We Interrupt This Broadcast

by K. K. Beck

  “How’s it going? Sell anything yet?” he said in a belligerent voice.

  “No, actually,” she said.

  Franklin, against his better judgment, felt a little sorry for her. After all, selling advertising on KLEG was probably about as easy as selling toxic waste. “Well, don’t worry,” he said. “It takes a while to polish your skills.”

  To his horror, Alice’s eyes began to glaze over with tears. “I’m afraid—I’m afraid—” she stammered.

  “Don’t be afraid. What’s the worst they can do?” he barked at her. “Say no, right?” If she was one of those women who wept their way through life, she might be able to pick up a few orders based on pure pity from feebleminded advertisers. But it was more likely that she’d fold and crumple and be gone in a week.

  “I’m afraid the worst they can do,” she said, biting her lower lip and straightening up in an apparent attempt to project bravery, “is to cancel an existing contract.”

  Judy piped up from the reception desk, “What? You mean you started out by losing business! Who is it?”

  “Carlson’s Clock Shop,” said Alice in a trembly voice. “Ed hadn’t been there for years, and they forgot they were on the air with us, I guess.”

  “That’s This Date in Music,” Judy hissed. “I produce that! Every day I find some interesting thing that happened on this date in music. It was on today’s date in music that Ernest Chausson died in a bicycle accident in 1899.”

  “Well, forget about it, Judy,” said Franklin. “We don’t need it unless it’s sponsored. You can use the extra time to answer the phones more expeditiously.” He gestured toward a leggy yellowish philodendron in the corner of the reception area. “Or water these plants. I always thought This Date in Music was pretty hokey anyway.”

  Phil said angrily, “Our listeners love theme programming! We can’t just cancel This Date! It’s been running for years.”

  “Yeah,” said Franklin. “Ever since the Chausson bicycle tragedy, no doubt.”

  “I trust you’re planning to get a new sponsor for This Date,” Judy said to Alice in frigid tones.

  “Might not be as easy as marketing the kind of dates Ed was selling.” Franklin smirked, jingling his car keys and sauntering out. Over his shoulder he said to Judy, “After you finish with the plants, you might want to clean that bathroom. It could sure use it.”

  “I can’t believe it!” said Phil after Franklin had left. “The whole reason we do This Date and Phono-Music Quiz and Composer’s Corner and Today’s Tone Poem is so we have that personal touch, communicating with our listeners. Otherwise we just sound like some preprogrammed, automated, cold, impersonal music service. Without theme programming, a trained chimp could run this place. Doesn’t he get it?”

  Judy gave him what Alice interpreted as a warning look, as if they thought she’d snitch about this outburst to Franklin. She seized the opportunity to ingratiate herself. “I agree with you,” she said. “I haven’t been here very long, but I’m sure it’s that warm, personal touch that makes KLEG so special. I love to learn new things myself, and I’m going to try very hard to find a sponsor for This Date.”

  “It’s important for me to have a creative outlet,” whined Judy. “This Date in Music gave me that. It’s not like I really need my master’s degree to water the plants and clean toilets. I just happen to believe in classical music!”

  “I’m not sure the Franklin Paynes of this world understand how some of us feel about the arts,” said Alice solemnly.

  Judy gave her a wary little smile.

  Alice smiled back. “By the way, whatever you did to your hair, it looks really good, Judy. You’ll look great on TV tonight.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  That evening, members of the KLEG-AM programming staff met at Daphne Hamilton’s tiny apartment to watch television coverage of Ed Costello’s murder. Judy and Phil sat on the bed, pushed against the wall with a row of cushions turning it into sort of a sofa. Carl Weeb and Bob LeBaron sat on creaking wicker chairs underneath Daphne’s framed black-and-white glossies of herself in various stage roles in local theater productions.

  Daphne was draped in a filmy caftanlike garment, and had arranged herself on a pile of ethnic cushions on the floor, like an odalisque on her side. One hand supported her head; the other held the television remote. For the moment, the mute button was on as the local news team covered a fire in a warehouse.

  Judy Livermore was giving the others an update on the phone calls she had monitored during the past week, and she had saved the best for last.

  “This is the real bombshell,” she said solemnly. “I knew it was important, because Ed went into the break room and closed the door. Then the button lit up, so I knew he was using the phone in there and wanted privacy. He didn’t want me to overhear his side of the conversation.”

  The others made little noises indicating their disapproval of Ed’s wanting to make a private call.

  “Well?” demanded Daphne impatiently. “What did you hear?” Like many dramatic people, Daphne resented others milking anything for cheap thrills, and Judy was stretching this one out.

  “He was calling Franklin Payne at his office,” announced Judy.

  Bob LeBaron clicked his tongue. “I’m not surprised. Haven’t I always said Ed was nothing but a management spy?” He looked around with an I-told-you-so expression, but no one gave him the satisfaction of acknowledging his prescience.

  “What did they talk about?” demanded Daphne.

  Judy leaned over for full effect and lowered her voice to a whisper, although there was no reason to believe Caroline or Franklin had bugged Daphne’s apartment. “He asked Franklin if he was interested in selling the station!”

  There was a collective intake of breath. “Franklin said he’d be glad to listen to any offer!”

  Phil’s hands went into fists. “How disgusting,” he said.

  “Listen to this!” Judy’s eyes were narrowed into glittery slits. “Ed asked Franklin if there would be a finder’s fee if he could come up with a buyer. Franklin said, ‘Absolutely,’ and asked Ed if he had any leads.”

  “Thirty pieces of silver,” said Phil Bernard, shaking his head sadly.

  Judy went on. “Ed said he just might and he’d get back to Franklin. And then Franklin said in that sarcastic way of his, ‘You might try selling a few ads while you’re at it.’”

  “Finally, proof of what we all suspected!” said Bob LeBaron. “They want to throw us into the gutter!”

  “Maybe new buyers would be okay,” said Daphne hopefully. “They might keep the format and put some money into the place.”

  Bob LeBaron tossed back his head. “Ha! No one wants an AM classical station.”

  Phil snapped, “I don’t see why all this fuss about an FM signal. It’s just like this mad rush to CDs.”

  There was a brief silence during which no one challenged Phil’s views on new technology. Daphne glanced nervously at the screen to see if the news was now covering Ed’s murder. Instead, there was some kind of chart describing how much it cost to send a kid to college.

  “What about Caroline?” said Carl Weeb in his feathery little voice. “Do you think she knows?”

  “Of course she does,” hissed Judy. “She pretends to care about classical music and the KLEG staff, but I bet she just wants to make a quick buck off their inheritance herself.”

  “Oh!” Daphne was sitting up now and squealing and flapping her arms. “Here it is.” She hit the mute button, and they all watched the television screen intently. A couple of men were rolling a gurney with the shrouded corpse through the KLEG parking lot.

  “The victim, Ed Costello,” said the announcer, “has been linked to an escort service headquartered at the classical music station. Station employees expressed shock at the slaying.”

  The scene shifted to a close-up of Judy, and the words “Caroline Parker, station manager” appeared along the bottom of the screen. “We were all surprised about the escort service,
” Judy said. “Ed was supposed to be selling ads.”

  “They got my name wrong!” said Judy indignantly. Now Caroline’s horsey face came into view. Across her shoulders white lettering read, “Judy Livermore, station receptionist.” Caroline was saying, “Poor Ed. He was devoted to classical music. We’re all in shock at this terrible tragedy, especially as it comes so close to the Marjorie Klegg Payne Awards.”

  “They got my title wrong, too,” Judy whined. “And they cut out all the stuff I said. I had a whole big thing about the station and what an asset it is to the community.”

  “In other news,” said the blonde anchorwoman, “it looks like we’ll all be paying more for home heating oil next winter.”

  Daphne surfed over to other channels, but there wasn’t anything more about Ed’s murder. She flung the remote aside and collapsed back on her cushions. “It’s all so terrible,” she said in her lovely contralto. “We’re not even famous enough to have anyone care when something like this happens at the station!”

  Bob said, “Frankly, it’s probably a good thing that Ed was killed. When he was, I mean,” he added hastily. “He may not have had time to line up a buyer.”

  Judy smiled. “I think you’re right. I don’t think he did. Because I overheard Franklin talking to that Alice. He said he wanted to go through all the papers on Ed’s desk with her. I bet he’s looking for the name of a potential buyer.”

  “The Paynes are probably planning to use this new woman as some kind of a fifth column,” said Bob LeBaron. “We’ve got to be very careful what we say around her.”

  “Aren’t you being a little paranoid?” said Daphne, rearranging her draperies. “From what I can tell, she’s just a sweet housewife looking for a glamour job.”

  “Maybe,” said Judy, clenching her jaw in a determined way. “And maybe not. She pretended to understand us today when Franklin talked about getting rid of This Date. But I’m not sure I trust her. Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Phil took off his glasses and polished them on the sleeve of his sweater. His giant eyes suddenly looked tiny and weak. “I can’t believe he wants us to get rid of This Date,” he said sadly. “It’s a wonderful tradition. And he was really crass and terrible about the Grove’s. Caroline was just about to see the light, I just know it.”

  “Let’s face it, all Franklin cares about is money,” said Daphne with a melancholy shake of her head. “What a sad, shallow little man.”

  “You know what?” said Phil, replacing his glasses and surveying them all. “I wonder if Franklin didn’t know about Ed’s little scheme and that escort service. Today, in Caroline’s office, he acted all cut up because Ed’s enterprise had been closed down. He called it the station’s only profit center.”

  Judy drew in her breath sharply. “If he wasn’t profiting himself, why should he say a thing like that? God, it makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s just the kind of thing Franklin would do. Use KLEG for his own greedy, immoral ends! We should share our suspicions with the police.

  “They asked me if I knew about the escort service. They asked to see the phone bills and acted suspicious when I said I hadn’t noticed Ed had his own line into the station, but what am I anyway, some kind of a bean counter? Light bookkeeping, that’s all my job description says.”

  “I bet those women who worked for Ed got more an hour than we get a week,” said Carl wistfully.

  “Using Ed to answer the phone was a shrewd move,” said Bob. “You know, Ed always was a party guy. When we were back together at KZZ in the good old days, he used to set the clients up with this wild group of gals—”

  Judy cut him off. Bob was the only one among them who’d actually been a broadcasting success before being a failure, and the others resented it. “Was it really Teresa’s voice on that machine in Ed’s cubicle?” she asked.

  “It sure sounded like Teresa to me,” said Bob.

  “Wow,” said Daphne. “The mysterious Teresa actually did know one of us. And it was Ed. That’s very, very weird.”

  “I guess the cops are going to find her now,” said Bob. “It should be interesting to see what she actually looks like.”

  “Maybe she’s someone who was disfigured in some horrible way,” said Daphne with a little thrill in her voice. “Like the Phantom of the Opera. And all she has left is her voice and her memories.”

  “Memories are all any of us may have of KLEG if that bastard Franklin Payne gets his way,” muttered Bob LeBaron.

  Judy raised a fist in the air. “He must be stopped! And if there’s any justice, he will be. Just like Ed was.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Detective Lukowski didn’t have any trouble finding Teresa Hoffman’s address. Although she didn’t have a driver’s license or a phone, she was listed in the city directory. She lived downtown, in an old brick apartment building near the bus station. Back in the twenties the place had probably been pretty stylish, but now the big terra-cotta urns with juniper shrubs flanking the front step were littered with cigarette butts and beer cans, and the handsome brass-trimmed glass door led to a dimly lit lobby with peeling paint and a worn carpet.

  Teresa’s apartment was on the ground floor and Lukowski leaned on the bell outside her door, producing an ear-piercing, old-fashioned mechanical buzz. There was no answer, so Lukowski scribbled a note on the back of his card asking her to phone him and wedged the card between the door and the jamb. As he turned to go, he was sure he heard a klunking sound from inside the apartment, like an interior door closing. He tried the bell again, using the shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits rhythm that made people think you were a friend instead of a salesman or a cop. There was still no answer.

  From the sidewalk outside the building, Lukowski looked at Teresa Hoffman’s windows. There were three of them. Two had old-fashioned window shades drawn down the whole way. The third provided a view of a kitchen. There was an old stove with a big greasy cast-iron pot on it, a sink full of dirty dishes, and a table with a faded cloth piled with a collection of odds and ends—old newspapers, a ball of string, empty mayonnaise jars, a few houseplants, a stack of folded grocery bags.

  Lukowski had made a point of listening to Teresa’s show the previous night. The woman had a voice full of husky sexual promise. She managed to sound as if she was recording her patter while wearing a slinky negligee and sprawling on a satin couch piled high with pillows. Teresa’s apartment, however, hardly looked like a sex palace. In fact, it looked rather like his grandmother’s apartment back in Chicago before his parents had put her in a nursing home.

  Lukowski was more successful in finding Carmen’s boyfriend. The license-plate number Alice Jordan had supplied was for a red Corvette registered to a Brad Jenkins, who lived in a modern apartment complex at the north end of the city, where suburbia began. It wasn’t hard to spot the red Corvette in the parking lot. Apparently Brad was home.

  A little label with “Jenkins/Davis” next to it gave him the apartment number. He pushed about five other buttons, yelled “UPS” into the intercom when the first voice said “Yes?” and was rewarded with a buzz.

  A sleepy-looking dark woman in a plaid bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy socks answered his knock. A TV blared in the background. She looked about twenty, with uncombed hair and a sweet little face.

  “Is Brad here?” said Lukowski, handing her a business card.

  She drew her brows together and looked nervous. “He’s asleep,” she said. “We both work nights.”

  “Well, could you please wake him up?” said Lukowski. “I want to ask him a few questions. It’s part of a criminal investigation.”

  “Who is it, Jodie?” said a male voice from inside.

  “A police officer,” she answered, stepping aside. Brad appeared, wearing silk boxer shorts with penguins all over them and a big T-shirt. He was about six-three, with huge biceps and calves, a neck like a tree trunk and a massive chest. He was holding a spoon and a large bowl of what appeared to be Cocoa Puffs.

  “Hey,
if it’s about those college kids I bounced out last night, I gotta tell you, they were plenty disruptive,” he said defensively.

  “I’m not interested in any college kids,” said Lukowski.

  “They were bothering the other customers,” Brad continued.

  “I’m investigating the murder of Ed Costello,” said Lukowski. “Can I come in and ask you a few questions?”

  Brad shrugged and backed away and said, “Sure. But I don’t know nothing about Ed Costello.” The woman pulled her robe around her tightly and gave the sash an extra cinch.

  Lukowski stepped inside. The apartment was neat and tidy, with the carefully inoffensive look of a doctor’s waiting room. Besides the giant TV, there were a few matching upholstered pieces and a big framed print of a stylized mountain and water landscape of the kind sold in furniture stores as “accessories.” On the oak coffee table was a row of overlapping fashion magazines, a TV remote control and a circle of milk, where the Cocoa Puffs had presumably been sitting. A kitchen was visible to the right.

  The woman picked up the remote and hit the mute button, leaving the silent image of a slatternly blonde with the words “Had Affair with Sister’s Husband” across her chest. Lukowski, who had conducted plenty of interviews in homes where the TV was blaring, took the voluntary muting as a sign that these people were trying to be gracious. The three of them sat down.

  “So, Jodie, are you Carmen?” he said to the woman in a friendly tone. “Is that a working name?”

  She shrugged and tried to look blasé. “Kinda.”

  Lukowski took that as an affirmative. “I understand you think Ed Costello owed you some money,” he went on. “I guess you worked for the Home Run Escort Service.”

  “I don’t know if I wanna talk about this without an attorney,” said Jodie as if by rote, picking nervously at one of her fuzzy socks. Without her makeup, and in this cozy little outfit, her long red nails looked rather grotesque.

  “I’m not interested in what you and your dates did,” he said. “This isn’t a vice matter, it’s homicide.”