Dead Line

by JJ Gould

  DEAD

  LINE

  A novel by JJ Gould

  © J.J. Gould

  Published 2020

  ISBN-13: 979-8561274015

  Acknowledgements

  Others may have a host of helpers to acknowledge. I have one. This book would not be written, edited or published without a lot patient advice from Rollan Wengert. Thank you!!

  Chapter 1 - Charlie Hofer

  It was the week after Christmas, and Charlie Hofer was in a foul mood. Charlie hadn’t always been rich, but he’d always been loud, coarse, and profane. Over the years, he’d noticed that the richer he got, the more people were willing to overlook his flaws. But not that day. That was the reason for his mood.

  Squat, florid, seventy-year-old Charlie had a lot of hair, but none of it was on the top of his head. He made up for that by letting the thin grizzled hair on the back of his head grow long and the hair on his chest bloom forth, a gray rat’s nest with gold chains set off by unbuttoned silk shirts and expensive tailored suits.

  “Get yer fat ass over here!” he said. The woman was certainly close enough to hear him, but he yelled it anyway, his voice surprisingly high.

  “What’s the matter, Charlie?” The woman tottered over, top-heavy and in high heels, ignoring his mood. Her first name had been Doris, but she changed it to Veronica when she started working for Charlie and then changed her last name to Hofer when she started living with him. Their common-law marriage had saved Charlie a ton on prenup.

  “Read me this.” He shoved an open envelope in her direction. Hofer had needed glasses for years but thought they detracted from his appearance, so as a nod to vanity and a way to exert control, he often made Veronica read him things.

  The envelope was heavy linen, embossed, and she did not want to take it. “It’s from them again?”

  “It’s from them again?” he said in a mincing voice, mocking her. “Who the fuck do you think it’s from?”

  Her voice took a soothing tone. “Charlie, you don’t need these stuck-up jerks. You’re too good for them.”

  He threw the envelope in her face. “What? You think you know what it says already? You think it’s a no?”

  The Oaks was not the only country club in Sioux Falls, but it certainly was the most prestigious. Sioux Falls was not a big city, certainly, but it did have a surprising number of millionaires. The most elite of these millionaires, who played golf and swam in comfortable seclusion, were known as the rich boys’ club, and although they were not nearly as wealthy as Charlie Hofer, they snubbed him anyway. Four times, he’d filled out the application. Four times, he’d sweated his way through the meet and greet, trying not to seem as coarse as he was, trying not to be as profane as he was, openly hinting at how he would be willing to use his immense wealth to improve the club. They nodded smoothly and looked down at him smugly.

  And now the letter had arrived again. He had an idea about its contents but wasn’t completely certain. That made his foul mood even worse.

  Charlie Hofer came from nothing. His dad had left a Hutterite Colony, and the family had been shunned. Young Charlie had used the fuel of spite to take advantage of a completely predictable human trait—sin. Starting with a run-down strip club on a state highway south of Aberdeen, Charlie targeted the hunters from out of state and the men coming in from out of town. He took the profits and added to them. He exploited other towns throughout the state that didn’t have statutes expressly limiting his kind of clubs, and he built outside the city limits of towns that did. He sold sex, gambling, and booze in all the ways that were legal and in other ways that he could get away with. He built his brand by calling all the bars, stores, hotels, and strip clubs that he owned the same name: Goodies.

  He bought billboards up and down the interstate that said, Have Some Goodies, then took those profits to diversify into video lottery, land, and motels. He’d married three times, always to strippers because he liked how they looked and the way they didn’t understand prenuptial agreements. He was divorced and living with Veronica but was contemplating making it official. Being married might help his attempt to get into the club. The last time they’d met with the club, he referred to her as his fiancée. They had not seemed impressed.

  Veronica held the expensive stationery, her lips moving as she read, her expression telling him the awful truth. Rejected again.

  “Come on, Charie. Let’s forget about it, huh?”

  She tried to cozy up to him, but he shoved her away. “Those dog-shit sons of bitches… think they’re better’n me. They’re dirty as hell. They all are.”

  “Yeah, Charlie, I know.” Veronica nodded wryly. Strippers knew all about men. “But what’re you gonna do?”

  Charlie sat brooding, a toad with a cigar and a Scotch. He brooded the whole day, staring at the TV, clicking through the channels, watching nothing. Then, in a flash of insight, he stopped and stared at the remote in his hand and burst out laughing, a sharp and venomous bark. And he began to plan. When the plan was complete, he started looking for the person to implement it.

  Chapter 2 - Stan Martin

  When the fateful letter arrived, Stan Martin was winding up another long day at News 610, KCHY, the Voice of Wyoming. There had been some snow in the morning, making for a treacherous drive to work, but by the time he pulled into the apartment parking lot, the sun had melted most of it. Jangling his keys, he opened the mailbox. He pulled out the letters and shuffled through them as he walked up a flight of stairs and down the hall to his apartment. If Stan Martin had taken the time to think about it, he would have realized he was a happy man. He had a job he was good at, a wife he loved, and a son to bounce on his knee when he came home.

  Sadly, his job did not pay very well—he was the head of radio news at KCHY-AM in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the state capital and a pretty good place for a news director. As news director, he was in charge of three part-timers, known as rip-n-readers, who would rip the latest news off the wire-service printer, stack it in order of relevance, and read it twice an hour. That meant Stan not only had to read news in the morning shift, but he was also the sole reporter at the station—the only one required to actually find, research, write, and report news. As a reward for his diligence and professionalism, Stan was poorly paid, a reality he’d grown used to.

  It was the end of the state legislative session, which consisted of about a month of relentless reporting of the various bills, budgets, committees, subcommittees, lobbying efforts, and press conferences—a long, long month but important to Stan’s livelihood. Underpaid as he was, he furiously wrote story after story, sending them upstream to the wire service, and each story that was picked up would add a few more dollars to the check and a much-needed bit of moonlighting bonus money for his young family.

  Family. The thought made him smile. Marriage and family had come late to Stan Martin’s life, and he was grateful and proud of his new role as husband and father.

  He checked the mail, grabbed the stack of what appeared at first glance to be mostly bills, and charged up the steps of the dingy building to the second floor, apartment 4B.

  He turned the key in the lock and walked into the one-bedroom flat decorated in industrial shades of beige, tan, taupe, and oatmeal. Claire was holding the baby on her hip, standing by the stove. She looked up with a smile, and Stan’s heart gave the same little jolt it always did. Claire would turn heads wearing a burlap sack.

  “Ring baloney, boiled potatoes, and broccoli. You’ve got twenty minutes to enjoy it before I have to get to the diner.”

  “What did the doctor say?” Stan picked the baby out of Claire’s arms and kissed his cheek. The baby stared back owlishly. The baby had a name, but they seldom said it—no need, really.

  “He said sit down and eat your supper.” She gave
him a kiss and a nudge toward the kitchen table.

  Stan nodded and sank into the padded vinyl chair, grateful to sit down and suddenly hungry. He bowed his head and thought a wordless grace. He was grateful for this woman who loved him and for a place to come home to at the end of a long day.

  “Mail come?” Claire asked.

  “Right here. Aren’t you going to join us?”

  A good daycare was hard to find and expensive, so Claire had gotten a job that fit around Stan’s. The diner was open twenty-four hours a day, desperate for good help, and satisfied with Claire’s arrangement of filling out her hours one week in advance.

  The baby studied them both, first Claire, then Stan, who blew on a small piece of potato and held it out on a fork. The baby shifted his attention to the potato. Like a judge weighing a sentence, he pondered the fork before opening his mouth and allowing Stan to insert the food. Then he closed his mouth and chewed, looking from one parent to the other soundlessly.

  “Weird,” Claire said, voicing what both of them thought.

  During all of his eight-month life, John Martin McGarvey had not uttered a sound. No crying, no burbling, no chortling, no cooing, no nothing. At first, they thought it was a blessing. Sleeping through the night was an almost immediate option for the two of them. Yet when Claire would wake up to check on him, he would be wide-awake. If she wondered if he might be hungry, he ate. If she was concerned that he might need changing, he did. If she felt like rocking him, he seemed to enjoy it. He would study her face and eyes with great solemnity and tenderness and never utter a sound.

  “So,” Stan said, stabbing a piece of baloney with a fork. “What did the doctor say?”

  “He said he didn’t know. He said we should get some tests. He said it could be autism.” She said the word in a careful, offhand way, like it was no big deal, like she’d practiced over and over again until she could say it without a tremor.

  “Autism?” Stan repeated the word to the baby, offering him a bit of broccoli, which the baby solemnly tasted and carefully spit out with a look of disappointment.

  “I don’t think that’s it.” Stan had done his own research, trying not to worry Claire while looking up various behavioral disorders at the community college library.

  “He said it could be. He said there are about eight places in the country that could help us. That could help John.” She was idly sorting through the mail, probably dreading to say out loud the names of all the expensive hospitals in all the expensive cities.

  Stan looked at her. Claire would not look back. She bit her lip and brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear, a habit she had when she was thinking.

  “Hey.” Stan reached out and held her hand across the table. “You have to leave for your shift… you’d better spill it now.”

  “Johns Hopkins, some place in Cleveland, New York City, Boston… a lot of places too expensive for us.”

  “You said eight. Any of them closer?”

  “Yeah, they said Hall-Hauptmann Hospital has a new clinic for kids like… for kids with behavioral stuff. I guess it’s pretty cutting-edge stuff.”

  Stan sat back, thinking. Hall-Hauptmann Hospital was located out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For a time, he’d lived in South Dakota. In fact, he’d met Claire there. Moving there would be fine—maybe even necessary. Already, Stan was mentally preparing the steps he would need to take to find work and help his young son. He was trying to remember if he had any media contacts in that town when he heard Claire snort.

  “What. Is. This?” She held up a piece of mail and looked at Stan accusingly.

  “What?” Stan reached for it, and Claire pulled back her hand, eyes narrowed.

  “You got a piece of mail—hand addressed—on strip-club stationery?”

  Stan held up his hands innocently. “Don’t look at me. Open it if you want.”

  “Oh, I will, buddy boy.” Claire was not one to be trifled with. She ripped the end off the envelope and shook out the contents. Her narrowed eyes grew wide with surprise and disbelief.

  “What is it?” Stan and the baby looked at her.

  “It’s from a guy named Charles Hofer. He’s looking to start a news station.” She scanned the letter with increasing surprise. She looked up, slack-jawed. “Stan, he wants you to apply!”

  Chapter 3 - Harrison Hall

  Dr. Harrison Benjamin Hall IV, reigning head of the Hall-Hauptmann Hospital, sighed theatrically. It would be so much easier to be just a doctor, one of the relatively nameless twenty-five hundred or so who wandered around the hospital and clinics, dispensing diagnoses, checking charts, eating in the hospital café, flirting with the nurses, and plotting their course to retirement.

  That was not his lot in life, though. No, Dr. Harrison Benjamin Hall IV was doomed to a higher path and, as such, was master of all the dreary little decisions that trundled their way across his massive mahogany desk, an arcane overblown thousand-pound monstrosity that his grandfather had bought in the ’30s. He’d tried to get it replaced by something more modern, a far more suitable Poul Henningson original that someone was auctioning off, but the budget people raised their eyebrows, and the auction came and went, and now he was stuck.

  He was wondering who’d gotten the desk when the intercom on his desk chimed.

  “I’m busy.” His answer was patient and immediate.

  “Yes, Doctor. Shall I try to reschedule Mr. Warner?”

  Hall blew out his cheeks, feigning resignation. In truth, he’d been waiting for this meeting all day, even looking forward to it, but it wouldn’t do if he showed it. He looked at his reflection in a nearby mirror and gave himself a martyred look. “No, no, let him in.” He dabbed a bit at the loose skin underneath his chin, wondering if it was time for another procedure.

  The door opened, and Chet Warner was let in. Warner was the fourth-generation owner of Warner Manufacturing. Not a majority owner, only twenty percent, but enough to allow him time to sit on the board of the Oaks Country Club and have a restored 1920s Tudor on the third hole. He would start each day with a brisk walk around the course, year-round, rain or snow, and end each day holding court by his stone fireplace in the winter and by his poolside in the summer.

  Feeling secretly envious of Warner’s trim physique, he walked over to stand next to him. Hall was taller. “Great to see you, Chet.”

  “And you as well, Harrison.” Warner refused to call him Doctor, a slight that annoyed Hall but one he decided to overlook, considering the reason for the day’s meeting.

  “How did the selection process go?” Hall asked. Warner was chair of new admissions at the club, a job he took very seriously.

  “Poorly.”

  Hall had expected that answer and couldn’t wait to find out the details. He strolled to the bar and reached for a tumbler. “Drink?”

  “A little early,” Warner said, following closely to make clear that the protest was not to be taken seriously. Hall prided himself on his single malt Scotch, and Warner knew it.

  “Ice?”

  “Two, please.”

  Hall poured the Scotch, and the two men stood by the patio window, looking out and down the golf course. Snow had fallen. A white desert drifted between leafless trees.

  “Planning a gathering tonight?” Hall motioned across the white fairway toward Warner’s house.

  “You know Sophie. Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night. She’s got a hot toddy recipe she wants to try out. Heavy hors d'oeuvres. Starts at six if you can make it.”

  The Oaks had been started in the late 1800s, when the original Halls donated eighty acres along the Big Sioux River for a “club of distinction.” Once pasture and slough, the land had become the place where the wealthiest of Sioux Falls lived and played, with a complete golf course, tennis courts, community pool, and clubhouse and a twelve-foot wrought-iron fence all the way around it. The Hall House was no longer the biggest or grandest of the homes in the Oaks, but it did have the finest lawn and the best view. Hall kept one of his
offices there and called this his home, even though technically the building belonged to the hospital.

  Hall decided he couldn’t wait any longer, though he tried to be casual about it. “So the selection had an issue?”

  Warner seemed just as eager. “It was Hofer again.”

  Hall clicked his tongue. “Such a weasel.”

  “He brought that bimbo with him this time.”

  “The Goody Gal?” Hall turned to look at him, shocked.

  Hofer was a sleaze king who made his money in sleaze and advertised sleaze up and down the interstates of South Dakota. He called all of his strip clubs Goodies and featured billboards with buxom women strategically lined up behind the two Os in the name. The most famous one eventually became Charlie Hofer’s girlfriend, and apparently, she was the very one he’d chosen to bring to the selection meeting.

  “Sophie about had a fit.” Warner delighted in the horror of it. “Hofer said she was his fiancée.”

  Hall decided to ask. “What was she wearing?”

  Warner shuddered and leered at the same time. “About half what she should’ve been… the rest of her was covered in about forty carats’ worth of diamonds.”

  “You said no, of course.”

  Warner rolled his eyes. “I sent the letter last week, but my God, it’s not like he shouldn’t have known.”

  “Such a dirty little man. Why do people like him think that money can buy them stature?”

  “Well, that’s just it… I got the strangest little note in the mail the other day.”

  “From Hofer?”

  Warner nodded. “It said, ‘You’ll see.’”

  “That’s it?”

  Warner shrugged.

  “Well, I certainly hope he doesn’t waste his time with legal matters. He won’t stand a chance.”

  “Agreed,” Warner said.

  “So what else could he possibly do?”

  “Nothing.”

  The two turned to look down the golf course as the weak winter sun struggled to break through the clouds. Hall sighed comfortably. Finally, the Hofer problem was over for good.