.
I hadn’t paid attention to the bottle when Ted poured, so my first sip surprised me. “Vionta?” I asked Gin. “A 2004?”
“From the Rias Baixas region of Spain,” she said. “Just like I read about in this wonderful book that was full of wine history and lore and advice on what to drink with what. It was written by an acknowledged expert in the field.”
I half smiled and put on the fake humble look most authors use when complimented. “A wise man said, ‘Write what you know.’”
Ted raised his glass. “To Billy,” he said, “a man who knows his vino.”
“A man I can always count on,” Gin added.
I sampled the Vionta again, then shifted the subject by asking Gin if she was enjoying her new status o
n the show. She had just learned that in spite of her cohost Lance Tuttle’s big push to interview Goyal Aharon, the ex–Mossad agent had asked for her, the fifteen-million-dollar woman.
“I tell you, Billy, it’s like ah’m playin’ in a whole new league.”
“With the loot you’re making, Gin, you could buy your own league,” I said.
“The rich get richer,” Ted said with a smile, clinking his wineglass against his paramour’s.
“Oh,” she said. “Do I have to start worryin’ about you lovin’ me for mah money?”
“I loved you before,” he said. “But now that you’re disgustingly rich … wow, just feel the beat of my heart.”
“Mah boy toy want me to buy him somethin’ special?”
The conversation was turning a little too cute, or too creepy. I decided to shift gears by asking, “Is Aharon’s book any good?”
“Dark Command is a spy thrillah that’s either bad le Carré or good Ludlum,” Gin said. “Frankly, I couldn’t care less about his dumb old novel. His publicist says everything’s on the table. I can ask him about Israeli assassination squads, torture, letter bombs. Anything.”
“Let the good times roll,” I said. “What about your plans, Ted? You sticking around for a while?”
“Maybe. I’ve missed this crazy woman, so I’m trying to convince my editor to let me snoop into a few local things. Rudy’s murder being one of them.”
“Any idea what he was doing in Kabul?” I asked.
“Riding herd on Jim Bridewell’s evening newscasts,” Ted said, brushing back his pale brown forelock.
“No other agenda?”
“Not that I know of. What have you heard?”
Instead of answering, I said, “Tell me about that night the Touchstone guard, Deacon Hall, was killed.”
“In the Irish pub. How’d you know I was there?”
“Phil Bruno,” I said.
“Right. The cameraman. But he and Rudy left before the guard was killed.”
“You stayed?”
“Jesus, yeah. It was a hell of a thing. The others split as soon as the two Afghanis started shouting and making threatening gestures. But it looked like something to write about, so I saw it through. It was grim.” He pushed back the unruly forelock again. “The Afghanis went for the bouncer, who tossed ’em around a little. Then they drew these knives and the bouncer backed off, no fool he. They charged our table and hit Hall like a pair of raptors, one from each side. He got his gun out, blasted one to hell, but the other slit his throat. The killer headed for the door, and Hall’s partner took him out. Head exploded like a melon. There was blood everywhere.”
“Holy crap,” Gin said. “Some of us are still eating here, Vlad.”
“Sorry, hon,” Ted said. “But Billy asked.”
“Just one more thing,” I said. “Before all the bloodshed, did you happen to see Hall hand anything to Gallagher? A shiny object of some kind?”
“No. Tell me more.”
“Well, from what you say, it sounds like those guys were there specifically to kill Hall.”
“That’s how it looked,” Ted said.
“So Rudy goes to Kabul,” I said. “He has drinks with a merc. The merc’s murdered. Rudy comes back home and he’s murdered. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but a pretty big one. If Hall passed something to Rudy in the Irish pub, that would take it out of the coincidence category entirely.”
“Was it Phil who saw the pass?” Ted asked.
“Not at the time,” I said. “But he got it on camera.”
“He was taping in the club?”
“Yeah. He was showing me the footage, and we both thought it looked like Hall handed something to Rudy. But we couldn’t quite make out what it was.”
“Isn’t there some way to clear up the image?” Gin asked.
“Phil’s been working on it,” I said.
“Well, jeez, Billy,” Ted said. “Get on the horn and see if he’s got anything. This could be the story I’m looking for.”
Phil Bruno picked up on the fifth ring, sounding annoyed. “Billy,” he said, “you caught me on the computer, right in the middle of the cleanup.”
“How’s it coming?”
“It was just a matter of finding the right filtering program. One or two more passes and we’ll have a pretty good look at the thing, whatever it is.”
“I’m with Gin and Ted Parkhurst,” I said, noticing that they had taken some of the dirty dishes into the kitchen. “Could we come over for the unveiling?”
“I guess so,” Phil said. “Wine and cheese is about the best I can offer on short notice.”
“More than we deserve,” I said. “We’ve already eaten.”
“How far away are you?”
I had to stop and think. Gin’s apartment was on Riverside Drive. “Maybe twenty minutes with the traffic. Might take us another ten or fifteen to get moving.”
“If you let me get back to it, I’ll probably have it ready when you get here.”
Ted stuck his head into the dining room. “What’s the word?”
“We should go over to his place,” I said.
“Great. I’ll go move the little lady along.”
Waiting for them, I put in a call to Cassandra and discovered that business was off by sixty-five percent. About as expected. “I did comp a few friends,” she said. “Just so the paying customers wouldn’t feel too lonely. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s fine,” I said, curious about what her friends might be like. In fact, I was a little surprised that she had any.
“What about reservations?” I asked.
“Dribs and drabs, but they’re coming in.”
“Everybody happy?”
“Happiness is relative,” she said, and hung up.
Chapter
TWENTY-ONE
Our cab took us past the bustling nightlife in what, some said, had become a much-too-gentrified section of the Meatpacking District. The noise and the traffic were only a few streets deep, and by the time we got out of the cab at Phil’s converted warehouse, the glitz had been replaced by true city grit. The area was dark and deserted and almost quiet, except for the faint sounds of distant club babble.
The light over Phil’s front door, which had been burning brightly for my last visit, was now dark. That’s why, when the door opened, I couldn’t quite make out the figure that emerged from the building.
“Phil?” I called out.
Instead of replying, the figure darted to the right, then disappeared down an alley beside the warehouse.
“Guess it wasn’t Phil,” Gin said, with a nervous giggle.
The person who wasn’t Phil had left the front door ajar.
“Should we just go in?” Ted asked.
I entered the building and called out Phil’s name.
No reply, but there was the sound of loud voices and ricky-tick music from up above, and light flashed in the open elevator shaft.
I called again. Same lack of reply.
I led the way to the old elevator and put it in motion. Wheels grinding, it took us up a flight to Phil’s living space. The lights and the voices and the music were coming from the large TV monitor in the living room. Daffy Duck was in a spaceship, trying to avoid Marvin the Martian, who was wearing a helmet with a scrub brush sticking from the top. Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-fifth and a Half Century. A classic.
“Phil must be in his office,” I said.
I took a step from the elevator and a strong, almost toxic, chemical odor stung my nostrils. The carpet was squishy wet underfoot. The whole floor seemed to have been doused in fluid.
“What the hell?”
Before my mind clicked in on what was happening, there was a loud WHOMP and the door to what I remembered as Phil’s office blew open. A ball of flame leaped through it and began to consume that side of the large room, tongues of fire licking the walls, descending to the floor.
“Come back, Billy,” Ted called. “This place is going!”
“Billy, we’re almost on fire,” Gin screamed.
The flames hit the carpet and began dancing in our direction at incredible speed. Smoke clotted the air. Daffy Duck’s raspy voice was being drowned out by the sudden intense sound of the fire, like a huge popcorn-making machine in overdrive.
“Billy! No time!” Ted yelled.
He was right. Ours were the only lives left to save in that building.
I jumped back on the elevator, and Ted sent it downward. We hit ground level just as the flames spilled over into the elevator shaft and started to travel down the oiled wooden sides.
We rushed from the warehouse. Luckily, we’d left the front door open. We barely made our frantic exit when the heat from the fire blew out the second-floor windows, scattering little shards of glass over us like snow.
From a safe distance, I stared in horror and, I hate to admit, fascination as the fire toyed with the building. I was aware of both Gin and Ted, drawing their phones like journalist gunfighters, calling in the story to their night staffs.
I was glad to have them there, glad I wouldn’t have to be the one to summon the firemen. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to just walk away, but I didn’t want to be the spokesperson for the group. I was still Solomon’s primary suspect in the Gallagher murder. My involvement in a new murder—and I was certain Phil Bruno’s body was inside the burning building—would only add to the detective’s belief in my homicidal tendencies.
With luck, Gin, the fifteen-million-dollar woman, would be the main-ring attraction of the soon-to-arrive media circus, and I could stay a few steps away from the action.
Just a thought.
Chapter
TWENTY-TWO
By the time the firefighters arrived with their hoses and axes, and the NYPD officers established a crowd barrier, a number of club crawlers had drifted our way like Kamikaze-soaked moths drawn to flame. The media crowd had been gathering, too, their interest divided between a burning building and Gin McCauley, who was being singularly ineffective in trying to convince the gawkers to go home.
