Dead Air

by David A. Poulsen

  “Adam Cullen.”

  “Yeah, I used to write for the Herald myself and I —”

  “I know who you are. And I’ve read some of your stuff. I liked a lot of it.”

  That stopped me for a few seconds. “Well, thanks, I appreciate that. Anyway, as I was saying, I —”

  “Are you writing something about Larmer?”

  “Actually, no. I’m mostly just curious about the guy, hoping to get your thoughts on him.”

  “Curious.” She said it in a way that made me think she doubted my sincerity.

  “Well, it’s a little more than that, I guess. I’m researching Larmer for a … project, but I don’t plan on writing anything.”

  “I hope you’ll excuse me, Mr. Cullen, but that sounds more than a little strange.”

  “It’s Adam, and I’m thinking my request probably does sound odd, and what complicates things even more is that I’m not able to tell you why I’m gathering information on Larmer’s life. But I really would like to talk to you.”

  “Gee, an offer like that, how can a girl refuse?”

  “I know and I apologize but —”

  “It’s okay. I’ll meet with you. Maybe I owe you something for being an early influence.”

  “I doubt the influence part, but I appreciate your generosity.”

  “I wasn’t finished. I was going to say ‘an early influence, however minor.’”

  I laughed and she did, too, and I was reminded that she hadn’t backed down from Larmer and had a toughness that I liked.

  We agreed to meet at a Second Cup near her home in northwest Calgary between five and five-thirty. I was on Larmer overload and decided to shut down my computer and let Amos Garrett try to bring some sanity back into my life. Though Amos was American-born, he, like Martha Wainwright, made the cut for my Canadian-only music collection by having lived in Canada.

  In fact, the world-class blues artist had lived not far from Calgary for much of his life. I’d interviewed him years before and seen him perform several times. His Cold Club, almost twenty years old and still as relevant as it had been in 1996, provided a solid step in the sanity-restoration direction. I followed the mellowing period with a run, then a shower, and headed off to meet Patsy Bannister.

  People seldom look the way their voices tell you they’re supposed to look, and Patsy Bannister was no exception. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and small, bordering on tiny. I’d pictured her as tall and fair. Good thing Cobb was the detective.

  It was warm enough that we decided to sit at one of four tables on a small patio outside the coffee place. The view was University Drive, and the sounds and smells were a blend of traffic and nearby steak house.

  I’d offered to buy; she’d accepted and opted for a chai tea latte, while I settled for an old favourite, a large mid-grade coffee. Unimaginative but satisfying.

  I delivered the drinks. She smiled at me over her mug, her generous mouth also contrasting, it seemed to me, with the soft voice.

  “Cheers,” she said. “If it’s okay with you, I won’t toast Buckley-Rand Larmer.”

  “I’m fine with that.” I smiled back at her. We sipped our drinks, looked at each other, assessing, both of us trying to convey that wasn’t what we were doing. “What are you working on these days?”

  “The same thing a lot of news people in this town are working on. It’s the end of June. Stampede is nine days away. I’m writing a history of the various midways that have been a part of the Stampede. Did you know that the midway used to come to Calgary and to the Stampede grounds by train?”

  I nodded. “I did know that, actually. Royal American Shows, I think the midway was called.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wow, I’m surprised. I thought it was the job of all media to hate everything about the ten days and to cast a cynical eye over everything from the rodeo to scorpion pizza.”

  “I know about Royal American Shows and I like the rodeo a lot, but the scorpion-pizza thing, I might give that a miss.”

  She shook her head. “Just one more tasty treat available to the poor, unsuspecting schmucks looking to leave their money at Stampede Park.”

  I did not fit the mould Patsy Bannister had described and, in fact, had as many media friends who were Stampede enthusiasts as those who couldn’t wait for the ten days to end. And I was even one of those who liked the “Cowtown” nickname Calgary carried, a sentiment that had earned me a healthy dose of scorn from some of my more “enlightened” colleagues.

  A few more minutes of small talk, mostly trading names of mutual acquaintances — ice-breaker conversation. Then we sat for a while, quiet, sipping our coffees and enjoying the view. I didn’t want to rush into throwing questions at her. That felt pushy, and as it turned out, was unnecessary. She broke the silence.

  “You want to know something? He scared me. I’m not actually afraid of that many people, but I was afraid of Larmer.”

  “That didn’t come across in your article. I thought you stood your ground pretty well.”

  “Thanks, but there was a lot more I could have written and didn’t.”

  I nodded. “I sensed that. I guess that’s why I wanted to chat with you.”

  “His playing the gay card, I have to admit that got to me. I’m long past being intimidated by people who want to judge my sexuality. At least I thought I was. But when he went on the attack I felt like I did in the first few days after I came out. On the defensive, I guess, but more than that, he made me feel … like an enemy.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation he’s done that with a lot of people. It’s how he plays the game. And he’s good at it.”

  She sipped again and nodded. “Very good.”

  “Listen, Patsy, I’m not trying to be a jerk by not telling you why I’m researching the guy. It isn’t for me exactly, and it’s not my call.”

  She nodded again. “It’s okay. Seriously.”

  “I’d like to know what else you learned about Larmer, either in your research or just other impressions you formed of him during your interview.”

  “My overriding impression was that he uses intimidation to get what he wants.”

  I nodded. “He seemed pretty touchy about your ‘run-ins with the law’ question. Was there anything to that or were you just fishing?”

  She shook her head slowly. “The strange thing about that was I don’t think he’s had any problems with the law — beyond two or three speeding tickets and a couple of near-miss lawsuits based on his affinity for slander. But I threw it out there, as you say, fishing. Thing is, even after my research and interviewing the guy, I feel like there’s more that I don’t know about him than what I do know. And it bugs me. I’m a pretty good researcher. I like to dig deep, but with Larmer it felt like there was so much I didn’t get. Part of it was the tight timeline but that wasn’t all of it. It seemed as if there were gaps in his life story — times that were summarized here and there in a few sentences, maybe a couple of paragraphs.”

  “Any particular periods of his life that felt like that?”

  “Several. A lot of the stuff from his more distant past — teenage years, for example. You know, there was the ‘brilliant student, terrific debater’ stuff you’d expect to hear about a guy like him but nothing in depth.”

  “Teachers? Fellow students? School friends? Nothing on what they thought of him?”

  “Bits here and there. And all of it was like it was scripted. ‘Deep guy but an okay guy. Never got into any real trouble. Bit of a loner.’ It felt like blah, blah, blah. Words but no meat. Right up until Jaden Reese.”

  I looked at her. “Jaden Reese. Don’t know the name. What’s the connection to Larmer?”

  “It’s weird. Jaden Reese was a classmate. Died of an apparent suicide a few years after high school. But while he was in junior high, the story is that Larmer saved the kid from an encounter
with bullies.”

  “Bull-ies plural.”

  “Uh-huh. Apparently Larmer stepped in when Jaden was taking some grief from a group of older kids.”

  “Hard to see Larmer as protector of the oppressed, although he’s big enough; I imagine he was a pretty big kid growing up.”

  She shrugged. “That’s not the surprising part.”

  “No?”

  “Jaden Reese was gay.”

  I sat back, digested that. Recalled something. “Now I remember the name. I’m damn sure not a member of Larmer Nation, but I tune in just often enough to remind myself how little I like the man. And I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the Jaden Reese reference at least a time or two. I can’t say I was paying close enough attention to recall now what Larmer said. But I seem to remember it was a source of great pride.”

  Patsy nodded, “Oh, yeah, great pride. If you were a regular listener you’d have heard it often enough to recite it by heart — every detail. It’s boldface on all his brochures. ‘Willing to stand up for the little guy even if the little guy is a sexual deviant.’” She laughed. “Okay, I might have paraphrased a little.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the same guy who attacked your sexuality during your interview.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “You think the story is bogus? That there was no Jaden Reese?”

  “No, I think there’s something there. What I don’t know is if I have all the details quite right. Or that Larmer does. He’s like a lot of his ilk — stretching the truth a little or even a lot to make a point or a better story is standard procedure.”

  “But you didn’t ask him about Jaden Reese in the interview.”

  She shook her head. “I intended to but I blew it. He gave me the perfect segue into it with his lesbian rant and I was going to come back to it right after the Quebec question, which was high on my editor’s priority list. But then he ended it and I never got the chance to ask him about the Reese incident. Bad interviewing.”

  “Easy mistake to make.” I smiled at her. “But it would be interesting to find out more about the incident — if it actually happened.”

  “And if it happened the way I heard it did.”

  “What school was it?”

  “Hope Christian Academy in southwest Calgary. You probably know that Larmer’s father was in the military — got moved around a lot. The Larmers were at Gagetown for his formative years.” She drew out the word “formative,” each syllable a word of its own. “Moved to Calgary when Buckley-Rand was eleven, finishing up grade six.”

  “And the Christian Academy — is it still around?”

  She shook her head. “Closed a few years ago.”

  I studied my coffee mug. “You must have done some solid digging to find out about the Jaden Reese thing.” Hoping I didn’t sound patronizing. “Reese’s parents still around?”

  “I couldn’t find them if they are. If one of his parents was also in the military they could have moved on a few times since then. We’re talking the eighties, so maybe they aren’t even alive anymore. Anyway, I didn’t dig as hard as you think. Kind of fell into it. I probably should have gone harder after it, but I had a deadline and you know what it’s like.”

  “Yes, I know exactly what it’s like.” I’d written lots of stories that could have been ass-kickers if I’d had a little more time. “Did you learn anything about the suicide?”

  “I couldn’t even confirm that it was suicide. Obituaries all called it a ‘sudden passing.’ Nothing on the net. And my source didn’t know for sure — used the term ‘apparent.’ Hardly definitive evidence.”

  “True. But I would like to have heard Larmer’s response to the question.”

  “Me, too. Damn.”

  I studied my coffee mug and thought about what she’d said. “Hard to imagine the Larmer of today stepping in to help a gay kid who was being bullied,” I said, repeating my earlier thought.

  She nodded, pursed her lips. “Seems impossible … so maybe something happened along the way to turn Larmer into the despicable creep he is … or, like I said, maybe the Reese thing didn’t happen at all the way I heard it.”

  “Or maybe it did, because Larmer saw some advantage to helping the kid.”

  “Already thinking about a life in the public eye?”

  “Seems a bit of a stretch.” I shrugged. “Your source on Jaden Reese. You have any objection to my talking to him?”

  “No, not really. Except it’s a her.”

  She pulled out her phone, pushed buttons, scrolled. “Ariel Mancuso. Classmate of Larmer’s. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, now. I talked to her on the phone and we emailed a couple of times. I tried to get her to give me more detail about the thing with Jaden Reese, but what I’ve told you is what I got. She says she wasn’t there to see it and the kids who were involved didn’t say much about it afterward. She told me that some boys, she wasn’t sure if there were three or four, and one girl were harassing Jaden — she didn’t use the word ‘harassing,’ she might have said ‘picking on.’ Anyway, they were giving Jaden a bad time and Larmer came along, stepped in, and made them stop.”

  “What kind of hard time? Was it verbal — like taunting — or did it get physical? Was it gay-related? She tell you anything about any of that?”

  Patsy shook her head. “I asked. She said she didn’t know. All she remembered was that one of the boys had his nose broken, she didn’t know which one.”

  “Could you tell if she was holding back anything from you or that she actually didn’t know?”

  “I thought about that quite a bit after I talked to her but I can’t say for sure. I do know she was glad to get rid of me.”

  I nodded. “It’d be hard to know what was going on with her without being face to face. Mancuso her married name?”

  Patsy shook her head. “Divorced. Went back to her maiden name. That’s how I found her. Read about her in one of the old school newspapers. She was on a couple of teams and was president of some club, photography club maybe. Anyway, I wrote down several kids’ names from that newspaper. She was the first one I was able to track down.”

  “You still have that list of kids’ names?”

  “Probably. I don’t throw out much.”

  “Any chance I could look at it?”

  “Don’t see why not. I can email it to you.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me about Larmer?”

  She gave me the Coles Notes version of Larmer’s university history. Nothing I didn’t already know.

  “After he graduated he came back to Alberta and straight into a gig with the Reform Party — office job, learned the ropes, wrote a few speeches for the big boys, looked like he was going to be one at some point. Not sure what happened. The word is he was too extreme even for the Reform cats, but that’s hard to imagine. Anyway, suddenly he was out of that job and freelancing. Ran for the school board, thankfully he lost and, bingo, he’s suddenly a radio whiz kid. Righties lapping up his every nasty word.”

  We finished our drinks at about the same time. “How exactly did that come about, the radio gig?”

  “Started with him appearing as a regular guest. If you needed somebody to slag gun control, dump on the CBC, debunk climate change — give him a right-wing position, Larmer could articulate it … and defend it. And he was pretty damn good at it.”

  “Have gun, will travel.”

  “So when the former host — the two- to six-o’clock time slot — was appointed to the Senate, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, there was a job opening with Larmer’s name on it.”

  I nodded, thought for a while.

  “Two to six. Mid-afternoon plus drive home. Huge audience potential — the guy’s a big hitter.”

  “Bats cleanup.”

  I smiled at the baseball analogy. “Guy like that, as
outspoken as he is, he’s going to make some enemies. In your research, you hear about anybody in particular, somebody he should be watching out for?”

  She laughed. “Probably dozens, maybe hundreds, but no, I didn’t encounter anyone I could say is a real threat. Most people were like me — wanting to stay clear of the guy. Thing is, he’s got his supporters, too. Lots of them and they’re diehard faithful. I heard him referred to as the Rush Limbaugh of the North.”

  “Nice.”

  “I know.” She grimaced, then stood up. ”I’ll just be a minute — washroom break.” I nodded as she turned and headed into the building.

  I spent the minutes alone thinking about what I’d learned so far. Jaden Reese had taken his own life. Years later another suicide — James Leinweber. One apparently rescued by Larmer, the other a Larmer victim. A few things to look further into. Maybe there was more to one or both deaths than there appeared. Or maybe not.

  And Jasper Hugg. The almost reclusive power behind the power. In the shadows. What if it wasn’t by choice? What if he resented Larmer’s very public persona, was tired of being in the background? Jealousy had been the motive for countless crimes throughout history. Maybe his thinking was that he could scare Larmer enough that the great man would take off for a safer place, a safer life, leaving the door open for Hugg to walk through and finally into the spotlight.

  Of course, it was all speculation. I didn’t know enough about either man to come to any meaningful conclusions. And I wasn’t sure any of it would be of any help to Cobb.

  Patsy Bannister returned from the washroom, sat back down.

  “Another tea?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Have to be going soon.”

  “Okay, one last thing. Jasper Hugg, what’s your take on him?”

  She smiled but there was no humour in her expression. “Huggy Bear,” she said softly. “I don’t know much about him, not really. Talked to him on the phone. It was Hugg I arranged the interview with. Very self-assured and I would say competent. Cold but capable.”