We Interrupt This Broadcast

by K. K. Beck

  As he was about to turn off the machine, Carl was startled to hear Bob LeBaron’s voice. “Hi, Ed, how’s it going? Still selling nooky out of your cubicle?” He laughed expansively.

  “Just trying to help out a few lonely guys,” responded Ed.

  “Yeah, well, I guess some guys have to pay for it,” Bob said smugly. “By the way, Ed, you got those Sonics tickets for me?”

  Carl turned off the tape. Apparently Bob LeBaron knew what Ed was up to. He’d have to, really, seeing as Bob was on from six to midnight.

  It was all so pathetic. Those washed-up losers from the Golden Age of radio cluttering things up, not to mention Phil. None of them understood that he, Carl, could make that station into a really exciting place. He’d have to be content with Teresa’s shift. For now, anyway.

  KLEG could be a really cool station, he just knew it. All it needed was some panache. A few years from now, when digitalized AM came online, the music quality could be as good as FM, and the station could really take off. Instead, KLEG was just a depressing little byway, staffed by unfeeling jerks, none of whom appreciated Carl and his true sense of style. Life was so unfair.

  * * *

  Alice was surprised to see Franklin in Caroline’s office the next morning when she came in. The glass door was closed and he was on the phone with his feet on the desk. Apparently he had meant it when he said he was going to take an interest in the station. At the reception desk, Judy put the phone down hastily. Alice assumed she’d been monitoring Franklin’s phone call. In a matter-of-fact tone designed to catch her off guard, Alice said, “So who’s he talking to now?”

  “Just his law office,” said Judy. She curled her lip. “His secretary is so deferential. It’s disgusting.”

  Alice summoned up her nerve. “Listen, I’ve been out of the workforce for some time and maybe I’ve forgotten how things are done, but it seems a little odd that you listen in on people’s phone calls. I really hope you aren’t listening to mine.”

  The two women fell silent as Franklin emerged from Caroline’s office and walked over to the studio.

  “I’m not saying whether or not I listen to phone calls pertaining to station business,” said Judy when he was gone. “I don’t think that’s any of your concern. Anyway, when I was a telemarketer management listened in.”

  Alice gave her a skeptical look and said, “But you knew that, right?”

  Judy didn’t answer and changed tack. “Technically, the French Resistance was an illegal operation. There are times when rules must be broken for a greater good. There’s such a thing as a higher morality. Keep in mind that special circumstances call for drastic measures.”

  “What’s so special about the circumstances here?” asked Alice.

  Judy leaned over to her and said in a fierce whisper, “You don’t understand. The very future of KLEG may be on the line. We have proof that Franklin wants to sell the station. Caroline may be in on it with him.”

  “Well, they own it, don’t they?” said Alice. She didn’t ask how Judy’s eavesdropping could stop them in any case.

  “KLEG isn’t just any business,” said Judy. “It’s a part of Seattle’s cultural heritage. Why should they be able to do with it what they like? We work here. You too. We could all be out on the street.”

  Alice wondered how long she’d have to be on the payroll to get unemployment compensation if they were all fired. “Ethical considerations aside, Judy, I hope you’re not listening to my phone calls. That would make me very uncomfortable.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t snitch to management, Alice,” said Judy. She reached out and grabbed Alice’s wrist and said in an ominous tone, “Remember what happened to Ed.”

  “Let go of me!” Alice said loudly, just as Franklin emerged from the studio. She regretted raising her voice. She was afraid she sounded like a bad actress in a catfight scene from some cheap girls’-reform-school melodrama.

  “Ladies, please!” Franklin said, bustling over. “What’s going on here?” He was carrying a hammer and a piece of plywood.

  “Nothing,” said Judy in a low snarl, withdrawing her hand.

  Alice resented the way Franklin had said “ladies”—plural—as if she were just as nuts as Judy. “I’m sorry. Judy just startled me,” she said, hustling off to her cubicle. If only she had a real office with a door, like a grown-up, she could close it and put her head down on the desk and weep a little.

  Franklin turned to Judy. “Try not to scare the other employees,” he said. “And please call a staff meeting for eleven this morning. Everyone. Get Bob LeBaron out of bed, too.” He went over to Alice’s cubicle.

  Alice was afraid Franklin was going to ask her what she and Judy were squabbling about. Instead, he gave her a nice smile, unlike the sharklike gloating smile she’d seen on his face before. “Say, Alice, I saw those contracts. You actually sold something. Good work.”

  “Thanks,” she said. It was the first kind word she’d had from anyone at KLEG since coming to work here.

  “I have a little assignment for you,” he continued. “We’ve got a lot of electronic equipment here, and after that break-in, I realized we need better security. See if you can find a burglar-alarm company that’s willing to do a trade.” He held up the plywood. “I found this in the studio. This is our security for now, until you can work out a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “That’s right. We’ll run ads in return for them installing a security system. We’ll pay you the same commission you would have gotten if they paid real money.”

  “Okay,” said Alice.

  “The police tell me the intruders were only interested in your cubicle, thank God. Anything missing?”

  “I was curious about that myself, but I didn’t want to go through the things until the police had finished dusting for prints,” she said. “Ed’s box of papers was definitely gone through.”

  “I’m curious, too,” said Franklin. “Bring that box into my office and we’ll examine it together after I finish with the window.”

  After a period of loud banging, Franklin came out of the bathroom, looking proud of himself. Daphne was reading a public service announcement about lost pets, her voice trembling with emotion. Franklin handed the hammer to Judy. “Put that back in the toolbox in the studio when she stops talking.”

  He and Alice went into his office and got to work. “It’s kind of like Kim’s game, you know?” she said as they went through the items in the box.

  “Oh, yeah. That Kipling thing where you have to remember everything on a tray. They used to make us do that in Boy Scouts,” said Franklin. He held up Chip’s phone number and gazed at it with a shudder.

  Alice caught his glance. “Oh,” she said. “I called that guy. He had a weird message on his machine.”

  “I know,” said Franklin, tossing the number in the wastebasket. “He’s completely nuts. I hope you didn’t talk to him.”

  “Not exactly,” she replied. “I left a message, asking him if he wanted to advertise.”

  “Forget it!” said Franklin. “There are some people even KLEG is too proud to do business with.”

  “I wonder what Ed Costello was doing with Chip’s number,” mused Alice.

  “Some flaky scheme of Ed’s, no doubt.” Alice noticed that Franklin looked embarrassed, perhaps because of his association, however slight, with the late Ed Costello.

  She held up the file marked “Leads” and felt its weight. “You know, I think whatever’s missing was in here. It seems to me this was heavier.” She opened the folder. “Wasn’t there some kind of a booklet?” She closed her eyes to concentrate. “A stapled thing,” she said in a dreamy tone like some psychic grasping for a flash of truth. “Newsprint . . .”

  Franklin looked through the file. “That catalog,” he said, handing it back to her. “The mail-order bride thing. Remember?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” said Alice, flipping through the file once more. They looked at each other with smiles of trium
ph.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “The prints on the broken glass were definitely this Charles Gilmore guy’s.” MacNab was filling Lukowski in on the fingerprint technician’s report.

  “Thank God for that computer,” said Lukowski. He remembered the old days, when the only way you could get a match was to have a suspect already. Now, thanks to the voters of King County, any set of prints already on file in the computer could be immediately matched with a sample.

  “Yeah. Charles Gilmore. Great military genius and criminal mastermind,” said MacNab, shaking his head. “Too stupid to wear gloves.”

  “We better go talk to Chip,” said Lukowski. “Anybody got a good address on him?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not home,” said MacNab. “I called my buddy over at the FBI. Chip’s in Idaho at a home schooling and gun show until day after tomorrow. Anyway, we got him on breaking and entering. That should be good enough to get a search warrant and see what we can find over at his place.”

  “It looks like what was taken was this,” said Lukowski, waving a sheaf of Xerox copies. He handed it to his partner. “I’d rather not tip him off just yet that we found out he was the one who broke in. Not until we know more.”

  “Huh?” said MacNab. “Mail-order brides? I don’t get it.” He flipped through the Xerox copies of the catalog pages. “Boy, you’d have to be pretty hard up to do this, wouldn’t you? I guess the idea is you get a wife who’s guaranteed not to bust your balls.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Lukowski, “I think it’s time we had another talk with Mrs. Costello. I’d like to know what she knows about Charles W. Gilmore. Let’s do that on our way over to get that tape from Teresa at the station.”

  * * *

  “Gee, I hadn’t thought about Chip Gilmore in years.” Lorraine Costello was showing Lukowski and MacNab an old photo album. “See? There he is. Kind of a quiet type. The engineers were always kind of quiet. Just the opposite of the sales department. We were wild and crazy.” She smiled nostalgically.

  She pointed out a shot of what appeared to be a party scene. A group of people sat around a table, some of them toasting the camera with plastic cups. Everyone’s eyes were bright red. “There’s me and Ed, and Chip, and a couple of gals who worked with me in Sales Support. We scheduled all the spots. And Bob LeBaron. He was the morning guy. That other guy worked for some ad agency. I forget his name.”

  Mrs. Costello’s youthful self sported a puffy Farrah Fawcett hairdo with flying buttresses of sprayed hair. Ed, with his arm around her, appeared to be just entering middle age and in denial. He had an over-gelled brown hairdo and wide silver sideburns. The two other women from Sales Support lurched against each other, looking smashed. Bob LeBaron was ogling one of them. Off to the side, next to the anonymous guy from an ad agency, sat a pudgy young man with a wispy mustache wearing a T-shirt that said “The KZZ Fun Guys.”

  Mrs. Costello tapped his image with a carefully manicured nail. “Ed always felt kind of sorry for Chip. He was always trying to fix him up with girls. Ed liked everyone to be happy.” She turned to the policemen. “Does Chip have anything to do with this?”

  “We don’t know, ma’am,” said MacNab. “But we have reason to believe Chip and your husband have been in contact quite recently.”

  She turned away and scooped up a fluffy white dog that slept on the sofa next to her. It opened one beady little eye, then went back to sleep. She stroked its fur rather desperately. “There’s so much Ed didn’t tell me.” Her masklike features twisted into a face full of pain.

  “My guess is he was trying to protect you,” said MacNab sympathetically. “Whatever he may have done, no matter how illegal or whatever, I think it was all for you and your security.”

  She stared down at the photo album. “That was taken at our engagement party. They made me quit. Station policy. You couldn’t report to a spouse. But I didn’t mind. I was marrying the boss. Sure, he was a little older, but he was so slick. He could get comp tickets to anything. He knew everyone in the media. TV weathermen, everyone.”

  She sighed. “When I married him, everything looked so rosy. KZZ was making so much money, and Ed was the sales manager. We had a time-share in Hawaii, we went skiing in Colorado. We took the clients to Reno and stuff. Everything was great. It was really glamorous and exciting. It looked like Ed was going to make station manager. Then radio changed. AM was dog meat. Ed ended up with that shitty little job at KLEG.”

  She sighed fretfully. “Bob LeBaron got him that job. God, Bob’s life fell apart too. At KZZ he was really big-time. He went out with stewardesses back when they had to be really cute. He was in celebrity golf tournaments and everything.”

  She stared at the policemen. “When I met Ed, there was this sweet guy my age who wanted to marry me. He had a job at the post office and he loved kids. Not like Ed, who said he was too old to start a family. If I’d married Dale, I could have had kids. He’s a postmaster now. I bet he’ll have a pretty decent pension.”

  “Things always turn out different than you think,” said MacNab.

  During Lorraine’s life review, Lukowski had been staring down at the photo album. The man from the ad agency, the one whose name she had forgotten, looked familiar. Lukowski tried to imagine how he would have aged. When he did that, he recognized him. He’d seen him at the KLEG studios, wearing a frayed tweed jacket and acting as if he didn’t really belong there.

  “Mrs. Costello,” he said, “I’d like to borrow this picture of your engagement party. I’ll return it to you.”

  She waved her hand aggressively in the air. “Keep it. I don’t care. My mom told me to grab Dale, but did I listen? No! I was too young and stupid. Instead, I marry Mr. Slick, and he ends up murdered in a Hide-A-Bed at that crappy little station with ratings in the toilet.”

  * * *

  Franklin skimmed his latest effort with satisfaction:

  To: Phil Bernard, program director

  From: Franklin Payne, acting station manager

  It has come to my attention that many of the promotional CDs we receive free of charge from record companies have not been unpacked, cataloged or played on the air. I understand this is because of space problems.

  To allow new releases to languish in unopened boxes while the shelves are sagging with scratchy old LPs is not acceptable. As far as I’m concerned, most of the old performances that were any good have been remastered, and a lot of them weren’t that hot in the first place. I have therefore arranged to sell the record collection to raise some ready money. The dealer will come in over the weekend with spot cash and a hand truck. I will handle the entire transaction. Please have all the LPs (as well as any 78s, wax cylinders or piano rolls you may have squirreled away over the years) boxed up and ready to be removed from the premises by close of business on Friday. Packing containers will be provided.

  I’m working on finding a home for the turntables too. Perhaps we can donate them to a school, orphanage or broadcast facility in some developing country that still uses treadle sewing machines and ox-drawn plows.

  He sauntered over toward Judy’s desk, whistling, and dropped the memo on her desk. “Type this up and make sure Phil gets it,” he said.

  Judy read the memo and gasped. “Phil will be very upset,” she said, growing even paler.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Franklin in a voice calculated to convey that he wasn’t a bit sorry. “I want you to run up to U-Haul on Aurora Avenue and pick up about fifty cardboard boxes and some packing tape.” He rubbed his hands together. “Don’t you just love throwing out old useless crap? I do.” He gave her a meaningful look, but she didn’t seem to get that he was referring to her. Oh, well, not every act of terrorism could hit home.

  “Speaking of throwing stuff out,” he continued, “when you get back can you please clean out the fridge? Something in there seems to be sprouting.”

  “Those are my lentils,” said Judy defensively. “They’re suppose to sprout. I was going to have
them for lunch.”

  “Oh. Lunch.” Franklin consulted his watch. It was way too early for lunch, but he could use a snack. “Could you pick me up a hamburger on your way back?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t handle products made from dead animals. I will become physically ill.”

  “Really?” said Franklin. “You mean throw up and everything? Just from touching a Big Mac? I find that pretty hard to believe.”

  Judy shut her eyes and seemed to be expressing strong emotion by flexing her closed blue-veined eyelids. The effect she created was rather like a petit mal seizure. “My system is very sensitive. I try not to be judgmental about what others choose to put inside their bodies, but I know that eating meat is criminal.” She opened her eyes and said confidently, “I’m convinced that killing an animal in order to eat it will someday be considered murder under our legal system.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” snapped Franklin. “Our legal system is based on the Western idea of the sanctity of human life, a tradition that is thousands of years old and that has served us well. Do you actually believe wringing some chicken’s neck for dinner is the same as murdering poor Ed Costello?”

  “Oh, no,” said Judy in a calm, kindergarten-teacher voice. “Ed Costello was a human being, capable of evil. People are lower than animals. Animals are innocent. I feel sure that whoever killed Ed probably had very good reason. It may well be that his murder was morally justifiable. Killing a chicken is much worse.” She smiled.

  Franklin decided she was completely insane. He didn’t like the strange gleam in her eyes, or her calm, mad voice. “Yeah, well, skip the burger,” he said, backing away. As he did, he caught Alice Jordan’s eye. She had apparently overheard their conversation. He didn’t think it was his imagination that she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as if to indicate that she too thought Judy was out of her mind. He felt a rush of warm feeling toward Alice. Unlike everyone else here, she seemed sane. Weepy and neurotic, maybe, but not nuts.