The Talk Show Murders (32 page)

“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.”

“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.

“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.”

“I don’t understand what you and Billy are talking about, Daddy,” Jonny said.

“That’s okay,” Baker said. “It was a long time ago, son,” he said. “Things were different.”

“Right. Now you kill a better class of people,” I said. “With your children as your accomplices.”

“Eat or get eaten,” he said. “It’s the new American business motto.”

“Only in your part of the zoo,” I said.

“Enough!” He turned to Dal. “Take care of this.”

I hoped I still had one card left to play.

“Did it feel like old times, Baker, seeing those flames again, feeling the warmth of the fire, getting that whiff of smoke and burning flesh?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The fire you set at Ubora Gallery. The one that killed the man who was helping me. Mantata.” I forced myself not to look at Dal.

“I didn’t—”

“No. I guess maybe you let the boys do it.”

“Not me,” Jonny said. “I don’t like fire. I only watched while Dickie—”

“Shut up!” his brother shouted.

He barely got the words out before Dal shot him in the head.

Baker watched, stunned, as his younger son crumpled to the floor. Then he wheeled on Dal in full fury.

“
Why
?” he cried.

Dal didn’t answer. He stood rigid. Eyes glassy.

I remembered what Mantata and Trejean and even Dal had said about the way anger transformed him.

Baker clawed at something in his robe pocket.

I turned and ran past Jonny, who was raising his weapon. I grabbed Kiki and pulled her to the floor, covering her body with mine as the gunfire began.

It was over almost immediately.

Still, I stayed in place, Kiki wiggling under me. At first I was afraid that I had been shot and would feel the pain at any second. Then I was worried that someone was standing near us, waiting for me to move before firing.

“Billy …”

It was Dal.

I rolled away from Kiki and stood.

I was, literally, the last man standing.

Jonny was on his back about two yards away, hand still clutching his gun, open dead eyes staring at the ceiling. His father lay on his side, blood seeping through his silk robe. Dal was braced against the wall near the door. Still breathing, but not easily. Staring at me.

I pulled Kiki to her feet and deposited her back on the couch before going to Dal.

As I approached, he coughed blood. He’d been shot twice that I could see, a probably fatal chest wound and a gash along his right cheek. “Just … wanted … to find out … who …”

“I got that.”

“They … all dead?”

I nodded.

“Get … outta here.”

I took out my phone and dialed 911.

“No,” he said. “Go … I’m … dead.”

And he was.

The Winnetka Police Department has a chief, a deputy chief, and an administration staff of two commanders, four sergeants, and eighteen officers, nearly all of whom visited the Baker compound within the next twelve hours. Along with investigators from the North Regional Major Crimes Task Force (NORTAF), a forensics team, paramedics for Kiki, and Detectives Hank Bollinger and Ike Ruello, whom I’d notified.

The Winnetka officers were not overjoyed by the presence of the Chicago team, but my feeling was that since they were investigating the murders of Patton and Larry Kelsto, they deserved to be on the scene. And I wanted to be on their good side, in case I needed them later.

Kiki and I told the same story many times that night and on into Saturday morning. At Baker’s request, his sons had murdered Patton and Kelsto, who’d been attempting to blackmail him with the knowledge
that, under his birth name, Giovanni Polvere, he’d been a member of the Chicago Outfit in the late eighties. They’d burned down Mantata’s gallery and killed him because they’d mistakenly thought he’d been in on the blackmail scheme. That’s also why they kidnapped and killed Nat Parkins. As for Kiki, they decided to use her to lure me to their party to find out what I knew about their father’s history. Which was nothing.

What made them think you did, Mr. Blessing?

From what Baker said, Patton told them I was involved. I have no idea why. I met him only last Friday on
Midday with Gemma
. We met once or twice after that and didn’t exactly hit it off. But I can think of no reason why he’d want to get me in trouble with killers like these. Maybe he was just a man who liked to cause people trouble.

The investigators from the CPD, the WPD, and NORTAF seemed to accept that vague speculation. I guess Patton’s reputation succeeded him.

Bollinger and Ruello drove us back to the hotel.

Kiki was uncharacteristically silent through most of the trip. But just before we arrived, she said to me, “There are two things we have to straighten out if I am going to continue working with you.”

I saw the detectives suddenly snap to attention.

“Okayyy,” I said, warily.

“You have to believe I didn’t know—”

“Of course I do.”

She kissed my cheek. Then she said, “And the next time we’re in a greenroom and I tell you I’m getting bad vibes and you should pass on the show, you bloody well pass on the show.”

I smiled at her. “Done,” I said.

The aftermath of what some press wag labeled the Winnetka Wipeout was bigger and more intense than either of my previous brushes with homicide had been. Both Kiki’s life and mine were changed, if not forever, at least for the immediate future. Everyone wanted to use us for fun and/or profit. That included the police; district attorneys; my agent, Wally Wing, who seemed to think he was now representing Kiki, too; the network, who insisted I become a semipermanent part of
Hotline Tonight
while signing Kiki to a new contract that would kick in as soon as the show returned to New York.