We Interrupt This Broadcast

by K. K. Beck

  “I see,” said Alice. “Your sister says I should emphasize the contribution advertisers will be making to cultural life in Seattle.” There seemed to be a strain of doubt in her voice.

  “Maybe so,” said Franklin, who didn’t believe any such thing. There were many charities far worthier than KLEG, which was, after all, a business, even if it wasn’t run like one. “Judy should have a list of advertising agencies. Go visit their media buyers and find out who their clients are. Tell them you can offer a stable, loyal listenership of old people. And you might monitor some of the other stations on the dial. Find out who’s advertising on them and rush over there and see if you can grab part of the budget.”

  Alice was now taking notes, something he found rather touching. Most of the staff reacted to everything he said with thinly veiled hostility or outright sneers.

  “Here’s another tip,” he added. “Don’t make appointments with the direct clients, just the ad agencies. If you phone first it’s that much easier for them to brush you off.”

  He stood up to indicate the meeting was over. “Let me know how you’re getting on,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “All right,” said Alice. He walked her to the door of his office and opened it for her. Just then Franklin’s secretary rushed into the room. “There are two women who insist on seeing you,” she said in a tense voice, the white showing all around her irises. “They’re making a scene in the lobby.”

  “Who are they?” Franklin asked.

  “They say their names are Dagmar and Carmen.”

  Two striking young women burst past the partly open door. The tall blonde was presumably Dagmar. She had on a tight red power suit with a very short skirt and matching four-inch heels. Carmen, a Latin bombshell type, wore similarly slutty business attire in black.

  “Hey! Are you Franklin Payne?” asked Dagmar belligerently, jabbing a long red fingernail at him.

  “Yes,” he said, looking startled. They had brought a cloud of cloying perfume with them.

  “Ed Costello owed us a lot of money from credit card receipts, and I guess, seeing as you were his boss, we’ll have to collect from you now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Franklin. “I don’t know anything about Ed Costello and his repulsive business interests.”

  “Bullshit,” snarled Carmen, revealing dazzling white teeth. “Try and stiff us, and my boyfriend will take care of you, but good. He won’t let anyone mess with me.” She put both hands on her hips, a maneuver that stretched her suit jacket wide to reveal the tops of her breasts tumbling out of a black lace pushup bra.

  Franklin turned to his frazzled secretary. “Get someone from security,” he said calmly. She scurried out of the room. He turned back to Carmen and Dagmar. “I resent any implication that I’m some kind of a pimp. Why don’t you gals get yourselves a lawyer to make a claim against Ed’s estate?”

  The secretary trotted back in, followed by a nervous-looking blue-uniformed guard of twenty or so with a thin mustache. He was carrying a paperback copy of a Stephen King novel, and a finger marked his page.

  Franklin pointed at the two women. “Jason, will you please escort these escorts the hell out of here!” Carmen and Dagmar stood glaring at Franklin and made no sign of moving. “Or we’ll have to call the real cops,” he added in an icy tone. “Maybe the vice squad.”

  “Okay,” said Dagmar. “But you haven’t heard the last of us.” Alice, fascinated, followed the two women and the shy-looking security guard to the elevator. The four of them glided silently down to the main floor. Alice followed Carmen and Dagmar out onto the sidewalk. Dagmar paused to fire up a smoke, and Alice lagged behind, pretending to remove some lint from her lapel.

  Parked in the loading zone in front of the building was a flashy red Corvette with a muscular-looking man wearing sunglasses at the wheel. The two women got into the car and it peeled away from the curb, but not before Alice had memorized the license-plate number. Maybe Carmen’s thuggy-looking boyfriend had already tried to collect from Ed and had ended up killing him. Before Alice did anything else, she’d call the police and give them this license number from the pay phone down the street, feeling the same heady rush she got vicariously from her true-crime paperbacks.

  She remembered the detective’s name. Franklin had just mentioned it. Detective Lukowski wasn’t in, but she left a voice-mail message, trying not to sound too breathless and excited.

  The thrill of calling in a police tip had momentarily canceled out the trepidation she felt about going out and making sales calls, but now she steeled herself and drove to Queen Anne Hill.

  * * *

  “So no one at KLEG has ever met this Teresa?” said MacNab to his partner, Lukowski. The detectives were eating a Vietnamese lunch in a tiny downtown restaurant.

  “That radio station has got to be one of the flakiest places I’ve ever seen,” said Lukowski, shaking his head.

  “They say they didn’t know about the hookers. They didn’t even know Costello had his own phone line. Judy explained the whole Teresa thing to me.”

  “The mean-looking receptionist?”

  “That’s right. The deal is this: Teresa mails them a tape with all the talk on it. ‘You just heard blah-blah-blah,’ and then that nerdy little guy, Carl—”

  “The one with dirty hair?”

  “That’s right. He sticks in all the music from the station’s library.”

  “Well, how do they pay her?” asked MacNab.

  “They send a check to a P.O. box downtown.”

  “Who’s the check made out to?”

  “Cash. Can you believe it?”

  “Who cashes the check?”

  Lukowski picked up a spring roll. “Teresa Hoffman,” he said. “That’s her name. But no one on the staff has ever met her.”

  “Except Ed Costello,” said MacNab.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Ed Costello? Never heard of him.”

  It was a few minutes before noon, and Alice was leaning on the counter at Carlson’s Clock Shop, speaking to a grizzled old man in a cardigan.

  Carlson’s was a small, dusty, family-owned business on Queen Anne Hill, specializing in antique clocks and repairs. It seemed like a good bet. Those older listeners Franklin had described probably had plenty of broken old clocks lying around. According to the station’s records, Carlson’s had been on the air for years, sponsoring something called This Date in Music.

  “Ed Costello was your contact at KLEG,” she explained, slightly rattled by the sound of masses of clocks ticking.

  “KLEG. Oh, yeah. Dad used to advertise with them.”

  “You still do,” said Alice. “And we certainly appreciate the business.”

  “Haven’t seen anyone from there for years,” said the old man. “Certainly not any Ed Costello.”

  “I just wanted you to know that I’ll be handling the account now, and I want to make sure you’re happy with the advertising and . . .” She began to trail off.

  “KLEG, huh? Well, I think I’d better pass. We get good results from the Yellow Pages and the neighborhood paper. No need to be on the radio.” He turned away from her and fiddled with a pair of chubby metal pinecone-shaped weights hanging from one of a half dozen cuckoo clocks in a row on the wall.

  “But you are on the radio,” said Alice, feeling the whole situation slipping away from her. “You have an annual contract.”

  “Well, we should cancel it,” he said over his shoulder. He turned back and smiled pleasantly. “I’ll have the bookkeeper look into it.” Above his head, the cuckoo clocks made creaking sounds, a brace of doors flew open and horrible little wide-eyed birds flew out and started making shrill, taunting sounds. Chimes and bongs began to kick in from around the store. The old man produced a gold watch from his pocket, flipped open the lid, smiled down at it with satisfaction, then closed it up again and put it away. “Anyway,” he said, his voice rising above the sound of chimes and bells and cuckoos, “word of mouth is the best adv
ertising there is, if you ask me.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for your time,” she said.

  “We got plenty of that,” he yelled over the din, with an irritating grin. Alice left the shop with as much dignity as she could muster, went out to the car and wept quietly for a few minutes, until she noticed the meter had run out.

  * * *

  “I was kind of hoping to find some kind of a trick book,” said Lukowski sadly. He and MacNab were at Lukowski’s desk, going through the box of papers from Ed’s desk. “My guess is we’re looking for someone from this guy’s hooker business.”

  Ed Costello’s desk had produced a dreary pile of advertising contracts, and numerous phone messages, many of which seemed to say “Called again. Wants desperately to talk about advertising. Please get in touch,” and a file folder marked “Leads” that contained restaurant reviews, print ads torn from symphony programs, a newsletter called Puget Sound Senior, a chamber of commerce listing of nursing homes and funeral parlors, and a publication on rough newsprint called Asian Dolls that featured smudgy pictures of young women from Manila and Taipei who wanted to correspond with sincere American men, including geriatrics, marry them, and get a green card.

  “Think the wife knew about his escort business and was playing dumb?” asked MacNab.

  “Playing dumb? I thought she had your basic room-temperature IQ. She’s one of those women who are only good at one thing. And that’s shopping.”

  MacNab nodded. “Let’s face it, the only reason he had that job at the radio station was to have a quiet place to do business. If the wife knew what he was up to, he’d have done it all from home. Saved himself a commute.”

  “We’ve definitely got to pursue the escort-service angle. Those are usually pretty quiet little businesses, but whenever you get vice, you can get other wonky stuff. Somehow I can’t imagine those classical nerds at the radio station had it in them to blow someone away,” said Lukowski. “And the wife’s shopping-channel alibi will probably check out. I called them today to see when that order came in, and they’re finding out.”

  He looked down at the papers all over his desk and sighed. “Well, let’s run some of these folks through the computer and see if we come across anyone interesting.” He had assembled a list of names and phone numbers from the flurry of Post-it notes and “Please call back” memos they’d found on Ed’s desk. “At the same time, I’m going to check out the tip I got on my voice mail. The one from that woman who saw those hookers try to get Franklin Payne to cough up.”

  * * *

  Franklin was so infuriated by the visit to his office from Dagmar and Carmen that he canceled a lunch appointment and drove down to KLEG to have it out with Caroline in person. Up until now, his plan had been to line up a buyer, make it look like an unsolicited deal and get her to sign. He knew he couldn’t persuade her to go along with any active efforts on his part to find a buyer. If it looked as if he had initiated a sale, she’d just dig in harder. But maybe now she’d listen to him. She had to listen to him.

  When he got there, she was sitting in her office talking to Phil. Franklin burst in on them just in time to hear Phil say pompously, “Without more budget to get the tools we need to do the job, we can’t be the best we can be.”

  Caroline turned to Franklin and gave him a goofy smile. “Phil has been explaining to me why the record library needs a Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians,” she said. “Apparently it’s rather expensive.”

  “About twenty-three hundred,” said Phil blithely.

  Franklin turned on him. “You people are lucky to have jobs,” he said. “Don’t push it.”

  “Frankie!” said Caroline.

  Phil turned pale, and Franklin said, “Look, nothing personal, Phil. Just hang in there with what we’ve got for a while, okay? To put it bluntly, now that Ed’s sex business is boarded up, this place hasn’t got a single profit center. Can I interrupt here for a moment and talk to my sister?”

  Phil scurried out of Caroline’s office, and Franklin slid the glass door shut with a huge blam.

  “Really!” said Caroline. “Think about morale around here, will you? These artistic types can be very touchy. You’re making my job as a sensitive manager of people just that much more difficult.”

  “Listen, Caroline, I’ve had it with this place. I want you to know that a couple of bimbos in four-inch heels and very short skirts came over to my office today—my office, Caroline—and made a big scene! They said Ed owed them money from his sleazy escort business and I was supposed to pay it. I can’t have this sort of thing going on! What are my partners going to think? People will laugh at me. I can’t have that!”

  “But those women don’t have anything to do with KLEG,” said Caroline in a tone of patient reasonableness. “Now that Ed’s out of the picture, what’s the problem?”

  “Can’t you see? Ed’s running a string of whores out of here is symptomatic of a greater rot.”

  “Just because he ran an escort service doesn’t mean the girls actually—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Caroline. Blow jobs! Ed was selling blow jobs out of here. And hookers are coming to my office. I used to joke that Ed couldn’t sell pussy on a troop train, but apparently that’s the one thing he could sell.”

  “Thank goodness Mama wasn’t here to learn about it,” said Caroline. She looked a little trembly and unsure of herself for once. Emboldened, Franklin leaned in closer and said, “Let’s sell the place, Caroline. It’s the only way. I’ll run an ad in Broadcasting magazine. I’ll get a broker on the job.”

  “But, Frankie, KLEG is my career. I’m a businesswoman—with a keen commitment to the arts. Mama wouldn’t let me run this place. No one ever let me be in charge of anything. I want to be a player, Frankie. I want to make a difference to the cultural life of my community.” Her lip trembled, and she said, “KLEG validates me.”

  “I’d rather have validated parking than anything to do with this place,” he snapped. Now Caroline would start in on how no one in the family had ever taken her seriously because she was a girl, and how Franklin owed it to her to let her run KLEG so she could develop self-esteem and feel good about herself. He quickly changed the subject.

  “Okay, okay. But at least we have to do something about Teresa. She was in collusion with Ed and made it look like the Home Run Escort Service was part of KLEG. If that kind of disloyalty and bad judgment isn’t grounds for firing someone, I don’t know what is.”

  “How can we fire her?” Caroline said contemptuously. “We don’t even know how to find her, do we? For somebody who’s supposed to be so smart—”

  “You couldn’t find Ed, either, when I finally persuaded you to fire him. Doesn’t this indicate a lack of control?”

  “My management style isn’t about control,” said Caroline.

  “Send her a letter,” he said. “You have her address, don’t you? How do you pay her? How can you send her a W2 at the end of the year?”

  “What’s that?” said Caroline defensively.

  “A document that tells the employee how much you told the IRS you paid them,” he said. “Everyone in the country gets one.”

  “I don’t think Teresa does, but I’ll have to ask Judy about that,” said Caroline airily. “I don’t micromanage. Anyway, I do know we send her checks to a P.O. box.”

  “It seems to me that running this place is just too much for you,” said Franklin. “Vice rings! Phantom employees! Red ink! Listen, even a low-powered AM station is worth something these days. You can take your half of the money and start some other business to make you feel good about yourself. Some pottery boutique or something.”

  “But I love KLEG. Just as Mama did.” She managed to imply that Franklin was a disloyal son.

  “If KLEG means so much to you, why don’t you buy me out? I’ll sell you my half cheap, believe me.” Franklin knew this would never work, but he brought it up occasionally to try to get it into Caroline’s dim brain that KLEG was an asset, not ju
st a source of emotional enrichment for her.

  Caroline lived on the income from a trust their father had set up for her. Before he died, the old man had taken Franklin aside and said, “With your sister’s taste in husbands, a trust fund is the only way I can keep her from being a burden to you someday.” Caroline simply didn’t have access to capital to buy him out. He’d have to bring her gradually to her knees, watching KLEG slowly bleed to death.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Caroline. “We should be concentrating on making KLEG pay for itself, not talking about selling it. And if we want to be profitable, we can’t fire Teresa. You keep telling me that without her we’d lose a lot of our revenue.”

  Franklin sighed. Caroline was right, of course. “Yes, I know. But that answering-machine stunt of hers shows poor judgment. I think we’d better at least find her and tell her so. She’s clearly a loose cannon.”

  “All right. I’ll send her a note asking her to call me.” As it always did, Caroline’s big-sister self-assurance returned. She gave him a patronizing smile and said, “I’m delighted you’re taking an interest in the station, Frankie, but I’m afraid I’ve got to run. I’ve got a Women Managers in Media meeting.”

  Franklin felt vanquished again. As he left, he tried to cheer himself up by booming in a thunderous voice for the staff’s benefit: “Don’t let them have that Grove’s Dictionary, Caroline. They don’t need to know anything about music to play a few CDs, for Christ’s sake.”

  Phil, who had been muttering conspiratorially with Judy, turned and glared at him. Franklin gave him a wide, wolfish smile. “Hang in there, Phil,” he said.

  Judy was emitting her own death-ray gaze, and he gave her a saucy wink. Let her sue him for sexual harassment. Fuck ’em if they couldn’t take a joke.

  As he headed for the door to the parking lot, he collided with the new woman, Alice Jordan, coming in. She presented a nice professional appearance, with her leather briefcase and neat suit, but her body language—slumped shoulders, sad little mouth—indicated defeat.