by Al Roker
“Didn’t I just see that on a greeting card?” I asked.
“You’re doing the fucking interview,” she said, and walked away. Arf! Arf!
Kiki had no new information on the fire, she informed me, when I returned to the office. But she did have notes on Li’l Beatcakes, who had only recently returned from a two-year prison stretch for carrying a concealed weapon. Among the other things that happened to him while in the slams, he had found God. Hence his new hit on Dig Out Records, “Pick the Redeemer over the Reamer.”
It was not my finest interview. I’m never at my best talking to a TV screen. In this case, I was talking to a TV screen that was essentially nonverbal. Li’l Beatcakes didn’t so much talk as make growling noises, especially when one referenced his time in the slams. No matter. The interview was really just a warm-up to get him to sing his song, which was, to my ear, growling noises punctuated by uhns.
But what do I know?
Still nothing new on the fire and no definite identification of the victim. And the media’s interest was waning.
Gus Genovisi, the fresh-vegetable king of Chicago, was a subject more to my liking than Li’l Beatcakes. Charismatic, knowledgeable, and helpful. Ditto Danny DeBek, the creator of Plum Tukker, a comic strip about the dating life that was a sort of mash-up of Doonesbury and Cathy. I was about as au courant on that as I was on rap, but DeBek was not only verbal, he was funny.
Kiki was waiting for me after that interview. She held up my phone.
“Some bloke just called. Said he’d call back. Sounded frantic.”
“Good,” I said. “Frantic is exactly what I need this morning.” But the events of the night made me think the call might be important. I took the phone. Its log listed the caller as “Private Number.”
I handed the instrument back to her. “If he calls again, try to work your magic and get a name and a not-so-private number.”
When I wrapped my “people online” segment, she was waiting. “He called again. Hung up as soon as I told him you were busy.”
“Okay.” I took the phone and walked to the tent where coffee and fruit and pastries awaited. I had black coffee and a bear claw, and I didn’t feel in the least guilty about ignoring the apples and bananas. Well, maybe a little. Halfway through the second bear claw.
The phone rang, but it was Cassandra calling from Manhattan.
She was angry and puzzled. Her fiancé’s operatives had followed the rat- and roach-releasing busboy to the offices of Restaurants International, the conglomerate that was trying to purchase stock in the Bistro.
“Fuck that smarmy Frenchman Charles Limon and his cologne!” she exclaimed. “But I don’t get it. Why would they want to ruin a business they want to buy?”
“They don’t want to ruin it,” I said. “They just want to make it more difficult for me to keep it going without their ‘help.’ It’s a combination of the old protection racket and the new business morality.”
“So we report them to the police, right?”
“Wrong. Ask your fiancé, A.W., if we’ve got enough evidence to make a case against Restaurants International. If not, we’ll just give ’em more rope until we do. Then we turn the whole thing over to Wally Wing and whichever firm of legal sharks he wants to bring in to bite them in their bankroll.”
“Wow, Billy. Speaking of the new business morality …”
“It’s the world we live in,” I said.
Chapter
FORTY-THREE
At a little after ten, just as I was getting ready to call Dal, Lily Conover arrived at our temporary HQ. My cable coproducer was dressed down in a little white frock, draped with a zebra-stripe-patterned cape.
She’d flown in from Manhattan to oversee the taping early next week of two Blessing’s in the Kitchen shows focusing on the varying styles of Chicago’s famous pizza, from the original deep dish to the more recent stuffed version, including thin-crust and pan-cooked pies.
“I assume you’ve seen the ad in the Tribune featuring tonight’s show?” she asked.
I admitted I hadn’t.
“I don’t understand you, Billy. Don’t you care anymore?” she asked, digging out a section of the morning paper from her black bag.
“I’ve had a few other things on my mind.”
It was a nice quarter-page ad featuring a still from the show in which I’m holding up one of Charlie Dann’s popular Puff Potatoes. The caption read: “Tonight, Blessing’s in the Kitchen salutes Chicago’s own Charlie Dann. Seven p.m., Wine & Dine Network.”
“You are going to be at the party tonight, right?”
“Sure. What party?”
She turned to face Kiki, who was staring into her laptop with a dreamy half-smile on her face. Lily frowned, then returned to me. “I thought I’d asked Kiki to tell you, but maybe I was mistaken. There’s a party tonight at Charlie’s restaurant. He’s giving away a lot of the Billy Blessing crap—the chef jackets with your picture over the heart, the kitchen essentials, the seasoning bottles. He was hoping you’d be there.”
“Okay. What time?”
“The show’s on at seven. Charlie would probably want you there at six-thirty, maybe?”
“Doable,” I said.
“Excellent. You can chat up the customers, watch the show with them, and maybe answer a couple questions after. Then Charlie’s putting on a feed for a few of us in a private dining room. It’d really be a downer if you didn’t—”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Lily said. “Very good.” She headed for the exit. “On to pizza land. Ta, Kiki—”
“Huh? Oh, right. Ta,” my surprisingly mellow assistant replied.
“Lily’s a breath of fresh air, isn’t she?” I asked her, when the fresh air had blown away.
“Definitely.”
“You okay?”
“Of course,” she said, trying to seem blasé. “Don’t I look okay?”
“You look like somebody with Cupid’s arrow stuck in her.…”
I stopped because my phone was vibrating again.
“Private Number.”
“Blessing. Who’s this?”
“Who do you think?” Nat Parkins replied.
“Where are you?”
“You got the five thou?”
“I can get it,” I said. It was in the hotel safe.
“How long’ll it take you?”
I had to call Dal, find out when he could come pick me up. “A couple of hours,” I said.
“That the best you can do?”
“Afraid so.”
“Okay, then. What time you got?”
I checked my watch. “About ten-forty-five.”
“Exact time.”
“Ten-forty-three.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you at Lincoln Park at one. On the dot.”
“At the zoo?”
He was silent, then, “Naw. There’s this place called Grandmother’s Garden. Where Lincoln Park West meets Belden Avenue.”
I snapped my fingers to get Kiki’s attention, then pantomimed writing on a piece of paper. Ordinarily, she’d have handed the objects to me before I’d finished miming. That day, it took nearly a minute.
“There’s a statue of Shakespeare—”
“Hold on.” As I wrote, I repeated his instructions. “Grandmother’s Garden. Lincoln Park West and Belden Avenue.”
“Yeah. I’ll be waiting at the Shakespeare statue.”
“I want something more than my file, Nat,” I said.
He hesitated. “What else?”
“The file belonging to the guy who killed Patton.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Save both our lives, maybe.”
“Deal. But this time you come alone. Leave your honky leg-breaker at home.”
“That’s not—”
“I see anybody with you, I bolt.”
He didn’t bother saying goodbye.
“What’s that all about?” Kiki asked.
�
��Meeting somebody.”
“You mentioned ‘money’ and ‘the guy who killed Patton.’ Tell me you’re not mixed up in murder again, Billy.”
“I’m not mixed up in murder again,” I said.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “The thing is—”
Thank God my phone began vibrating again. “Hold that thought,” I said, getting out the phone. “Actually, don’t hold it.”
“Private Number.”
This time it was Dal.
“You don’t need me right away, do you?” he asked.
I told him that I didn’t need him until around twelve-thirty.
“Okay. It’s official. The burn victim was Mantata. DNA verified it. And there was a leg bone. When Mantata was a young man, one of Jackie ‘the Lackey’ Cerone’s hard cases beat the crap out of him. Snapped his right leg in two places.”
Until that moment I’d been holding out the hope that the old man had faked his death.
“I’m trying to contact all of the crew, including the old-timers,” Dal continued. “The ones I’ve reached are taking it harder than I’d thought. Guess we criminals aren’t so tough after all.”
“What about his sister?”
“I called her. Did you know fucking Oakley was the old man’s nephew?”
“He may have mentioned it.”
“He answered the phone when I called. Still lives with his mother. Talk about arrested development. Anyway, I’m gonna drop by their place for a few minutes. And there’s some other stuff I’d better take care of. No problemo making it by twelve-thirty. I can get there earlier if you want.”
“Make it by noon and we can grab a quick lunch somewhere around here.”
“You’re on.”
I expected Kiki to pick up precisely where we’d left off, but she surprised me. “Could I depart now, Billy?” she asked. “There are a few personal things I should do, and I’ve a … meeting at noon.”
“Go,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your … meeting. With Richard, I assume?”
She smiled. “We’ll name our first boy Billy,” she said.
Chapter
FORTY-FOUR
Dal arrived at a quarter to twelve, looking as if his visit to Mantata’s sister, Olivia Hudson, had worn him down a little. On the walk to The Gage, a nearby gastropub, he said, “She’s a tough old broad. Tougher than her kid and maybe even tougher than her brother. She’s got it all under control. The church. The service. When I left, she was lining up a choir.”
I selected a light lunch, a seared sea scallops salad, while Dal tore into a grilled rib-eye sandwich. We were out of the restaurant at twenty after twelve. By twelve-thirty, I was at my hotel, withdrawing the cash from the safe. Fifteen minutes later, we were in the maroon Z-car on our way to Lincoln Park.
“I don’t like the idea of you spending any time hanging around that statue by yourself,” Dal said.
“Nat will run if he sees you. Anyway, you’re going to be close. And I have the famous air horn to strike fear in evil hearts.”
It was nearing one p.m. when he brought the car to a stop beside a knee-high wall of piled stones on North Stockton Drive. Because we did not want to risk Nat seeing Dal or the familiar maroon Z-car, we had not taken Lincoln Park West, as Nat had suggested. That street offered an unobstructed view of the statue of Shakespeare. Instead we’d traveled north on Stockton, the parallel street that ran along the other side of the narrow Grandmother’s Garden.
From where we were parked, foliage in the garden partially hid the car from the view of anyone near the statue, which was a good thing. But it also meant that Dal would not be able to observe all the activity at the meeting scene, which was not such a good thing.
“Is that him?” Dal asked.
Someone was sitting on a bench facing the statue.
I checked my watch. Two minutes to one. “I might as well find out.”
I opened the door.
“Got your air horn?” Dal asked.
“Yep,” I said, amused by how much faith he had in it.
As soon as I reached the sidewalk leading to the statue, I saw that the man seated on the bench was not Nat. He was a rotund white man in his middle to late years, dressed in black. Black suit, black shirt. Ditto socks and shoes. He had a cherubic face surrounded by white hair on top and a matching Monty Woolley under his nose. One of his hands rested on the bench; the other held a black walking stick.
A primly dressed young woman and ten children, a mixed bag of preschool-age boys and girls, entered the garden area from Lincoln Park West and gathered around the statue. Some began climbing on the bard of Avon. A tiny girl sat on his lap.
Nat was nowhere to be seen.
“A little late, Susanna,” the man in black chided the woman. His voice was a rich, theatrical baritone.
“We stopped to watch a game of horseshoes,” the woman replied. “And how are you today, Durwood? Enjoying the park, as always?”
He looked up at the overcast sky. “ ‘True is it that we have seen better days,’ ” he said.
“I know that one,” the woman said, evidently pleased with herself. “The duke in As You Like It.”
The kids were creating quite a ruckus. The woman—their teacher, I presumed—tried to quiet them down, without much success.
I wondered where the hell Nat was and if I was being stood up.
It was ten after one.
The man in black looked at me and, referring to the kids, said, “Full of sound and fury, eh?”
I managed to come up with a smile. Then I saw that his pale plump hand was resting on a spiral notebook I’d last seen on a table at Nero’s Wonder Lounge.
Walking toward him, I said, “This may sound like a strange question.…”
“Say no more. The answer is yes, I am the thespian Durwood Candless.”
“Of course,” I said, as if I knew who Durwood Candless was. “I’ve enjoyed your performances.”
“My Falstaff?”
Behind me, the young woman was threatening to remove the kids from the park if they didn’t behave.
“I’ve yet to have that pleasure,” I said to the actor. “I was wondering about your notebook.”
“Oh!” He looked down at it as if he’d forgotten it was there beneath his hand. “This isn’t mine. It belongs to a young man who comes here often. He seems as fond of this tribute to the Bard as I. I was talking to him just a few minutes ago. Did you know that this statue is the first in which the great man was properly attired for his time? The collar. The cape. The leggings tied with bows.”
“It’s one heck of a statue,” I said. “The young man. Is his name Nat?”
“Yes. You know him?”
“I was supposed to meet him here.”
“Well, as I said, we were sitting here talking when he stood suddenly and ran off, over there toward the conservatory.”
“Just a few minutes ago, you say?”
“Yes.”
I looked in the direction he was indicating with his cane. Minutes. One minute would have been too late.
“Any idea why he ran away?”
Durwood Candless’s attention had drifted to something just to the right of my crotch. A little boy stood there, staring at me. “It is him,” he said.
“Matthew,” the teacher called, “the gentlemen are talking. Come here.”
“But it’s him!” Matthew said. “The black guy from the morning show. The one my dad calls a no-talent asshole.”
“Matthew!” the teacher almost screeched, silencing the other kids. “Don’t ever use language like that. You apologize immediately to the gentleman.”
“Why? It was my dad who said it.” The others were gawking at the kid now.
“If you don’t apologize immediately, Matthew, I will put you in Ms. Ordway’s group.”
Matthew hesitated, his deceptively cherubic face registering alarm. Then he gave up. Sniffling and staring at my knees, he s
aid, “I’m sorry my dad said you’re an asshole.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
“This is so embarrassing,” the teacher said to me.
“Don’t give it another thought,” I told her. “It’s just one of the joys of being in the public eye.”
She gave me an awkward smile, then gathered the brood, including Matthew. “There will be consequences,” she informed them. “We’re heading back to school now. No more climbing on the statue today. No recitation from Mr. Candless. No visit to the playground. All thanks to Matthew’s rudeness.”
The kids looked bummed as they walked away.
Durwood Candless looked a little bummed, too, watching them go. “I’d planned Polonius’s ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender’ speech,” he said.
If that was a hint, I had neither the time nor the inclination to act on it. “Do you know why my friend Nat rushed away?” I asked.
“Uh,” the actor said, refocusing. “Clearly he was seeking to avoid the fellow who chased after him.”
I stared at him, wondering if he was amusing himself at my expense. “The fellow,” I said, calm as the day. “Tell me about him.”
“There were three of them, actually. They pulled up in their dark green chariot right over there.” The cane was now pointing at a spot where the sidewalk met Lincoln Park West. “One of the males rushed after Nat. The other male and the lady stayed with the auto. I gathered by their proximity that they were a couple.”
“Could you describe them?”
“Indeed so. The young woman was lovely enough to be the modern incarnation of the Bard’s dark lady, and the two men, were they thespians, I would have cast as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”
“By ‘dark lady,’ you mean she was black?”
He mock sighed and touched his heart. “More a sweet caramel.”
“And the men?”
“Caucasian. The shorter one, who pursued Nat, was stocky, the taller had a lean and hungry look. But regardless, there was a sameness to them. Hair. Coloring. As I said, they fit the characters of Prince Hamlet’s false friends from childhood.”
“Did the stocky man catch up with Nat?”
“Not that I saw. They both disappeared from view behind the conservatory. Then the other two got into their auto and drove off, north toward Fullerton Parkway, where I suppose they turned right. Assuming they were following the others.”
