“Where are you, Billy?” my restaurant hostess-manager, Cassandra, wanted to know.
“In my hotel room, getting ready for dinner.”
“I hear a man singing.”
Dal was in the suite’s sitting room, singing along with a contestant on The Voice.
“Just a friend,” I said, not wanting to get into the whole thing with her. “He’s staying with me for a few days.”
“In your hotel room?”
“Can’t a couple of guys hang out in a hotel in their bathrobes without narrow minds jumping to conclusions?”
She was silent for a beat, then decided to change the subject. “We identified the little bastard who’s been causing the trouble. A busboy named Phillipe, who’s been working here for less than a month. The undercover security lady saw him setting some roaches loose in the main dining room just before lunch.”
“Crap! What’d you do?”
“We got rid of the roaches. Most of them, anyway. It was a little tricky, since we didn’t want Phillipe to know he’d been observed.”
“Why didn’t we?”
“Because as any expert in security knows, you don’t chop off the finger while the hand is still at large. Or something like that.”
“Your boyfriend tell you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Other than Phillipe and his roaches, everything okay?”
“Better than that. We’re just about at full capacity in the main room, and three of the private rooms are busy. How’s Chicago?”
“It’s got Marshall Field and Soldier Field, and it’s on a nice lake, but,” I began to sing, “ ‘… It hasn’t got the hansoms in the park, it hasn’t got a skyline after dark. That’s why New York’s my home sweet home.’ With apologies to the late Sammy Davis.”
“You and your hotel friend should do a duet,” she said, and clicked off.
At ten to eight, Dal stood in the doorway to the bedroom, resplendent in black blazer, dark gray turtleneck, and lighter gray slacks. There was no evidence of his gun or Kevlar vest.
“You’re looking good,” he said.
“I look like Bibendum, the Michelin Man. And I feel like I’m wearing a corset.”
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
I still hadn’t by the time we reached Pastiche.
It was in a modern tri-level building located on the Chicago River, near the Merchandise Mart. A semi-officious maître d’ informed us, in a French accent that sounded almost comical, that the Onion City party was being held down the stairs to our right.
The stairwell led to a just-above-river-level indoor-outdoor dining area, where a lovely young brunette seated at a table introduced herself as Jo Sennett, Derek’s social secretary. She welcomed me and asked Dal for his name, which she checked off her list. “The bar is to the left, but guests are gathering on the terrace,” she said. “Have fun.”
“Fun,” Dal muttered. “Billy, if the women guests all look like her, you’re going to have to keep reminding me why we’re here.”
“I don’t know about you, Dal, but that is why I’m here.”
The restaurant’s efficient layout, furniture, and especially the white cushioned chairs on the terrace made it easy to recognize which French Seine-side establishment had been its inspiration: Riviere. I hoped that the menu would be as successfully reproduced.
We were neither the first nor the last to arrive. There were about fifty people milling on the large terrace, with room for another twenty or twenty-five. I recognized a few of the cast and crew members I’d met at Webber’s mansion sprinkled in among those present. Near the boat dock, the marsupial-like assistant director, Harp Didio, was chatting up three young executive types. Webber’s partner, Alan Luchek, his red hair temporarily tamed by more than a dab of mousse, shifted his weight from foot to foot anxiously while struggling through a conversation with an elderly, obviously affluent couple.
Thief’s director, Austin Deware, was at a table, doing shooters with several young men and women who might have been film students. Nearby, at another table, the actor Sandford Hawes, dark Ray-Bans lending their air of mystery to his absurdly handsome face, was holding court with an array of women, young, old, and in between.
A waiter arrived, bearing a tray containing bite-sized grilled somethings, accessible by toothpick. I tried a sample.
“Well?” Dal asked.
“Grilled calamari,” I said. Instead of mentioning that the calamari was soaked in lemon butter, garlic, basil, and tomato, I merely added, “Delicious. Try ’em.”
He took two, and I continued to scan the crowd for Adoree. I didn’t see her, but I spied Madeleine Parnelle engaging several executive types in conversation. She was wearing a midnight-blue dress with sparkles and a neckline nearly down to her navel. Her head was adorned by a matching version of an African skullcap.
Panning right, I locked eyes with Carrie, who was at the far edge of the terrace. She turned to a tall, professorial gentleman, said something to him, then began working her way through the crowd toward us.
Following just behind her, looking a little apprehensive, was J. B. Kazynski.
“Billy, I’m so glad you’re here,” Carrie said.
“And in such sleazy company,” J.B. added. She was glaring at Dal, who was wincing and looking ill at ease.
“Dal, this is Carrie Sands,” I said.
“A pleasure,” he said, turning from J.B. with relief. He shifted his face into what I suspected was his ruggedly appealing Daniel Craig grin. “Henry Hart Dalrymple, at your service, ma’am.”
“Jesus Christ!” J.B. grumbled. “Excuse me while I puke.”
“I take it you and Dal are not strangers,” I said.
“J.B. tried to kill me a while back,” Dal said.
“It was just a warning shot. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
Carrie was looking at them both, her eyes open wider than Little Orphan Annie’s but with more pupil.
“Dal’s my bodyguard,” I told her.
“Uh … J.B.’s mine.”
“What happened to the legendary Bucky?” I asked.
Dal and J.B. stopped their sniping to ask in unison, “Bucky Hurtz?”
“Y-yes,” Carrie said. “I think Derek and Alan talked to him, but he said he’d retired.”
“Bucky retired?” Dal said, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“He was the champ,” J.B. said. “Remember when the Imperial Insane Vice Lords marked Senator Rockville’s family …?”
“As soon as the senator hired Bucky, he grabbed one of the Lords—” Dal said.
“Not just one of the Lords,” J.B. interrupted. “He grabbed Li’l Hay-sus and nailed him to a tree.”
“Crucifixion-style,” Dal said.
They both laughed.
J.B. turned to me suddenly and said, “Could we talk for a minute, just the two of us?”
I nodded and, with Carrie and Dal watching us with curiosity, followed her to a less populated section of the restaurant’s interior.
“What’s with you and Dal?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“Friend of a friend put us in touch.”
“He’s a sociopath.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” I said, and started to walk away.
“Wait! That’s not why I wanted to talk.”
I didn’t think it was. I stood there, looking at her, waiting for her to ask me not to repeat anything she’d told me about her investigation of our host and his company.
It was evidently hard for her to ask a favor. She’d tried to make it a quid-pro-quo situation by telling me something she didn’t think I knew about Dal. That hadn’t worked, and now she was trying her best to come up with a spin that would make her seem less needy.
“I’m in a position to find out who tried to kill you and Carrie,” she said. “Don’t screw it up.”
“How could I do that?” I asked, with fake innocence.
“By telling Webber what I stupidly told you about my nephew,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“Oh, I see. You want me to keep your secret? All you have to do is ask.”
“It’s as much for your benefit as—”
“All you have to do is ask,” I repeated.
“Okay. Will you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Can we go back to the party now?”
When we returned, Carrie was laughing at something Dal had said.
“What’s so funny?” J.B. asked defensively, as if she assumed they’d been talking about her.
“Dal was telling me about the time Bucky rescued several young undocumented Asian women from a house of prostitution in Joliet,” Carrie said.
“Yeah,” J.B. said. “He got ’em out in the confusion he caused by dumping a garbage can full of sewer rats into the reception area.”
Regardless of the reason, the use of rats to clean house was a little too close to home for me to be amused. But it definitely raised J.B.’s spirits. She felt she had to top it with another merry tale of the legendary Bucky Hurtz.
While our keepers amused themselves, I suggested to Carrie that we slip away to the bar for cocktails. This resulted in a mojito for her and a Sapphire martini for myself. I tapped my glass against hers and said, “To a long life.”
“Amen.”
“Last night, when you asked me to drive to Derek’s with you, was that your idea?”
“What do you mean?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. I immediately regretted giving Mantata’s unpleasant suggestion even a second’s thought.
“I don’t even know what I mean,” I said. “It’s been a long day. How was yours?”
“Not bad. We filmed some exteriors at Trump Tower.”
On the deck, our bodyguards were laughing again.
“How’d you hook up with J.B.?” I asked.
“After Bucky said no, Alan remembered seeing her on the show with us and called her service. She said she was busy but finally agreed to farm out the job she’d been doing and come aboard. I’m glad. I doubt I’d feel as comfortable with Bucky, as legendary as he may be. And J.B. seems very professional.”
I’d say, I thought to myself. J.B.’s nephew and his wife were paying her to find out the source of Onion City’s financing, and now Onion City was a client, too, which put her in a position to complete the first job. Brilliant.
“I got a nice long email from Gerard today,” Carrie said. “He misses me, and he thinks he’ll be finished with the corrections to the final draft by the time I meet him in Paris.”
A Frenchman who prefers email to the sound of his lover’s voice? I wondered if good old Gerard might be working on something in Paris besides his mystery novel. By hooking up with Webber, Madeleine Parnelle had given her husband a reason to romance a younger woman. But maybe the guy didn’t need a reason. Maybe he was just a self-gratifying son of a bitch who now had found somebody more to his liking than Carrie. I sipped my martini, scanned the crowd, and tried to keep my speculations about Gerard Parnelle to myself.
“I know what’s on your mind,” Carrie said.
“Really?” I said, hoping she was wrong.
“You’re wondering where Adoree is.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“She’s on Derek’s yacht with some of the investors. They’ll be here any minute.”
“That’s what this blowout is all about, right?” I asked. “Feting the moneymen?”
“And the media. There’s a private dining room upstairs where they’ve set up lights and cameras. Before too long, Sandford and I and Austin and Adoree are gonna be escorted up there for interviews. With the usual crowd—ET, Insider, Extra, Access Hollywood, E! channel.”
“Anybody from Wake Up?”
“You mean besides you?”
Was that why I’d been invited? Maybe, I thought.
But roughly ten minutes later, when camera crews appeared and the crowd out on the deck started to gather at the rail to welcome Derek the yachtsman and his passengers, I realized this was merely going to be a social night for me. Sharing the cruise with Cap’n Derek, the lovely Adoree, and an assorted collection of white men with expensive haircuts in business gray suits was the morning show’s willowy flame-tressed conservative entertainment reporter, Karma Singleton.
Karma was draped against Derek close enough to leave an indentation of her right breast on his blazer. Our host seemed to be enjoying himself, in his yachtsman outfit of midnight-blue blazer, white turtleneck, white slacks, and—wait for it—skipper’s cap. Thurston Howell III would’ve approved.
He raised a megaphone to his lips and called out, “Ahoy, Pastiche. We are preparing to come ashore from the good ship Duchess the Fourth.”
“Derek has three other yachts?” I asked, as we walked out on the terrace to join the festivities.
“I don’t think so,” Carrie said. “Oh, you mean Duchess the Fourth. No, that’s just … Al Capone’s yacht was named Duchess the Third. Derek’s a big gangster buff. His pet project, which he’s been working on forever, is a television series about organized crime in Chicago. I guess there was a show like that a long time ago, but he says that one was more about the police.”
As the yacht bumped the dock, Karma and Derek were pushed together even closer.
“Who’s the redhead bimbo doing the vertical grind with Webber?” J.B. asked, as we joined her and Dal.
“Karma Singleton,” I said. “I work with her. She’s the show’s entertainment reporter.”
“Looks to me like the only thing she’s entertaining is a ride on the hobby horse.”
“Doesn’t make her a bad girl,” Dal said.
“Tell that to Lady Parnelle, who’s looking daggers at Webber,” J.B. said. “Speaking of karma.”
Madeleine was at the terrace rail, definitely not in high party spirits.
“Poor Derek,” Carrie said.
“That romance wilting a little?” I asked her.
She sighed. “I think so. And it used to be so happy at the castle.”
As soon as Webber set foot on the terrace, la Parnelle was at his side, saying something to him through clenched teeth. He smiled at her as if she was complimenting him on his cap, a passive-aggressive move that seemed to push her anger past the verbal stage. When her mouth clamped shut, he left her and began pressing the flesh and welcoming his guests.
A tall, handsome gent moved Adoree off to another section of the terrace, where they met with a group of middle-aged couples. I wondered if she knew I was at the dinner. Or if she cared.
“Billy, what are you doing here?”
It was Karma, approaching quickly and with purpose.
“Hi, Ka—”
“This is my beat, Billy,” she hissed. “They shouldn’t have sent you.”
“Nobody sent me,” I said. “I’m here as a guest.”
“Oh.” She stared at me, apparently trying to decide if I was telling her the truth. “Guest of whom?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but Derek invited me.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Then, as if the mention of his name had drawn him to us, Derek was there, pumping my hand and saying, “Glad you came, Billy. I see you know Karm—. Of course you do. You guys work together.”
“More or less,” I said.
“And who’s this guy?” he said, referencing Dal. “He looks like that Irish actor Donal Logue.”
After I introduced them, Dal told Derek, “Not Irish and not an actor. I’m in security.”
“Oh.” Derek looked from Dal to the bodyguard he’d hired, J.B., then to me. “I get it,” he said. “But I think we’re pretty safe here.”
“Unless you consider all those skyscrapers across the river as potential cover for a sniper,” J.B. said. “With all those windows, they could be looking down at us right now through a scope on an AW-fifty.”
“That’s what I’ve always loved about you, J.B.,” Dal said. “Your positive outlook.”
She turned to me and suddenly stuck her forefinger into my chest. “And whose positive idea was it to put Billy in this lumpy Kevlar vest?”
“Excuse me, kids,” Webber said, “but I’d better get the ball rolling here.”
“Why don’t I join you?” Karma said, grabbing his arm, not waiting for an answer.
“I know Madeleine,” Carrie said. “Your redheaded friend is in more danger than we are.”
I looked at the buildings J.B. had mentioned. And the windows. And I wondered if that was true. The vest offered some comfort, but in every movie I’d ever seen on the subject, a red laser dot appeared on the victim’s forehead just before the sniper invariably went for the head shot.