by Al Roker
“If I’m that good, I’m being underpaid. I should call my agent.”
“He’ll tell you you’ll be in a better bargaining position if you do bring in the ratings,” she said. “Meanwhile, I don’t want to wear you out. You’ll only be working the last half-hour of the morning show.”
She explained that she’d already notified Arnie that Karma Singleton, our right-wing entertainment reporter, would be hosting the segment featuring the thirteen-year-old basso profundo and some of my other assignments. My interview with the author of Da Mare had been postponed a day—which would give me time to finish reading the door-stopper—but I’d still have to chat with the stars of the new WBC reality show Naked Housewives of Wilmette.
At least I still got to hang on to a few perks of the job.
Chapter
TWENTY-ONE
It was nearing midnight when I pushed through WWBC’s thick glass doors to a crisp, clear starry night, expecting to see the cab I’d ordered. Instead, I found Carrie sitting behind the wheel of her Beamer.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “I sent your cab away.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I was hoping you’d come with me to my place.”
“Say again?”
“Oh, God, I guess that sounded weird. I mean, I was hoping you’d drive with me to where I’m staying. It’s on North State Parkway, not that far from your hotel, but we can send for a cab there.” She was nattering. Speed-nattering. “It’s just that, with everything that’s happened, I don’t … I mean, it won’t be that far out of your way, and you’re going in that direction anyway, and … Please, Billy. I have to park on the street, and there’s never an empty space, and I wind up walking blocks and blocks. And it’s always dark and really scary even when I don’t have a good reason to think somebody might pop out of the shadows and kill me.”
I took a closer look at her. “Desperate” was the word that came to mind.
I slid onto the Beamer’s leather bucket beside her. “Okay, Cisco, let’s went.”
She gave me the puzzled look of someone who’d never seen an episode of The Cisco Kid when they were growing up. Then she started the engine and we wented.
“All that talk about us being on the killer’s list really got to me,” she said. “Especially after seeing what they did to that poor man.”
She was quiet for a beat, then added, “I’m going to ask Derek to get me a bodyguard.”
I assumed that would be Derek Webber, the zillionaire producer of her movie, whom Charlie Dann the Puff Potato Man had mentioned.
“I’ve heard he’s a pretty good guy,” I said.
“The best. Really smart. Handsome. Almost Zuckerberg-rich. I’ll introduce you tonight. He’s usually up late.”
“You’re staying at his place?”
She smiled. “He and I are sharing a cozy little four-story, thirty-five-room shack with the film’s director, the cinematographer, several other members of the cast, and a full staff.”
“Sounds like a sure cure for loneliness.”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t heard we were all staying at his mansion,” she said. “It’s usually the second thing any interviewer is curious about.”
I was on the verge of asking what the first thing was when I remembered Gin’s interview with her on our show. Carrie was having a romance with the author of the Spy Who novels, Gerard Parnelle, while Parnelle’s wife was sleeping with Derek Webber. The situation struck me as a little too Jackie Collins. Or maybe not enough Jackie Collins.
The “shack” was an elegant red-brick neo-Georgian townhouse fronted by a wall with a wrought-iron gate on North State Parkway. The closest available street parking was a couple of blocks away on Dearborn.
“You’re a lovely man, Billy, for indulging my weirdness like this,” Carrie said as we walked away from the Beamer. “I guess you think I’m a wimp.”
Actually, I was thinking I was the wimp. The neighborhood may have been on the city’s ritzy Gold Coast, but that didn’t chase the dark shadows away. As we turned the corner on Schiller, heading for State, a metallic red monster of a car zoomed past us, leaving in its wake a dark, very quiet, very sinister block.
“What’s that place?” I asked her, indicating a long slab of granite on our right.
“The Chicago Racquet Club,” Carrie said. “Derek and Gerard play there … played there when Gerard was in town.”
“He’s off writing a book?”
She nodded. “I really miss him.”
“How long before he gets back?”
“He’s not coming back. I’m flying to Paris as soon as we wrap.”
“When will that be?”
“With luck, another two weeks,” she said.
“How often do you talk?”
“I got an email this morning. Gerard says that when we talk it’s too distracting. He prefers us to text and email.”
Ah, romance in the digital age.
We were halfway down the block, when a man-size hunk of shadow separated from an alcove at the rear of the Racquet Club. As he stepped into a rectangle of light from a club window, I blinked. When I looked again, he was still there, a snarling, six-foot-something baldie black guy wearing a black warm-up outfit and bright orange running shoes.
His hand seemed to be attached to an ugly-looking weapon.
I grabbed Carrie’s arm and pulled her down beside a parked car just as I heard several thunk-thunk-thunk sounds and pinging noises as the wall behind us developed a line of gouges and chips.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make me wonder if this might be the big coronary. I suppose I even might have wished that to be the case. Beside me, Carrie was shaking like a whipped terrier.
Judging by the padded footsteps on asphalt, our homicidal attacker was crossing the street toward us. Moving slowly. But irrevocably. I use words like that when I’m about to pee in my pants.
Chapter
TWENTY-TWO
I kept my grip on Carrie, and, still squatting, we backward duck-walked away from the approaching footsteps. My plan was simple: Do anything to keep at least one automobile between us and the shooter.
It was a very temporary plan. It relied entirely too much on someone hearing the gunfire and giving enough of a damn to call the cops. The cops would then have to arrive before the shooter stalked us into a position where we would be defenseless. And all of this would have to take place within the next—what?—half-minute?
As if the odds weren’t already against us, two more shadowy figures emerged silently from the alley. I assumed they’d come directly at us, leaving us the option of being shot by them or moving into the street, where the orange-shoe gunman couldn’t fail to get his job done. Instead, for some unknown reason, presumably stupidity, they took to the street.
That gave us a hairline chance, but we were still contending with three armed killers. I did the only thing I could: I pulled Carrie closer, giving them a smaller target that was mainly me. Any second there’d be another spray of bullets coming our way.
I could feel Carrie’s panicked breathing. There was a pounding in my ears I tried to ignore as I strained to hear approaching footsteps.
Instead, I heard what sounded like a garbled word. Were the three of them communicating?
We stayed that way, pressed against the side of a car for what was probably only a minute or two but seemed a lifetime. Then, suddenly, there was the squeal of tires as a vehicle roared down the alley, turned onto Schiller, and charged in our direction.
It braked parallel to the car protecting us. Doors opened.
Carrie trembled against me. I hugged her tighter.
The car doors slammed shut. And the vehicle roared away.
I relaxed my hold on Carrie enough to poke my head over the car’s hood. A familiar black SUV was zooming away. It’s headlights blazed on just as it made a left turn onto Dearborn.
Edging up to join
me, Carrie saw the same thing I did: Schiller Street was now deserted. “What just happened?” she asked.
I shook my head. “The only thing I know for sure is that we’re still alive.”
“But for how long?” she asked.
Carrie had her own electronic key to the mansion’s front door. It took her a few tries, but she finally got it to work just as police sirens sounded. We’d barely made it inside before a prowl car zoomed past, flashing its lights and wailing.
We were in a polished white marble vestibule, which struck me as looking way too much like a funeral parlor. Carrie sighed and stared at me. “I don’t get it. I’m a wreck, and you’re as cool as a kumquat.”
“Cucumber. Cool as a cucumber. Kumquats make even less sense in similes than they do in salads.”
“See, that’s what I mean,” she said. “You’re Mr. Cool. Is this a daily routine for you? Do people shoot at you all the time?”
“Lately, it seems,” I said. “But the fact is, I’m not at all cool with it. More like in shock.”
“I guess we could both use a stiff drink, or something,” she said, leading me down the marble hall to a broad oak door guarded by twin suits of armor.
“All this marble and tin,” I said. “Might Mr. Webber be just a touch imperious?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Derek’s as down-to-earth as an old shoe.”
Perhaps one worn by the late Howard Hughes, I thought, as we walked into a space bigger than the average ballroom. I should have said walked down into it, since most of the floor was sunken. The room was dimly lit but not so dim that I failed to see that the ceiling, two stories above us, supported a chandelier that the Phantom of the Opera would have found irresistible. He’d probably have liked the black onyx piano almost as much. Not sure what he’d have thought about the huge paintings by pop artists Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, among others I did not recognize, that dominated the far wall and seemed to challenge the gentlemen’s club leather furnishings and no-nonsense walk-in fireplace and hearth.
Searching for the source of the light, I saw a chrome lamp positioned near the back of a brown leather chair. The chair faced a crowded built-in bookcase that filled one of the mile-high walls. Beside the chair was a small round glass-top table on which rested a book and what appeared to be a cocktail glass, half-filled or half-empty, your choice. A pale, slender arm extended from the chair, its delicate hand finding and lifting the drink.
Carrie walked to the chair, looked at its inhabitant, and said, “Adoree, where is everybody?”
“Ah, they are in the game room, cherie,” came the lyrical, accented reply. “We watch your show and then Madeleine goes to work, the boys play their games, and I come in here to read.”
Carrie saw me heading their way and said, “Billy, do you know Adoree Oden? Adoree, Billy Blessing.”
As I rounded the chair and came face-to-face with the woman seated on it, I think I froze. I’m not sure, because I’d more or less lost track of everything except Mademoiselle Adoree Oden. She looked up at me and smiled. “Enchanté,” she said.
There are brunettes and brunettes, enough varieties that the word doesn’t mean much anymore. All of them have a certain appeal, except perhaps the ones who are about as brunette as Carrie under the dye and as to temperament as solid as marzipan. There is the modified-Afro brunette who’s tall and toned and serious, who spends her prework hours at yoga and her after-work hours with similarly minded friends, parsing the latest Palin pronuncio or discussing the condition in Darfur and giving both topics equal time. There’s the willowy brunette who poses rather than talks because she really doesn’t have much to say, and the tiny, gamine brunette who chatters like a magpie and makes about as much sense.
There is the beautiful but oh-so-bored brunette who might have stepped from the pages of Vogue and who looks at you as if you’ve just crawled out of a used copy of Hustler. And the ultra-hip brunette who’s into cloud computing and urbanomics and knows the best place in town to dine on Korean tacos. She’s fun for a while, until you try to slow her down long enough for a normal conversation and she suggests you both take a power walk instead.
There’s the Dragon Lady brunette who seems mysterious with more than a hint of danger attached, but rescue her from a dull party and you’ll discover she’s living in Queens with a husband, two kids, and a mother-in-law. There’s the bubbly brunette, as effervescent and sexy as Halle Berry, who picks you up in a bar and invites you to dinner and back to her hotel room, where you will probably awake the next morning missing a kidney.
There’s the wise-and-knowing brunette, with a touch of gray in her hair, whose disposition is as calm as a country pond and whose understanding of the human condition is so complete she can spot your failings ten minutes after you’ve met and won’t hesitate to offer her expert advice on self-improvement. And there’s the zaftig brunette with a full-throated laugh and a grand sense of humor who seems so friendly and charming when you first meet but after a couple of vodka Red Bulls turns frantic and starts tossing crockery.
Adoree Oden was none of these. At least, I hoped to God she wasn’t. She seemed beautiful and smart and sophisticated and even-tempered … and did I mention beautiful? Skin the color of caramel, eyes a luminescent lime, lips of cherry red. Hey, food is my life, okay?
“But this is a coincidence,” she said. She showed me the book she’d been reading. Wake Up to Murder by yours truly. Her backup novel rested on the table beside her cocktail: Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Her literary preferences cinched the deal. She and I were soul mates.
I would have mentioned this to her, but, as I said, I was too damned agog.
“Is something the matter?” she asked, in her utterly charming French accent (which I will not begin to attempt to duplicate in print).
Carrie was giving me an amused look. She said to the goddess, “C’mon, Adoree, you must’ve looked in a mirror today. Billy’s just a little poleaxed.”
“Qu’est-ce que ‘poleaxed’?”
“Awed by your … presence,” I managed to get out.
“Ah, well, then”—she placed my book on top of Chandler’s, stood, and took my hand in hers—“I have to say I am a bit poleaxed myself.”
My hand felt as if it were on fire.
“I may call you Billy?”
“You may call me anything your heart desires.”
“I was very impressed by your sangfroid on the television when being questioned by the hostess, who seemed so hostile in her unattractive Fendi blouse. I asked Derek if he had the book you mentioned.” She indicated the copy of Wake Up to Murder. “You see, I am quite enamored of …”
“Yes?”
“… the noir. I have only just started your book, but I know I will enjoy it.”
“Ah, if you two will excuse me,” Carrie said, “I have to talk to Derek about something.”
“But of course,” Adoree said, moving even closer to me. “We will join you. I am sure Billy did not come here tonight to spend his time with me.”
True, but that’s before I knew she was there. “Now,” I felt like shouting, “My time is yours!”
But that may have sounded a bit desperate. So I remained mum and gratefully allowed her to take my arm and, pressing it against her silken body, lead me into Derek Webber’s game room.
Calling it a man cave would not be doing it justice. Superman’s Fortress of Solitude didn’t come close. The room was a mash-up of boardwalk arcade, shipboard casino, and Best Buy showroom. It was stocked with several dozen standing machines, from the primitive Pac-Man era to the latest Skee Ball X-Treme, slots, video poker, pinball, a wall taken over by active midsize flat-screen monitors, all gizmos flashing lights and emitting slightly muted electronic bongs and beeps.
There was a long white enamel table on which six computer monitors rested, five of them displaying alternate Windows and Mac desktop logos. The sixth was being used by an attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties wit
h short henna-red hair, an ample bosom barely contained by a black-and-silver halter, and long, shapely legs extending from black shorts. A ring glittered from the big toe of her bare left foot.
She didn’t seem to be aware of the noise, the flashing lights, or us.
Carrie moved past her without pausing, heading for the other side of the room, where six men were seated at a green felt table, engaged in a refreshingly electronic-free, real-life game of old-fashioned poker. With one exception, they were pre–middle age, not quite clean shaven, and enjoying themselves, probably because, judging by the beer cans and booze bottles, they were at least slightly in the tank.
The exception, age-wise, was a dour gent with blond, almost white, hair and one of those mustacheless beards that outlined his pink face with a frosty band running from sideburn to sideburn. He was at least a decade older than the thirtysomethings.
When Carrie called out, “Derek, we need to talk,” I expected him to reply. But it was one of the others who raised his arm and urged her to come closer for an embrace. A handsome guy with an easy smile who reminded me of a young Gregory Peck. He was wearing a pale yellow silk shirt that probably cost more than its Asian seamstress made in a lifetime, well-used denim jeans with a worn spot at the right knee, and white running shoes trimmed in red.
“You know I love to talk, Carrisima,” he said, drawing her toward him.
As he did, he seemed to sober and immediately removed his arm from Carrie’s waist. He cast a sheepish glance at the henna-haired woman, who, to his apparent dismay, was staring at him without expression.
As he broke eye contact with her, he looked our way, squinted, frowned, and then his face relaxed in a broad smile. He closed his cards into a neat packet and got to his feet. He was about my size in height and maybe a little more than half my size in girth. “Chef Blessing? This is great. I was hoping to get the chance to meet you while you were here in Chi-town.”
