Al Roker - The Midnight Show Murders: A Billy Blessing Novel

BY AL ROKER AND DICK LOCHTE

The Morning Show Murders
The Midnight Show Murders

The Midnight Show Murders is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Al Roker Entertainment

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D ELACORTE P RESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roker, Al
The midnight show murders : a billy blessing novel / Al Roker and Dick Lochte.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33978-6
1. Television personalitiesFiction. 2. Celebrity chefsFiction.
3. Los Angeles (Calif.)Fiction. I. Lochte, Dick. II. Title.
PS3618.O537M53 2010
813.6dc22 2010026890

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

This book is dedicated to my wife,
Deborah Roberts.

How I ended up with such a
special woman is still a mystery to me.

To Courtney, Leila, and
Nicky: I know you are surprised
I wrote a mystery because you
think I dont have a clue.

I love you all.

My love affair with Los Angeles began to wane twenty-three years ago, the morning a cleaning crew found Tiffany Ardens body in a dumpster behind Chez Anisette, a very popular restaurant of the day. Her head had been pulverized. If youre ghoulish enough to want a more detailed description than that, then go ahead and Google the media coverage of the murder.

There was a lot of it.

Much of it was accurate. Some was not. For example, it was widely reported that her murderer was unknown. Not true. I was pretty sure I knew who he was. And I knew that he was still at large, enjoying a rich, full life in the City of Angels.

Just listen ta this, Billy. The gruff but lilting voice of Irish pop singer-guitarist Jimmy Fitzpatrick interrupted my morose thoughts with a statistic almost as disturbing. There are two thousand, nine hundred an forty-three things that can cock-up the average airplane, any one of em capable of plummetin us to earth an certain death. Would ya believe it?

Fitz, my seatmate aboard American Airlines flight 349 to Los Angeles, was reading a cheery little nonbook hed picked up at JFK, What Could Go Wrong?

Thanks for sharing, I said, and picked up my airport purchase, a Walter Mosley paperback, from my lap, where Id rested it while musing about poor Tiffany.

O course, this is not the average airplane, since were travelin in the compny of the future king o late-night tele, Fitz added, making sure he was heard by the king, who was sitting across the aisle.

Off camera and semi-relaxed, the comedian Desmond ODay was a wiry bantamweight in his forties with a V-shaped face and short, neatly coifed hair so blond it was almost silver. He had a penchant for tight, black apparel, which presently included linen trousers and a T-shirt designed to display his workout arm muscles and mini-six-pack. He paused in his perusal of a script to glare over his rimless half-glasses at his shaggy-haired, bearded music director.

Stop botherin Billy, ya sod, he said. The mans doin us a big favor, travelin all across the country to help us kick off the show.

Fitz, wincing from having incurred the displeasure of his old pal and new boss, said, Sorry, Billy.

He gave me an apologetic smile and leaned back in his seat, silent as the late King Tut.

A little conversation would be fine, Fitz, I said, as long as its about something other than us plummeting to the ground in a screaming death plunge, then being vaporized in a fireball of death.

He kept his lips zipped, evidently convinced that a command from Des ODay was not to be taken lightly. He was a better judge of that than I. Hed known Des since they were boys together on the Emerald Isle, while Id just met the man.

Oh, Im Billy Blessing, by the way. Chef Billy Blessing, to be formal about it.

For a decade and a half, I served in other chefs kitchens before opening my own place, Blessings Bistro, in Manhattan. Its famous for its steaks and chops, and the food we prepare and serve has earned a top rating in Gault Milleau, of which I am quite proud.

My fame, such as it is, comes only indirectly from my culinary skills. Im a cohost on the Worldwide Broadcasting Companys morning news and entertainment show Wake Up, America! weekdays seven to nine a.m. If youre one of the shows four million viewers, youve probably seen me, the guy who, Ive been told, looks a little like a slightly stockier, clean-shaven (head as well as face) version of Eddie Murphy.

I provide a daily WUA! segment on food preparation, but I have other chores, too. I do remotes, interview visitors to NYC who line up on the street each morning outside the studio, review books, chat with authors who are flogging their wares, and, whenever possible, flog my own wares, which, in addition to the Bistro, include a weekly cooking show on the Wine & Dine Cable Network, Blessings in the Kitchen, a line of premium frozen dinners, and a couple of cookbooks.

At that particular moment I was flying from New York to Los Angeles to add two new credits to my list. One of them involved the Irishman across the aisle. Though you couldnt have told it by his sour scowl, Des was very funny and quick-witted, and hed parlayed success on the stand-up circuit and a featured role as the cynical, sex-obsessed photographer in the popular sitcom A Model Life into an upper-strata gig as host of his own show, ODay at Night, WBCs entry in the post-prime-time talk-show sweepstakes, set to debut in precisely nine days.

Id been tapped as the new shows first weekly guest announcer. Its producer, a Falstaffian wheeler-dealer named Max Slaughter, told me Id been Dess first choice. My agent-lawyer, Wally Wing, who, unlike most members of both of his professions, has never heard the term candy-coating, admitted that Des had wanted someone on the order of Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt or, at the very least, the exgovernator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gretchen Di Voss, the head of the network, somehow avoided laughing in his face and offered him Howie Mandell or me. Howie had other commitments.

Why wouldnt I have other commitments? Id asked Wally.

Well, one reasonGretchen wants you to do it. She feels it would be, in her words, an act of synchronicity. Youd be the bridge between Wake Up and At Night, getting viewers of the morning show to sample the late show while at the same time giving At Nights fans a taste of the morning show.

Id love to meet these viewers who are up from seven in the morning till after midnight, Id replied. But, okay, that explains why the network wants me to do the show. Why in Gods name would I agree to spend two weeks in L.A., away from home, hearth, and restaurant?

Wally had grinned and said, The real reasons got nothing to do with the ODay show. Its wait for it Sandy Selman wants to make a movie about you and the Felix thing.