The Morning Show Murders (1) (3 page)

He started to get up, but I waved him down.

"You know my wife, Sarina, don't you, Billy?" he said.

"Of course," I said.

"And these are my grandkids. Little Jason, Rasheeda, and Adama. Kids, I want you to meet the man who owns this palace of fine food--Mr. Blessing."

Little Jason and Adama gave me bored-kid looks, but Rasheeda fixed me with her alert brown eyes and said, "I've seen you on
Wake Up, America!
You smile too much."

"Ra, be polite," her grandmother said.

Rasheeda cocked her head and said, "You're more handsome when you don't smile."

"Tell that to my producer," I said.

Henry Julian chuckled. "She's the one, ain't she, Billy?"

I told him I thought she was. In fact, I was wondering how long it would be before she put her father and uncle out to pasture with her grandfather.

Henry asked his wife to take the children to the powder rooms and suggested I sit for a moment beside him. Naturally, Rasheeda wanted to stay, but her grandmother dragged her away.

"You're a man about town, Billy, and you're in the news business at Worldwide Broadcasting," Henry said when they'd departed. "What do you hear about Felix the Cat?"

"Not much," I said. "But I do try to keep up with Bugs Bunny."

"Ain't talkin' 'bout any cartoon character," he growled. "This Felix ain't all that funny, know what I mean?"

I gave him my blankest look.

"This Felix supposedly lives in Par-ee, though nobody knows for sure, and when he shows up in any other city, the population decreases. It worries me he might be coming to town."

"What makes you think so?"

Henry shifted his shoulders, moving his neck around in his shirt, turtle-style, like the late Rodney Dangerfield. "I may be retired, Billy, but I still got my sources. This guy Felix plays it pretty close--nobody still alive even knows what he looks like. But as quietly as he moves, he makes some waves. There's this dude the really high rollers use to keep track of trends and the shifting moods of people worldwide. I pay him to be my danger spotter. He swears Felix is on his way to the Big Apple."

"To see you?"

"I don't think so," Henry said. "I wouldn't be sittin' here jawin' with you without a couple uglies watching my back, that be the case. But between us, not that long ago I had a very minor business arrangement in Nigeria that was, ah, protected by the late General Santomacha. Know who he was?"

"Another in a long line of brutal dictators," I said.

"Well, this Felix put an end to the general's reign in a very nasty way. Ever since, I been keepin' track of the man. So if he's in my town, even if he's here on business got nothing to do with me, I like to know about it. Which is my point in askin' you what you've heard."

"Why would I have heard anything?"

"My spotter says Felix's target got something to do with the media. Couldn't get any more specific than that. But you a member of the media in good standing."

This really wasn't a conversation I wanted to be having. In spite of the things the old man had done, I liked Henry, and he'd stopped me from making a terrible mistake. But talking about a mysterious hit man flying in from Paris to take out somebody in the media? Murdered dictators? Much too complicated for my simple life. "I'm sorry I can't help you, Henry," I said, getting to my feet. "I've never heard of this Felix guy."

"Yeah, well, I figured I'd ask. If you do hear of anything ..."

"You know it," I promised, shaking his callused hand.

Cassandra was waiting at the rear of the room, near the exit. "Finally," she said.

Moving down the hall to the stairwell, we passed the open door to a private dining room. I made the mistake of looking in and catching the eye of Gretchen Di Voss.

She was seated at a table with two other women and one man. She waved me in.

"Billy, come say hello to my friends," she called out.

I looked at Cassandra, who sighed in exasperation.

"I think you know everybody," Gretchen said as I entered the room.

I knew them. The gamine, red-haired Gin McCauley was a comrade-in-arms, a coanchor on
Wake Up, America!
She was flanked by her short, plump manager, Hildegard Fonsica, and Frederick Spence, her agent. Hildy's ruthlessness in fighting for her clients had earned her a certain infamy, but as far as I knew she played it straight, and I found her lack of bullshit admirable. I hadn't made up my mind about Spence. He seemed affable enough but was a little shy in the sincerity department.

"Any menu suggestions, Billy?" Gretchen asked.

I spent a few minutes plotting their meals, then excused myself to join the impatient Cassandra, who was hovering just outside the door. As we headed for the stairs to my office, she said, "I'm surprised the TV princess didn't ask you to toss the salad for them."

"That reminds me," I said. "Send them a bottle of Dom '98 with my compliments."

"I thought it was all over between you and Miz Di Voss," Cassandra said.

"If I was still in love, I'd have sent the Cristal '99."

Finally in my office with the door closed, Cassandra said, "Do you want the bad news, the badder news, or the baddest news?"

"Isn't that supposed to be the bad news or the good news?"

"Not tonight," she said.

"Start with the bad and build up."

"Okay. Mr. Politano informed me this afternoon that he was doubling the price of corn. He gave me some bullshit about crops being depleted because they're being used for ethanol."

"That may be true," I said. "But doubling is a little much."

"I told him he could stick his corn up his ass," she said.

"It might be more practical to make ethanol with it," I said. "How much corn do we use, anyway?"

"That's beside the point," she said. "May I continue?"

"If I said no, would you stop?"

"When Mr. Politano got tired of shouting Sicilian curses at me, he said he wouldn't sell us any more produce at any price. So I was forced to phone an acquaintance, Mr. Tamonia."

"The one who runs the book on Forty-fourth and breaks kneecaps?"

"Exactly. I got him to convince Mr. Politano to continue providing us with produce, including corn. The corn would be at a forty
percent hike, from which, I presume, Mr. Tamonia will take his cut. It's still less than we'd be paying if I'd just bent over and spread for Mr. Politano. I hope all of this is okay with you."

"Sounds fine," I said. "Is Mr. Tamonia the badder news?

"No. It's that dickwad Philip Rodell. ..."

"The dickwad who happens to be the number-one hotshot in the district attorney's office. The dickwad who put the Calibrio Family in the jug."

"Whatever. He threw a hissy out front tonight."

"Because ...?"

"He waltzes in with his crew a little after eight. Three couples. No reservation. Just, 'Seat us in a private room, sugar tits.' Classy, huh? I tell him the private rooms are occupied, as is the main room, and, though it galls the crap out of me, I offer to set something up in the lounge for him. He tells me he doesn't eat in lounges. He
orders
me to move one of our private-room parties to the lounge and give him
that
room."

"I hope you didn't suggest
he
shove anything up his ass."

"Of course not. I told him to fuck off."

"How'd that work out?"

She blinked her sky-blue eyes. "He called me a few names and demanded to talk with you. I told him you weren't around and suggested he move on. He, in turn, threatened to keep sending health and fire inspectors until they find some reason to close us down."

"That
could
be a problem."

"I ... don't think so. I showed him the security camera we have over the front door. I asked if he thought his wife might like a copy of his entrance with his crew."

"He wasn't with his wife," I said.

"Not unless he's married to a thousand-dollar-a-night hooker."

"What is it with these fighting lawmen, can't keep it zipped? Well, you seem to have things in hand, Cassandra. Why'd you text me?"

"Because of the baddest news," she said. "Juan hit Bridget."

Juan Lorinda had spent two tours in Iraq with the other members of his National Guard unit. During the second, he'd lost his right leg to a suicide bomber. He'd been working behind the bar for five months. Bridget Innes had been waitressing at the Bistro for more than a year. She was not a bad server, but she regularly ignored a rule I'd established about not dating customers.

"She okay?" I asked.

"Just a slap," Cassandra said. "But enough to leave a red splotch on her cheek. She cried and tried to hit him with her tray, but I intervened."

"This happen in the bar, in front of customers?"

"It was early. Just a couple of martini drinkers. They seemed to like the show. I told Bridget she could take the night off, but she preferred to stay. So I sent Juan home and put Josef on bar detail. Didn't want whatever it was to start up again."

"Juan go quietly?"

"Like a lamb. He tried to apologize to her, but Bridget wasn't in a forgiving mood. Some temper on that girl."

"Lovers' quarrel?" I asked.

Cassandra held up a hand. "When you hired me, Billy, I told you I'd take care of every aspect of the Bistro except for one. I do not get involved in HR matters."

"Forget human relations. Were they sleeping together? Or was it something else?"

"I don't know. I don't care. I have presented you with the problem, which is as far as I go."

"Well, hell ... I guess you'd better send her up," I said. "And while you're at it, have her bring me a roast beef on rye and a glass of merlot. The Altadon 2002."

"Sure you wouldn't rather the Cristal '99?" she asked.

I stuck my tongue out at her departing back.

Fearless, that's me.

I was perusing Bridget's file when there was a tentative knock on the door.

Assuming it was she with my supper, I placed the file in a desk drawer and said, "Come on in."

The tiny woman with a mop of red hair and an uncharacteristically sheepish grin was definitely not Bridget. "Hope you don't mind my droppin' in like this, Billy," Gin McCauley, the morning-show coanchor, said. "Hildy and Spence suggested I get lost while they have a little chat with Gretchen about mah contract." Her Greenville, Mississippi, accent, usually subdued except in moments of stress, was in full bloom.

"Glad to have the company, Gin," I said, rising and gesturing toward a chair. "Sit. Please. Want me to order something up?"

"No, thank you. Sure ah'm not distractin' you from somethin' important?"

"What could be more important than being distracted by you?"

She smiled. "Fact is, Billy, I been meanin' to ask yo' advice about somethin'. You were sweet enough to help me get loose from that son of a bitch Bobby Lee."

The reference was to a relationship that had turned ugly when Gin
refused to "lend" her then boyfriend, Robert Lee Ferell, seventy thousand dollars to semi-finance a documentary on media bias in America. His fallback position was to threaten her. He'd secretly filmed one of their more intimate couplings and told her that unless she paid him the seventy thou, he would give the TMZ and Gawker websites something to make their day.

She hadn't known what to do. Going to the police was out of the question. Ditto the network. She didn't even trust her manager or her agent to keep the secret. Instead she'd settled on me.

I wasn't surprised. When I was younger, I realized that I possessed something rare: Because of the way I looked or talked or because of my body language or manner, people trusted me. Men, women, black, white, or in between. Didn't matter.

In my teens, I misused this gift. But the karmic danger of that to body and soul had been brought home to me in a particularly brutal and violent way. I'll save the details of that part of my life for another time when we've known each other a little better.

Let's just say that for nearly two decades I've done penance for my misdeeds by justifying the faith that people seem to have in me. The closest I've come to falling back on my old ways was in getting Gin out of her bind. I conned her ex-boyfriend into a situation, filmed by his own camera, resulting in a short movie that, if unspooled, would have led to his spending time in prison. He and I settled on a mutual agreement to let Net cruisers find something more positive to watch.

"What's the problem, Gin?"

"Nothin' like the last one," she said. "That was mah first and last cougah moment. As I hope you know, ah've been totally faithful to Ted evah since we met, even with him away so much."

"Ted" would be Theodore O. Parkhurst, byline "TOP," an investigative reporter for
Now Magazine
who'd spent nearly a year covering the progress of the war in Afghanistan. He seemed like a nice guy and an excellent journalist, and I hoped that Gin really was being faithful to him. And vice versa.

"My problem this time is strictly business, Billy. About my future on
Wake Up.
"