by Al Roker
I was about as panicked as a man can be without peeing his pants … or worse.
I lay there, listening to my own breathing. Waiting for the bullet that would find its mark.
Instead there was the sound of rushed motion. Footsteps heading toward me, then past me, and moving quickly to the stairwell and up.
I prayed that whoever it was would hit that rotten stair and get trapped there, screaming in pain. But like so many of my prayers, it went unanswered.
When I’d heard the shooter’s footsteps moving up and away, I sat up and turned on the Stick ’em light. I used the nearby wall to stand. My ankle hurt but took its share of my weight without giving way.
I aimed the light at the rest of the basement. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to see Bettina, lying on her back on the cement floor.
I hobbled to her.
She was alive. Unconscious, shivering, but with a strong pulse. Blood glistened in the dark hair above her left ear. A bullet wound, I assumed. How serious, I had no idea.
I was afraid to move her, even if my damaged limbs would have allowed it.
I struggled out of my coat and tucked it around her. Not much help, but all I could do for the moment.
I scanned the room again. Where the hell were Gin and Ted?
Bettina’s gun was several feet from her right leg. I picked it up and, using the Stick ’em light as a lantern, limped into the darker section of the basement. The gasoline smell was stronger.
That’s when I saw the other body. A big white guy, pitched forward on his face. Very dead. His left hand seemed to be reaching out in Bettina’s direction. I was reminded of Lee Marvin’s famous death scene in the remake of The Killers. He’d been shot before he could draw his gun, but, with his last breath, he made a kid’s imitation gun with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at the person who did him in.
I held the Stick ’em light close to the dead man and saw that a bullet had entered the back of his head. I had no interest in turning him over to see the exit wound. But there was something … Yes, along with the cordite and the gasoline, there was a faint, familiar odor. I moved the Stick ’em light down his body to a pair of brown shoes I’d seen before.
Hello, Clove Boy.
Staring at his corpse, I wish I could say I felt sorrow or even revulsion, but I was too concerned with the fate of my friends, and what he’d done to them, to give a damn.
His gun lay on the floor a few yards away. I hesitated about picking it up. I’d probably screwed up the crime scene evidence already by taking Bettina’s weapon. I left this one where it had fallen.
Thanks to the Stick ’em, which was rapidly becoming my favorite infomercial product, I saw the spotted wall that had served as a backdrop for Gin’s video. The Sunday New York Times was still where she’d dropped it and, though no camera was in evidence, the portable generator that had been used to power the video light rested on the cement floor. It was the source of the gasoline smell.
The Stick ’em helped me find another stairwell, this one short and made of stone, leading down to a lower, colder second level. This was clearly where old Joe Vosburgh had kept his imported bubbly. To my left were empty wine racks and a faded and flaked painting of a bevy of cancan girls popping out of a giant champagne bottle labeled VOSBURGH’S CRISTAL.
The House of Roederer had created Cristal for Russia’s Czar Alexander II, but, just as the United States was about to lower the boom on booze, the keepers of the House decided that the rest of the world should also get a taste of the classic champagne. And Vosburgh, the old pirate, had somehow got his hooks on the first cases of the stuff. God, a case of that Cristal today would go for—
An impatient squeal drew my attention to a very female figure lying on the cold concrete about ten yards away. A blackout mask had been duct-taped over her eyes. More duct tape had been used on her body—to seal her lips, to secure her wrists behind her back, and to hold her ankles together.
Ted Parkhurst was lying against the far wall, similarly bound, blinded, and gagged.
“Gin. It’s me, Billy,” I said, as I painfully hunkered beside her.
She made a series of “umm-umm” noises while I placed the gun and Stick ’em light on the floor. I got out my trusty Swiss Army Knife and sliced through her wrist tape.
“I’m gonna let you do the rest,” I said, “while I help Ted.”
The knife did its job there, too.
I was amused to see that no sooner had Ted torn the mask from his eyes and the duct tape from his mouth than his unruly hair flopped onto his forehead.
“Is that it? Are we free?” he asked me, unconsciously pushing back his hair.
“Like the birds in the trees,” I told him.
“Are you okay, baby?” he called over to Gin.
“Yeah, sweetie,” she said, working on her ankles. “We’re all okay.”
Except for the big white guy in the other room, who was about as far from okay as you can get.
And poor Bettina.
Chapter
FORTY-NINE
We were entering the upper basement when flashlights blinded me. A gruff voice shouted, “Drop the gun.”
“No problem,” I said, placing the weapon on the concrete floor. “Dropping the gun.”
“It’s okay,” I heard A.W.’s voice shout. “They’re friendlies.”
“Is the area clear, chef?” Lee asked.
“Yes,” I said, shading my eyes. “Think your guys could lower the flashlights?”
When they did, I saw that Lee was kneeling beside Bettina. “Who did this?” she asked as I approached.
“Over there,” I said, pointing at the corpse.
“Killing him was good work, chef,” she said.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
“Then Bettina …”
“Maybe, but there was somebody else here,” I said. “Too dark to see. Could have been Felix. The guy over there took a bullet in the back of his head. I don’t know how Bettina could have managed that.”
“We can sort that all out later,” Lee said.
While A.W. and the others wrapped Gin and Ted in blankets and led them upstairs, Lee wasted no time sending for paramedics for Bettina and arranging for her hospitalization. Then she turned to me. “You okay? You look like you’ve been through hell.”
“I, ah, fell down the stairs,” I said. “Some aches and pains, but I’m ambulatory.”
“Good. I think you should leave here now. And take your friends. A.W. can drive you.”
“The police will want to talk to us.”
“Not if they don’t know about you,” she said. “I’ll take care of it. You do not want to be involved. Neither you nor your friends. But especially not you. We’re paid to handle things like this.”
She called out to A.W. and, when he arrived, instructed him to take us away from there immediately. But before I left she asked, “What did you touch?”
“The handrail along the stairs, this.” I handed her Bettina’s pistol. “And the Stick ’em light. That’s about it.”
“You touched nothing else? This is very important.”
“The strips of duct tape.”
“The sleep masks?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“We’ll have to collect and destroy all of that, anyway,” she said. “Now that there was no kidnapping.”
She held up Bettina’s gun. “I’ll take care of this, too. You should go now and let me summon the police. We will talk tonight.”
I nodded.
As I reached the stairs, I heard her say into her phone, “I wish to report a trespass and a fatal shooting at …”
Chapter
FIFTY
“Mah head’s still sore as a boil,” Gin said as A.W. chauffeured us through the darkening city toward her apartment on Riverside Drive. She and Ted were sharing the backseat, her sore head resting on his shoulder.
She’d already told us about being whacked on the noggin by person unkn
own at Rudy’s suite and waking up thinking she might be paralyzed and blind before realizing she was bound and gagged and wearing a blindfold.
“One of the bastards woke me and freed mah ankles and walked me to the upper basement, where he took the tape off mah mouth. He was surprisingly gentle about it, careful easing it off my lips. Then he released mah hands and gave me stale-tasting doughnuts and a cup of lukewarm, weak coffee.”
After that pathetic excuse for breakfast, she’d been placed in front of a wall where “they peeled the blindfold from mah eyes.”
She reached up suddenly to touch her eyes. “Damn, ah hope they didn’t pull off mah eyelashes?”
“Your eyelashes look beautiful,” Ted reassured her.
“Thank God. Well, anyway, when they took off the blindfold at first ah couldn’t see much more than the bright light in mah face. But slowly other things came into focus. A cheesy little camera was sittin’ on a tripod pointed at me. Theah were two men that looked jus’ like shadows. Later, ah saw that they were wearin’ black raincoats, buttoned, black pants, black hat, black shoes. They wore stockings over theah faces to disguise theah features. The thinner one stood beside the tripod pointin’ a gun at me. The other, a big man, was near me, just off camera, holding a white paper in one hand and a copy of The New York Times in the other.
“That fella handed me the Times and the other fella, speaking in an odd, throaty voice, ordered me to hold it up close to mah body with the front page showin’.”
“You remember his exact words?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Hold the paper up when the camera’s red light goes on.’ And ah said ah knew all about hot cameras, since ah have spent most of mah adult years standin’ in front of one.
“Then he said, ‘Fine, only when ah cue you, drop the newspaper and take the sheet of paper from mah associate.’ The guy near me showed me the paper.
“‘You jus’ read what’s on the paper,’ the thin fella said. And ah asked to look at the paper and he said, ‘No. Ah want a cold reading.’”
“Wait,” I said. “He used the words ‘cue’ and ‘cold reading’?”
Gin nodded. “So ah read it cold. Well, actually, ah kinda screwed up the first take. Which is a good thing, because that gave me a chance to look around. The bright light really lit the place up, and ah realized ah’d been there before, with you, Billy, talkin’ about the old man—Vosburgh, right?—and his champagne cellars. So ah threw in that line about champagne hopin’ you’d catch it.
“It kinda ticked ’em off. The big guy hit me. But they kept the camera going. Ah was afraid they might do another take, but they must’ve thought the comment was innocuous natterin’.”
“Did you hear both kidnappers speak?” I asked.
“No. Jus’ the thin one. The big guy coulda been a mute. Anyway, they stuck the blindfold back on and ah was led back to the lower, colder cellar, where mah wrists and ankles were taped again.
“Later, they put me through the same routine, except they substituted a dry cheese sandwich for the doughnuts and there was no newspaper prop and the words on the paper were different.
“Ah was led back to the lower cellar, and that’s where ah stayed until the shootin’ started, and then you cut me loose, Billy.”
“Any idea how many kidnappers there were?” A.W. asked.
“Ah only saw the two, but it was kinda weird. Ah had the feelin’ somebody else was there, watchin’. An’ another thing, now that ah think of it, the thin one coulda been the same person we saw leaving Phil Bruno’s building just before the fire.”
“Could the thin kidnapper have been a woman?” I asked.
“Ah guess, Billy. He, she, whatever, wasn’t feminine exactly. But there was … somethin’. I picked up a definite he-she vibe.”
Ted’s abduction story was similar to a point. At Rudy’s, he’d gone looking for Gin, had seen her lying unconscious and started toward her, when he, too, had been hit from behind. He’d awakened in the basement and remained bound, gagged, and blindfolded until I’d freed him, except for a brief period when his gag was removed and he was fed a ham sandwich and a soft drink.
He was telling us that he neither saw nor heard his captors when A.W. suddenly grabbed a headset from a niche beneath the dash and slipped it on. We listened in silence as he mumbled several yesses and noes and uh-huhs. Finally he said, “I’ll check and get back to you,” and removed the headset.
“News about Bettina?” I asked.
“She’s on her way to Manhattan-Presbyterian. Still in a coma. Lee wants me to pass along some info on the dead guy. He’s been ID’d as a Steven D. Gault, from Chicago. Mean anything to anybody?”
It did to me and, I assumed, to Ted. I looked at him.
“Gault?” he said. “Holy Jeez. One of the Touchstone mercs in Kabul. From that damned pub.”
“Kinda makes you the last man standing,” I said.
“Thanks for pointing that out, Billy,” he said. “So that’s why.”
“That’s why what?” Gin asked.
“I could see why they grabbed you, honey. You’re a very valuable lady, in every sense of the word. But why bother with me? Now I’m thinking it was because I was sitting at the wrong damned table at the wrong damned time.”
“I’d better pass this info along to Lee,” A.W. said, slipping on the headset again.
The ensuing telephone conversation with his beautiful boss did not seem to interfere with his driving. He was still listening and mumbling when we arrived at Gin’s building.
We sat there for a minute or two with Gin’s doorman eyeing us suspiciously. Finally A.W. broke the connection and removed the headset.
“Lee’s sending some agents to stay with you folks,” he said to the couple in the backseat. “Shouldn’t take longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. We’ll just hang here until they arrive.”
“Nooo,” Gin said. “My head hurts. I need sleep. I wanna go in now.”
“I guess we can do that,” A.W. said, though his body language said he’d have preferred not to.
He got out of the vehicle, circled it, scanning the area all the while. He opened the rear door, then mine, and ushered us into the building, where he left his car key and a five-spot with the doorman.
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.
Chapter
FIFTY-ONE
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 f
inally 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.
