The Midnight Show Murders Read online

  BY AL ROKER AND DICK LOCHTE

  The Morning Show Murders

  The Midnight Show Murders

  The Midnight Show Murders is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Al Roker Entertainment

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Roker, Al

  The midnight show murders : a billy blessing novel / Al Roker and Dick Lochte.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33978-6

  1. Television personalities—Fiction. 2. Celebrity chefs—Fiction.

  3. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Lochte, Dick. II. Title.

  PS3618.O537M53 2010

  813′.6—dc22 2010026890

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to my wife,

  Deborah Roberts.

  How I ended up with such a

  special woman is still a mystery to me.

  To Courtney, Leila, and

  Nicky: I know you are surprised

  I wrote a mystery because you

  think I don’t have a clue.

  I love you all.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  About the Authors

  Chapter

  ONE

  My love affair with Los Angeles began to wane twenty-three years ago, the morning a cleaning crew found Tiffany Arden’s body in a dumpster behind Chez Anisette, a very popular restaurant of the day. Her head had been pulverized. If you’re ghoulish enough to want a more detailed description than that, then go ahead and Google the media coverage of the murder.

  There was a lot of it.

  Much of it was accurate. Some was not. For example, it was widely reported that her murderer was unknown. Not true. I was pretty sure I knew who he was. And I knew that he was still at large, enjoying a rich, full life in the City of Angels.

  “Just listen ta this, Billy.” The gruff but lilting voice of Irish pop singer-guitarist Jimmy Fitzpatrick interrupted my morose thoughts with a statistic almost as disturbing. “There are two thousand, nine hundred an’ forty-three things that can cock-up the average airplane, any one of ’em capable of plummetin’ us to earth an’ certain death. Would ya believe it?”

  Fitz, my seatmate aboard American Airlines flight 349 to Los Angeles, was reading a cheery little nonbook he’d picked up at JFK, What Could Go Wrong?

  “Thanks for sharing,” I said, and picked up my airport purchase, a Walter Mosley paperback, from my lap, where I’d rested it while musing about poor Tiffany.

  “O’ course, this is not the average airplane, since we’re travelin’ in the comp’ny of the future king o’ late-night tele,” Fitz added, making sure he was heard by the king, who was sitting across the aisle.

  Off camera and semi-relaxed, the comedian Desmond O’Day was a wiry bantamweight in his forties with a V-shaped face and short, neatly coifed hair so blond it was almost silver. He had a penchant for tight, black apparel, which presently included linen trousers and a T-shirt designed to display his workout arm muscles and mini-six-pack. He paused in his perusal of a script to glare over his rimless half-glasses at his shaggy-haired, bearded music director.

  “Stop botherin’ Billy, ya sod,” he said. “The man’s doin’ us a big favor, travelin’ all across the country to help us kick off the show.”

  Fitz, wincing from having incurred the displeasure of his old pal and new boss, said, “Sorry, Billy.”

  He gave me an apologetic smile and leaned back in his seat, silent as the late King Tut.

  “A little conversation would be fine, Fitz,” I said, “as long as it’s about something other than us plummeting to the ground in a screaming death plunge, then being vaporized in a fireball of death.”

  He kept his lips zipped, evidently convinced that a command from Des O’Day was not to be taken lightly. He was a better judge of that than I. He’d known Des since they were boys together on the Emerald Isle, while I’d just met the man.

  Oh, I’m Billy Blessing, by the way. Chef Billy Blessing, to be formal about it.

  For a decade and a half, I served in other chefs’ kitchens before opening my own place, Blessing’s Bistro, in Manhattan. It’s famous for its steaks and chops, and the food we prepare and serve has earned a top rating in Gault Milleau, of which I am quite proud.

  My fame, such as it is, comes only indirectly from my culinary skills. I’m a cohost on the Worldwide Broadcasting Company’s morning news and entertainment show Wake Up, America! weekdays seven to nine a.m. If you’re one of the show’s four million viewers, you’ve probably seen me, the guy who, I’ve been told, looks a little like a slightly stockier, clean-shaven (head as well as face) version of Eddie Murphy.

  I provide a daily WUA! segment on food preparation, but I have other chores, too. I do remotes, interview visitors to NYC who line up on the street each morning outside the studio, review books, chat with authors who are flogging their wares, and, whenever possible, flog my own wares, which, in addition to the Bistro, include a weekly cooking show on the Wine & Dine Cable Network, Blessing’s in the Kitchen, a line of premium frozen dinners, and a couple of cookbooks.

  At that particular moment I was flying from New York to Los Angeles to add two new credits to my list. One of them involved the Irishman across the aisle. Though you couldn’t have told it by his sour scowl, Des was very funny and quick-witted, and he’d parlayed success on the stand-up circuit and a featured role as the cynical, sex-obsessed photographer in the popular sitcom A Model Life into an upper-strata g
ig as host of his own show, O’Day at Night, WBC’s entry in the post-prime-time talk-show sweepstakes, set to debut in precisely nine days.

  I’d been tapped as the new show’s first weekly guest announcer. Its producer, a Falstaffian wheeler-dealer named Max Slaughter, told me I’d been Des’s first choice. My agent-lawyer, Wally Wing, who, unlike most members of both of his professions, has never heard the term “candy-coating,” admitted that Des had wanted someone on the order of Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or, at the very least, the ex–governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gretchen Di Voss, the head of the network, somehow avoided laughing in his face and offered him Howie Mandell or me. Howie had other commitments.

  “Why wouldn’t I have other commitments?” I’d asked Wally.

  “Well, one reason—Gretchen wants you to do it. She feels it would be, in her words, ‘an act of synchronicity.’ You’d be the bridge between Wake Up and At Night, getting viewers of the morning show to sample the late show while at the same time giving At Night’s fans a taste of the morning show.”

  “I’d love to meet these viewers who are up from seven in the morning till after midnight,” I’d replied. “But, okay, that explains why the network wants me to do the show. Why in God’s name would I agree to spend two weeks in L.A., away from home, hearth, and restaurant?”

  Wally had grinned and said, “The real reason’s got nothing to do with the O’Day show. It’s … wait for it … Sandy Selman wants to make a movie about you and the Felix thing.”

  The Felix thing. A typically Wally way of summing up one of the more unpleasant events of my life. A little more than a year ago, an executive at the network was murdered, and for a number of reasons, real or imagined, I was put at the top of the cops’ suspect list. Then an international assassin known as Felix the Cat got involved and all hell broke loose. I was threatened, nearly roasted alive, and shot at. And I lost a woman I cared for.

  The Felix thing.

  “Okay,” I said, “a guy I’ve never heard of wants to make a movie about a devastating experience I’ve spent the last year trying to forget. Tell me why I have to go to L.A.?”

  “You’ve never heard of Sandy Selman?” was Wally’s response.

  “Okay, I’ve heard of him. He makes movies that are ninety percent computer graphics, eight percent sex, and two percent end credits. So why do I have to go to L.A.?”

  “To write the book,” Wally said in the singsong manner Big Bird uses to speak to kids.

  “What book?”

  “The book you’re going to be writing in L.A.”

  “What makes you think I can write a book?”

  “How hard can it be? Paris Hilton has written a book. Miley Cyrus has written a book. Hell, the goofy weatherman on the Today show’s written five books. You may be the only person in show business who hasn’t written a book.”

  “Well, I did the cookbooks,” I said.

  “My point exactly,” Wally said.

  “Why do I have to go to L.A. to write it? Last I checked, it was possible to write one in Manhattan.”

  “Not if we want Sandy Selman to produce the film version. He likes to be able to look over his writers’ shoulders as they work. And don’t worry about that. It’s Harry Paynter’s shoulders he’ll be looking over.”

  “Ahhhhhh. Suddenly, it all becomes clear,” I said. “I’m guessing Harry is one of your literary clients, and he’s going to be helping me write the book.”

  “On the nose,” Wally said, tapping his almost nonexistent schnoz in an impressive display of his expertise at charades. “He’ll also be writing the screenplay.”

  “How altruistic of you, Wally! Oh, wait … in addition to your agent fees for both of us, you’ll probably be getting a packager percent, too, right?”

  “What’s with the ’tude, bro? I assure you, this little jaunt is gonna be worth your while.”

  “It’s not the money,” I said. “I trust you to handle that. It’s going to L.A.”

  “Spending two or three weeks on the coast is gonna kill you, Billy?”

  Little did he know.

  Chapter

  TWO

  “Change seats with me, mate,” Des O’Day said to Fitz, who leapt to meet the request. Unfortunately, in his zeal, he’d neglected to unsnap his seat belt, and it nearly cut him in two.

  “Uh, oh, Jaysus! Sorry, Des,” he said, freeing himself this time and hopping into the aisle.

  “Save the low comedy for the show, boyo,” Des said as he eased past the bearded man and slid onto the vacated seat.

  “Man’s as thick as two short planks,” he said, winking at me.

  I said nothing, merely gave him a questioning look.

  “Well, Billy, suppose you tell me what ball of shite’s awatin’ me in lotusland?”

  “Could you be a little more specific?”

  “What’s the city like? I know the jokes. It’s a great place to live if you’re an orange. In Malibu, you can lie on the sand and stare at the stars, or vice versa. I’ve heard ’em all. But what’s it really like?”

  “Your guess would be better than mine,” I said. “I haven’t been out there in years.”

  “Twixt you and me, mate,” he said, lowering his voice, “the longest I’ve spent in the so-called Angel City has been forty-eight hours, and most of that was in the airport.”

  “But you’ve been there preparing for the show, right?”

  “I’ve taken some quick runs in and out, mainly to meet with our fearless producer, Slaughter. And to check the progress on the theater conversion. It’s near the WBC lot in Hollywood. For the last thirty or forty years it was a playhouse where they put on live dramas. Last time I was there, some of that ‘Don’t throw away our history’ bullshite was goin’ on, but I hear that’s mellowed some.

  “I didn’t see the point of gettin’ involved in any of that. So I’ve been puttin’ off the big move, and the publicity, till the last bloody minute.”

  “Last, indeed,” I said. “You go on the air in nine days.”

  “They don’t need me to cobble the feckin’ set,” he said angrily. “All I’m expected to do is move kit and caboodle to a strange and, from all reports, loony land; get me fixed up in a proper house; keep my pale Irish flesh from the incessant, cancerous sun; find a whole new stable o’ slappers; and, finally, hobble in front of a camera and try not to look like bloody Fecky the Ninth.”

  Not having an Irish slang dictionary handy, I was pleased with myself for making sense of at least a third of everything Des said. “You’re a funny man,” I told him. “You’ll do fine.”

  “Don’t go Father Feeney on me, Billy,” he said. “I haven’t got a baldy, and I know it. I tried like hell to convince Gretchen to do the show from New York. It’s my bad cess she didn’t see the logic of it. I mean, Christ, look at the crowd of shows out here every night. Leno, Kimmel, George Lopez. And the bloody Scot. And now feckin’ Conan’s back. All hustlin’ for A-list wankers an’ makin’ the same bloody jokes about smog, agents, and the stupid culchies.

  “Meanwhile, Dave and Fallon, bein’ the only players in Big Town, can afford to do hardball comedy, pick ’n’ choose from the top-name caffers, and still get the ratin’s. I mean, what’s Gretchen thinkin’?”

  At this point I should confess I had given up deciphering what Des was saying, and to a failure of character. I was romantically involved with Gretchen until she suffered a lapse in taste and dumped me. There’s more to that story, of course, and if Wally has his way, you may be reading about it someday or seeing it in some exaggerated context on a movie screen. For the now, I mention it only to explain why I was secretly amused at the thought of Gretchen reacting to the carping and complaints of a sometimes-incomprehensible brash comic she was about to transform from sitcom sidekick into brand-name headliner.

  I could imagine her biting her tongue, secretly cursing Des. Possibly even cursing her father, Commander Di Voss, for deciding that the network (of which he was president and chairman
of the board) needed a late-night talk-show presence. Was it wrong of me to take some delight in an ex-sweetie’s distress? An unfaithful ex-sweetie? I think not.

  “The fact of it, Billy,” Des was saying, “I need the edginess of a real city, like New York or Dublin, to keep the noggin noodles crisp. I’m afraid of what the feckin’ sun and the smog does to your wit. Not to mention everything being all spread out like bloody cheese on a cracker. Hell, I don’t even know how to steer a car. I’m gonna have to depend on a bloody chauffeur. Or Fitz.”

  “Life is tough in paradise,” I said.

  “If it was like Vegas, maybe I could work around the sun and the rest of the shite. You know, just hang in the hotel, do your work, and order up the food, drink, and scrubbers. But Gretchen says I’ve got to use the feckin’ city in my stand-up. And to use it, you’ve gotta know it.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I won’t have to use it,” I said.

  “As much as you’ve bounced about, I can’t believe you never spent serious time in L.A.”

  “Nothing worth mentioning,” I said.

  “Then why am I wastin’ my scintillatin’ personality on you?” he asked, giving me a half smile to show he was only half kidding. He removed his glasses and tossed them on the empty seat next to his script. “Might as well go check the talent on the flight.”

  I wasn’t unhappy to see him wandering off to treat the hostesses to his dubious charm. Aside from his being pretty much the antithesis of a good traveling companion, I really didn’t need anybody to quiz me about L.A.