Mumbo Gumbo (23 page)

A
frenzy of slicing, dicing action was about to get under way in
Food Freak
’s Kitchen Arena and I wished I could just focus. The audience all around us was screaming for their favorite players. The band had begun to play “Let’s Get This Party Started.” It was my recipe for gumbo, after all, that these
über
-contestant chefs were about to modify for the final food fight, and I wanted to pay attention to the cooking mania ahead. But then, I was so close to understanding this recipe-address puzzle and it wouldn’t leave me alone. The answer seemed right there, just beyond my reach. If I could figure out who had written those mangled recipes and gotten them in the script, I’d know it all.

Quentin Shore could have done it. He had access to the show material. He had been the primary writer responsible for the bumpers. But now Quentin was dead, and still the address code had made it into the current script. Quentin might have played a part in writing up the bumper copy, but he wasn’t the only one involved.

Greta. I had to consider Greta. She was Tim’s boss and as such she reviewed all the scripts. But that didn’t work, either. Greta wasn’t here this week and somebody
here was involved. Somebody had changed the bumper copy back to its original numbers just a few minutes ago, after I’d tried to fix the guacamole recipe on Randy’s script card one last time.

A shot rang out.

I looked up, startled, nervous. It was just the starting gun on the final
Food Freak
gonzo cook-off. The contestants, wearing their neon-colored aprons, rushing about in the Kitchen Arena, had begun cooking their gumbo. The show’s band, The Freaks, moved on to another hard-rocking number and it was off-the-charts loud. Holly couldn’t stop herself from bopping along with the beat. Neither, I noticed, could most of the audience members. This show was now in over-drive. The divorced couple, Bruce and Belinda, started fighting immediately over how much cayenne, if any, they were going to use. Chef Howie dashed over to their side of the kitchen set to interview the ex-wife, who was almost in tears. Her new boyfriend was sitting in the audience section a few feet away from where Holly and I stood. He was yelling at Bruce to lay off and let Belinda spice it up, goddamnit!

As the music pounded and the cooks raced around the Kitchen Arena, I kept wondering who else on the staff might have had control over the script. If I could eliminate all the people who couldn’t have done it, I’d have an idea who did.

I considered the
Food Freak
people, one by one. Chef Howie Finkelberg and his wife, Fate, had relatively little access to the scripts. It was possible they might have proposed some recipes, but neither could make sure such mixed-up numbers as were actually aired made it to the final script. Too many others reviewed the content of the show for errors and would
have fixed any mistakes that were found. I had to rule them out.

In the same way, the contestant coordinators, Nell and Stell, were out of the loop. They had no contact with the script material at all.

The announcer could have changed the recipes, I supposed, by reading it out his own way, but in the normal course of shooting this series, the shows were pretaped. He would have been stopped by the director and asked to redo it if he didn’t follow the script. I could rule out Randy East. Our problem was with the script itself.

Jennifer Klein had more involvement with the scripts as they were being developed. As a staff writer, she had some input on changes. But Jennifer hadn’t worked on the bumpers. And that left her out.

I considered the show’s PAs. Kenny and Jackson were just too low on the totem pole to have any say. Too many people above them had the authority to change their work. But that didn’t apply to their supervisor, Susan Anderson. Susan controlled production of the scripts. She typed them and made any updates and it was conceivable she could even alter their contents slightly, if no one else noticed. I thought that over and then had another uneasy thought. Susan had a lot of influence over the show’s head writer. She could have fed Tim those bumper recipes, I supposed, and persuaded him to hand them off to Quentin to submit. It was true. Susan’s position in Tim’s life and her job supervising the scripts gave her just enough opportunity to get those recipes through. And then I had one more horrible thought. Susan had a lot of reasons to hate Artie Herman.

But Susan Anderson? The sheep lady? The girl who
named one of her lambs Mutton Jeff and dyes her wool with Kool-Aid? No matter how much opportunity to tamper with the scripts she might have had, Susan could not possibly be involved in a scheme that dispatched killers. It’s true, Susan might have hated Artie enough, with some hidden revenge in mind, to want to destroy his hit show. But aside from the complete improbability of Susan getting involved with a drug cartel, Susan was in love with Tim. Susan couldn’t have knowingly typed a bumper recipe and placed it in the show’s script that would have sent a killer straight to Tim’s house.

The whole idea of Susan as the guilty party was completely impossible. Susan Anderson? I had gotten to know Susan. She was not even capable of talking back to her demented boss, much less of masterminding some gangland-style killings. I thought it over again. Could she really have added those recipes to the script? I changed my mind. Not really. Surely others would have noticed if the script was being typed “incorrectly” too often. Artie would have noticed.

And that’s when I knew for sure. I remembered Jennifer telling me that any changes to the final script cards had to be shown to Artie for his approval. Artie had final say over the script. Artie was the last word. And Artie had been standing by the announcer’s podium right after I’d tried to correct the bumper recipe. He’d had the chance to override that correction one last time.

But was Artie—that sweet little nebbish of an old man—capable of this sort of monstrous enterprise? Of sending killers out into the streets? I thought about it. I was inclined to believe Susan’s version of what had happened in Mexico, the version where Artie came
unglued and went ballistic, and then later repented and paid off Susan to forgive him. So, okay, yes, I could believe Artie had a terrible temper. Look at the way he got rid of Greta—Greta, who had worked for him for years. I believed Artie could blow. But why would he get mixed up with killers? He was an old ad man, a corny guy who made corny jokes. He was a guy who loved
alliteration
, for Pete’s sake. And now, capping years of success in television, Artie Herman had the biggest hit series of all.
Food Freak
was number one. Would such a man at such a time in his life go into business with gangbangers and drug lords? Was he the kind of man who could order the deaths of so many people? It made absolutely no sense.

And yet, Artie was the one with the ultimate control over what script material stayed in or came out. Artie might have given the bumper recipe to Tim each week, telling Tim to make sure he didn’t alter one ingredient. Tim must have seen immediately that some of the proportions of ingredients didn’t make sense. Tim was stuck between doing what he was told by the man who owned the show, and his dignity as a game-show writer. I smiled. A month back, that would have been a concept I couldn’t even imagine. But now I had walked a mile in Tim Stock’s Gucci loafers.

Tim would have been angry. He would have passed off the bad recipes to Quentin. Quentin, of course, was struggling anyway. He had been hired because of his connection to Chef Howie. Quentin would have been grateful to be given something to do, anything, that would make him feel secure on the show.

I looked up, startled. The section of audience sitting near me had just gasped. A large group of adults gasping in suspense can take your mind off anything. Their
attention was riveted on the stage. On the Kitchen Arena set, the two teams were chopping and filleting. The contestant chefs were working feverishly to get their pots of gumbo ready to cook. They were being judged on the grace they showed under pressure. On the side of the stage, a raised platform held the celebrity judges. Bowzer was hamming it up, his eyes circles, his mouth a gasping
O.
Belinda Holtz had drawn first blood. She had stabbed herself while trying to shell too many shrimp too quickly.

In the audience section nearby, Belinda’s new boyfriend jumped up in agitation and shouted, “Get the medics!” All the other contestants went back to their intense work, but Chef Howie was there in an instant. He consulted with the team, checking Belinda’s finger as she rinsed it in cold water.

Randy East’s concerned voice filled the room, booming out over the rock and roll crescendos of the band. “This could be a crushing blow for a team of plucky individuals who overcame their own personal differences to cook together here tonight. Did you know that since winning on
Food Freak
earlier this year, Bruce Holtz has opened his own handmade ice cream shop in Wilmette, Illinois? And his ex, Belinda, has taken her quarter million and traveled around the world, tasting the best cuisines at the very best restaurants. Let’s see what Chef Howie and the judges say.”

Belinda’s ex-husband, also an ex-marine, did a battlefield dressing, wrapping Belinda’s finger tightly in a Band-Aid he had pulled out of his wallet. Then he kissed away her tears. The crowd screamed their approval. These two gourmets had determination and grit. Belinda said she wanted to continue and Chef Howie gave her the go-ahead sign. The crowd around
me cheered their heads off. And the “Applause” sign didn’t even have to remind them.

So Quentin had most likely written up the mangled bumper recipes, just doing what he was told, happy to keep his job. And this setup could very well account for all the cash Tim had resisted placing in a bank. A payoff for letting the bad recipes go out over the air and keeping his mouth shut. But what had changed? What had gone wrong?

I guessed that Tim was never let in on the truth. He didn’t understand the deeper evil lurking behind those recipes. Maybe he resented getting mail saying his show’s recipes weren’t reliable. So he rebelled one time. On his own, he ordered that show number 10021 be fixed before it was broadcast. He must have found out soon after what those recipes were really used for—they represented addresses. And the person who lived at that altered address was soon dead. Immediately after that, Tim Stock ran.

Onstage, the clock was counting down the last few minutes of the cook-off as the rock band launched into their final song. Sydney Baker had begun to scoop out dollops of sour cream while her sister Marley was pulling fresh sourdough rolls out of the oven. Sour cream in gumbo? I was amazed. The Holtzes had recovered from Belinda’s injury and were adding some last-minute crab legs to the pot. Chef Howie was excited and urging the crowd to go nuts. The audience screamed.

I turned to Holly as Randy’s voice called out over the cook’s melee onstage, “Don’t go away! We’ll be right back with the final revenge-filled minutes of ‘THE FINAL FOOD FIGHT’…”

“Holly, come on.”

“Where are we going?” she called out after me, and then caught up.

“I’ve got to call Honnett. I’m not sure how well I can hear my phone in here.”

When we came to the heavy stage door, I pushed it open and found that the sky had gone dark during the time we’d been inside. It was nearly seven
P.M.
and the night air was chilly. When we were alone outside, I pulled my cell phone out and hit the Redial button. Noiselessly, it connected me with Honnett’s cell phone in an instant. The marvels of modern technology. Honnett was just a button-push away.

“It’s me,” I said, breathless. “I’ve figured it out, Honnett. Not all of it, but enough.”

“Where the hell are you?” His voice sounded agitated as it hit my ear. “I’ve got four uniforms out there and they have been on your lot for the past half hour. You aren’t at your office. They checked.”

“I’ve been down at the stage,” I explained. “But it’s okay. Holly is with me along with about two hundred healthy strangers in the audience. What’s up?”

“We got a break,” he said, his voice relaxing a little. “Look, I’m on my way over. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Ten if I can manage it.”

“You’re coming here?” I was so relieved. I turned to Holly, who was rubbing her arms to keep them warm and told her, “Honnett’s coming.” And then I spoke to the cell phone, “I thought you were working on your Wednesday-night theory.”

“It’s all over,” he said. “We’ve been there. We rounded up two real badasses tonight. We’ve made the arrests.”

“What!”

“That address you gave me. We got over there right
away. The guy who owns the place nearly wet himself when we told him there were some guys looking to whack him. He kept saying, ‘Assassins.’ ”

“So he was involved with some drug dealers.”

“Big time.”

“What happened?”

“He was so scared that he might be on their hit list, he offered to turn state’s evidence and we took him into protective custody. So we also got the name of three very rough dudes on arrest warrants tonight.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“And then we had that house on San Gabriel Drive staked out and you wouldn’t believe who walked into that net. We grabbed two separate guys out for a walk. Each was armed like you wouldn’t believe. Both with priors. One actually broke into the house before we busted him. So that’s two more scumbags on their way to jail tonight.”

“So it’s over?”

“It looks like we got pretty lucky on this end,” Honnett said. “And I’m not sure how you figured it out. But until we know how your show got involved in this, you just stay put. Stay with Holly till I get there.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “She’s with me now. Aye-aye.”

“Enough,” he said. “You done good.”

I smiled as I pushed the tiny “End Call” button on my cell phone. I turned to tell Holly all the news.

Only Holly was no longer standing a few feet away in the alley behind soundstage 9.

“You must be chilly, my dear.”

The only other person standing out there was Artie Herman.

I
must have jumped.

“You nervous, Maddie?” Artie asked. His voice sounded somewhere between disgusted and charming.

“Where’s Holly?”

“While you were on the cell phone, there, I told her it was time for our celebrity judges to come onstage. She wanted to see them. Can you blame her? I told her not to worry about you. She said you shouldn’t be left alone, so I volunteered to help out. Do you mind?”

“Let’s go inside,” I suggested. “I’m cold.”

“Not yet,” Artie said, his voice still low. “Let’s talk first. I was just informed by the studio guards that there is a swarm of policemen at my office right now. Do you know about this?”

“No.”

“Really? Well, that’s odd, then. You see, they gave your name when they got to the guard gate. They thought you might need protection, Maddie. Why is that?”

“It’s a mistake,” I said. “But why are you so nervous, Artie? You seem pretty upset. Have you done something that might not look too good to the police?”

“Me?” he said. “I’ve done nothing.”

A bulky man in a studio-guard uniform came around the corner. I was no longer alone with Arthur Herman, and I was incredibly relieved. I started toward the man who had come at just the right time.

“Yes, sir, you got trouble?” he asked Artie.

“Grab this girl and bring her inside. She’s stolen material from my show.”

“I have not!” I yelled, but the guard was twice as big as I was, and like a fool I had walked right up to him.

He grabbed me and twisted my arm in back and up high. Arms shouldn’t go there. Tears leaped into my eyes. The pain was extraordinary and I couldn’t think of anything else. The guard opened the soundstage door and thrust me forward down the little corridor. I yelled at him, “Please, this is a mistake. Let me go. The police are here, damnit. Go ask them!” But no one could have heard my screams. The band onstage was going nuts on their final song. The audience was whooping it up. Randy East’s voice was amplified over it all as he counted down the seconds of the cook-off. “Six…five…four…three…two…one…IT’S ALL OVER!”

By the time it was officially “all over” onstage, I had the feeling it might be all over for me as well. I had been dumped in a tiny prop room in a remote corner of the huge soundstage. I was screaming as loud as I could, but no one could hear me now.

“Should I go get the cops, Mr. Herman?” asked the studio guard after he shoved me into the room.

“Let’s not bother with that,” Artie said. “It’s much better to keep these things in-house and out of the papers. Just stand in the hall, in case I need your assistance.”

“Sure thing,” he said, despite my screams that Artie
was going to kill me. Who would believe that? And he left me alone in the prop room with Artie.

“So what do you know, I wonder?” Artie asked, worried and angry. He made that sound I’d heard before, pushing a few puffs of air out his nostrils as he thought over what to do. “What have you told the police?” he asked me.

“Artie,” I said, trying not to sob, “Artie, what are you doing? You don’t want to hurt me. Let me out of here.”

He blocked the door with a chair and sat down in it. “You’ll forgive me for not offering you a chair,” he said. “I just need a minute to think what I’m going to do.”

I stood there, wondering if I could overpower him. He might be seventy, but he looked solid enough. And then there was the studio guard who would come to help him.

“So, what did you discover here, Miss Madeline Bean, in only two weeks of working on my show, that made you sic the police on me?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“ ‘Nothing,’ ” he repeated, looking up into my eyes. “I could almost believe you, cookie. What could a girl like you discover in two weeks? I’m frankly surprised you learned how to write a decent game-show question in two weeks. You are smart, my dear, but you are not that smart.” He looked me over. “Who told you about it?”

“Look, Artie. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

His light eyes danced and he grew even angrier. “Was it Stock?”

“Artie…”

“Was it Stock?” he asked, making the accusation
and looking at me for confirmation. I shook my head. “Don’t lie. It had to be. Tim Stock put you up to this, didn’t he? Tim told you everything, that bastard. That bastard. Even though he swore to me up and down he would go away. He would just disappear. He promised on his mother’s grave that he wouldn’t tell a soul. Not a soul. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. But I’m an old fool. Sure I was fond of Tim. Sure I was. But now I have a new problem.”

I watched him as he tried to work it out. I kept hoping he’d say something that explained how he was connected to the trouble, but he was just rambling.

“And I won’t let my family suffer, you understand? I won’t make that kind of bargain. They come first. You can understand that, can’t you? I should have kept my mind on my own troubles. I should have thought of Neal first. Sure, sure. But then, I couldn’t let them kill Tim, could I?”

“You’re saying you saved Tim?”

“What are you asking? Sure I did. Do you think I wanted to see anyone get hurt?”

“How can you ask that question, Artie? Look at what you’ve done to me.”

“I have no choice. You gave me no choice. There were police at the gate. They had to be admitted, I was told. They were going to search my office. Why did you bring them here? Answer that. Why did Tim betray me when I went out on a limb to save his life?”

“Save his life? You got Tim into trouble, Artie. He was inserting those bumper recipes into the scripts for you, wasn’t he?”

“Why ask me that? If Tim told you this, you already know!”

“And you paid him all that money to shut him up.”

“Yes, they paid me and I paid him. I didn’t take one penny. Not one. How can you blame me for that? Tim’s the one who needed money. I just made sure he got paid in cash. He was going to England, he said. All right, so he helped me get the recipes in the scripts. That was his job, wasn’t it? He worked for me. The extra money was a bonus.”

“Then why did he change that one recipe? Why did Tim order the looping session?”

“Why?” Artie looked like he wanted to pull his fluffy white hair out. “Why? What kind of a question is that? You and Tim have been in on this together. You know why! Tim is no saint in this scheme, cookie. He agreed to look the other way and not get too involved with the bumper recipes. When this all started, I tried to keep him out of it, but he had too many questions. He was always a meticulous head writer. The best. So I had to offer him the deal. Money for his silence. At that time, he was just bugged the recipes were so damn inaccurate. He didn’t know what the recipes meant, you see. Neither did I. We were both in the dark. The men who were behind this told us nothing. I swear.”

“So they passed you the address information each week and you constructed the recipes and handed them to Tim.”

He nodded.

“Then Tim gave them to Quentin, who submitted the material as his own,” I said. “But what did you think it all meant? Why were those men paying Tim so much to keep quiet?”

“Tim already told you this,” Artie said, disgusted. “We thought it was about the drugs. The whole thing was a mistake, I realize that. But we had the best intentions.”

“You mean about your son. About Neal?”

“Yes, I’m sure you know all this. Neal has had some problems. All boys do sometime or another. He got in trouble with these men.”

“Your son was selling drugs?”

“I don’t know that. I just know they said he owed them a lot of money. Of course I was upset. I’m a father. Sure, I said, I’ll pay his debts. They were going to hurt him, Madeline. My son. They said they didn’t want my money. I told them I’d pay extra, anything, send my boy back home. But they wouldn’t listen to me. They said they needed a good example. They said that if they killed Neal, it would teach the others out there what happens to someone who tries to cheat them.

“I couldn’t persuade them. I tried. I have plenty of money, believe me, but they laughed at me and my money. They said it was too late for Neal to pay back his debt. He’d had his chance. So I went to them and begged. I’m an old man and I begged. I cried. He’s my son. They must have sons. What could we do? How could we work out a deal?”

A tear escaped, and then another. Artie was reliving his worst nightmare. “They were only interested in my show,” he said. “You’ll love this part. These men. These animals. They were all big
Food Freak
fans. Can you imagine that? Well, why not? Forty million other people are addicted to the show, why not these drugdealing swine. And they thought it would be funny if they could use my show to do their dirty work. They offered me that. My only deal. Take it or leave it. They would kill my boy as an example, or I could put these little recipes in each week’s show. What was the harm?”

“Didn’t you know the recipes were really addresses in code?”

“Sure, sure, I figured it out with Tim. We both knew they must be addresses. But we didn’t know what they meant. We never dreamed the addresses would be used by hired killers. We figured it was about drug shipments, that sort of business. It was hard enough to live with the idea that we were probably giving drug dealers out there in America the address where some shipment was arriving or something like that. We didn’t like it, but what were we going to do? When Tim decided to make that unauthorized change in one of the recipes, that’s when we discovered the truth. Tim was the one who brought in the
L.A. Times
the next morning. He was physically ill. He figured we were being used to give out the addresses for some kind of gang murders. And because he changed those numbers in the recipe at the last minute, some poor woman had been killed by accident. I couldn’t believe it.” Artie, who had always looked more youthful than his years, was now an old man. He looked at a point somewhere beyond me and swore. “Those bastards! Those filthy bastards tied me and my show to something much worse than some dirty drug deal. They had turned my number one television series into an accomplice to murder. What was I going to do then?”

“That’s when Tim went into hiding.”

“Of course he did. Of course. I told him to go. I saved his ass.”

“The people you were doing this for, they got angry when the recipe was altered,” I said, filling in the pieces.

“Sure they were angry. Up until that week, they had been laughing at us. They had used my beautiful show
for their dirty work and they laughed at us because we didn’t even know what we were helping them do. But after that lady was killed and her address was in the paper, we knew. They couldn’t allow us to have anything on them, you see, so they were going to kill Tim and make me help them do it. That way they could trust me again, they said. They said put Tim’s address in the next show.” Another tear fell down Artie Herman’s old cheek.

“And you couldn’t do it. You told Tim to hide?”

“Sure I told him to hide! I told him to stay away from that house like it was the plague. That house would be a deathtrap. What else could I do? I couldn’t ignore their orders or they’d kill my boy, Neal. I had to put that recipe on the air to show them I was not going to cross them. But I told Tim to stay away. If you don’t believe me you can go ask Fate. She was in my office when I spoke to Tim on the phone. She didn’t know squat about what we were saying, but she heard me loud and clear. I told Tim not to go near his house on Wednesday night. And even after that. Once that address had been broadcast, who knew how greedy some of these contract killers might be. They could stalk that house for weeks, months, until they had their kill and could collect their reward. I didn’t want Tim’s blood on my hands. I didn’t want any of them.”

“But what will you do now?” I asked him. “You keep getting in deeper and deeper. Tim may have been kept safe, but Quentin Shore died last week. Tonight, you put another address out there. Did you think of that?”

Artie wiped away another tear. “I have to save my boy. That’s my job. These are gangsters you are worried about getting killed.”

“Are they going to kill me, Artie, just to shut me up?
Are they going to find Tim and kill him, too, now? You can’t pretend you aren’t responsible.”

“Why did you have to get involved?” he asked, angry again.

“It’s over now, Artie. The police know all about the addresses.”

He stared at me, a lost old man.

“They went out to that home on San Gabriel Drive tonight. They arrested two men who were caught trying to get into the house. And tonight’s intended victim? He is going to testify against the men who put out the hit over the air on your show.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“My friend is working on the case for the LAPD,” I said. “I was just talking to him on the phone when you got rid of Holly and dragged me in here, against my will.”

“Just to talk,” Artie said, starting a fresh tale.

“You can’t twist the truth anymore, Artie.”

“It will be your word against mine,” he said, angry again.

“Not exactly.” I pulled my cell phone out of my bag. This was the reason I had been so calm. This was what had given me strength. The phone was on. I held it up so Artie could see the elapsed time still ticking off the seconds of the live call. “The police have been listening in. They’ve heard every word you said.”

The moment Artie had surprised me out in the alley, I had just ended a call with Honnett. It took only half a second to push the Redial button and drop the tiny phone into my purse before Artie had any ideas about taking it away. All that time, I knew Honnett was tracking our conversation, so I pushed Artie for more answers.

“Can I go then?” I asked, rubbing my sore arm.

Artie stared at the phone, his eyes desperate now. “The police? What have I said? I never hurt you or threatened you! I’m an old man, Madeline.” Artie’s forehead showed beads of sweat. “Sometimes when I forget to take a pill, it can leave me disoriented and I don’t know what I’m…”

“It would look better if you turned yourself in, Artie,” I said, holding up the phone. Every word we spoke was being heard.

“Give me a head start,” Artie said, making a final deal. “I’ll meet the police in a few minutes. I was a pawn. You know that. I was being blackmailed and coerced. These men, these scum, were threatening to kill my son. I had no choice. And, look, Madeline, I had no idea what those men were really up to. They never told me. So I was a victim, too. I will testify. I am a respected businessman. My testimony has to be worth ten times what that drug dealer’s testimony is worth. Let me go and I’ll be back in a minute.”