by Al Roker
Maybe I was overthinking the whole thing, misreading her reaction. Even if she thought I was calling her a horse, how bad was that? Horses were handsome animals, right? Hadn’t some famous artist called attention to Katharine Hepburn’s equine profile?
I was still focused on my little faux pas when I emerged from the men’s room stall and began washing my hands at the row of basins. It took me a moment to realize something was off in the room. I raised my eyes from my wet but now immaculate hands and, in the mirror, saw two men standing a few feet behind me. Staring at me. My old kidnapping pals—Ace and C-man.
I turned to face them.
They’d dressed for the occasion. Ace had traded in his country-boy duds for cleaned and pressed khaki pants and a bright yellow T-shirt that read: “She’s with Stupid.” C-man’s bombardier jacket had been replaced by a black-and-white checked sport coat. I’d thought that he looked familiar the last time we’d met. Seeing him in the sport coat brought that into focus.
“Why were you in the audience at the Gemma Bright show?” I asked him. “A fan of Gemma’s? No, I bet you were a fan of Pat Patton’s.”
He stared at me.
His coat bulged a little over his heart. He removed the bulge and pointed it at me. “I think we’ll just pick up where we left off,” he said. “With you coming with us to our van.”
I have to admit that even though he was aiming the gun at my chest, the Kevlar vest didn’t make me feel any less frightened.
“That reminds me,” he said. He took a step forward and smashed the gun against the side of my head.
So much for the value of the vest.
First came shock, followed by loss of equilibrium, followed by pain.
My knees gave. I tried to grab the washbasin, but it was too smooth, and I slid to the tile floor. Head spinning, eyes out of focus.
“Get up,” he shouted. A silly request, since he’d made it a physical impossibility.
“Chri’ Pete, why’d you hit him, C-man?” Ace said.
“Payback for the knock his pal gave me. I got a bump big as an egg.” What seemed to me like two C-men leaned down and shouted, “Stand the fuck up!”
I tried, but my legs were rubber.
“Get him up, Ace.”
“An’ then what?”
“Then you carry him out.”
“Me and what derrick?” Ace said.
“Okay, c’mon. You take one arm, I’ll take the other.”
They were bent over, trying to pick me up, when the bathroom door opened and Dal stepped in.
C-man dropped me and, as I fell back down, dragging Ace with me, swung his gun around to aim it at Dal.
My bodyguard was a little too fast for that. He grabbed C-man’s wrist, bringing it up behind his back with an ugly cracking sound. The gun clattered against the tile as Dal swung the unfortunate C-man face-first into a porcelain basin.
Ace scurried out from under me in time to see his partner’s damaged nose sending a spray of blood across the tiles where he’d fallen. He got one step toward the door when Dal grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt and yanked him backward off his feet. He hit the tile with butt, back, and head, in that order.
Dal grabbed my arm and lifted me. “How you doing?” he asked.
“Better than them,” I said.
“Can you walk?”
“Give me a minute.”
“That’s all we’ve got. Our host is about finished doing his thing out there, and this place is going to see a whole lot of traffic.” While he talked, he searched the pockets of the unconscious men.
“Wallets. Car keys. No phones.”
“Maybe in their van,” I said.
“No time to check, even if we knew where they parked it. I’d really love to chat up one of these a-holes about their employer, but that’s not gonna happen. At least not right now.” He slipped the wallets into his coat pocket. “You ready?”
My head ached and I was still woozy. I took a tentative step, and my legs seemed to be working again. “Ready,” I said.
Dal looked down at the sprawled, bleeding C-man and kicked him in the stomach, without much reaction. “Bastard’s lucky he didn’t do anything to make me mad,” he said.
Our timing was right. Derek’s after-dinner display had just ended, and people were moving quickly in the direction of the restrooms. I caught a glimpse of Adoree talking with an outwardly appeased Madeleine Parnelle.
“It seems rude to leave without saying goodbye,” I said.
Dal made a horse-whicker noise and shook his head. He whispered, “Save the romance for later. We—Make that I—don’t want to be anywhere near here when the cops come.”
I took one more look at Adoree and followed Dal out.
Chapter
THIRTY-SIX
It had been quite a day.
Between the interview with the naked housewives on Wake Up and the moment at ten-thirty p.m. when I settled back on the soft chair at my hotel with an ice pack, a couple of aspirin, and a glass of water, I’d been kidnapped and rescued, almost shot in a South Side bar, hit with a gun (“gun-whipped” was the term Dal used), and nearly kidnapped again.
And all I could think about was the dumb thing I’d said to Adoree.
Pressing the ice against my throbbing skull, I washed down the pills and was wondering if I should call her when Dal said, “Want to take a look at this stuff?”
He was sitting at a flyleaf table that he’d opened up to spread the contents of the two wallets he’d taken from the hard-luck kidnappers. There wasn’t much. Several hundred dollars in cash. No credit cards. No photos. No receipts. The only personal items were the driver’s licenses. According to one, Ace was Ashton Paul Killinek, a twenty-seven-year-old, six-foot-two, 172-pound blond male with blue eyes who lived at an address Dal said was near O’Hare Airport.
C-man was Claus Dieter Heinz, a thirty-five-year-old, five-foot-nine, 159-pound male with brown hair and brown eyes who lived in Evanston.
Dal had found another card, which he tossed onto the table. It identified Heinz as a private investigator licensed by the state.
“Heinz is a private eye?”
Dal responded with a derisive snort. “Like that’s a step up from kidnapper? It just means it should be easier to get our hands on him again.”
“What else do we have?”
“That’s it. I wonder how long before the cops release ’em.”
“They may not even be arrested,” I said. “They might seem more like victims, the condition they were in.”
“That’s why I left their guns. Since we have their wallets, I know they’re not carrying FOID cards.”
“FOID cards being …?”
“Firearm Owner’s ID cards,” Dal said. “Very big in this state.”
“I’m going to bed,” I told him. “You should, too. I have to be at Millennium Park by five-thirty a.m.”
“You’re shitting me! Five-thirty?”
“I’ll be up at four-thirty,” I said. “Want me to wake you then? Or would you rather loll around until four-forty-five?”
Chapter
THIRTY-SEVEN
“I can’t find my shoes,” Dal said, at approximately five a.m., just after I’d shaken him partially awake.
He was lying on the couch that he’d converted into a bed, reaching over to pat the carpet nearby, searching.
“Open your eyes,” I said. I was without mercy. My head was sore and, though the ice may have kept the swelling down, there was a lump where the pistol had connected that looked like a stunted devil horn.
“Okay,” Dal said. “My eyes are open.”
“Now look down the length of your body. See? You’re wearing your shoes. And your pants and shirt. You must’ve slept in them last night.”
“Right,” he said, rolling over to go back to sleep.
I considered dousing him with water.
By five-twenty-five, he was upright and more or less dressed in fresh clothes. His hair, still wet, hung do
wn on his face, giving him the look of a Viking who’d been caught in the rain. “It’s still dark out,” he complained.
“How late was it when you got to sleep last night?” I handed him a cup of freshly brewed black coffee.
“Very. Mantata was pissed because I woke him up, so he got back at me by talking for over an hour.” He took a gulp of the coffee, winced at its heat, and put the cup on a table.
“I told you it was too late to call him,” I said.
“It’s his standing order that we let him know about things like the bathroom incident in, to use his words, a timely manner. He said he was going to check with his source at the CPD to find out what happened to Killinek and Heinz. And by now he’s probably got somebody running down the addresses on the licenses. Whatever else he is, the old bastard’s efficient.”
Dal stood. He stretched, cleared his throat, and said, “Okay, Billy, you got me up. You threw water on me and burned my mouth with hot coffee. What’s next on your torture list: Making me watch your show?” Ouch.
It wasn’t bad, as shows go.
The highlight for me was a segment of Karma’s featuring an excellent local singer who was promoting an upcoming swing festival in the city. In spite of our charming entertainment reporter’s obvious disregard for the style of music (“Isn’t swing sort of old-fashioned?”), the singer managed to remain upbeat and cheery. She’d brought along a seasoned trio, and they performed two of my favorite songs, both by Billy Strayhorn, “Lush Life” and “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
Afterward, I caught up with Karma just as she began ranting to Trina about not wanting “to be stuck with any more nostalgia shit. Let Lance do it. It’s more his age bracket, anyway.”
“Let me explain something,” our producer replied. “Lance Tuttle is a respected television journalist who interviews politicians, major celebrities, and, yes, what you call nostalgia shit, if and when he wishes. You, on the other hand, are a twit with big boobs, good hair and teeth, who interviews whomever I decide.”
“You”—Karma’s face reddened as she tried to think of the ultimate squelch—“liberal,” she said, with hauteur, and departed.
“Aw, snap!” Trina said, then turned to me. “What do you want, Billy?”
“To talk to the twit,” I said, and ran after Karma.
“My hair isn’t good,” she said, when I caught up with her, “it’s great. Everybody says so.”
“And your boobs aren’t just big,” I said, “they are spectacular, to quote the immortal line from Seinfeld.”
“What do you want, Billy? And what the heck happened to your head?”
“A spider bit me,” I said. “How late did you stay at the party last night?”
“I was there past the bitter end, with Sandford and Austin,” the Thief movie’s leading man and director. She squinted her eyes. “A spider? I hate spiders.”
“I heard there was some kind of ruckus just as the party was ending.”
She gave me a blank look. Well, blanker than usual. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe police showing up?”
“Not that I saw.”
“No ambulance?” I asked, thinking of the condition of the two men.
“Ambulance? Police? For Christ’s sake, Billy. If there’d been anything like that, I’d have got my cameraman all over it. I’m not an idiot.”
I thanked her for her kindness and was walking away when she said, “Are you talking about the drunks?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Well, when Derek finished his pitch on behalf of the movie, two of the guests who’d had too much to drink got into a little fight in the men’s loo. They had to be helped to their car.”
“Who helped them?”
“Derek and a couple of the other guests.”
“Tell me about the other guests.”
“What’s to tell? Two of them. Just guys. They weren’t celebrities.”
“What’d they look like?”
“Who knows?”
“What were they wearing?”
“Who cares? Like I said, they weren’t celebrities.”
“Give it a little thought. It’s important.”
“Fuck you. I’m busy.”
I watched her go, although I’d rather have kicked her in the butt. And it was a nice butt. Went with the good teeth and big boobs.
Dal was sitting on a camp chair in our little makeshift office, phone to his ear. “Can you pause that?” I asked him.
He said something into the phone and lowered it, staring at me.
I relayed the information I’d extracted from Karma. He frowned, lifted the phone to his ear, and said, “Call you later.” To me, he said, “Did she say—”
He was interrupted by Kiki rushing in, cursing me for hiding from her, and announcing I had twenty seconds to my interview with Willard Mitry, the author of Da Mare.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Dal, and departed for the set, quick-scanning the notes I’d made on the book.
Mitry, a burly guy in his fifties with a mainly gray buzz cut and a matching mustache-Vandyke beard combination, was sitting before a camera, rigid as a wooden plank. He relaxed only slightly when I sat down beside him, freshly miked.
“They couldn’t find you,” he said, when we’d shaken hands. “The guy in the Hawaiian shirt said they might have to cancel the interview.”
“That’s just his way of relaxing the guests,” I said. “Everything’s okay. All we have to do is …”
I heard Gin McCauley introducing us. The camera directly in front of us blinked red. And we went live.
Fourteen minutes later, the network was peddling a diabetes product and Willard Mitry was being relieved of his mike. “On the air you mentioned your new project is a history of Chicago’s gangs,” I said.
“Right. Gangland, Illinois is the tentative title.”
“That seems to be a hot topic these days.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Derek Webber is hoping to launch a television series about the gangs.”
“Oh, yeah.” He was obviously relieved. “I thought you were talking about another book. I’m aware of Webber’s project. When he heard I was researching the book, he wanted me to meet with him. My agent said no.”
“Even before he heard the offer?”
“Jeb, my agent, Jeb Matthias, is probably a little conservative, but he’s not a big fan of Webber’s.”
“He have a specific problem?”
“He doesn’t trust the guy.”
“Is that because of the stuff Pat Patton said about Webber?”
“Not at all. Nobody with any intelligence paid attention to Patton’s rants. But speaking of Patton, that’s gonna be one hell of a story when they find out who killed him. I bet it’s Mob-related. Even way back, when I was starting out at the Trib, there were rumors that Patton was in Joe Nagall’s back pocket.”
That name rang a not-too-distant bell. Mantata had mentioned that Louis Venici, the man who’d killed Paul Lamont, had worked for Nagall. I longed to ask Mitry about Paul’s death, but I didn’t want him to wonder about my interest. Instead, I asked how Patton managed to keep moving up in the CPD.
“Like I said, there were rumors, no proof. And he wasn’t the only cop on the … I think your assistant is looking for you.”
I turned to see Kiki charging toward us. “Damn it, Billy, don’t make me keep chasing you. It’s ‘Goofy News’ time.”
That was one of my newer segments, prompted by a friend of our CEO who mentioned over dinner that the news was simply too dreary. To combat that, and just maybe to grab some of that successful Daily Show vibe, I was now, in addition to my other duties, the “Goofy News” reporter, essentially a voice-over chore accompanying odd people, things, and events captured on film. Edward R. Murrow would be proud.
“Gotta go, Willard,” I said, “but I’d like to continue our conversation. Any chance you might be free for lunch?”
�
��I’m on Gemma Bright’s show at noon, but I’ll be out around one.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the studio.”
Chapter
THIRTY-EIGHT
The news was not particularly goofy that morning. A dog and a duck did a dance. A Brunhilda-type opera singer fell into the orchestra pit in the middle of an aria. A robber making his getaway from a bank tripped on his shoestrings, fell, and knocked himself out. Though to some it may have been the apex of hilarity, it didn’t do much to counteract the real news about another rise in unemployment, more discord in the Middle East, and more gridlock in Congress.
But, looking at the positive side, it completed my work for the day.
Kiki was alone in the mini-office. “It’s a lovely morning, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Bright and beautiful,” I said, staring at her.
“Sorry if I seemed angry before.”
“No problem,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Going on? Oh, you mean your schedule tomorrow.” She consulted a sheet of paper. “At six-fifteen, you’re interviewing a sausage maker named Armand Hutner.”
“I mean what’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the first time, to my knowledge, that you’ve ever apologized for anything. I’m guessing you’ve met someone new.”
“No. Well, Richard did call and invite me to dinner tonight.”
“Richard being the guy who picked you up at the hotel?”
“I wish you wouldn’t put it that way. But yes. That Richard.”
“Good. I’m happy for you. Did you say I’m working at six-fifteen tomorrow morning?”
“With a sausage maker.”
“Then I’m not booked on Hotline Tonight?”
“The whole show is going to be about the floods in California,” she said.
“Floods in California?”
“Don’t take this as criticism, Billy, but you could pay a little more attention to the news.”
“Lady, I’m the go-to guy for news. Of course it’s ‘Goofy News.’ ”
