by JJ Gould
Workers from the sign company were switching out the Plexiglas marquee. The new sign read, “KCAH-AM 1620, the Voice of Truth.” Stan was given carte blanche on design, and since he had no skills or flair in that line, he decided on simple pica font, like you’d find on old manual typewriters. Claire decided she liked it. Simple, no frills, just hard journalism. Go get ’em, buddy.
Walking through the open door, she realized she was going in the back entry instead of the front. The whole radio station ran along the lower floor of an office building, and most of the rooms had windows that looked out over the back parking lot. All the doors were propped open, and through the windows, she could see that a final cleanup was underway. Four people with shop vacs, carpet vacuums, dustpans, and brooms were attacking the final layers of drywall dust with gusto.
She walked in and saw the bottom half of a large, lumpish form working on some wiring under a console. She recognized it as belonging to Matt Bradley, the kid who’d moved over from Hall Media, a tireless and morose worker.
“Hey, Matt.” She kicked his shoes to get his attention.
He scooted back a bit and looked up at her through grimy glasses. “Hey, Claire.” He sounded glum.
“You know where Stan is?”
Matt heaved a heavy sigh. “Probably up front.” He pointed with a screwdriver and then scooted back under.
Cal and Wes, her cousins, were running some tests on the studio—Wes with an oscilloscope, Cal checking the levels on the phone as it ran through the board.
“Stan here?” Claire asked.
Both nodded, and Wes said, “Yep.”
Cal nodded to both Johns. “Hey.”
“Looks nice.” And she meant it. It was nothing fancy but had lots of natural light and what looked like pretty good equipment.
“Walls are weird.” Wes nodded to the corners.
Whoever designed the building had decided that the whole structure would be built at odd angles. Each room was a parallelogram with a forty-degree corner and a one-hundred-degree corner. Standard square cabinets and equipment looked awkward. Claire saw their point and shrugged.
Stan walked in with that intense look he had, saw her and the two Johns, and his face broke into a smile. “Hey.”
She smiled back. “Hey yourself.” Then with a gesture, she said, “Looks pretty good.”
“It’s getting there.” He waved his hand around the room. “Signal is up and solid. We’re looping Frank Sinatra’s ‘The Best Is Yet to Come.’ Monday at six a.m., we’ll have our first newscast and break the format. One of the production rooms is ready. The other might take till next week. Matt Bradley—you met him?”
Claire nodded.
“He’s got the networks we need dialed in on the satellite. CBS Radio is available, so we’re using that as our primary. I’m meeting with the staff in an hour to go over assignments and shifts.”
Claire watched him while he talked, the energy pulsing off of him in waves. He had a natural command and authority, and it was a joy to watch. Claire had met the owner once and dismissed him for what he was. Charlie Hofer was a weasel and a snake, and his motives were shady, but he’d hired Stan, and he’d started something. Claire had a feeling Hofer would get a little more than he’d bargained for.
“So you met everybody, then?” The way Stan said it made her give him a look.
“Pretty sure.”
“You met Doris?”
“Who?”
Stan paused. “Yeah… kind of a surprise. She got fired from her old job, and the circumstances were such that…”
Cal and Wes had stopped working and were watching the conversation with quiet amusement. “She came through the back way,” offered Cal, probably the longest sentence he’d used in the last year.
Stan cleared his throat. “You probably know about her. It’s Charlie’s ex-wife.”
“Veronica?” Claire’s eyebrows shot up.
“Her real name is Doris.”
“Ex-wife?”
“Yeah.” Stan colored a little bit. “Charlie dropped the divorce papers on her while we were meeting, and he tossed her out.” He added lamely, “It was a brutal thing to see, and I just couldn’t…”
“You hired a stripper for a receptionist?”
Stan was talking faster. “She was a stripper, but she did a surprising amount of bookwork for Charlie and is familiar with a lot of the software, so I thought that maybe…”
Claire stepped closer to Stan, leveling him a hard look. “Listen, buddy boy…”
What she was going to say was interrupted by the woman herself stepping into the doorway. “Hey, Stan, I was looking over the office supplies, and I…” She stopped in midsentence, surprised, catching sight of the semicircle facing her—Stan, Cal, Wes, Claire, and the two Johns.
Claire looked at her hard. Doris was almost six feet tall with blond hair piled on her head. She had a cautious, almost frightened look in her eyes and an enormous chest draped over with a conservative blouse and cardigan sweater.
She looked at Claire and took a half step back. She held her chin up a trifle, knowing that she was being judged, eyes bright with the sting of shame.
Two seconds went by in an eternity.
Then Little John thrust himself forward with his arms out. Big John stepped forward and held the baby out in a massive hand. “Do you wanna hold him?”
Chapter 33 - Trent Wheeler
Trent Wheeler was relearning an age-old fact—shit ran downhill. The carpet had been deep, and the looks had been chilly across the table. He didn’t figure it out at first. He’d never been invited to Dr. Hall’s office and was looking around too much to catch the vibe. There was a plate of scones and a carafe of juice on a sideboard and coffee in one of those pots with the little candle underneath. Swanky.
“Would you care for something, Trent?”
He hardly noticed the touch of sarcasm in the offer. Trent started sensing he might have made a misstep when he was invited to sit. At the other end of the table. The only one with food or drink. He started to get the feeling it was some kind of test.
And I took two scones. Trent stuffed one of the scones into his mouth, trying to get rid of the evidence.
“Hungry, Trent?” There was a note of malice in the way it was phrased.
“I didn’ get brefas,” Trent said around his food.
The trio facing him was at the other end of a tree’s worth of mahogany. Even though the table was level, Trent distinctly felt like he was looking uphill.
Dr. Hall was seated on the left, ever tan, examining his perfect nails, saying nothing, hearing everything. Technically, the two had met before. Dr. Hall was a fixture at the company Christmas party, an intimate gathering of two hundred Hall Media employees and their spouses with the radio staff relegated to the back of the room, farthest away from the stage and closer to the bar—a situation everyone was comfortable with.
The other guy was the company lawyer. He sat in the middle and was looking at the paperwork for the radio sale. Good old Diane VanDenBosch was sitting next to them. Her name was on the contract, too, but it was easy to see that she was on the other side of the table, and only one name on the contract was going to be examined. His.
“Tell me about this person, Emilio Gonzales.” The lawyer was talking casually, his smooth, rich voice hiding claws.
Trent was trying to work a piece of scone out from the side of his gums without using his finger and was caught a little off guard. He was trying to remember the lawyer’s name. Minor? Meyer?
“You mean the Mexican guy? The evangelist?”
The lawyer smiled flatly.
“Yeah, so anyway, I get a phone call, and he lookin’ for a station to buy in the market, something to reach the immigrants, y’know, the ones that work at Morrell’s, farm laborers.”
“And how was he going to pay for this?”
“With a check, I guess.” Wheeler’s humor came off flat. “Uh, he said there was a bunch of stations carrying the same p
rograms outa ‘May-hee-ko.’” He used finger quotes around the Spanish pronunciation. “What I know for sure is, the check was for two hundred thou, and not in pesos either.” He looked to Diane for backing. There was none.
“And you checked into his story?”
“Story? What story?” Trent was suddenly finding it hard to swallow.
The lawyer—Meyer! That’s his name!—pushed a picture across the table. It was a snapshot of a radio station sign that said KCAH-AM 1620, the Voice of Truth.
“Maybe that’s the truth, like the Gospel truth?” Wheeler’s voice lacked confidence.
“They started broadcasting this morning. KCAH is saying they are a news and information station featuring investigative journalism in the Sioux empire.”
“What?”
Meyer pressed on. “The morning news anchor introduced himself as Stan Martin.”
“Stan Martin?” Wheeler said, stalling. The name was familiar, but he was having a hard time thinking.
Meyer continued. “Closer scrutiny finds that this Emilio Gonzales person has not been seen in the area for months and that the purchase price and, in fact, the license of operation belong to the majority owner, Charlie Hofer.”
“Charlie Hofer?” Now Wheeler was really at a loss. “You mean the Charlie Hofer? The sleaze king of South Dakota has purchased a news station?” He stared at the trio and got nothing but glares.
Wheeler tried bluster. “So… a crummy eight-hundred-watt AM station that barely reaches the outskirts of town is going to investigate Sioux Falls businesses? What the heck do they expect to find?”
Dr. Hall looked up at him with pure venom—or maybe it was fear.
Chapter 34 - Matt Bradley
Matt Bradley looked around the room before the morning assignments. It was seven thirty. Stan Martin was up at the white board, scribbling names underneath columns.
“Dwight. Scale of one to ten. News out of the city council meeting last night?”
Dwight was a nail chewer and was worrying a little piece of skin by the nail of his ring finger. He examined it without looking up. “Three.”
Stan sighed. “Figures. Three versions. Forty-five seconds for each.” He moved over to the business column. “Gretchen? Jim?”
Jim Fletcher cleared his throat, a nervous habit. He was a longtime ag reporter hired out of WNAX. He’d been second banana down there and was never going to be first, so he took the high salary Stan was offering and jumped. Thin, nervous, and suspicious, he glanced at Gretchen and jumped in. “Planting numbers are in for the state, a little higher than last year.”
Stan nodded. “Jim, I’ll be honest—our signal barely reaches the edge of town. We know the state runs on agriculture, but I have never seen a story on what that means exactly. Do a story on the annual impact, in dollars, per person in Sioux Falls. Make it two minutes with two versions. Gretchen?”
Gretchen Wallace was a recycled morning jock from Sioux City. She had a deep, throaty voice that was sexy and sultry and in no way matched her appearance. Her career had ended when a drunk at a bar remote asked what happened to her face. With no warning, she hauled off and kicked him square in the jewels, dropping him like a sack of wet cement. The rumor was she dropped her microphone and walked right out of the bar, both hands raised high, middle fingers offered to the bar owner and astonished patrons. She never even picked up her last check.
She got a job at Citibank in customer service, met a guy in the next cubicle, married him, and had been working for the Man for about five years. Bradley had no idea how or why she applied to work at KCAH and decided it was none of his business.
“Hank’s is closing.” She tossed it off the cuff and got a few looks. Hank’s was a local downtown diner specializing in poor food and flagrant abuse of the state no-smoking laws. The term smoke-filled room described not only the behind-the-scenes deals that were made there but also the choking ambience.
Stan perked up. “Source?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Hank himself. My cousin is a nurse and was there when the doctor laid down the law to Hank—he’s had two heart attacks, and this one scared the shit out of him. He told the doc he’s calling a commercial real estate agent today.”
“Nail it down and get it out—now. That is the top story. Get a sound bite from Hank, and I will buy you lunch.”
Gretchen gave a one-sided smile and held up a cassette tape. “Right here and the noon buffet at Minerva’s if you don’t mind.”
Stan smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Iconic Sioux Falls Establishment Calls It Quits.”
He went over to another scoreboard, where the names Dwight, Gretchen, Jim, and Matt were written. At one week in, Gretchen had two hash marks, Dwight and Jim had one, and Matt had none. He grimaced. Not for long.
Stan put another hash mark underneath Gretchen’s name. “You win this morning, Gretchen. Remember…” He looked around the room.
His gaze was intense, and Matt could feel its energy. He knew it was corny, but it reminded him of those old war movies where the commanding general gave out the mission and talked about how important victory was.
Stan repeated this same line almost word for word every day. “We are only eight hundred watts of static, but by the time we are done, we will change this city for the better, and we will not be forgotten for it.”
He strode out of the room, and Matt felt the ridiculous urge to stand up. After he left, Matt flipped his pen and caught it with the same hand, staring off into space, wondering how he could land the story he knew was out there.
Chapter 35- -Lester LaFave
Lester had a system for success that had served him well. The first thing was appearance. Even when he had no money, Lester made sure he looked good. Out of prison and with no money, he found a thrift store and, in it, a complete military dress uniform that fit him beautifully. He had no idea of the rank, but it looked good. He rummaged around and found stuff to match—fatigues, camo, even dress shoes and combat boots. Hell, the uniform even had ribbons on it along with the name tag LaFave.
He tried it all on in front of a mirror, posing, constructing the life that matched the clothes. “Lester LaFave,” he whispered. The name had a nice ring too.
He strode out of the store and down the street to a barbershop, head erect and hair shaggy. “Gentlemen.” He folded his jacket carefully over the back of the chair and sat down.
The barber stepped right up. “High and tight?”
Lester nodded, having no idea what the barber meant. Fifteen minutes later, he looked in the mirror. His head was shaved up the sides and short and flat on top. Nice.
The barber took off the apron with a flourish. “On the house. Semper Fi.”
The man who now saw himself as LaFave repeated, “Semper Fi.”
Then he strode out the door and into the rest of his new life. It took careful listening at the local VFW to pick up details of his new life. He learned that he was a master sergeant in the Marines. He learned where he’d been stationed, what the various patches meant, and what his backstory was. He’d seen combat, of course. That meant a trip to the surplus store to pick up the needed ribbons to add to his dress uniform and to flesh out some of the other uniform stuff.
Now that his appearance was set, he worked on his second gift: lying. Lester LaFave was a master liar. He could spin a résumé out of thin air and demand compensation based on skills and experience he did not have. He was caught pretty quickly, though. A contractor, ex-marine, hired him based on his service then found out he knew absolutely nothing. Angry, the contractor dressed him down in front of everybody at a jobsite. “You don’t know shit from shinola! You don’t know how to plumb, wire, excavate, frame, or read a plan! Get the hell off this site, and never come back!”
Red-faced, LaFave walked to a bus station and, with eyes closed, poked his finger at a map. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a dot on that map that seemed remote enough for his needs and big enough for his new plan of marrying his two gifts of appearance and lying with
his third gift, crime.
LaFave had figured out the solution. No one was interested in résumés when something illegal or unsavory was needed. And the fees could be quite a bit higher. Off the bus, LaFave got a nice set of duds and, impeccably dressed, got some cards printed—heavy ivory stock with just his name and number. He drank soda water at the finest bars in town and introduced himself to select groups. When asked what he did, he would give a secret smile and an evasive answer.
“I… consult in private matters,” he would say with a direct look that would shut down any further inquiry.
It took a few weeks before he got his first nibble. A guy named Howard, with a false laugh and a nervous look, steered a conversation toward his problem. “So my wife and I are heading out of town for the weekend… I finally got her to leave her poodle at home. The son of a bitch never did like me—growls, snaps at me. Now it’s sixteen years old and has a tumor. Vet is suggesting a trip to Iowa City for emergency surgery and maybe a hip replacement. Four grand! I said we could drive down and check the place out…” He trailed off.
LaFave got the cue. “Do you want someone to take care of the dog while you’re gone?”
The guy looked nervous but said nothing. LaFave got an address and some details, setting the hook. Then in an offhand way, he sipped from his drink before setting it down. “One thousand dollars.”
The guy looked relieved. Should have asked for more.
“Do you have the money with you?” LaFave asked, and the guy nodded, looking left and right like he was in a mob movie.
LaFave, who had seen the same movie, knew what role to play. “Geez, Howard, lighten up. My coat is in the entryway, black cashmere, says LaFave on the inside breast pocket. Put the money in there, and have a nice weekend.”
Killing a sixteen-year-old arthritic dog was easy. LaFave used the blanket the dog slept on to suffocate it, easy peasy. Howard was impressed and must have had a circle of friends with similar needs. LaFave did not keep count, but a few times each month, he took care of a pet while the family was gone. It was pretty easy money and a chance for his reputation to grow.
