The Talk Show Murders

by Al Roker

  Back on track, Jonny used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe his nose and eyes and asked, “Is it hot in here?”

  “Not for us only children,” I said.

  As the route took us around and past the seemingly never-ending Northwestern University campus, Jonny said, “That’s where my brother, Dickie, went to school. Studied architecture building and planning, so he could work with our dad. He says he’s lucky I didn’t get much smarts because that left more for him.”

  “What a nice, brotherly thing to say.”

  “Oh, yeah. Dickie’s the best.”

  Once we’d entered the village of Wilmette, Jonny was able to find his way without the help of the grating British voice but blamed me because neither of us could figure out how to silence it.

  It was still “recalculating” when he took a left turn onto a lane that led in the direction of the lake. Several feet from the lane’s end, the disembodied Limey voice announced we’d reached our destination.

  That wasn’t quite accurate. There was still another left turn and then a lengthy drive through a forest of trees, at the end of which was the lighted gate of a high stone fence. Off the road to our left was a small windowed structure constructed with the same kind of piled stones as the wall. It was dark.

  “Usually there’s a guy out here who takes care of the gate,” Jonny said, as he reached across me to open the glove compartment. “Dickie sent him away.” He found a little plastic device, which he clicked twice.

  The gate opened smoothly and silently. It remained open only long enough for us to enter the compound, and as it swung shut, I heard an odd bristling, pounding sound. With heart-stopping suddenness, the vehicle was attacked by two snarling German shepherd dogs, their faces inches from our windows, their paws scraping the paint on the door panels. They’d evidently been trained not to bark.

  “Adolph and Eva,” Jonny said.

  “Cute names,” I said.

  Jonny reached into the right pocket of his jacket. Then the left. Then he dug into the pockets of his pants, growing more and more upset. “I know I had … Ah, here it is.”

  He’d finally found the object he’d been seeking, a metal whistle. He placed it in his mouth and blew three times. The only sound I heard was his breath going through the instrument. But as suddenly as the dog attack had begun, it stopped. The two animals trotted off across a lawn the size of a soccer field. They glanced back at us occasionally, as if they weren’t quite convinced that they were doing the right thing by ignoring us.

  Jonny put the SUV in drive. As we crunched along the gravel road, I got a good look at the compound by moonlight. There were three buildings that I could see. The biggest, surrounded by a lush garden, was a white two-story colonial home that, by my rough count, beat the house of the seven gables by one. With the exception of a room in the upper-left corner of the building, it was in darkness.

  Behind that was a chain-link-fenced tennis court and an almost Olympic-size swimming pool. The smallest building, barely a cottage, was near the pool. Totally dark.

  To our left was a large three- or four-car garage with what looked like living quarters above it.

  “Chauffeur lives up there?” I asked.

  He laughed. “We don’t have a chauffeur. That’s where Cecil and Camilla stay. But they’re not here now.”

  “Probably went to visit their daughter.”

  He frowned. “You know Ce—” Then he grinned. “Aw, I told you that.”

  Our final destination was on a grassy knoll overlooking the lake, a miniature, less-gabled version of the main house. Its ground floor was lit up, and I saw the outline of someone leaning against the jamb of the front door.

  “Dickie’s waiting for us,” Jonny said. “I hope he’s not too pissed at me for getting lost.”

  He drove the SUV to within a few feet of the coach house, parking it on the lawn.

  The man standing in the doorway was of average height, pale, dark-haired, and clean-shaven. He was thin, with a runner’s body. Denim pants. White dress shirt rolled to the elbows. He resembled his brother, but while Jonny’s face was unlined and full, Dickie’s had sharp edges, prominent cheekbones, and dark smudges under his eyes. He looked tired, arrogant, and, at the least, annoyed.

  “Here we are, Dickie,” Jonny said, as we got out of the SUV. “Just like you wanted.”

  Dickie showed no response except to turn on his heel and go inside the house, letting the screen door slam back in place.

  “This isn’t good,” Jonny said. “Dickie’s angry. And he can be, well, mean when he’s angry.”

  Terrific.

  Chapter

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The coach house the brothers inhabited was furnished in early American—lots of wood, some chairs with cane bottoms, knit throw rugs on plank floors, walls a creamy off-white decorated with paintings by artists of the Grandma Moses school (maybe Grandma herself), dark beam ceilings, gingham pillows on tufted sofas. Not exactly what I’d have thought appropriate or acceptable for the Baker boys. But the furnishings were probably a decorator’s idea, just as the neat-as-a-pin, fresh-tulips-and-roses-in-vases atmosphere was the work of their caretakers, Cecil and Camilla.

  I took another look at the grounds, saw the two dogs stretched out by the pool, facing my direction, and wondered if Dal would be able to handle them, assuming he could make it past the gate.

  “This way, Billy,” Jonny urged me on, gesturing with his handgun. Its reappearance at this point was not unexpected. All signs—including the fact that Dickie had dismissed the staff—indicated the sort of night I’d be having. It reminded me of the old Woody Allen line: “The lion shall lie down with the calf, but the calf isn’t going to get much sleep.”

  The others were waiting for us in what appeared to be a den. Ordinarily, it would have been overwhelmed by the giant TV screen that covered a full wall. But the screen was dark, and the two bodies—one on the floor, the other on the sofa—demanded attention in a way TV never would.

  Nat was slumped near a cold flagstone fireplace, his body too brutalized and twisted to still be supporting life. His bloody face had a spongy, raw look. One eye was open, but it wasn’t seeing anything.

  The other body was very much alive, thank God. A forehead cut near her hairline had leaked blood down the side of her face. But she seemed otherwise unharmed, sitting upright on a wicker couch, her wrists and ankles bound by blue duct tape. Another blue strip had been pasted over her mouth, but a trickle of blood from the head wound had loosened an edge. She struggled against the bindings, watching me. Her dark eyes were full of fury, but I was pretty sure that this time, I was not the object of Kiki’s wrath.

  “Your girl can be a real pain in the ass, Blessing,” were Dickie Baker’s first words to me. “She likes to make things difficult for herself.”

  “I’m glad she’s not as difficult as Nat Parkins,” I said.

  Dickie glared at Jonny, whose eyes dropped to the floor. “That was a mistake my retard brother made,” Dickie said.

  “He looked like he could handle it, but he just sort of came apart, Dickie.” Jonny looked stricken. He seemed to have forgotten the gun in his hand.

  “There’s the problem, Blessing. Parkins came apart before he could tell us where the red files were. We’re kinda hoping he told you.”

  “That’s it? You seduce, kidnap, and brutalize my assistant and get me here because you hope I might know something? And you think you’re the smarter brother?”

  His face darkened. He took a step toward me, drawing back his hand. And stopped. He stared past me, his anger replaced by surprise.

  Jon Baker Senior, in white silk pajamas under a black silk robe, was standing in the doorway. He was not happy. “Why the devil isn’t there a security guard at the gate?”

  “I sent him away,” Dickie said.

  “You what?” Jon entered the room and blinked when he saw Nat’s body. “For Christ’s sake, Dickie, what the hell … Blessing?”

  I shr
ugged.

  “Everything’s under control, Dad.”

  “This you call under control? Is that man dead?”

  “I told Jonny—”

  “Don’t lay any of this cock-up on Jonny. You’re supposed to be calling the shots.” He saw Kiki trussed up on the couch. “Who’s this woman?”

  “She works for Blessing. I’ve been using her to find out what he’s been up to. Stupid bitch hadn’t a clue what I was doing.”

  “What’s she doing here? Why are any of these people here? This is where we live, for God’s sake.”

  I’d backed up a few steps until I was standing beside Jonny. His soft face was twisted in anguish. He was totally caught up in the conflict between his father and his brother.

  “I’m sorry I’m not a genius like you, Dad,” Dickie said. “Why don’t you tell me where else I should have taken—”

  “This is full-out idiocy. A key rule of life: You never put yourself in an indefensible position.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “What would you call it, if you got caught with a corpse in your own home?” His eyes swept over me and Kiki. “Or in this case, three corpses.”

  “We’ll get rid of them, Dad. There’s no chance anybody would—”

  Jonny’s cry interrupted him.

  The comment about my impending corpsehood had been all the encouragement I’d needed. Jonny had forgotten both me and his gun. I just reached out, grabbed it with both hands, and twisted up. Hence the squeal.

  “You hurt me,” Jonny said, glaring at me with indignation. He began licking his scraped finger to heal it, animal-style.

  “Dumbhead!” Dickie yelled at him.

  Their father didn’t seem very intimidated by my weapon. “What now, Blessing?”

  “Now we discover how indefensible your position is.” Keeping the gun pointed in their direction, I got out my phone.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw motion at the door. Then Dal slipped into the room with a gun in his hand. “Good timing,” I said. “How’d you get …?”

  I was going to ask how he got past the dogs, but he more or less answered that by pointing the gun at me.

  “Let it fall, Billy,” he said. “At this distance I can put a bullet right between your eyes before you even start thinking about pulling the trigger.”

  Chapter

  FORTY-EIGHT

  “Do you get it now, Dickie?” his father asked, as Jonny reclaimed his weapon from the rug where I’d dropped it. “Do you see why Dal was worth every penny I paid him?”

  “Okay,” Dickie said, begrudgingly. “You were right, Dad. You’re always right. Now can we get back to the business of cleaning up the mess you made?”

  “Please do,” Jon Baker said. “I’m anxious to see how you hope to accomplish that.”

  “Simple. We just let Jonny convince Blessing to give up the file.”

  Jonny was studying me like he’d been on a forced vegan diet and I was a three-inch porterhouse.

  “Jonny seems up for it,” his father said, “but it won’t get us anywhere.”

  Dickie glared at him. “You’re psychic now?”

  “Dal, would you enlighten my impetuous son?”

  “Like I told your dad this afternoon,” Dal said, “Billy doesn’t have the files. And he doesn’t know where they are.”

  That wasn’t quite true. I was pretty sure I knew their location. But this definitely was not the time to mention it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing, Dickie?” Jon Baker said. “I could have saved you and your brother a lot of wasted effort. Now we have to dispose of three bodies. For no goddamn reason except your impetuosity.”

  Kiki managed to moan past the duct tape.

  “So I’m clear on it, Dad, I have your permission to kill ’em here?” Dickie asked, not without sarcasm.

  “Actually, no. We’ll let Dal handle things now. He’s the pro. You’re not even an amateur.”

  Jon Baker started to leave.

  “It’s fingerprints, right?” I asked him.

  He turned and raised an eyebrow. “You know what’s in my red file?”

  “You don’t?” I asked.

  “Actually, no. Patton was as cagey as he was crooked,” Baker said. “He came here to see me last Saturday, said he had evidence linking me to … my past. He wouldn’t be more specific. I said that if he had anything worth a hundred grand—that was his price—I didn’t understand why he’d waited so long to collect. He told me he hadn’t known what he had until you brought it to his attention earlier that morning.”

  Pat Patton, nature’s nobleman, always happy to throw anybody under the bus.

  “Is that what’s in the red file, Billy? My fingerprints?”

  Improv time. “The fingerprints of Giovanni Polvere,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Patton was no dummy,” I continued. “And you were too cute with your new name.” I might have been improvising, but there was some logic in it. “Lots of sons of Italy who are born Giovanni change that to John in this country. Just look at New York Mob boss Johnny Gambino. And ‘polvere’ is Italian for flour. John Flour. Jon Baker. Not a dead giveaway but much too close for a wise old bird like Patton not to see the connection.”

  “It’s difficult to give up the past completely,” Jon Baker said. “You want to keep something of what you were. I chose to do it with my name. I know you can understand that, Billy B.”

  So Patton had told him I was Billy Blanchard and, probably, how he and I were linked by Paul Lamont’s death. The old bastard hadn’t just thrown me under the bus, he’d given the driver a reason to want me dead.

  “How much did you and Mantata find out about Gio Polvere?” Baker asked.

  Did Dal tense up? I hoped he did.

  “We pieced together most of the story,” I said.

  “Let’s hear what you think you know.”

  “Dad, like you said, we should get moving.”

  “Shut up, Dickie. Billy’s about to tell us how smart he is.”

  He gestured that I should begin.

  “Gio Polvere. A bright young guy who convinced mobster Joe Nagall of his financial prowess and wound up the chief financial officer of Windy City Industrials, the Chicago Outfit’s business umbrella.”

  “A guy that bright may even have suggested the creation of WCI,” Baker said.

  Hubris. Don’t you love it?

  “Not only that,” I said, “he was shrewd enough to do his thing in the background, becoming a major player in the Outfit without posing for the cameras. The others enjoyed power and publicity and living the fast life. Gio was happy just watching the money pile up and waiting for the chance to grab as much of it as he could.”

  “Gio was a little more subtle than that,” Baker said. “And it wasn’t just about grabbing the money. It was taking what he felt he was owed to make up for the crap he’d had to endure from his loud, obnoxious, disgusting associates.”

  “Thanks for the clarification,” I said. “In any case, in 1987, an Outfit lowlife named Louis Venici came to Gio and told him about a real moneymaker that some fool had dropped in his lap. Geo looked into it and realized that Venici was the fool and was about to be picked clean by a very smart con man named Paul Lamont.”

  “What’s this crap all about, Dad?” Dickie asked.

  “Shut up and learn something,” his father said. “Excuse the interruption, Billy. Please continue.”

  “I was just going to point out how really clever Gio was. He could have exposed Lamont. But where was the profit in that? Instead—and I’m guessing here—he went to the con man and suggested a partnership.”

  “He suggested more than that,” Baker said. “Lamont thought big but not quite big enough.”

  The room was very quiet. Dickie was staring at his father with an expression of awe. This was all new to him. Dal seemed to be amused by his employer’s openness. I hoped he understood what that candor meant to his life expectancy.

&nbs
p; “So,” I continued, “Gio—you—got Paul to add a few zeros to his scam, which you, as CFO, approved, and together you hit the Outfit’s cash box pretty hard. As soon as the money exchanged hands, you had Paul killed, took the loot, set fire to your house, and caught the next flight out.”

  “It wasn’t quite that easy,” Baker said. “First I had to convince Venici that Lamont had played him. Then, when he and his cousin took care of Lamont and brought the cash back to me, I had to kill them. Not a walk in the park for a guy who’d never held a gun before in his life. I doctored their drinks first. Waited until they were unconscious, and used Venici’s own weapon. But first I wrapped towels around their heads to minimize the mess.”

  “Jesus, that’s cold,” Dickie said.

  “Cold? I’ll tell you what’s cold. Winding up on the bad side of a hard-core son of a bitch like Joe Nagall.”

  “How did he find out you had the money?” I asked.

  “He didn’t. Not for sure. I wasted fifty grand hiding it in Venici’s closet, where I knew they’d find it. But there was just too much cash still missing. And Nagall never quite believed his old pal Venici would have gone against the Outfit.”

  “So you burned down your house.”

  “It seemed like the thing to do,” he said. “I found a homeless guy about my size on Damen Avenue, fed him some cheap booze, and put him in my bed. Wasted a few more bills. Then woosh.”

  “Next stop, Southern California,” I said. “That Hindu heaven on earth, where people go to exchange old lives for new. Exit Gio Polvere, mobster on the run, enter Jon Baker, wealthy young man of leisure.”

  I heard a whimpering sound to my left and saw Jonny was crying. “You’re not our real dad?”

  “Sure I am, son. I met your mom in California. We got married, and soon you boys completed the family. She wanted to come back here to live, and so did I.”

  “But not immediately,” I said. “You had to wait until most of your old pals, like Nagall, were dead or in prison, and those still at large were too busy trying to deal with the burgeoning black gangs and the Russian Mafia to start wondering where a newcomer could have amassed all the ready cash needed to start building a little empire.”