The Morning Show Murders (1) (32 page)

He was saved from having to explain himself by the head nurse exiting Bettina's room and closing the door behind her. "I don't know what's going on here," she said, "but the condition of the patient in that room is unchanged. From this moment, she is to remain undisturbed, pending the arrival of her doctor. Do I make myself clear?"

"Of course," Lee said.

"It's about time the police were notified," the head nurse said.

"One of your nurses said they're on the way," I said.

"Good." The little woman stared at me. "You know, you look a lot like that man who's on TV in the morning. The one who's always grinning like a hyena."

"I get that a lot," I said.

"Ah, Nurse ..." Lee said, studying the nameplate pinned above her right breast. "Nurse Cuttler, is there someplace we could wait for the police in privacy?"

"And who might you be?"

Lee slid a black leather ID case from her coat pocket. It had a tiny metallic Prada inverted triangle stuck into the leather that impressed the nurse about as much as a used bedpan. She seemed to find the information on the ID only slightly more impressive. "Miss Lee Franchette. Then you would be the lady I talked with on the phone, arranging for the guard over there with the red face."

Lee nodded.

"Okay, I'll show you to a room the interns use when they're on call overnight. Then maybe my people"--she glared at the orderlies and nurses still lingering in the corridor--"can GET BACK TO WORK!"

The intern room consisted of two cots and a washbasin. It smelled of disinfectant and something funky but unidentifiable. Intern perspiration, maybe. I sat on one of the cots, taking the weight off of my ankle. My shoulder felt stiff.

Sistrom was holding a wet paper towel to his wounded head, looking at Lee eagerly to see if she had bought his tale of woe.

"Is this the man who attacked you?" she asked, pointing to Ted, who was lying on one of the cots, his wrists and ankles handcuffed together so that they forced his body into what might have passed for a new yoga position. He looked uncomfortable and angry, and tossed his head in an unsuccessful attempt to flip his bangs away from his eyes.

"I didn't see who it was, but it musta been him."

"Thank you, Mr. Sistrom," she said. "Now please go and get your head examined."

"Uh. Then you want me back on guard, ma'am?"

"Definitely not," Lee said. "A.W. can handle that. And when the NYPD finally arrive, I imagine they'll have their own ideas."

Sistrom rewarded us with an attempt at a brave smile and made his awkward exit.

"That idiot didn't see me hit him because I didn't hit him," Ted said. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"You were in Bettina's room," A.W. said, "moving in on her with a pillow in your hands."

Lee stared at Ted, who repeated his absurd excuse that he was only trying to make Bettina more comfortable.

She turned to me. "Well, chef?"

"Well what?" I said, rubbing my shoulder. "Like A.W. just told you, we caught the guy in the act."

"But what made you rush here, thinking Bettina might be in jeopardy?"

I told her about the blackboard note I'd seen in Rudy Gallagher's apartment.

"'Check: 1 or 2, F or OC'?" she said. "And from that you surmised that Mr. Parkhurst would try to kill Bettina?"

I didn't blame her for being skeptical.

"There's a little more to it than that," I said. "What I think the note means is that Rudy saw or heard something that made him wonder if F, the assassin Felix, was working alone or with a partner, forming an OC, Odd Couple."

She seemed puzzled. Too young and too European. "You mean gay?" she asked.

"It was a play, and a movie," A.W. said. "A comedy about a prissy guy who gets divorced and moves in with a divorced friend who's a slob. We put it on in high school. I helped make the sets."

"It was also a long-running TV show in the 1970s, before you were born," I said. "Rudy loved old TV. He would have known the names of the odd couple. You remember them?"

"I should," A.W. said. "I heard those guys practicing every day for about a month. The neatness freak was Felix. And the slob was ... Oscar, but I don't see how that name fits in."

I looked at Ted. "You want to tell him?"

He closed his eyes and said nothing.

"Ted's byline on his articles is TOP," I said. "Theodore
Oscar
Parkhurst. OC, Odd Couple, was Rudy's shorthand for Felix and Oscar."

"So it is your assumption," Lee said, "that Gallagher was about to explore the possibility of Ted being Felix's little helper?"

"It might have been what got Rudy Gallagher killed," I said.

"That makes me a hit man, my middle name?" Ted said. "What bullshit."

"It plays," I said to Lee. "Like a fool, I told Ted that Phil Bruno had video footage of the night in Kabul. Less than an hour later, poor Phil was burned to death and whatever his video could have disclosed about that night was gone forever."

"This man is delusional," Ted said. "I was with him every minute of that evening. When could I have set fire to the building?"

"Not you. You phoned your partner, Felix, who did the arson job."

"That's just fucking crazy. I'm not the friend of a killer. I'm not a killer. If anything, I'm a victim. I was kidnapped, for God's sake."

"You're a liar," I said. "And I can prove it."

"Good, that would be appreciated," Lee said. "But first, the one thing we know for certain is that Felix is still out there somewhere. A.W., please go see to Bettina's safety."

The young agent nodded. He leaned over Ted to make sure he hadn't slipped a cuff, then left the room.

"Now, about that proof ..." Lee said.

"There is none," Ted said. "It's fantasy."

"Let's see if I can run it down," I said. "First, the kidnapping. How could the kidnappers have known you and Gin would be there that night? How did they get past the doorman? Why weren't they on the security tape?"

"I can only guess," Ted said. "There are crooks who specialize in looting the remains of the recently deceased. Gallagher's address was spread everywhere by the media. The robbers had to be in the apartment before we arrived. They came out of hiding, knocked us out, recognized Gin, and decided to kidnap us."

"And one of them happened to be the same guy you had dinner with in Kabul," I said. "It makes much more sense if you were the kidnapper. All you had to do was call in your mercenary buddy Steve Gault to drive a car to the alley behind the building to help you cart Gin off to a secluded hideaway."

"Why would I do that, Blessing?"

"Ignoring the fifteen million bucks for the moment, I'd say the main point was to stop her from interviewing Goyal Aharon on Tuesday morning. For some reason I haven't quite figured out, this was a necessary part of Felix's plan to assassinate Aharon."

"Aharon being Felix's target because ...?" Lee asked.

"I'm no political strategist," I said. "But I'm thinking that Felix has a benefactor who isn't too keen on Aharon trekking across the U.S. with his new novel, tarnishing the Israeli image by spilling the beans on the Mossad's darker deeds."

"Who do you think is paying Felix?" Lee asked. "And don't tell me the Mossad or the CIA."

"The dead guy worked for Carl Kelstoe," I said.

"And Kelstoe is engineering all this because of his political convictions?"

"You're asking who the guy is behind the guy behind the curtain? Hell, I don't know."

"It's a bit speculative," Lee said. "Well, Mr. Parkhurst? Care to fill in the blanks for us?"

"What are you talking about?" Ted said. "You're as mental as he is."

"This would be the time to unburden yourself," Lee told him, "while you can still put some spin on the facts."

"You don't expect ... What is it you want from me?"

"The truth," I said.

He was staring at Lee. "The truth is what you
don't
want to hear, that I'm an innocent man."

"Why would an innocent man try to kill Bettina?" I asked. "We've got you cold on that. What made you risk that? Did she see you untied and roaming around that basement? Maybe Gault didn't shoot her? Maybe it was you?"

"I was bound and gagged, you stupid hash slinger. You had to cut me loose."

"There was somebody else in the basement," I said. "Your partner had just enough time to put on your blindfold and gag, wrap a strip of duct tape around your ankles and wrists. Or you could have done it yourself, saving your wrists for last, wrapping the tape loosely and giving your wrists a final twist to make it look tight.

"But however you got tied up, just before you did, you made a stupid mistake."

His eyes glared at me from behind his bangs.

"It was a thing you do a hundred times a day," I said. "You brushed your hair back."

"My hair?"

"When I found you on the ground, supposedly where you'd been for hours, your hair was pushed off your forehead. How could you have done that with your hands tied behind your back?"

He blinked, then said, "Gee, Billy, I think even Perry Mason would have turned up his nose at that kind of 'evidence.'"

"They probably won't need much evidence, Ted, with Bettina as an eyewitness."

Ted looked at Lee. "There's no proof of anything," he said.

"We'll just have to see how it all plays out, Mr. Parkhurst," she replied. She leaned over him and used her left hand to brush his hair back.

His body stiffened, and he jerked his head away from her. The forelock flopped forward again.

Lee made a
tsk-tsk
sound and grinned at him.

The first police to arrive were several officers in uniform whose names I didn't catch. They were followed by a pair of detectives. One of them, a young Hispanic-American woman named Juarez, read Ted his rights. She and her partner, an older black man named Gideon, asked the basic who-what-where-why questions. Then, satisfied that such action was appropriate, they and two of the uniforms took Ted off to the lockup.

A Detective Hawkline, a middle-aged white woman who was a dead ringer for the late Spencer Tracy, and her equally white partner, Detective Seestrunk, a thirtysomething beer keg with ears and bloodshot eyes, took more detailed statements from Lee, A.W., and, finally, me. Hawkline and Seestrunk, it turned out, were the lead detectives investigating the shoot-out at the Vosburgh mansion.

Since I had no idea how Lee had spun that situation, it was a good thing the detectives were working under the assumption that I had not been involved. They knew who I was. They knew I was a person of interest in the Gallagher murder investigation. They did not know why I wound up being a witness in what appeared to be an attempted murder in the hospital. That was the focus of their questioning, which was done primarily by Hawkline.

I kept my story as close to the truth as I could. Because I had received threats on my life, my employer, Commander Vernon di Voss, had hired InterTec to make sure I came to no harm. Bettina Noor was one of my bodyguards. When I learned of her misfortune, I decided to visit her in the hospital, where I and my other bodyguard, A.W. Johansen, interrupted Ted Parkhurst attempting to smother Ms. Noor.

Seestrunk seemed satisfied with my explanation. He appeared to have something more important on his mind, like hitting the nearest bar and grill. Hawkline, on the other hand, was one of those dog-with-a-bone investigators.

"Any idea why Mr. Parkhurst should want to kill Miss Noor?" she asked.

"No idea."

"But you knew Mr. Parkhurst? Had what might be described as a friendly relationship with him?"

"I'd thought we were friends."

"Was he a friend of Miss Noor's, too?"

"I don't know," I said.

She changed the subject, asking if Detective Solomon would corroborate my "story" about the death threats. I replied that I had not bothered to tell him about the threats, since we were in an adversarial situation and he didn't seem to believe anything I had to say.

She nodded and looked at Seestrunk, who was focusing on a spider in a corner of the ceiling. She nodded again and asked if I knew why Bettina Noor had gone to a deserted mansion earlier that day.

I said that I did not.

She asked if I knew a man named Stephen Gault, and I replied that I did not know him.

"Could Miss Noor's trip to the mansion have had anything to do with your death threats?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"What about this Parkhurst guy? Think he might have been the source of the threats?"

"He'd be near the top of my list," I said.

"Why do you think he's got it in for you?"

"You'd have to ask him."

"And why would he have it in for Miss Noor?"

I was beginning to like Detective Hawkline and the way she threw
those questions right across the plate. I actually wished I could lay it all out for her--Felix, the kidnapping, the whole works. Just unburden myself. But that would have been foolish. Instead I said, "I don't know."

"This gonna take much longer?" Detective Seestrunk inquired.

Detective Hawkline told him she thought it would and smiled when she said it.

Shortly after that, she got a phone call. She listened awhile, emitting little grunts of mild surprise. She made a few whispery comments behind her hand that I couldn't hear, being neither a dog nor a teenager. Then she put away the phone.

"Good news for the bars in town, Seestrunk, you're through here," she said, rising. Her body was a little like Spencer Tracy's, too.

"What's up?" I asked.

Detective Hawkline gave me a look of bemusement. "Good-bye, Mr. Blessing," she said. "I imagine Detective Solomon may be checking in with you to talk about those death threats."

"I'd rather talk with you," I said.

"I appreciate the compliment, if that's what it is," she said. "But we have nothing more to discuss."

"I'm not sure what that means."

"The case against Theodore Parkhurst is no more. It expired with Mr. Parkhurst."

"Say what?"