Al Roker Read online

  “The odds are he’ll be moving on eventually,” I said.

  Stew turned his back to the ocean and stared at me. “I was hopin’ you’d know something about the bastard that might end it sooner than later.”

  This was definitely not anything I wanted a part of. “I wish I could help you—” I started to say.

  I paused, because Stew was now looking past me, his eyes open wide in surprise.

  I heard and felt the vibration of heavy footsteps on the deck, moving toward us.

  “Blessing, you worthless piece of shit!”

  I spun around to see Roger Charbonnet rushing toward me, drunk and dangerous. “What lies is this bastard telling you, Stew?”

  “Take it easy, Charbonnet,” Stew said.

  “What did you tell him?” Roger demanded. His face was now showing splotches of purple.

  “I were you, Roger,” I said, “I’d cut way back on the tequila and the jalapeños.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  He made a fist and drew it back. Just as he unleashed it at my head, I ducked and tossed my margarita into his face.

  Trying to block the drink, he pulled the punch and almost hit himself in the forehead.

  I wish I could say that I’m a lover, not a fighter, but that’s only partially true. I am definitely not a fighter. I headed for the door. Guests were gathering there, eager for tomorrow’s morning dish material.

  Out of deference to my host, a Hollywood hero, I tried not to run.

  Stew was calling out to Roger, urging him to “stop behaving like a raging lunatic.”

  Since that’s exactly what Roger was, he paid no attention. Instead, he lumbered across the deck. At me.

  Roger was as close to rabid as a human can get without the help of an infected animal. While I’d always considered myself the loser in our confrontation long ago, I realized at that moment that something—my celebrity, maybe—must have been ringing his chimes for years.

  And now he was going to make me pay.

  He’d be on me before I hit the door, so I checked my surroundings for an alternative to flight. A baseball bat would have been nice. But, alas …

  Roger paused, glaring at me. Red-eyed and snorting. I swear I saw drool dripping from his nose and lips. Keeping our eyes locked, I began edging toward the door.

  I took a sideways step, and my foot hit a wet spot near the pool. I stumbled backward to the deck just as he was almost on me. His fist sailed through the empty space that a second before had been occupied by my head. The momentum of the unsuccessful punch carried him forward, over me. The tip of a shoe caught my right ankle, and he sailed over me, barely missing the pool’s concrete edge before disrupting the beautiful blue-green surface of the water with an inelegant belly flop.

  “You okay?” Stew asked as he helped me up.

  My butt hurt, and my ankle felt like it’d been caught in a bear trap. “Define ‘okay,’ ” I said.

  Roger was making a lot of noise, flapping around in his sodden leather and screaming that he couldn’t swim.

  “You damn fool,” Stew shouted. “Just stand up. You’re in four feet of water.” Turning to me, he asked, in a much quieter tone, “What ‘lies’ did he think you were telling me, Billy?”

  I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. But I’d wait till he calms down a little.”

  Roger was now standing chest-deep in the pool. He wiped water from his eyes and spun around, searching the crowd. He stopped when he saw Dani standing by the pool, giving him a look of dismay before turning and walking inside the house.

  Roger blinked, then began his jerky search again until he found me. “Blessing, you fucking coward,” he yelled, moving toward a metal ladder. “I’m gonna kill you.”

  “Don’t worry about that drunken jackass,” Stew said as we watched Roger slip from the ladder and fall back into the water. “Once he manages to get out of the pool, if he doesn’t behave himself, it’ll be my pleasure to give him one right between the horns.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said. “I’ll be limping off now. Lovely party, Stew.”

  Chapter

  EIGHT

  Back at the villa, I devoured a Wolfgang Puck pizza that I’d found in the freezer and was depositing the plate and utensils in an otherwise-empty dishwasher when Des and Fitzpatrick floated in, smelling of booze and … chlorine?

  “How was dinner?” I asked.

  “Uh, okay,” Fitz said. He seemed pale, even for him. And a bit unnerved.

  Des said nothing. He focused on the bottle of Elevage Blanc that I’d opened earlier and resampled with the pizza, grabbed it, and headed out of the kitchen.

  “He okay?” I asked Fitzpatrick.

  “Gimme a minute,” he said, and followed Des from the room.

  It was more like five minutes when Fitz returned with a bottle of Jameson fifteen-year-old Irish whiskey. I’d kept busy by locating and heating a Toaster Strudel, assuaging some of my caloric guilt by purposefully ignoring the icing packet.

  Without a word, he walked to the counter, poured himself a cup of coffee, and brought it and the whiskey bottle back to the table, where I was scarfing down my strudel. He uncapped the Jameson. He held it over my cup and, when I shook my head, reversed and poured a healthy tot of what may be the world’s best sipping whiskey into his coffee. I tried not to wince at the sight of him taking that first gulp.

  “Rough night?” I asked.

  “Wojus, I’d call it.”

  “What happened?”

  He gave me an odd half smile. “Case o’ mistaken identity.”

  “Somebody take Des for Rod Stewart?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  I stared at him, waiting for the story.

  He shook his head. “Tales out o’ school.”

  I took a bite of strudel.

  Fitz brooded for a minute or two, then said, “Mr. Max Slaughter is a bloody horse’s ass.”

  “How so?”

  Evidently unhappy with the whiskey-coffee ratio, he added another inch or so of Jameson. “Slaughter and that gofer of his, Trey, pick us up in a limo and take us to a pub in downtown L.A. named O’Doul’s. The joint was more Oirish than Irish. Strictly plastic Paddy. All bloody green an’ white. The Brothers Clancy singin’ from the speakers. Cheesy paper-doll shamrocks and wee folk strung from the rafters.

  “The barman, who’s never even seen the Isle, gets out a tiny camera and makes a thing of getting Des to pose for some snaps, durin’ which he lets slip that Max owns the bloody place. Assumin’ that Max is usin’ him for free publicity, Des proceeds to down one pint of plain after another. This leads to him gettin’ his back up and callin’ out some boyos who’d been sittin’ peacefully at the bar. Before there be wigs on the green, Max and this Trey herd us out of there, headin’ to Hollywood for grub.

  “In the limo, Des’s black mood does a sudden roundabout. Now he’s on the pig’s back.”

  “Say what?” I interrupted.

  “He’s happy. Ready to celebrate. Which, at that moment, means downing most of a bottle of the bubbly. By the time we pull up at the restaurant, he’s rubber, and me and Trey have to steer him in.

  “The chow parlor is called In the Dark. Ever hear of it, Billy?”

  “One of those restaurants that claim you get a truer dining experience by eating in pitch-black?” I ask.

  “Bang on! Max says it’s to give us a taste of the O’Day at Night set. He’s got this wizard of a lighting designer on the payroll who’s usin’ darkness and shadow to come up with a look that’s different from the other talk shows. The stagehands are gonna be runnin’ around in head-to-toe black outfits, so they can move props and do stuff without the camera seein’ ’em.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll look like the invisible man.”

  “Huh? Oh, I get ya.” He grinned a bit sheepishly, the way some whites do when a black man makes a joke about his color. “Well,” he continued hurriedly, “no matter what reason Max gives, I f
igure the choice of restaurant is one more piece of evidence that he has his head up his arse. Anyway …”

  He seemed to hesitate, then took another mouthful of his doctored coffee. He swallowed it slowly, gazing across the kitchen at nothing in particular.

  I prompted, “Anyway …?”

  “Oh. Yeah, well, the lights go off and, soon enough, the food is served, a good thing, ’cause by then I’m so starved I could eat the lamb o’ Jesus through the rungs of a chair. It’s not easy gettin’ food to your mouth in the dark. An’ the business about tunin’ up your taste buds is bullshite.”

  He drifted off again, lost in some thought that, judging by his face, was none too pretty.

  “Fitz?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, Billy,” he said, standing. “I gotta … I dunno, get some sleep or somethin’.”

  I watched him waddle off, a bear-man with more on his mind than he cared to share with me.

  I deposited the remains of my strudel in the disposal, poured off his Irish coffee, rinsed off the cups and plate, and put them in the dishwasher.

  I exited the main building through the rear door and was on the path to the guesthouse when I heard Des call out, “G’night, Billy.”

  He was sitting on the beach in his boxers, his body as pale as milk in the moonlight.

  I walked toward him feeling the grit of the sand under my shoes. “You ought to put on a robe,” I said. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Freezin’ my arse,” he said, his teeth chattering. “It’s a Catholic thing, Billy. Penance for your sins.”

  “Penance is ten Hail Marys, not pneumonia.”

  “You don’t know my sins,” he said. He turned to look out at the dark sky and ocean, frowning as if searching for the horizon line. When he lifted the wine bottle to his lips, there was enough moonlight for me to see what appeared to be blood crusted on his knuckles.

  “Anything happen tonight I should know about?” I asked.

  “What’s me flannel-mouth friend been tellin’ ya?”

  “Not much,” I said. “You guys went to a pub and had dinner in the dark.”

  “That about sums it up,” he said.

  “Doesn’t quite explain why you both smell of chlorine,” I said. “Or why your knuckles are busted.”

  He looked at the hand holding the wine bottle. “In that feckin’ joke of an eatery, with the lights off and me in my cups, I musta dusted ’em on somethin’ rough,” he said, then returned to his contemplation of the darkness.

  “Yeah, well, it’s late,” I said. “I guess I’ll go hit the hay.”

  “Sleep well,” he said.

  Probably better than you, I thought.

  Chapter

  NINE

  I awoke from a dream of Nat King Cole singing “Frim-Fram Sauce” to discover it had been prompted by my cellular’s ringtone repeating itself.

  “What the hell?” I said into the phone, squinting at my watch. “It’s too damn early.”

  “Nine-thirty-six,” Wally Wing said.

  “Six-thirty-six here,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I guess you aren’t the guy used to getting up at five for your morning show.”

  “What do you want, Wally?”

  “To congratulate you on demolishing that prick at Stew Gentry’s party,” he said.

  “How …?”

  “You’ve gone viral on the Internet.”

  I was wide awake. I’d been so caught up in the mystery of Des’s night that I’d forgotten about my dustup with Roger Charbonnet. Evidently the shadowy figures lurking just off the beach at Stew’s had been busy with their cameras.

  “How … bad is it?” I asked.

  “Bad?” Wally said. “You look great. Very heroic. It’s the other guy, the hothead L.A. chef you tossed in the pool, who looks like a donkey. What’d you do to piss him off?”

  “Just being my own sweet self,” I said.

  “Well, Harry’s gonna want all the gory details for the book. You and he connect yet?”

  The connection had been made, I told him. That seemed to satisfy him enough to click off and let me get back to sleep.

  But I couldn’t sleep.

  For one thing, I was curious to see the footage.

  It was on YouTube, my phone’s small screen providing a picture that was a little dark, a little grainy. But it was recognizably Roger and me going through our dance. The distance had been too far for the mikes to pick up any conversation except for Roger’s yelled threats.

  At the time I’d been too full of myself to realize how lucky I’d been. Roger’s physical and mental abilities had been dulled by drink, and he’d fallen into a pool, thereby hindering him from simply getting up and tearing me apart like a barbecued chicken. The reality of the situation was that he was a very large, dangerous man who’d hated me years ago and had even more reason to hate me now, especially since our little tango had turned him into a worldwide joke.

  Shortly after nine o’clock Pacific Coast time, Gretchen Di Voss called from Manhattan, asking if I was all right after my “fight.”

  “You boys and your macho games,” she said, and segued into the real reason for the call. She wanted me to host a few Wake Up segments using the network’s West Coast facilities. “The viewers need to be reminded that you’re still a part of the show. And that you’ll be appearing with Des during his opening week.”

  “What type of segs are we talking about?” I asked.

  “The sort of things you’ve been doing every morning. Interviews and the like. I’ll talk to Trina about it, and she’ll work out a schedule with Carmen.” Trina Lomax was the executive producer of Wake Up, America! Carmen Sandoval was the vice president of network news and entertainment on the West Coast.

  “Who knows?” Gretch added. “It may even make sense to keep you out there awhile. Maybe even permanently.”

  She clicked off without assuring me that she’d been joking.

  I was starting to get that not-one-of-my-better-days feeling. Since the phone was still in my hand, I dialed a 212 number. The first ring was cut short by the crisp British accent of my ultraefficient assistant, Kiki Owens.

  “What’s the word?” I asked her.

  “Wow, Billy, I guess it’s still the Wild West out there.”

  “I’m more interested in what’s going on where you are. I know what’s happening here.”

  “So does the world, judging by the emails and phone calls. All wanting to know when their new favorite action hero will be returning.”

  That explained Gretch’s request for West Coast segments. I told Kiki about them and that I’d be juggling those assignments with rehearsals for O’Day at Night and conferences with Harry Paynter.

  “You’re not good at parceling your time, Billy,” she said.

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’m ready to help,” she said. “I can be packed in a moment’s notice.”

  “It may come to that. But right now I need you right where you are.”

  “Stew’s beach house looked very … nice in the video.”

  I flashed on the fact that Stew had taken her to dinner last year when he was in NYC on a promotion tour. “Just your average twenty-five-million-dollar shack,” I said. “Nothing special.”

  “What’s his current status, Billy?” she asked, suddenly very serious.

  “I think he’s getting ready for a new movie,” I said.

  “Bastard. You know what I mean.”

  “He didn’t seem to be with anybody at the party,” I said.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “Aren’t you almost engaged to that nice guy in ad sales?”

  “Let me know if you need me out there,” she said brusquely, and broke the connection.

  Before I put the phone down, Stew called. I half expected him to mention Kiki, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he asked how I was holding up. I told him I had a few bruises but was otherwise fit.

  When I mentioned the Internet coverage
of the party incident, he spent a minute or so cursing the boat paparazzi. Then his mood brightened. “After you left last night, Dani and Roger had a little talk. I didn’t exactly have my ear to the wall, but from the way he stormed out of here, I think she’s gonna dump the son of a bitch.”

  “I suppose Roger will add that to my scorecard, too,” I said.

  “Where’s all the animosity come from?” Stew asked.

  “Too long a story from too long ago.”

  “Well, the man’s not the kind to forgive and forget, that’s for sure. Watch your back, amigo. But if you feel you don’t have enough excitement in your life, drop on by. I’m rarely busy, but if I am I’ll always give you a drink before kicking you out.”

  I shaved, showered, and tended to my bodily necessities, noting the pain points at the base of my spine and my anklebone. From time to time, the “Dah-dah-da-dah-da, dah-da-dah-dah-dah-da” ringtone sounded in the bedroom.

  There were six messages left, five of which I ignored.

  Harry Paynter picked up on the second ring.

  “Come up with a title?” I asked.

  “Uh, no. Well, maybe Sound of the Assassin?”

  “Might work for the audio version,” I said.

  “Well, that’s not why I called. It’s about the punch-out you had with Roger Charbonnet. That’s literary gold, Billy. Two culinary masters duking it out like the Iron Chef ninjas of old. And all of it taking place at the Malibu beachfront mansion of a mega-superstar.”

  “There’s only one problem,” I said. “What’s the first rule of Fight Club?”

  “ ‘You do not talk about Fight Club,’ ” he replied, repeating the quote made famous by the Brad Pitt–Edward Norton cult movie. “Touché, Billy. I dig. You don’t want to talk about it. Fair enough. We’ll just let everybody else talk about it. Whet their appetites for the book. This project is gonna rock.”