Al Roker Read online

  Chapter

  SIX

  Harry Paynter, the novelist-screenwriter with whom I was supposed to form a literary alliance, was a plump young man with a baby face and sad, weary eyes that gave him the look of a debauched choirboy. He seemed surprised, but not impressed, that a pop-music star like Fitzpatrick had unlocked the gate and escorted him to my digs. Harry would probably not have been impressed to find Prince doing my laundry.

  “So Billy,” he said, when we were seated in the guesthouse living room, “don’t suppose you’ve got any Diet Mountain Dew?”

  “Doubtful, but I’ll check.” I walked to the small kitchen, looked in the fridge, and reported back to Harry, “No to the Mountain Dew. Thanks to somebody—the realtor, I guess—there’s tomato juice, carrot juice, and bottled water.”

  “Pass,” he said.

  “I’ll add Mountain Dew to my list.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “Here’s the thing, Billy. My time is fucking valuable. I’ve got two scripts due next week—a contemporary remake of The Pit and the Pendulum for Sony and a musical thriller that’ll star The Peezy Weezies, we all hope. I can’t afford the time it takes for me to drive out here. I spent five minutes just waiting for the security guys at the gate to find my name on their list. There’s no reason we have to be in the same room to collaborate. We can use the phone, text, Skype, whatever. Right?”

  “Sounds right to me,” I said, though I had no working knowledge of Skype. As for The Peezy Weezies, well … the only Weezy I knew had the last name of Jefferson.

  “Okay, that’s how we’ll handle it. But I’m here now, so let’s get to work,” he said, sliding a laptop from a leather shoulder bag. “I can give you ninety minutes. And I’ll try the fucking carrot juice.”

  I returned to the kitchen, poured two glasses of the thick, bright-orange liquid, and returned to the living room.

  Harry had the laptop open and balanced on his knees, ready for action. He took a gulp of juice, shuddered, and said, “Yuk.”

  “Fresh-squeezed,” I said.

  “That’s the problem. I can’t stand fresh. Tastes like medicine. Okay, let’s get going on this bad boy. We need a title. How about TV Can Be Murder?”

  “A little jaunty, don’t you think? What about The Morning Show Murders?”

  “Too on-the-nose. Murder on Camera? Blood on the Camera?”

  I winced.

  “High-Def Death?”

  “Too hard to pronounce,” I said.

  “Why don’t we follow Raymond Chandler’s lead?” he asked. “Good Morning, Murder.”

  “What’s that got to do with Chandler?”

  “Farewell, My Lovely. Good Morning, Murder.”

  And so it went for the next ninety minutes, at which time, as promised, my collaborator departed. Without a decision being made on the title.

  Having picked up on Harry’s anxiety, I strolled over to the villa, where I found Des, Fitz, and a newcomer—short, soft, with a pug nose, tiny ears, and a shock of jet-black hair—in what appeared to be a big-boy’s playroom, complete with dartboards, pinball machines, and the like. Fitz was playing pinball, while the other two men were stretched out on leather chairs and ottomans in front of a giant flat TV screen, engrossed in a videogame called Brütal Legend.

  “Yo, Billy,” Fitz said, by way of welcome.

  “That you, Billy?” Des said, not taking his eyes from the TV screen. “Say hello to Gibby Lewis, head writer on our little show.”

  Gibby, evidently not quite as committed to the big-screen competition, turned a peeved baby face toward me. He broke it with a brief forced smile, a nod, and then it was back to Brütal Legend.

  “Des,” I said, trying to talk over the noise, “a friend is throwing a dinner party a few houses down. Around eight, if you’re interested.”

  “Can’t make it,” Des replied, keeping his eyes on the screen, where a buffed and bearded character resembling both Jack Black and Popeye’s nemesis, Bluto, was using his odd-looking guitar to thwart evil. “That feckin’ little twerp who was here earlier called to say Slaughter’s hostin’ a hooley for me with a bunch of doxies.”

  The twerp was our associate producer Trey Halstead. Slaughter was, as mentioned previously, Trey’s boss, producer of the new show. A hooley was a party. The doxies were, well, doxies.

  “Max didn’t mention any party to me,” Gibby said. His delivery was as peevish as his mug. “Not that I coulda gone. I’ve gotta spend the evening with my lovely sister and her adorable kids. Unless I can think up an excuse. Like a hernia. Then I’ll go find my own doxy.”

  “Pull up a chair, Billy. This game’s a gallery. That’s Jack Black with the gizmo, doin’ the arse-kickin’. Ozzy Osbourne’s in it, too.”

  Regardless of those attractions, Brütal Legend seemed to be a combination of unrelenting violence and headbanger music, two of my least favorite things. “I’d better get myself in gear for tonight,” I said.

  “Your call,” he said.

  According to my watch, it was ten after seven. Ten after ten in Manhattan. I’d already searched and found nothing remotely snack-able at the guesthouse. “Mind if I raid your kitchen?” I yelled over the sounds of Jack Black’s arse-kickin’.

  “What’s that?”

  I repeated the question, and he told me to help myself to whatever.

  In the large, brightly tiled gourmet country kitchen capable of feeding a tribe, I discovered the perfect dinner foreplay—a wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, saltines, and green seedless grapes. And to wash it down, a brisk, melony Chimney Rock Napa Valley Elevage Blanc.

  Feeling considerably refreshed, I returned to the guesthouse and put in a call to my restaurant’s manager-hostess, Cassandra Shaw.

  “Oh, Billy,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten us, out there in lotusland.”

  “The time difference threw me off,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “We had an excellent night. Near capacity. Service was smooth. Morale high. Don’t worry about us, Billy. We always seem to prosper when you’re not around.”

  Cassandra is a tall, relentlessly beautiful blonde and, more crucial to the success of Blessing’s Bistro, an extremely self-reliant, smart, and dedicated second-in-command. But as long as I’ve known her, nearly seven years, she has carried a chip on her shoulder the size of the Manhattan phone book. Our customers not only accept her snarky attitude, they seem to be amused and even enchanted by it. I have to admit, there are times I’m amused by it myself. This wasn’t one of them.

  “Well,” I said, “if, by some miracle, you do need me, you know how to reach me.”

  “I seem to have misplaced the phone number of your beach cabana.”

  “I’m working here, Cassandra. No beach cabana.”

  “How sad for you,” she said. “Billy, to be serious for a moment, the women out there are as self-obsessed and predatory as they are beautiful. Please try not to disgrace yourself or the Bistro. Keep it zipped.”

  I told her I’d do my best. I didn’t tell her I was wearing breakaway pants.

  In any case, her advice, sincere or not, went in one ear and out the other.

  Only an hour later, at Stew’s dinner party, overdressed in a sport coat in L.A., I found myself sharing personal space with one of the most attractive females present, pretending to be enthralled by her explanation of why she’d had to take Balthazar, her Pomeranian, to “doggie rehab.”

  I’d spied her the moment I stepped through the door. Stew had welcomed me, expressed regret that Des had been unable to make it, and was about to lead me to a group of pleasant-looking, affluent, middle-aged couples when I asked if he’d mind introducing me instead to the beautiful lady who, like myself, disproved Herman Mankiewicz’s quip about Malibu racial intolerance.

  Now she and I were standing poolside with a couple dozen other guests, enjoying a mariachi band and margaritas and appreciating the way the patio heaters kept the night balmy in spite
of a chilly breeze off the ocean. So fascinated was I by the way her no doubt enhanced sea-green eyes contrasted with her dark brown skin, I was able to keep a straight face while she told me about “poor Balthy” nibbling on a marijuana plant in the garden behind her house. I assumed Balthy was one of those accessory quasi-dogs so popular in L.A., and, in fairness, NYC.

  “It got so I just couldn’t keep him away from it,” she said. “I decided I had to … Why is that fool gawking at us?”

  It took me a second to realize she’d not only changed the subject, she’d asked me a question.

  Reluctantly, I turned from her to observe the fool.

  He was a big, arrogantly handsome guy in his early fifties. Salt-and-pepper hair cut close to his balding scalp. Black leather jacket. Several days’ growth of beard on his chiseled chin. He was standing with Stew’s daughter, Dani.

  “Do you know him, Billy?”

  Oh, yeah. I knew him.

  The last time I’d seen Roger Charbonnet, he’d threatened to kill me. Twenty-two years may have passed, but, judging by the expression on his face, he still remembered me, and it was not a fond memory.

  Chapter

  SEVEN

  “Isn’t he the chef with all the hot restaurants?” the lady with the green eyes was saying. “I think he just opened a place over on Kanan Dume Road.”

  I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t even remember her name. And I’m usually very good with names. My problem was that I’d just lost twenty-two years. I was no longer a moderately self-assured adult attending a dinner party. I was a hesitant, self-conscious, out-of-work kid being faced down by a seething lunatic with a gun tucked under his belt.

  Roger Charbonnet smiled suddenly. Not a pleasant sight. He raised his hand, made a gun with thumb and forefinger, and pointed it at me. Then, continuing to face me, he bent down and whispered something in Dani’s ear, draped his arm around her shoulders in a possessive gesture, and escorted her back into the house.

  I’m not sure how long I continued to stare at the now vacant section of the patio. What brought me back to the party were the mariachis hitting a high harmonic note on “Guadalajara” and the slightly distant sound of the sister with the green eyes talking about a “wonderful dog whisperer who saved little Balthy from his addiction.”

  She’d abandoned me for a younger, tanned and toned guy in a flashy Hawaiian shirt and white slacks who was so attentive to her shaggy-stoned-dog story that if he stood any closer to her, he’d lose the pleats in his pants.

  It probably would have been more prudent for me to head back to the Villa Delfina at that point. I could raid Des’s fridge again and then waddle off to sleep away the jet lag and other excesses of the day. But it was still early, on this coast, at least, a dinner including fresh seafood salad and grilled top shoulder of lamb was imminent, and, most important, having regained my senses, I was not about to let an asshole like Roger Charbonnet think that he’d chased me off a second time.

  I found him inside the house, treating Dani and a small group of partygoers to a play-by-play of a recent trip to an estate in Sardinia as the guest of an Italian American film director. Hearing a slur in his voice, I realized he’d been sipping more than his share of tequila.

  Sloshing through a vignette centering on “the auteur’s fucking amazing Ferrari Enzo,” he noticed me standing just outside his conversation circle, observing him with the same unreadable smile I’d perfected as part of my on-camera interviewing technique.

  My presence was apparently distracting enough to cause a momentary gap in his monologue. Dani followed his glance and saw me, smiling pleasantly. She waved, and I returned her wave.

  Roger’s neck turned pink, and as the flush spread to his face, I sensed he was about to blow. An ugly confrontation would definitely detract from the party mood. Before that happened, I broke eye contact and moved on.

  There were signs that the dinner bell was about to be rung. Smiling Latinas in beaded blouses and colorful full satin skirts, and their male counterparts in embroidered guayabera shirts and black trousers, were transporting the fragrant dishes on silver salvers from the kitchen to the dining room, where three long groaning boards had been pushed together to form a U. Lured by the heady aroma of the spicy foods, the guests were gathering.

  “You look like you could use this.”

  Stew had made another of his silent approaches, but this time I took it in stride. I’d already had my startle reaction of the evening. He was holding out a salt-rimmed glass containing a fresh margarita in crushed ice, a duplicate of the cocktail in his other hand.

  “You walk quieter than a ninja,” I said, taking the drink.

  “My Indian blood,” he said. “It makes me aware of things, too. Like the friction between you and Charbonnet. What’s the deal?”

  Maybe I should have told him that I suspected the guy fondling his daughter had murdered his girlfriend twenty-three years ago. But that kind of accusation can at worst get you sued and at best get you hopelessly ensnared in an ugly family scene. I took a sip of the margarita. “We chefs are a competitive crew,” I said.

  “As opposed to actors?” He sampled his margarita. “Well, don’t let your competitive sense interfere with your enjoyment of tonight’s feast.”

  “Don’t tell me Roger’s responsible for the food?”

  “No way. The chef is Zapopa Estevez. From Camino Real in Brentwood, for my money, the best true-to-Mexico restaurante on the West Coast. And believe me, I’ve tried ’em all.”

  “You’ve sold me,” I said, heading in the direction of the gathering crowd.

  Stew put a halting hand on my shoulder. “It’ll take a while for the line to go down. Let’s us get some air and have a little chat.”

  He led me out to the patio. It was suffering from dinnertime loneliness, except for the mariachis, who were taking five. When one of them noticed us, he tossed away his cigarette and picked up his guitar.

  “Relax, amigo,” Stew called over to him. “Take your break. You guys earned it.”

  I followed him to the far edge of the deck, where he stood looking out at the ocean. The dark water was touched by shimmering streaks of reflected moonlight. “Goddamn it! There. See that?” Stew asked.

  I saw nothing at first. Then I caught a few shadows disturbing the natural pattern of the ocean. “That a boat out there?” I asked. “What are they doing?”

  “Hell if I know. Maybe some kind of new-age fishermen. More likely they’re there because they can be. According to coastal-access laws, the other side of the high-tide line is open to the public. But even though they’re not breaking any laws, they don’t belong out there.”

  He shook his head. “I guess I sound like an uptight asshole. But the fact is, there are twenty-one miles of beach in Malibu. And no matter what you want to do at night on the ocean, you can find a better spot to do it than right here. So I’m guessing the main reason they’re out there is because we’re here. Those law-abiding sneaks are probably paparazzi hoping to catch my guests taking a skinny-dip in the drink.”

  All of this was mildly interesting but, to a hungry man, hardly a substitute for grilled lamb.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why we’re out here when the food’s in there?” Stew asked, reading my mind.

  I shrugged.

  “I want to hear about you and Charbonnet.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s like those punks on the ocean,” Stew said, his lip curled. “An opportunist taking advantage of a situation. He’s a minor partner in Golden Bear, the company that’s producing my next movie. He seems to think that gives him the right to sleep with my daughter.”

  He paused, evidently expecting me to respond. I couldn’t think of a thing to say other than TMI, so I remained silent.

  “The guy’s successful,” Stew continued. “I’ll give him that. He’s got a bunch of the town’s top restaurants, and I hear he’s about to follow Wolf Puck to Vegas and points east. Probably be putting one up a block away
from you in Manhattan.”

  Just what I wanted to hear.

  “He’s a black hat, Billy,” Stew said. “I knew it the first time I saw him, with his fucking whiskers and black leather. Not that I’d write anybody off just because they’re a poster boy for male menopause. He’s too old for Dani. Too volatile. I’ve seen the way he treats his people. To top it off, the son of a bitch is a player. Dani’s just twenty-two, and she’s already one down. I don’t want her making another mistake.”

  The mariachis picked up their instruments and started working on a festive little number that they took inside the house to entertain the diners. I shifted my feet and said, “What makes you think marriage is in the air?”

  “I don’t know for certain. I guess they could be just, what’s the term, fuck buddies. That’s bad enough.”

  “What’s Dani say?”

  “Christ, Billy. I haven’t talked to her about it. I’ve bought so many wedding rings myself, I qualify for the discount price. If I tried to give her advice, she’d probably laugh in my face. But, damn it, she’s my daughter.”

  “Maybe her mother—”

  “Gloria and I don’t talk … much.

  “Here’s the deal, Billy. A couple years ago, Dani quit school and ran off to marry a prick named Wilt Kirkendahl. I wasn’t happy about her settling for life with a goddamn stuntman, which is not a profession that cries out stability or longevity. But I figured what the hell. She’s happy.

  “Six months later, she’s at the door with an eye the color of an overripe banana. Turns out Kirkendahl’s an abusive drunk. Gee, what a surprise. It took this peeper I hired less than a week to get enough on the weasel I was able to present him with an option—agree to a divorce or have a vacation on me at Pelican Bay State Prison. That worked out fine.”

  “I’m guessing you put your peeper on Roger,” I said.

  Stew nodded grimly. “The only thing he came up with was from a long time ago. Some dame he was banging got herself killed. For a while Charbonnet was a suspect. But he had an alibi. Other than that, nothing. In ’94, he married a Vegas showgirl and divorced her a year later. I can’t fault him for a waltz I’ve danced myself. For the last decade and a half, he’s tapped a long line of beautiful women, which would be peachy, except that his current tap is my daughter.”