The Midnight Show Murders (2) (14 page)

Chapter
TWENTY-SIX

“Listen up,” Max Slaughter ordered from his position at the head of the table. Actually, it was a round table, following the example set by the planners of international sit-downs seeking to avoid the problem of choosing one attendant poobah over the others to sit at the head (or conversely, the foot). But television rehearsals are not known for their diplomacy, and anywhere the portly producer of the newly rechristened
The Midnight Show
chose to deposit his pear-shaped rear end automatically became the head.

To his left was his gofer, the pale, deadpan assistant producer, Trey Halstead. Beside Trey, Whisper Jansen was leaning forward, her scrubbed, unadorned face frozen in concentration as she aimed a Sony TG1, billed as the world’s smallest camcorder, at the producer, hoping to capture every syllable of his words of wisdom for her boss, Carmen Sandoval, and, after that, posterity, I suppose.

Next to her, Fitzpatrick slumped, his beard pressed against his chest, looking as if he’d had another rough night and exuding a boozy-sweaty musk that had prompted me to move my chair as far away from his as I could without bumping into our director, Tessa Ruscha.

Her sullen silence made me wonder if she was catching a Fitz whiff, too. Or maybe she was reacting to the not-so-funny two-lesbians joke Gibby Lewis was telling to a stand-up pal of his named Howard something, who was helping him with the opening monologue.

Howard laughed like a howler monkey even before the punch line, but the joke definitely wasn’t playing too well with floor manager Lolita Snapps, who’d been damaged in the bombing and was shaking her bandaged head at the comic’s choice of material.

If our final table mate had heard any of Gibby’s utterances, she wasn’t showing it. April Edding, whom I’d met at the villa the night of the rat, rested languidly on her chair, eyes active behind her large aviator glasses, as she studied her iPad.

“Zip it, Gibby,” Trey Halstead said, identifying the room’s main disruptive element and, from the look on our new, possibly temporary star’s pliable mug, making an instant enemy. Not that Trey cared. The pale young man’s only concern seemed to be satisfying Max’s every whim. Any other thoughts or deeds he kept under wraps.

“First, in case some of you may not have heard, I have some good news,” Max said. And April’s attentiveness was suddenly matching Whisper’s and Trey’s. “The police have caught the bastard who murdered Des. Not some druggie or fruitcake, as you may suspect. A well-known restaurateur, Roger Charbonnet. I
know
the guy. I’ve played cards with him at Hillcrest.”

“Christ, I know him, too,” Gibby said. “What was the deal? Why’d he do it?”

Max shrugged. “Cops haven’t said. Or what led them to him.”

“There’s going to be a news conference any minute,” April informed us. “I’ve been checking my
L.A. Times
alerts. Nothing yet.”

“Keep us posted,” Tessa said. “We all want to know what’s going on.”

I considered enlightening them. “It’s all because of me,” I could have said. But in spite of the occupational road I’d taken, I wasn’t really that “it’s me” guy. In fact, I should have known better than to even harbor that thought. I’d seen enough evidence of mental telepathy to believe in it.

“Billy.”

It was April who’d called my name. She was staring at me, smiling. “I must be slow today,” she said, holding up her iPad. “
The Smoking Gun
made the obvious connection.”

“What?” Max asked. “Lemme see.”

“The fight at Malibu,” April said. “Remember. It was all over the Internet. Billy tossing Roger Charbonnet into the pool.” By now, I had given up playing the “didn’t toss him in the pool” card.

“That’s right,” Gibby said, staring at me, mouth hanging open in a mixture of surprise and amusement.

They were all staring at me. And not in a totally friendly way. With the exception of Gibby’s pal, they’d all been affected by the explosion, and they no doubt felt I’d been hiding something they deserved to know—why Roger had gone from iron chef to behind-iron-bars chef.

What the heck
. Brueghel said the news would be out soon enough.

“The detectives believe Roger Charbonnet meant that bomb for me,” I said.

“It wasn’t … Des wasn’t …?” Fitz sputtered, trying to process what I’d just said.

“At the villa, the rat!” April exclaimed. “Tell them about the rat.”

“By all means,” Max said.

“Somebody broke into Des’s place, where I’ve been staying, and left a rat cooking in the oven,” I told them. “I thought it was just a bad joke. I should have taken it more seriously.”

“That can’t be,” Fitz said, shaking his shaggy head in obvious confusion. “The rat was …”

“Was what?” I asked.

He stared at me, glassy-eyed. Then he got it together. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m about as sharp as a beach ball today. Still bolloxed from last night.”

That’s when the ringtones started.

First was “Ode to Spring” on April’s iPhone. She answered, said a few words I couldn’t hear, and signed off. “Police Chief Weidemeyer is meeting with the press at the new headquarters at First and Spring.”

Max ordered Trey to turn on the TV set in the corner of the room.

Trey was complying when the lilting sounds of “Frim-Fram Sauce” issued from my pocket.

“Enough with the goddamn cellphones,” Max yelled. “Turn ’em off. This is supposed to be a rehearsal.”

My caller was Carmen Sandoval. “Hello, Billy,” she began.

“Carmen, I’m sorry,” I said, “but Max wants us to turn off our phones.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

I passed the word on to Max.

“Give Carmen my best,” he said.

“Okay, back on again,” I said.

“Bravo. Are you on, too, Whisper?”

I looked across the table and saw that Whisper had a phone to her ear. “Yes, I am, Carmen,” I heard her say through my phone.

The network veep summarized the
Smoking Gun
announcement in a few succinct words before asking me if the website was correct in assuming I was Roger’s intended victim.

“It looks that way,” I said.

“When I have more time, Billy, I would love to know why you’ve kept this information from the news-gathering network that’s paying you so handsomely. But right now, there are more important things to cover.

“You are about to be besieged by every media outlet in the free world. I’d like to remind you that as a WBC employee, you owe us a certain exclusivity on this fast-breaking story.”

I was not at all certain that was true. But if I wanted to continue working for the network, there was little point in discussing it.

“When we’re through talking, I want you to turn off your phone. Avoid the other media at all cost. If any of them manage to get past the gate, call security immediately.

“Now, Whisper, I’ll be phoning Wanda in D.C.”—Wanda Lorinski was the producer of the network’s half-hour
News Tonight!
—“to tell her Billy has confirmed the
Smoking Gun
rumor and that we, by that I mean you, Whisper, will have him ready in a studio here for a Q-and-A with Jim, as early in tonight’s show as Wanda can arrange.” Jim McBride anchored the nightly news half-hour from the nation’s capital.

“While I clear things with Wanda, please inform Max that he’ll have to shift things around on tonight’s show to make room for a more in-depth Billy interview. I’ll make sure that it will be plugged on the news.”

“Ah, about Billy’s
Midnight
interview?” Whisper asked, lowering her tiny voice even more than usual. “You don’t want Gibby to do it, right?”

“God, no. He’d pause mid-question for a fart joke. Get Marcus Oliphant.”

That was a name from the past. Marcus Oliphant had been the late-news anchor for the net’s L.A.-owned-and-operated station KWBC back when I’d lived in the city.

“But watch out for the old boy,” Carmen cautioned Whisper. “Telling him he’ll be guesting on a network show is liable to give him wood.”

“I’ll phone him,” Whisper said, without a hint of irony.

The conference call was over. Never once was I asked if I
wanted
to talk about my history with Roger Charbonnet in front of 8.5 million viewers.

“We have to rush, Billy,” Whisper said as she circled the table. “We’ve less than twenty-seven minutes to get you sponged and in the chair.”

As we headed to the door, Max bellowed, “Where the hell are you going, Billy? This is a rehearsal. There’s blocking …”

Whisper, her voice reedy but clear, evoked the name of Carmen, mentioned my
News Tonight!
appearance, and promised to have me back within the hour.

“No later,” Max said, trying to save face.

But Whisper wasn’t finished with him. “Oh, and about tonight’s show,” she said. “You’ll have to make a change in the lineup.”

“At this hour, that’s fucking impossible,” Max said, his face reddening. “Forget it.”

“Carmen will be very disappointed,” Whisper said.

For a second or two, Max pursed his lips and relaxed them, staring at the table in front of him. Then he stopped that and asked, “What is it she wants, exactly?”

“A longer interview with Billy. Conducted by Marcus Oliphant. It’ll be promoed on the evening news.”

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Max mumbled.

I could feel him glaring at our backs as we left the room. Closing the door behind us, I asked, “How often does Carmen put you in the middle like that?”

“This was the first time,” Whisper said, with more than a hint of wonder. “She likes to order people around herself. And now I know why. It’s fun.”

Chapter
TWENTY-SEVEN

The Jim McBride interview went smoothly enough. Fortunately, the press conference at LAPD headquarters had provided an abundance of footage in which Police Chief Clarence Weidemeyer, the latest in a revolving door of short-termers to occupy the position, explained the official theory: “We have arrested local restaurateur Roger Charbonnet in connection with the explosion that claimed the life of comedian and television talk-show host Desmond O’Day and destroyed portions of the Harold Di Voss Theater in Hollywood. It is our belief the explosive device was, in fact, intended to kill another performer on Mr. O’Day’s late-night show, William Blessing, whom Charbonnet considered a rival.”

For the most part, all I had to do was agree with Chief Weidemeyer’s report. There was a moment when McBride asked me about the source of Roger’s antipathy. To avoid getting into a discussion about who may or may not have murdered Tiffany Arden, I had to twist my answers so much I almost fell off my chair. McBride sensed my discomfort and moved on to another question.

The
Midnight
interview was another matter altogether.

In the first place, the whole show seemed off. Gibby’s opening monologue was neither clean enough to pass Bill Cosby’s standards nor vulgar enough to be distinctive. Most of it was of the “I shouldn’t even be doing this!” variety, none of it capable of eliciting more than a few errant chuckles from a studio audience that expected more, having been put through a tougher security check than it takes to get into the Pentagon.

Due to the low wattage of our celebrity guests—a TV hero from the seventies who was running for governor of Arizona, a starlet who took time from plugging her upcoming movie and her “naughty new website” to teach Gibby how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with his tongue, and Gilberto, the new Guatemalan singing sensation—my interview was kept till last.

By then the show seemed to be dragging on longer than the Academy Awards. Even more vexing, when the time finally came for our dog-and-pony routine, Marcus Oliphant seemed to think he was auditioning for
60 Minutes
. Or maybe FOX News.

“Tell us how you felt, Billy, when the universe suddenly exploded in a white flash of destruction and death?”

I stared at him, trying not to focus on how the thick pancake makeup was making his age-wrinkled face resemble a raised relief map of the Great Smoky Mountains. “A little like I feel now, Marcus,” I said. “Only not as vulnerable.”

His questions, though overly dramatic and verbose, were on target enough to get me to respond with a detailed account of the minutes leading up to the explosion.

“But how fortunate that was for you, up there above the chaos and madness. Tell us exactly what you were going through.”

“I was pretty uncomfortable, hanging twenty feet in the air. Des was singing. I remember thinking that when he finished his song I’d be lowered to the ground, so I was wishing he’d hurry it up. And …”

At that point, I realized I’d forgotten something about last night. Something possibly important that I should tell Detective Brueghel. Making that mental note, I committed one of television’s cardinal sins. I froze on camera. Not for very long, but enough to cause Marcus a few anxious moments. His eyes were starting to bulge, and he was turning pale under all that makeup.

Lolita, standing just to the left of the camera, reacted to the sudden silence by whipping her bandaged head in my direction. She placed a cupped hand behind one ear and wiggled it, glaring at me.

“And”—I repeated, trying to recall where I was in the answer—“Des stopped singing and said his goodbye to the audience. And that’s when the explosion took place.”

“You were knocked unconscious?”

“I think so,” I replied. “A lot of things were happening all at once.”

“And Desmond O’Day died?” Marcus said.

“That would be an understatement,” I said.

“You two were close, you and Des. I believe you were living together.”

Huh?
“Hey, Marcus, just because two guys barbecue a few steaks in their bathrobes, it doesn’t mean …” I stopped because the perplexed look on Marcus’s face reminded me with whom I was dealing. “Actually, to answer your question seriously, Des and I first met less than two weeks ago on a flight out here from New York. He mentioned that there was an empty guesthouse on his property and asked if I wanted to use it during my short visit. So I guess you could say we were living together.

“Des seemed like a nice enough guy, and his death is certainly a tragedy. But we were not what I would call close friends.”

“Uh-huh. Well, let’s move on to the presumed villain of the piece, Roger Charbonnet. He hated you for something that happened in the past. Tell us about it.”

It was a very broad question that required a slippery answer. “You’d have to ask him why he hated me, if indeed he did.”

“Can’t we assume that? He tried to kill you.”

“Maybe we should let a jury decide what Roger Charbonnet did, or tried to do,” I said.

“The evidence seems pretty conclusive. But you’re correct, Billy. Innocent until proven, and all that that implies. So how do you suppose the
killer
managed to get the explosive into the theater?”

I was a little surprised to realize I had an answer. That rear door that, for some reason, wasn’t as guarded as it should have been when Fitz and I made our exits. But it was another strike against the network’s security arrangements, so I answered, “I wouldn’t want to speculate.”

“According to the
L.A. Times
website, Char … the
killer
was disguised as a stagehand,” Marcus said, “wearing a black bodysuit similar to that worn by the legitimate stagehands. Those outfits were unique, weren’t they?”

I went into a semi-elaborate description of the ninja suits and how they fit into the set and lighting designs of the show. The designs and the black suits were not being used in the show’s present iteration.

“The situation was made to order for him, wasn’t it?” Marcus said. “He puts on the suit and becomes … the invisible man.”

“That’s a likely assumption,” I said.

“Oh, it’s more than that,” Marcus said. “He was definitely dressed in the black bodysuit.”

I gave him a patronizing smile. “Unless there was an eyewitness or a confession, I don’t see how even the savants at the
L.A. Times
could know without doubt what the killer was wearing.”

“The police found the black bodysuit at Roger Charbonnet’s home,” Marcus said. “He’d tried to hide it in his closet.”

As surprising as that revelation was, I remained aware of the little red light on the camera and refrained from letting my jaw drop, at least not too far. “Well, let’s hear it for the police,” I said, before getting another of Lolita’s “Speak up” signals.

“It’s believed the bomb was some form of homemade plastic explosive,” Marcus said. “Possibly as small as a cigarette pack or a man’s wallet. Did you see anything like that?”

“No,” I said, not daring to challenge him on the “It’s believed.” I hadn’t heard a thing about what the bomb had looked like. The info had probably been in that same damned
L.A. Times
report.

“If it was that small, it seems logical he had hidden it under his clothes,” Marcus speculated. “He had access to the stage area. Am I right that there were strips of tape to indicate where you—or as it happened, Des O’Day—were supposed to be standing at the close of the show?”

I answered in the affirmative.

“Then it was just a matter of the killer walking out and leaving the bomb near the tape strips,” Marcus concluded.

“It could have happened that way,” I said. I didn’t really think so, but this wasn’t the ideal time or place to hold a discussion of how the bomb was positioned or triggered.

“Well, I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us when I say, of Desmond O’Day”—he turned to face the camera—“good night, sweet comic prince. May flights of angels sing you to your rest. And to our own Billy Blessing,
bravo
, sir. Blessed are we to have you with us still.”

Lolita was giving him the “hurry, hurry” arm windup.

“This is Marcus Oliphant, discussing last night’s tragedy with one of its near victims, WBC’s own Chef Billy Blessing. Stay tuned. There’s much more to come on
The Midnight Show.
”