Free The Talk Show Murders by Al Roker

construction site with a backhoe resting idly at the curb beside a huge pile of sand. In just the few days I’d been in town, I’d seen considerable building and rebuilding taking place. What Nelson Algren had once famously labeled the City on the Make was now apparently a city on the makeover. Mainly by BDI.
    Because the sand was blocking part of the sidewalk, I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed the two-lane street, walking against the flow. Continuing north, I spotted a small black SUV parked just past the backhoe. The darkened side window was open a crack, and cigarette smoke snaked through it, mixing with the traffic exhaust. While I watched, the SUV backed up and darted out into the traffic, barely missing a dusty sedan driven by a Germanic-looking guy, who began pounding on his horn.
    I had no reason to think the driver of the SUV had any business with me. But there’s that little twinge you get sometimes from a sixth-sense connection made. Usually it’s the feeling that someone’s watching you. At that moment, it was Pat Patton’s death and my potentially perilous situation.
    At the corner, the SUV suddenly attempted a U-turn but was only partially successful. A Lincoln Town Car blocked it. When the Town Car moved on, the Accord behind it stayed where it was and the black SUV made his U.
    Coming for me, no doubt.
    I ran out into the street, dodged a truck, and continued on past a slow-moving Mercedes sedan to the sidewalk on the other side. Before the SUV’s driver could manage a second U-turn, I ran down an alley and hung a right into another alley. Exiting, I continued on a fast walk east and flagged down the first free taxi I saw.
    “Hey, I know you, man,” the black driver said, as I pulled the door shut. “You’re the morning show dude.”
    “That’s me,” I said, and gave him the name of my hotel.
    As he pulled away from the curb, I twisted in the seat to look out of the rear window. No black SUV. When I faced forward, the driver was staring at me in his rearview.
    “You see anything back there I should know about?” he asked.
    “Not a blessed thing,” I told him.
    Why should both of us be worried?

Chapter
TWELVE
    “Won’t you even consider it, Billy?” Trina Lomax asked.
    We were at the tail end of a dinner at Everest in the Chicago Stock Exchange, Trina, Arnie Epps, and myself. I’d been a little surprised to discover I was the only cohost they’d invited. Surprised and wary.
    For the better part of an hour and a half, we’d small-talked, observed the view from the fortieth floor, and enjoyed our seven courses that arrived from Chef Jean Joho’s educated kitchen with courtesy and efficiency. We were sipping espresso and nibbling on petits fours when Trina finally got around to the purpose of the dinner.
    “Gretchen and I feel that the show should feature special coverage of the Chicago PD’s investigation of the Pat Patton murder.”
    My throat closed in on a bite of petit four. Usually happens when a noose tightens. I coughed and grabbed a glass of water. When I could talk, I said, “It’s a local murder. Why would—”
    “Patton was almost a regular.”
    “Almost,” I said. “He didn’t even appear on the show.”
    “What kept him from it, need I remind you, Billy, is that he was murdered,” she said. “It could even
be
the reason he was murdered.”
    “I get it. You want to use that very dubious possibility to suggest that our show is more relevant than the other morning shows—not to mention edgy and dangerous.”
    “It is a unique situation,” she said. “Not
Today
or
GMA
or
The Early Show
can claim to be that closely tied to a homicide.”
    “What about you, Arnie, you old hipster?” I asked. “You on board with using a man’s violent death to put more eyeballs on the screen?”
    Our line producer, who was already looking uneasy with his multicolored Hawaiian shirt nearly hidden by an ancient, shiny blue blazer, winced and stammered. “Well,