The Talk Show Murders (22 page)

I moved to the clear pane, too.

A big red vehicle was parked near the front door. It looked like the same one I’d seen that night on the way to Webber’s home.

There was the sound of gunfire and shattering glass.

I dropped to the not exactly clean floor. I turned to check Parkins’s condition, and discovered he was among the missing. The bar’s rear door was swinging shut.

I got up and ran to the door.

All I saw in the paper-and-trash-strewn alley was a row of overflowing garbage cans and living proof that you can draw more flies to garbage than you can to honey.

When I returned, Dal was in the bar, looking for me. He didn’t seem to realize that everybody else in the room was looking at him.

“Billy,” he yelled. “Gotta boogie.”

I looked at our table, wondering if Nat had left his notebook. It and the pencil were gone.

We boogied.

The maroon Nissan Z had a line of bullet holes along its left side, leading to a hanging piece of wire where the extended mirror had been blown away.

By the time I made it to the passenger seat, Dal had the engine revving. “Let’s see how lucky we are,” he said, and steered us away from the curb.

“The question is,” he continued, as he drove us away, “did that asshole hit any vital parts?”

I assumed he meant parts of the car.

“What happened?”

“These two very white guys drove up. Don’t know if you’ve
noticed, but there aren’t a lot of white guys around here. The driver didn’t bother to park. Just hovered. The other guy hops out. Twenties. Thin, six-foot-plus, black hair, dark suit, white business shirt. No tie. Average-looking, but there’s a very intense vibe coming off him.

“He’s heading for the bar. I figure I’d better slow him down. I get out of the car and shout at him. He responds by pulling a Glock G32 from under his jacket, and I dive inside the car just before he stitches up the open door. I return fire while he’s running back to the Range Rover. He dives in, and they’re gone.”

“It was a metallic red Range Rover,” I said.

“Yeah. You saw that? It makes even less sense. Who goes to a shoot-out in a red Range Rover?”

“The same guys who tortured and killed Pat Patton,” I said. “Very stupid or very confident.”

“I vote for very crazy,” Dal said. He had his phone out.

I heard him ask to be put through to Mantata. While he summarized the shoot-out at Nero’s, having nothing better to do, I searched the streets we were passing for the red Range Rover. In a city boasting more than three million cars, the result was no more than expected.

Dal finished his conversation as we crossed the Kennedy Expressway, traveling west. “The man’s not happy,” he said.

Our destination was Zeke’s Auto Repair on North Milwaukee. To my surprise, Zeke was a female. Literally if not ostensibly. A woman-of-the-plains type—ageless, big, muscular, straight gray hair tied in a ponytail, wearing baggy, oil-spotted Levi’s and an
Orange County Choppers
T-shirt. She gave me a quick, curt nod, had a raucous laugh at Dal’s “purty clothes,” and barely spent a minute looking at the damage to the car.

“Hell, Dal, this is all Bondo bullshit,” she said. “Rattlin’ cages again, huh?”

“Something like that,” he said. “You know anybody drives a metallic red Range Rover?”

“Nah. My customers all got good taste. ’Cept you. You like these foreign crapwagons. Be ready for ya tamarra. Take the Camaro.” She
pointed to a yellow two-door with twin thick black stripes down the center of the hood.

“It looks like a fucking bumble bee,” Dal said. “What about the Mustang?”

Zeke turned to the mechanics working on cars in the shop. “Bessie, Dal here wants to borry ya new ’tang,” she shouted.

A tiny woman rolled out from under a Buick. She was young and had oil smudges on her attractive pug face. “Dal can go fuck himself,” she said, and rolled back under the car.

Zeke gave Dal a helpless shrug. “What can I say? A woman scorned. Key’s in the Camaro. And pick up ya damn Nissan early tamarra. Cars that ain’t homegrown give the shop a bad name.”

“Colorful character,” I said, as we drove east.

“Huh? Oh. Zeke, yeah. Character.”

“Something on your mind?” I asked.

“I’m a little surprised at Bessie’s attitude. I thought we were … okay. I guess I did stand her up last time. But she knows the nature of my job with Mantata. Brush fires spring up, putting ’em out takes precedence over a roll in the sack. I explained all that to her.”

“In those words?”

He didn’t answer, which I took to be a positive response.

“This car rides fine,” he said.

“Where’s it taking us?”

“Ubora. Mantata wants to talk with you about the shoot-up.”

“Me? I didn’t even see it.”

“I think it’s got less to do with the shooting than what would have happened if the guy had made it inside the bar with his Glock.”

“Nat Parkins was out of there so fast,” I said, “I doubt the killer would have had the chance to shoot him.”

“Well, that’s the thing Mantata wants to talk about. He’s thinking maybe Parkins wasn’t the target.”

Me? The target? Now there’s a happy thought.

To take my mind off how close I’d come to experiencing multiple bullet wounds again, I phoned Kiki for news of the day.

“Trina says that since you’re not doing
Hotline
! she expects you to do the first hour of the show tomorrow, and Arnie has scheduled your interview with the
Da Mare
author for six-twenty a.m.”

“What else?”

I heard paper crinkling on the other end. “J. B. Kazynski called and left her number. Please tell me that it’s only business.”

“Not even that,” I said. “Next.”

“Lily C. called from New York. After cursing you for not turning your phone on, she said to tell you she fixed the sound on the Puff Potato Man show. She thinks the show is better than the one scheduled for Friday, and since this is a sweeps week, she’d like to switch the play dates.”

“I can’t remember which show was scheduled for Friday.”

“The, ah”—more paper crinkling—“the organic milk controversy.”

“Oh, hell, yes. Tell her to change it,” I said.

“Derek Webber’s office called,” she said, “to remind you about a dinner party tonight at Pastiche. Eight p.m. I looked up the place, Billy. On the Chicago River. Very swank. It was designed to look like a restaurant in Paris on the banks of the Seine.”

“Which one? The River Case? La Plage? Le Petit Poucet? Riviere?”

“If they’re on the Seine, just like one of them.”

“That must be why they named it Pastiche,” I said.

“Sometimes I hate you.”

I put my phone away and turned to Dal, who was steering the car with thumb and forefinger. “You ever hear of Restaurant Pastiche?”

“Oh, yeah. Very new. Very French. Very good. Yachts floating by on the river. The lights of the city on the water. If you and your companion aren’t bumping uglies twenty minutes after dessert, you did something wrong.”

“You and I are having dinner there tonight,” I told him.

“In that case, ignore what I just said.”

Mantata seemed on edge.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said.

I took the chair near his desk. Dal chose the couch, as if purposely distancing himself from the discussion.

“The episode at the lounge is vexing,” the elegant elderly black man said. “But before we get into the gunmen in the red vehicle, Billy, please enlighten me on your conversation with”—he consulted the iPad on the coffee table—“with Nat Parkins.”

I gave him a pretty accurate summation, during which he seemed to relax.

“So we’re certain he did not murder his employer and his roommate?”

I nodded. “From what he told me, I’m convinced that the men in the red Range Rover committed those crimes.”

“Yes. About that vehicle … A Range Rover, painted a color that the company calls Rimini Red, was discovered abandoned less than an hour ago on South Shields Avenue, scant blocks away from the
lounge. It had been on the stolen list since Monday morning. Its license plates belonged to another vehicle entirely. Would it surprise you to know that its owner was Onion City Entertainment?”

“They reported it stolen on Monday?” I asked.

“Yes. They claimed it probably had been taken from the premises the previous night. The same night Pat Patton was tortured and murdered.”

“This isn’t good news,” I said. “Especially since I’m supposed to go to a dinner the CEO of Onion City is hosting tonight.”

Mantata asked where the dinner was being held.

I told him, and he replied, “I doubt anything untoward would transpire in such a public place,” he said. “And … you will be there, too, Dal?”

Dal nodded.

“You both should pad up, just to play safe.”

Dal looked at me. “Size-forty-two chest?”

“Yeah. But I hope this won’t make me look like the Michelin Man.” I was hoping to hook up with Adoree.

“What good is stylin’ if you’re dyin’?” Dal said.

“You’re sure you’ve never seen the gunman before?” Mantata asked him.

“I’d have remembered.”

Mantata pursed his lips. “An import? And the driver is a blank, so—”

“Not exactly,” I interrupted. “Nat told me one of the guys he saw getting into the Range Rover near Patton’s home was short and thick. That’s got to be the driver.”

“Or the driver could’ve been one of the guys tried to kidnap Billy,” Dal said.

“Perhaps,” Mantata said. “But …”

He looked up as Roxanne entered the room. “Sorry to interrupt, but Emma just called,” she said. “The only prints on the Range Rover were from locals who were in the midst of vandalizing it when the patrolmen drove up. They scattered. Possibly because of them, the
vehicle’s interior was clean except for a piece of rumpled paper under the passenger seat. She’s sending you a photo.”

“Excellent,” Mantata said, blessing her with a smile.

We all watched her exit.

“Who’s Emma?” I asked.

“One of my few remaining loyalists among the blue line,” Mantata replied. “The point I was trying to make before …”

Again he paused as a tiny bong sounded on his iPad and an image popped on the screen. He picked up the device, his forehead creasing as he studied its surface. Eventually, he turned it around for us to see.

“Gibberish or significant?” he asked.

Dal duck-waddled toward the small screen, squinting.

It was a sheet of paper. At its top was the Onion City logo, an inch-high onion containing a dark cityscape outline, like a snow paperweight housing a Christmas tree. Someone had scribbled “Starbucks” in almost childlike printing, then drawn several dark pencil slashes through the word. This was followed by the similarly printed names “Phipps, Williams, Scott, Cobb, Watts, Jackson, Neal, and Sorey.” After that final letter
y
, the writer had dragged the pencil down the page almost to the bottom.

“Those mad-as-hell lines drawn through ‘Starbucks,’ ” Dal said, “were either made by a guy who works for Mr. Coffee or who drinks too damn much of the stuff.”

I shrugged. “I guess I vote for gibberish,” I said.

“There is at least one substantial bit of information,” Mantata said. “The company logo.”

“It was a company car,” I said. “Any employee could have dropped that paper before the car was stolen.”

Mantata lowered the iPad to the coffee table. “Speculating on a paper that may have been dropped by one of the killers has its merits,” he said, “but pawns are merely pawns. We need to get a line on the king. To that end, I’ve spent several hours today perusing the Internet bloviations of the late Pat Patton.”

“And …?” I said.

“The good news is I don’t think my IQ was lowered to any degree. The bad news, the man’s archives are a rubbish heap of misinformation, innuendo, outright lies, and obfuscation. But there was one thing that bears further investigation.”

“Do I have to ask?”

“Not that long ago, Patton and Onion City were in negotiation on a television project.”

“I know about that,” I said. And I summarized what Webber had told me about the negotiations and how, at the last minute, Patton had refused to sign the contract, claiming he did not want to do business with organized crime.

“Webber told you this?” Mantata seemed quite surprised. He paused for thought, then nodded. “It was clever of him. The information is out there on the Web, where you could have found it at any time. Better that you hear it from him, thereby establishing his openness and honesty while at the same time casting doubt on the legitimacy of Patton’s claim.”

“You seem convinced that Webber is behind all this,” I said.

“Definitely leaning in that direction.”

“In 1987, when Paul was murdered,” I said, “Webber would have been a little kid.”

“You should accept the probability that your perilous situation may have nothing to do with Paul’s death,” Mantata said.

“But that’s my only connection to this whole mess.”

“Incorrect,” he said. “You’re connected to Patton.”

“I’ll give you that. So what?” I couldn’t see his point, and that was upgrading my annoyance to anger.

“I know it’s hard for you, but you must look at this objectively, Billy. According to what Nat Parkins told you, Patton was in possession of four active red files, each containing blackmail-worthy material. Pat Patton was murdered. Parkins and Larry Kelsto became possessors of the red files. Kelsto was murdered, and Parkins, who has the files, is afraid for his life. I think we’re in agreement that whoever possesses the red files is a potential murder victim. Isn’t it possible—no,
make that probable—that the man behind the killings thinks you have the files or have knowledge of what’s in them?”

“At last we agree,” I said. “I’m fairly certain one of those files will tell me the current identity of Giovanni Polvere.”

“Your head is as hard as onyx,” Mantata said. “Please at least entertain the possibility that Patton was lying to you, trying to extort money from you with his Polvere fiction. On the other hand, he went on record identifying Webber’s company as being linked to the Outfit. I’d put my bet on Webber being the Mr. X looking for his red file.”