by Al Roker
“In that case, ignore what I just said.”
Mantata seemed on edge.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said.
I took the chair near his desk. Dal chose the couch, as if purposely distancing himself from the discussion.
“The episode at the lounge is vexing,” the elegant elderly black man said. “But before we get into the gunmen in the red vehicle, Billy, please enlighten me on your conversation with”—he consulted the iPad on the coffee table—“with Nat Parkins.”
I gave him a pretty accurate summation, during which he seemed to relax.
“So we’re certain he did not murder his employer and his roommate?”
I nodded. “From what he told me, I’m convinced that the men in the red Range Rover committed those crimes.”
“Yes. About that vehicle … A Range Rover, painted a color that the company calls Rimini Red, was discovered abandoned less than an hour ago on South Shields Avenue, scant blocks away from the lounge. It had been on the stolen list since Monday morning. Its license plates belonged to another vehicle entirely. Would it surprise you to know that its owner was Onion City Entertainment?”
“They reported it stolen on Monday?” I asked.
“Yes. They claimed it probably had been taken from the premises the previous night. The same night Pat Patton was tortured and murdered.”
“This isn’t good news,” I said. “Especially since I’m supposed to go to a dinner the CEO of Onion City is hosting tonight.”
Mantata asked where the dinner was being held.
I told him, and he replied, “I doubt anything untoward would transpire in such a public place,” he said. “And … you will be there, too, Dal?”
Dal nodded.
“You both should pad up, just to play safe.”
Dal looked at me. “Size-forty-two chest?”
“Yeah. But I hope this won’t make me look like the Michelin Man.” I was hoping to hook up with Adoree.
“What good is stylin’ if you’re dyin’?” Dal said.
“You’re sure you’ve never seen the gunman before?” Mantata asked him.
“I’d have remembered.”
Mantata pursed his lips. “An import? And the driver is a blank, so—”
“Not exactly,” I interrupted. “Nat told me one of the guys he saw getting into the Range Rover near Patton’s home was short and thick. That’s got to be the driver.”
“Or the driver could’ve been one of the guys tried to kidnap Billy,” Dal said.
“Perhaps,” Mantata said. “But …”
He looked up as Roxanne entered the room. “Sorry to interrupt, but Emma just called,” she said. “The only prints on the Range Rover were from locals who were in the midst of vandalizing it when the patrolmen drove up. They scattered. Possibly because of them, the vehicle’s interior was clean except for a piece of rumpled paper under the passenger seat. She’s sending you a photo.”
“Excellent,” Mantata said, blessing her with a smile.
We all watched her exit.
“Who’s Emma?” I asked.
“One of my few remaining loyalists among the blue line,” Mantata replied. “The point I was trying to make before …”
Again he paused as a tiny bong sounded on his iPad and an image popped on the screen. He picked up the device, his forehead creasing as he studied its surface. Eventually, he turned it around for us to see.
“Gibberish or significant?” he asked.
Dal duck-waddled toward the small screen, squinting.
It was a sheet of paper. At its top was the Onion City logo, an inch-high onion containing a dark cityscape outline, like a snow paperweight housing a Christmas tree. Someone had scribbled “Starbucks” in almost childlike printing, then drawn several dark pencil slashes through the word. This was followed by the similarly printed names “Phipps, Williams, Scott, Cobb, Watts, Jackson, Neal, and Sorey.” After that final letter y, the writer had dragged the pencil down the page almost to the bottom.
“Those mad-as-hell lines drawn through ‘Starbucks,’ ” Dal said, “were either made by a guy who works for Mr. Coffee or who drinks too damn much of the stuff.”
I shrugged. “I guess I vote for gibberish,” I said.
“There is at least one substantial bit of information,” Mantata said. “The company logo.”
“It was a company car,” I said. “Any employee could have dropped that paper before the car was stolen.”
Mantata lowered the iPad to the coffee table. “Speculating on a paper that may have been dropped by one of the killers has its merits,” he said, “but pawns are merely pawns. We need to get a line on the king. To that end, I’ve spent several hours today perusing the Internet bloviations of the late Pat Patton.”
“And …?” I said.
“The good news is I don’t think my IQ was lowered to any degree. The bad news, the man’s archives are a rubbish heap of misinformation, innuendo, outright lies, and obfuscation. But there was one thing that bears further investigation.”
“Do I have to ask?”
“Not that long ago, Patton and Onion City were in negotiation on a television project.”
“I know about that,” I said. And I summarized what Webber had told me about the negotiations and how, at the last minute, Patton had refused to sign the contract, claiming he did not want to do business with organized crime.
“Webber told you this?” Mantata seemed quite surprised. He paused for thought, then nodded. “It was clever of him. The information is out there on the Web, where you could have found it at any time. Better that you hear it from him, thereby establishing his openness and honesty while at the same time casting doubt on the legitimacy of Patton’s claim.”
“You seem convinced that Webber is behind all this,” I said.
“Definitely leaning in that direction.”
“In 1987, when Paul was murdered,” I said, “Webber would have been a little kid.”
“You should accept the probability that your perilous situation may have nothing to do with Paul’s death,” Mantata said.
“But that’s my only connection to this whole mess.”
“Incorrect,” he said. “You’re connected to Patton.”
“I’ll give you that. So what?” I couldn’t see his point, and that was upgrading my annoyance to anger.
“I know it’s hard for you, but you must look at this objectively, Billy. According to what Nat Parkins told you, Patton was in possession of four active red files, each containing blackmail-worthy material. Pat Patton was murdered. Parkins and Larry Kelsto became possessors of the red files. Kelsto was murdered, and Parkins, who has the files, is afraid for his life. I think we’re in agreement that whoever possesses the red files is a potential murder victim. Isn’t it possible—no, make that probable—that the man behind the killings thinks you have the files or have knowledge of what’s in them?”
“At last we agree,” I said. “I’m fairly certain one of those files will tell me the current identity of Giovanni Polvere.”
“Your head is as hard as onyx,” Mantata said. “Please at least entertain the possibility that Patton was lying to you, trying to extort money from you with his Polvere fiction. On the other hand, he went on record identifying Webber’s company as being linked to the Outfit. I’d put my bet on Webber being the Mr. X looking for his red file.”
I had two problems with Mantata’s smug conclusion. I was convinced Patton had not been pulling my chain about Polvere. And I liked Derek Webber.
I turned to Dal. “The night the hit man shot at Carrie Sands and myself,” I said. “You were following us, right?”
Dal nodded.
“Was the red car following us, too?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yeah. We spotted the Rover parked at the TV station with its engine running. When you and the actress drove off, the Rover followed you, and we followed it. But we lost sight of it when you two were parking your car. We were hunting for a place wher
e we could observe you without being noticed when Trejean saw the Range Rover dropping the crazy bastard off and driving away.”
“Why did they drop him off, I wonder?” Mantata said. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to do a drive-by?”
“Some hit men have their own method—,” Dal began.
Mantata cut him off. “When they were waiting for you, Billy, they had no way of knowing you’d be accompanying Ms. Sands. That posed a problem. She’s the star of Webber’s movie. Her death would be too costly a price to pay. They didn’t want to risk a drive-by. They wanted the killer to be able to dispatch you without harming the lady. You did say the initial shots he fired went over your head?”
I nodded. “But what the heck was his exit plan?” I asked. “The guy shoots me and he’s stuck with my body and Carrie. And no ride. Why did the red car drive off?”
“Good question,” Mantata said.
“Maybe they dropped him off, saw us, and panicked,” Dal said.
“Perhaps,” Mantata allowed. “It is a puzzle. Thinking outside the box, we might even speculate that Webber got Ms. Sands to lure you to that spot.”
“Now she’s part of this murder cabal, too? That’s a little too cynical for me. And too unbelievable. I know how frightened she was.”
“Need I remind you, Billy, she’s an actress.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong about her. Wrong about Webber.”
He gave me a stern look. “Billy, because of our mutual friend, I’m doing my best to keep you alive. If you resent my help, there are other, considerably more profitable ways Dal and I could be spending our time.”
“I appreciate your help, Mantata. And Dal’s, certainly.”
“Good. Be careful tonight. By tomorrow, I should be in a better position to suggest our next move.”
“Why then?” I asked.
“By then I will have accumulated more data.”
On the way to my hotel, I asked Dal, “Was it my imagination, or did Mantata seem a little more obnoxious than usual?”
He smiled. “He’s always a little hardheaded and high-handed. Comes with old age, I think. But there’s something else, too. When I first started working for him, there were twenty of us in the crew and, what with his … businesses, mainly on the South Side, we were hustling all the time. Wasn’t that long ago. Then things changed. The gangs took over. Black gangs, white gangs, Latino, Asian. Over a hundred of ’em by now, each claiming a bigger slice of turf. One night, for no particular reason we know of, somebody blew up a car with five of our guys inside. Mantata pulled the plug on everything. Now he’s down to a few primarily aboveboard operations, mainly in Bronzetown. And the gallery, which is where he spends most of his time.
“You’ve met the only crew that’s left. There are four other guys we use when we need them, which isn’t very often anymore. But basically it’s me, the crazy Jamaican Trejean, and the even crazier Hiho. What we usually do is collect and deposit the cash from Mantata’s coffee shops and bakeries and barbershops and pool halls. We solve small problems. And we keep the old man company.
“What I’m getting at: It’s been pretty boring for us, and especially for Mantata. Then you come along, and it’s almost like old times. Except now we’re the good guys. Mantata used to see himself as a black Professor Moriarty. You bring out the Sherlock Holmes in him. I think he digs it.”
“What did you study at Duke? Psychology?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “It was Duke, not Harvard. My major was coeds, my minor chemical enhancement.”
Ah, the halls of higher learning.
Chapter
THIRTY-FOUR
“Where are you, Billy?” my restaurant hostess-manager, Cassandra, wanted to know.
“In my hotel room, getting ready for dinner.”
“I hear a man singing.”
Dal was in the suite’s sitting room, singing along with a contestant on The Voice.
“Just a friend,” I said, not wanting to get into the whole thing with her. “He’s staying with me for a few days.”
“In your hotel room?”
“Can’t a couple of guys hang out in a hotel in their bathrobes without narrow minds jumping to conclusions?”
She was silent for a beat, then decided to change the subject. “We identified the little bastard who’s been causing the trouble. A busboy named Phillipe, who’s been working here for less than a month. The undercover security lady saw him setting some roaches loose in the main dining room just before lunch.”
“Crap! What’d you do?”
“We got rid of the roaches. Most of them, anyway. It was a little tricky, since we didn’t want Phillipe to know he’d been observed.”
“Why didn’t we?”
“Because as any expert in security knows, you don’t chop off the finger while the hand is still at large. Or something like that.”
“Your boyfriend tell you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Other than Phillipe and his roaches, everything okay?”
“Better than that. We’re just about at full capacity in the main room, and three of the private rooms are busy. How’s Chicago?”
“It’s got Marshall Field and Soldier Field, and it’s on a nice lake, but,” I began to sing, “ ‘… It hasn’t got the hansoms in the park, it hasn’t got a skyline after dark. That’s why New York’s my home sweet home.’ With apologies to the late Sammy Davis.”
“You and your hotel friend should do a duet,” she said, and clicked off.
At ten to eight, Dal stood in the doorway to the bedroom, resplendent in black blazer, dark gray turtleneck, and lighter gray slacks. There was no evidence of his gun or Kevlar vest.
“You’re looking good,” he said.
“I look like Bibendum, the Michelin Man. And I feel like I’m wearing a corset.”
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
I still hadn’t by the time we reached Pastiche.
It was in a modern tri-level building located on the Chicago River, near the Merchandise Mart. A semi-officious maître d’ informed us, in a French accent that sounded almost comical, that the Onion City party was being held down the stairs to our right.
The stairwell led to a just-above-river-level indoor-outdoor dining area, where a lovely young brunette seated at a table introduced herself as Jo Sennett, Derek’s social secretary. She welcomed me and asked Dal for his name, which she checked off her list. “The bar is to the left, but guests are gathering on the terrace,” she said. “Have fun.”
“Fun,” Dal muttered. “Billy, if the women guests all look like her, you’re going to have to keep reminding me why we’re here.”
“I don’t know about you, Dal, but that is why I’m here.”
The restaurant’s efficient layout, furniture, and especially the white cushioned chairs on the terrace made it easy to recognize which French Seine-side establishment had been its inspiration: Riviere. I hoped that the menu would be as successfully reproduced.
We were neither the first nor the last to arrive. There were about fifty people milling on the large terrace, with room for another twenty or twenty-five. I recognized a few of the cast and crew members I’d met at Webber’s mansion sprinkled in among those present. Near the boat dock, the marsupial-like assistant director, Harp Didio, was chatting up three young executive types. Webber’s partner, Alan Luchek, his red hair temporarily tamed by more than a dab of mousse, shifted his weight from foot to foot anxiously while struggling through a conversation with an elderly, obviously affluent couple.
Thief’s director, Austin Deware, was at a table, doing shooters with several young men and women who might have been film students. Nearby, at another table, the actor Sandford Hawes, dark Ray-Bans lending their air of mystery to his absurdly handsome face, was holding court with an array of women, young, old, and in between.
A waiter arrived, bearing a tray containing bite-sized grilled somethings, accessible by toothpick. I tried a sample.
&nbs
p; “Well?” Dal asked.
“Grilled calamari,” I said. Instead of mentioning that the calamari was soaked in lemon butter, garlic, basil, and tomato, I merely added, “Delicious. Try ’em.”
He took two, and I continued to scan the crowd for Adoree. I didn’t see her, but I spied Madeleine Parnelle engaging several executive types in conversation. She was wearing a midnight-blue dress with sparkles and a neckline nearly down to her navel. Her head was adorned by a matching version of an African skullcap.
Panning right, I locked eyes with Carrie, who was at the far edge of the terrace. She turned to a tall, professorial gentleman, said something to him, then began working her way through the crowd toward us.
Following just behind her, looking a little apprehensive, was J. B. Kazynski.
“Billy, I’m so glad you’re here,” Carrie said.
“And in such sleazy company,” J.B. added. She was glaring at Dal, who was wincing and looking ill at ease.
“Dal, this is Carrie Sands,” I said.
“A pleasure,” he said, turning from J.B. with relief. He shifted his face into what I suspected was his ruggedly appealing Daniel Craig grin. “Henry Hart Dalrymple, at your service, ma’am.”
“Jesus Christ!” J.B. grumbled. “Excuse me while I puke.”
“I take it you and Dal are not strangers,” I said.
“J.B. tried to kill me a while back,” Dal said.
“It was just a warning shot. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
Carrie was looking at them both, her eyes open wider than Little Orphan Annie’s but with more pupil.
“Dal’s my bodyguard,” I told her.
“Uh … J.B.’s mine.”
“What happened to the legendary Bucky?” I asked.
Dal and J.B. stopped their sniping to ask in unison, “Bucky Hurtz?”
“Y-yes,” Carrie said. “I think Derek and Alan talked to him, but he said he’d retired.”
“Bucky retired?” Dal said, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“He was the champ,” J.B. said. “Remember when the Imperial Insane Vice Lords marked Senator Rockville’s family …?”
