The Midnight Show Murders (2) (9 page)

Chapter
EIGHTEEN

“Moonlight madness and mirth at midnight. Tonight at the midnight hour.
O’Day at Night. Live
from L.A.” That was pretty much the substance of the ads running in the East Coast media. Since the telecast would begin at nine p.m. Pacific Coast time, the “live” aspect would be missing locally, of course. The L.A. network affiliate, KWBC, reserved that family-hour slot for the ratings hits
Hot Bodies
(two wacky young coroner’s assistants cut comedy capers in the morgue) and
Flaunt It!
(male and female runway models compete for the attention of single multimillionaires). Therefore, the hour would air nationwide (prerecorded in L.A.) a half-hour after the usual talk-show time of eleven-thirty p.m.

Actually, the show wouldn’t be precisely live in the East, either. It would be seen on a seven-second delay to allow the ever-watchful standards-and-practices folks to nip profanity and wardrobe malfunctions in the bud.

These particulars, as important as they might have been for the network and the show’s producer, were of small consequence to me. As I aimed the Lexus in the direction of Hollywood that night, my main concern was that I arrive on time for the telecast. I was expected at least an hour before the show went on the air. Hearing tales of traffic congestion on the highway heading east from Santa Monica, I’d given myself an hour for the trip. So I touched down at a little before seven p.m., with more than enough time to relax alone for a bit in the dressing room I would be sharing with country-western singer Rennie Nolan.

Someone had been kind enough to stock the room with iced champagne and plates of caviar and crackers and, it being L.A., carrot sticks and celery stalks filled with feta cheese and something that was probably tabbouleh. Since the morning show was telecast live, I’d learned the hard way that you shouldn’t drink fluids too close to showtime unless you want to suffer the torture of a full, unrelieved bladder. Ditto for eating. I’d fixed a tuna sandwich at two-thirty p.m., washed it down with bottled water, and kept dry and food-free thereafter. So I was thirsty and hungry, and the sight of that frosty bottle of champagne and caviar was too damn tempting.

I decided to stroll down the hall and pay Des a visit. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since Gibby mentioned his belief that I was a company spy. This would be a good time to quash that notion.

With my tux in the hands of the wardrobe folks, who were steaming out the wrinkles, I rewrapped the elastic bandage on my ankle, slipped on the terry-cloth robe the production company had provided, and left the room. The door to Des’s dressing room was shut. I was about to knock when I heard him speaking angrily and loudly enough for the words to penetrate the door.

“Cop on, ya eejit. The bloke’s got nuthin’. An’ you’re shittin’ bricks. Jasus, you make me wanna gawk.”

I couldn’t tell if he was talking to someone on the phone or in the room with him. No less curious than the next guy, I moved closer. I had my ear about a foot away from the door when:

“Nice legs, Billy.”

I jumped back, my heart pounding with that just-been-caught beat.

Vida Evans was facing me in the hall. She looked beautiful, dressed in a sensational shiny aqua dress slit up the left side almost to her hip. A Versace, she would inform me later. Actually, the way she put it was: “This little Versace?”

“Vida,” I said with a croak, almost running toward her and away from Des’s door. “Hi.”

“You’re looking just a little … undone,” she observed.

I tightened the robe, though she might have been talking about my awkwardness.

“I wasn’t expec—What’s up?” I asked.

“Just dropped by to say hello,” she said. “And to tell you how much I enjoyed working with you on those spots. I hope we can do it again. You okay?”

“Sure. Just … before-the-show butterflies.”

“I know the feeling,” she said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to … whatever it was you were doing out here in your robe.”

“Taking a walk. That’s … all I was doing. Are you sticking around for the after-party?”

“I … I’m not sure.”

“Please,” I said. “I promise to be a little more unflappable. We might even have a full-blown conversation.”

She smiled. “I’ll try to make it.” Judging by the way she said it, I figured the odds at one hundred to one against. “In any case, Billy, break a leg.”

“It’s what everyone seems to want,” I said.

An hour later, I was standing stage left, hidden from a rather noisy audience by one of Pfrank’s scrim/light-cloaking combinations, while a sound tech adjusted my wireless lapel mike. He asked me to mumble a few words into it, stepped back, gave me a wink and a thumbs-up, and promptly disappeared.

I was feeling a little better than adequate for the job ahead. Not only was my mike working, my freshly steamed tux fit me perfectly, a symbolic emerald-green display handkerchief peeking from its pocket. The stomach butterflies had been replaced by an unhealthy but invigorating rush of adrenaline that was having the added benefit of deadening the pain in my ankle.

Onstage, in the spotlight, Gibby Lewis was desperately trying to warm up the crowd with a routine that might have had the late George Carlin groaning in his coffin. Hell, it might have had George Burns groaning. “First off, you’ve never heard of the disease,” Gibby was saying, “because some advertising writer made it up. Ever see the commercial for Septumagic? It goes something like this: ‘Are you suffering from nostril inflammation? Are your nasal walls falling down? You could have the pain, the social embarrassment of … 
nasalitis
!’

“In the TV enactment, a young woman is sitting by herself in a very chichi restaurant with a schnozzola as red as a monkey’s rear end. Camera pulls back to another table, where two upscale femmes are talking about her. ‘Uh-oh,’ one is saying, ‘looks to me like Gladys could use a little Septumagic.’ And the other one says, ‘Yeah? Looks to me like she’s due for another trip to Betty Ford.’ ”

Granted, it was a tough crowd, a lot of them in the biz. There were executives with the network and West Coast affiliates; talent agents and their clients, who were showing Des their support in the hope of reciprocity; and his comedian friends and competitors from Vegas and elsewhere. Judging by the reaction to Gibby’s less-than-stellar material, he was getting through to about one-tenth of the audience. The others were talking among themselves or being distracted by the cameras and/or a scowling Lolita Snapps, in a white gown, sneakers, and a headset, looking a little like Dennis Rodman in drag as she managed the floor.

“And the small-print advice,” Gibby went on bravely, “always delivered by a British lady at very high speed … ‘Not recommended for anyone suffering from asthma or bronchial discomfort, ruptured mucous membranes, apnea, hoof-and-mouth disease. If profuse bleeding occurs, or intense sneezing, or if your nose remains engorged and stiff for longer than four hours, seek medical advice immediately.’ ”

Across from me, also hidden from the studio audience, Des, in a tux but with a black shirt open at the neck and a bright green cummerbund to indicate his swaggering nonconformity, was being helped onto the crescent moon by two ninja minions.

Onstage, Gibby was pointing to the applause signs.

We were less than a minute from magic time, and my throat was suddenly very dry.

With Des comfortably situated, facing the curved edge of the moon, riding it, cowboy-style, the ninjas began operating the winch device that gathered the cable, hoisting the contraption aloft. Des rose up to a height of twenty-five feet or more, his Irish mug expressionless. I wondered if he was aware of the precariousness of his situation. A fall from that height probably wouldn’t be fatal, barring a broken neck, but it would certainly do damage enough to sideline his talk-show hosting for a while.

There was nothing wrong with Gibby’s timing. As soon as Des and the swaying moon arrived at the catwalk, the writer warm-up thanked the unresponsive audience and hotfooted it from the stage. He brushed by me, trailing a familiar odor of fear and flop sweat.

I turned my attention quickly to Lolita, who was holding up a hand, indicating
Stand by
.

With my heart pounding, I waited and watched.

Only seconds more.

I took a deep breath and released it, saying a silent prayer that I would remember the intro and get it out without a spoonerism. At those moments, I always thought of the legendary Harry von Zell flub, “Ladies and gentlemen … President Hoobert Heever.”

Suddenly, in response to an order to Fitz’s headset from the director’s booth, he and the band began blasting out the catchy theme he’d composed, and home viewers on the East Coast were seeing the prerecorded title sequence with Des romping about L.A.

When the music softened and segued into a few repeated bars, Lolita’s big finger pointed at me like the barrel of a gun. My cue to get to work.

“Frommmm Hollywood …” I began, consciously channeling all the announcers I could recall, from Gene Rayburn to the subtly satiric delivery of
Saturday Night Live
’s Don Pardo. “…  the Worldwide Broadcasting Company presents the debut of … 
O’Day at Night
 … with our special guests … Nashville’s number-one singing sensation … Rennie Nolan … from the WBC megahit
Flaunt It!
 … the beautiful Emmalou Adams … direct from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas … the hilarious Plimsol Brothers … and the mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Lucille Marquez.”

The stage and the theater were suddenly enveloped in darkness, thanks to Pfrank’s oddball visual concept.

There was an intake of breath from the surprised audience, but I was prepared for the blackout and didn’t miss a beat. “And now here he is … the Celtic Lord of the Laugh … that irrepressible son of a
shamrock
 … who’s trying not to be too starstruck in Hollywood-land … Des … mond … O’Day-eee!”

A red dot appeared on one of the three cameras precisely at the same instant a spotlight captured Des up near the catwalk, straddling the moon. He looked surprised and startled, and pretended to lose his balance, wrapping both arms around the upper part of the crescent.

The studio audience responded with a universal gasp. Then some giggles. And as Des righted himself, grinning from ear to ear, arms extended in a “Look Ma, no hands” gesture, the applause and cheers rose energetically and on cue.

The image of a starry night sky was being projected on a backdrop and, with luck, the televised illusion would be of the comedian floating through the heavens on the crescent moon, dodging huge hanging stars while singing the Harold Arlen–Yip Harburg classic “It’s Only a Paper Moon.”

He was about halfway to the floor when the moon jerked and he was almost tossed off for real.

“Whoa,” he interrupted the song to shout at the two black-cloaked stagehands nobody could see. “Take it easy, boys.” He looked at the camera and added, “That’s what you get, folks, for usin’ stagehands sent over compliments of Jay Leno!”

There was a rim shot courtesy of Fitz’s alert drummer, followed by laughs and more applause from the studio audience.

Des picked up the song again and, finishing it in time with his arrival at stage level, hopped from the unstable moon with athletic grace.

To the encouraging sound of whistles and shouts and more applause, he did a surprisingly professional pirouette and punctuated that with a low bow. “Good evening, good evening, ladies, gentlemen, and all the many alternative genders in between. Welcome to our first big show in this new
little
theater.

“You folks at home probably can’t tell how small this building is …”

“How … small … is … it?” the band asked in unison, an homage to the late Johnny Carson that would, with hope, link Des to the forever king of late-night entertainment.

“It’s so small, you can’t even begin to Twitter or tweet. The best you can do is
twuh
. And my dressing room? The prison cells at Guantánamo Bay were bigger. Better furnished, too, now that I think of it.

“But we have the magic of television on our side. And that’s no little thing. For example, all I have to do is point my finger and … bid-a-boom …”

Fitz and his band were suddenly illuminated, the former in a white tux and a green T-shirt, his musicians in green tuxes over white T-shirts.

“…  allow me to introduce you to me auld boyhood chum Fitzpatrick and his chart-bustin’ band o’ merry minstrels … Knackers!”

When that round of applause began to subside, Des pointed at me, and I was suddenly hit by a blinding light. “I think you all know my good friend from
Wake Up, America!
, that master chef, restaurateur, raconteur, and, for this week, my right-hand man. Billy Blessing!”

I bowed, not quite as deeply as Des, and smiled. As I walked toward him, the intricate set and lighting design passed another test. A leather chair and couch seemed to materialize, while shadowy stagehands scurried to the wings.

“What’s
this
all about, then?” Des asked, indicating the furniture.

Going along with the bit, which was from the clueless comic/smart straight man playbook, I explained that the chair was for him and the couch for his guests.

“And then what? We just sit here?”

“You converse with your guests,” I said. “Discuss important things, or entertaining things. What did you think you’d be doing out here for an hour every night?”

“Frankly, mate, I didn’t have a plonker’s plink.”

The camera faded out on Des’s amazingly pliable face holding on an exaggerated what-do-I-know? expression while the audience reacted with laughter.

And … we cut to a commercial, with Lolita giving us a reassuring thumb-forefinger circle. Everything was okay.

So far.

My dressing-room mate, Rennie Nolan, was scheduled to be the first guest. But he was among the missing and, in a bit of panic improvisation, it was decided by the director in her booth that the Plimsols, a trio of high-energy comedy midget acrobats, be brought on early.