by Al Roker
“Hi, Sugar Tits,” Dal said. “Buzz the boss that I’m here to deliver the male.”
“Is that a new gold tooth, Dal?” she asked. “Oh, no, I see. It’s just leftover lunch.” She pressed a button on the console resting on the desk. After a few beats, her lips moved, and I guessed she was saying something into her earphone, but I couldn’t hear a peep.
She pressed another button, and the door to the left behind her swung open. Dal winked at me and used his left hand in a sweeping gesture to suggest I enter in front of him.
Time to head down the rabbit hole. Whoever was waiting on the other side, I doubted it’d be Elmer Fudd.
Chapter
TWENTY-EIGHT
After the reception area (and receptionist), the room we entered was something of a letdown. It was windowless, its soft light coming from two antique lamps. One with a filigree shade was perched on a carved, round wooden table with a marble top in the corner of the room to my right; the other, resting on a square table in the opposite corner, boasted a beaded rose shade. The walls were a restful ivory, except for four paintings that appeared to be, on first glance, primitive depictions of rural black Americana.
Two overlapping Oriental rugs partially covered a dark wood floor. There were several carved wood parlor armchairs in varying solid hues and, against one wall, a large hand-painted leather trunk decorated with metal studs. As I mentioned, I’m no expert on antiques, but my guess was that the furniture was Victorian.
A delicate glass-topped coffee table stood in for a formal desk. On it rested a cordless phone, a fluted glass half filled with what looked like champagne, and the inevitable iPad. Behind the table was the one touch of vibrant color in the room, an orange velvet love seat. Empty at the moment.
As the rest of the room seemed to be.
I turned to Dal, who was standing to my right. “What now?” I asked.
“Now we meet, sir.” The voice came from my left.
He was standing near the wall beside the open door, a dark black man approximately five and a half feet tall, very thin and very fit. He was wearing an immaculate three-piece white suit, a crisp powder-blue shirt, and a black tie with a large knot. His scalp was covered by a meringue of neat white hair. He sported a matching mustache. If he’d been wearing glasses with a thicker frame and a goatee, he’d have resembled a skinny black Colonel Sanders.
The white hair was the only sign of advanced years. His face was unlined, and half-lidded eyes behind rimless glasses gave him the look of a relaxed, self-satisfied man.
“My name is Mantata, Chef Blessing,” he said, extending a manicured hand, which I shook. He smelled of mimosa—the flower, not the cocktail. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Ordinarily I’d have replied in kind, but I wasn’t sure that politesse was required or expected when one was kidnapped.
My silence didn’t seem to faze him. He gestured toward one of the chairs facing the coffee table and said, “Make yourself comfortable, please.”
I sat and watched as he unbuttoned his jacket and adjusted the crease in his trousers before lowering himself onto the love seat. He was quite a gent.
“Would it be too informal if I called you Billy?”
“Not at all. And I’ll call you … Mantata?”
“It’s the only name I use,” he said. “As you may know, in Swahili it means ‘troublemaker.’ Alas, I am now several decades past the time when that sobriquet applied.”
“I don’t think I’ll buy that.”
He smiled and turned to Dal, who’d remained standing. “Would you ask Roxanne to get off her delightful derriere and fetch something for our guest to drink? A flute of Roederer, perhaps?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Some fizz water, then?” He indicated his glass. “I use it as a digestive. Or we have tea.”
“Tea would be fine.”
“Bravo. Tell Roxanne it’s teatime, Dal. Oh, but before you do that … a brief report, please, on the events at police headquarters.”
Dal dutifully complied.
“You made note of their license plates?”
“Illinois, but they’d smeared mud over the numbers.”
Mantata sighed. “What’s your afternoon like, Billy?”
Since I’d more or less given up on freedom temporarily, the question caught me by surprise. Other than the meeting I’d missed with Lieutenant Oswald, I was drawing a blank. I got out my phone and tapped it to life. Four messages waiting. The numbers I recognized belonged to the Bistro, ergo Cassandra; Kiki; and Arnie Epps. That left “Private Caller.” More mystery. I ignored it and the three others and scrolled across various screens until I arrived at my daily schedule. There was nothing but the Hotline show much later that night.
“I’ve a meeting at three,” I lied. I’m not sure why.
“Where?”
“WWBC.”
“Ah, then, Dal, perhaps you’d better visit Fredrika,” Mantata said.
“Oh, Christ,” Dal said. “Not again.”
“As fond as I am of your biker-trash persona, I think we’ll dispense with it for a bit. Go to Freddie and be back here at two-thirty. That will give Billy plenty of time to make his meeting.”
Dal looked crestfallen. “Fredrika, really?”
Mantata seemed to enjoy the big man’s despair. “And don’t forget our tea.”
He waited until his employee dragged himself from the room.
“Who’s Fredrika?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. “What do you think of Dal?”
“Think of him?”
“Did he mention he’d attended Duke University?”
“Not even a hint,” I said.
“He’s a Dalrymple. Of the South Carolina Dalrymples. The family is richer than Croesus. And very social.”
“They all dress like badass bikers?”
He chuckled. “Hardly. Only our Dal fell from grace.”
“What happened?”
“The old story. Boy meets girl. Girl is a rebellious drug-addicted crazy who draws him into her web. Boy loses mind, loses girl, and embraces a debauched and ruinous lifestyle, thinking someday he’ll get her back.”
“Self-criticism?” I said.
He frowned. “Explain.”
“Didn’t you just say working for you was part of a debauched and ruinous lifestyle?”
“I hope you’re being facetious. Dal was living on the edge, trafficking in meth and using as much as he sold. Riding with rowdies. That’s the ruinous lifestyle. Working for me has put him on the road to salvation. He’s been clean for nearly two years.”
“He killed a man last night,” I said.
“Baby steps,” Mantata said. “And, speaking of the man he killed …”
He interrupted himself when his blond receptionist entered. She carried a silver tray containing a teapot, delicate China cups, silver spoons, a tiny cream pitcher, a bowl of sugar, and a plate with little cookies. As she bent to place the tray on the coffee table beside the iPad, Mantata’s eyes never left her cleavage.
“Would you pour for us, Roxanne, dear?”
“Of course.”
Bending again, she filled our cups, straightened, smiled sweetly, did a sharp about-face, and left, closing the door behind her.
“She is a jewel,” Mantata said
“A jewel? She’s the whole tiara.”
That seemed to please him. He dropped two sugar cubes into his tea, stirred, sipped, then added another cube. “As I was saying, the man who incurred Dal’s wrath last night was apparently trying to assassinate you and a lovely young actress.”
“What am I doing here, Mantata?”
“Staying alive. No small achievement, since someone obviously wants you dead. You mistakenly think the someone is a man named Gio Polvere.”
“How would you know that?”
“My old friend Henry Julian asked me to keep an eye on you. He told me you think Polvere was some sort of Mob mastermind who is now livin
g here in Chicago, prospering under an assumed name. That’s quite a theory.”
“It’s Pat Patton’s theory, not mine,” I said. “He passed it on the day before somebody killed him, which, to my mind, lends it a certain authenticity.”
He studied me for a beat, then nodded. He placed his teacup on the table and leaned back against his sofa. “What exactly did Patton tell you about Polvere?” he asked.
“Not much. That he was a crime figure in the eighties who was responsible for the murder of my foster father—”
“Paul Lamont,” Mantata said. “I liked Paul. He was a charming rogue who lived by a moral code more stringent than mine. He died by it, too.”
“You know something about his death?”
“Nothing specific. Most con men are perfectly happy to pluck low-lying fruit. Paul eschewed the naïve in favor of the fat and the greedy. That made his game a much more perilous one. The year he died, he came here seeking a specific kind of mark—a mean-spirited, stupid, and, of course, obnoxiously rich member of the Outfit who would be in no position to go running to the cops or to let his associates know he’d been played. If Webster’s carried a picture of that particular definition, it would resemble Louis ‘Baby Shoes’ Venici.”
“Not Gio Polvere?”
“Well, there’s the rub. In those days, Venici was the poster boy of organized crime as far as the media were concerned. He loved publicity. If I’d even heard the name Polvere back then, it didn’t register.”
“Patton said Polvere had Venici killed. Is that possible?”
“Doubtful. At the time, Venici was under the wing of Joe Nagall. If Baby Shoes wasn’t acting on his own, it would have been Nagall calling the tune. Frankly, I wasn’t much interested in what the I-ties were doing as long as they left me alone. My business on the South Side was untouchable, if I may use that word, as per a deal I brokered back in the sixties with Momo Giancano. He went to bat for me with Mob consiglieri Ricca and Accardo. Our arrangement remained in effect until my retirement.”
“You’re retired?”
“Don’t I look retired?” He leaned back against the love seat and made like a crocodile, only showing fewer teeth. “He was a good friend, Momo. But there was talk of him turning state’s evidence, and one of his associates shot him several times in the back and head while he was at the stove in his home, preparing peppers and onions.”
“If we could stick to Polvere,” I said.
“Of course. Sorry for the digression. Polvere. This is what I have, Billy.” He leaned forward and picked up the iPad. He began running his digits over its surface, expanding and retracting images, like a child working with finger paint. Eventually he found what he wanted and turned the gizmo toward me.
It was a page from the Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, June 15, 1987. The obituaries. Second from the top of the third column was: “CEO Dies in Fire. Giovanni Pietro Polvere.” Under that was a brief synopsis of a short life prepared by the Tribune staff and wire reports. Date and place of birth unknown. In 1981, he was elected to the board of North Side Amusement Co. In 1984, he became a board member of Near North Disposal Services. Both companies were subsidiaries of Windy City Industrials, where he was listed as CFO in the company’s 1987 prospectus.
According to the notice, faulty wiring in Polvere’s home caused the fire that resulted in his death on the night of June 10, 1987. He lived alone. He was not married. There were no known surviving family members. Services were held at Saint Joan of Arc Church in Evanston. It was suggested that donations to the parish be made in lieu of flowers.
There was no accompanying picture of Polvere.
“I’ve heard of staying on the down low, but this is ridiculous,” I said. “No date or place of birth. No record of school or military service or work history other than a couple of career milestones in the eighties. And then he died.”
“How did the Bard put it? ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.’ ”
“I suppose Windy City Industrials is a Mob operation?”
“It was. Until 1995, when it shuttered after the Justice Department indicted most of its executives under the RICO Act.”
“Don’t you find it significant that Polvere died only months after Paul was murdered along with his two killers?”
“Perhaps. But that’s irrelevant to the current situation, since, being dead, he’s probably not the man trying to kill you.”
I was suddenly very hungry. I popped one of the little crumbly, buttery, sugary tea cookies into my mouth. I followed that with another and washed it down with tea that was only lukewarm. “Every mystery novel I’ve ever read,” I said, “if somebody dies in a fire, they always turn up in the last chapter alive with a gun in their hand.”
“In real life, it’s very difficult to stage a fire that the investigators won’t label arson.”
“Unless Polvere had help from someone in a position to make sure his death wouldn’t be questioned,” I said.
Mantata stared at me for a beat. “Someone like a high-ranking cop, you mean?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Someone like Pat Patton.”
Chapter
TWENTY-NINE
Mantata and I had lunch at a neighborhood Cuban restaurant—chicken and white rice for him, shrimp and yellow rice for me. While he and I wolfed down the delicious food, Hiho and Trejean kept watch seated near the front door. I didn’t think it was only me they were mother-hen-ing. Mantata must’ve created an impressive list of enemies over the years.
Before leaving his office, he’d promised to put his researchers to work on the fire that took Polvere’s life and his subsequent funeral. “I’d suggest a little midnight grave digging,” he’d said, “if we had any DNA to match against whatever might be left in the coffin.”
During lunch we dropped the talk of internment for something a bit more appetizing—the food and how much we were enjoying it. Then it was back to Ubora, where Mantata informed me that he had business to conduct. He suggested I enjoy the art until Dal returned. Dal was to be my personal bodyguard for the duration of my Chicago visit.
“Can’t Hiho just drive me back to my hotel?” I asked. “Dal can pick me up there.”
“I’d prefer you wait.”
So I did.
The beautiful Roxanne directed me to a small empty office, where I got out my phone and began a series of callbacks.
Cassandra informed me that thus far in the day, my restaurant had remained problem-free from rodents and Con Edison. Her fiancé, A. W. Johansen, had assigned an Intertek Security operative to work undercover as a Bistro waitress. She’d begin that night. All seemed right in that corner of my world.
Kiki’s news was not as comforting. Trina had been fuming about my missed meeting with Lieutenant Oswald. No big surprise. Lily Conover had left word that she was back in Manhattan. She was supervising the editing of the show with Charlie Dann the Puff Potato Man and was a little disappointed in the sound quality but thought it would suffice. She thought we should devote a show to Chicago pizza, since everyone seemed to concur that it was the best in the free world. I asked Kiki to pass along my approval.
“Why did you miss the meeting, by the way?” Kiki asked.
“Personal business.”
“In the middle of the day? Oh, God, Billy, say you’re not doing the deed with that private-eye person.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said, and clicked off.
Next up, Arnie Epps, who also wanted to know why I’d missed the meeting.
“Overslept,” I told him.
“At eleven o’clock?”
“It’s the wacky schedule Trina has me on. Our show in the morning and Hotline at night. I’ve got to catch a few winks when I can.”
“Yeah. About Hotline. They won’t be needing you tonight.”
It was good news but also a bit insulting. “Really? Who bumped me? Some Hollywood B-lister go off his or her nut on the road to rehab?”
“No.” He hesitated, then said,
“There’s been a development in the Patton murder investigation, and when you didn’t show up, Lieutenant Oswald called Trina to say she was going to release it to the media. Trina talked her into breaking it on Gemma’s show. It won’t rate more than a brief mention on Hotline.”
“What’s the development?”
“An arrest warrant has been issued for Patton’s chauffeur, Nat Parkins.”
“New evidence?”
“Nobody mentioned any. Parkins was working for Patton and bunking with the dead comic. And he ran.”
“That’s old news,” I said. “Did the lieutenant have anything more to say about it with Gemma?”
“Not really. They spent most of the interview talking about policewomen’s uniforms.”
“There’s got to be more to the story. Let me see what I can find out, and if it’s substantial, rebook me on Hotline.”
“Uh, that’s not gonna happen,” Arnie said. “Tonight’s show is a special about the mishegoss in the Middle East.”
“In other words, all the talk about my missed meeting being the reason I was bumped was just guilt-tripping bullshit.”
“Well, you know Trina. And you did miss the meeting.”
I pressed the red button on my phone, ending the conversation.
The last number on my call log was unfamiliar, and the caller had not left a message. I dialed the number. Ring, ring, ring. No answer. And no transfer to voice mail. Maybe it was my new dream girl, Adoree Oden, and she’d turned off her phone when shooting on the film began.
I withdrew from this fantasy with the happy thought that, no longer tethered to Hotline, I could get to Derek Webber’s party at a more reasonable hour.
In higher spirits, I headed back to Roxanne and inquired if Dal had returned.
Not yet. She suggested I tour the gallery.
I’d made it through the modern-art room and the Impressionists and was sharing the graphic-art section with a bunch of high-schoolers when a hint of Aramis cologne told me that a new comic connoisseur had entered the room. He was a big man in a beautifully tailored tan suede jacket, white silk shirt open at the neck, and cocoa slacks. His short streaked brown hair was combed straight back. His beard was neatly shaped.
