We Interrupt This Broadcast

by K. K. Beck

  While the KLEG staff had held its meeting, Lukowski had left the station and returned to his office. He and MacNab had sat and listened to Ed Costello’s tape. Afterward they looked at each other. “A thousand bucks. Is that worth killing someone over?” asked MacNab.

  “If you thought it might not be a onetime-only payment,” answered MacNab. “Anyway, it’ll take the forensics guys about ten minutes to work out from those phone blips just whose number he was calling, and we can check it out.”

  By the time Lukowski was ready to leave for his park-bench lunch date with Alice Jordan, they had their answer. The number Ed Costello had called, before apparently successfully blackmailing someone, had been Jeffrey Fleming’s number.

  “Interesting,” said Lukowski. “He’s Caroline Payne’s new boyfriend. I saw him down at the station earlier. And he was also in that picture Mrs. Costello gave us. Franklin Payne said he and Caroline were on the road. Arizona, I think.”

  “I’ll find out what I can about him while you’re gone,” said MacNab. “Maybe this will finally start making some sense.”

  * * *

  Back at his law offices, Franklin’s secretary told him that Ron Ott was on line three. Franklin decided to play dumb about the break-in and see if Chip was still in the market for KLEG. Let him buy it and he could fix the broken bathroom window himself.

  “Listen, Ron,” said Franklin, “I just wanted you to know that there is some interest from another quarter in buying KLEG. Seeing as we had already spoken, I thought it only fair to let you know.” In a move inspired to motivate Chip to get his cash together for ideological reasons, he added, “It’s an ethnic, multicultural thing. These folks want to use the station to broadcast in a lot of Third World languages.”

  “I see,” said Ott. “I suggest we meet once again, over at Mr. Gilmore’s house. He’s decided to be more forthcoming about his possible funding source.”

  “Well,” said Franklin, “I’m not sure I can help him there. I mean—”

  “I know it’s a little irregular, but”—here Ott took on a collegial manner that Franklin found insulting—“let’s face it, some clients are a little irregular. Just a little whimsical. Still, I think if you put it to him there’s another buyer, maybe you can help him pull a deal together, because of specialized knowledge you might have based on Mr. Costello’s efforts.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Mr. Ott,” said Franklin, who decided to drop the friendly “Ron.”

  “All will become clear in due course,” said Ott with smug mysteriousness. “I want you to hear Mr. Gilmore’s story from his own lips.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Franklin. Who knew when Caroline would reappear to muddy the waters? Time was of the essence. Franklin agreed to let Ott come by the office later that afternoon and take him to Chip’s house.

  * * *

  Lukowski sat on a park bench between Alice and the bag containing his Taco Bell lunch. He was turning his head to accommodate a messy beef burrito and listening to her talk while she peeled and separated a navel orange and placed the sections in a neat row on the napkin in her lap.

  “To be honest,” she said, “I’ve given it a lot of thought. Being new and all, there’s not a lot I know, but I’ve been listening and watching.”

  “Excellent,” said Lukowski. “What do you hear about Caroline Payne’s boyfriend, Jeffrey Fleming?”

  “Is that his name? All I know is that Judy, who eavesdrops on everyone’s phone conversations, says he’s younger and a gigolo type and probably after Caroline’s money. They seem to think that’s her pattern.”

  “Really? This Judy is spying on everyone?”

  “KLEG is a hotbed of high feeling and intrigue,” she said. “Basically, the staff is all paranoid because they’re afraid the owners want to sell the station. Which they do—at least Franklin does—because it’s losing money. I think the employees have developed a siege mentality. They all seem to think that Ed was too cozy with management.” She leaned forward. “I did hear that Ed had tried to get Phil Bernard fired.”

  “Phil Bernard?” said Lukowski.

  “The program director. He’s been there a million years, and KLEG is his life. Sometimes he loses it on the air. Ed was taping him to document his outbursts and get him fired.”

  “You mean the old guy who works in the library?” said Lukowski. “I saw him in tears today. He seems kind of high-strung.”

  “They’re all kind of high-strung. Judy, the receptionist, for instance. She’s said a few things that sound irrational. Like that Ed’s murder was probably justifiable homicide. She thinks animals deserve a higher standard of legal protection.”

  “I see.”

  “At one point,” Alice went on, “she told me not to snitch to management. ‘Remember what happened to Ed,’ she said. She’s really pretty far gone.”

  “Hmm,” said Lukowski. “Doesn’t sound like a fun place to work.”

  “Well, I was a housewife for a long time,” Alice said defensively. “I hadn’t worked outside the home for many years. I had to take what I could get.”

  He glanced down at her bare ring finger, half expecting to hear some autobiographical stuff about how she came to be single. Instead, she went on talking about his case.

  “But what I think is more intriguing than all those disgruntled employees is that break-in. If Chip Gilmore is some kind of white supremacist type, maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know he was once married to an Asian woman. Why else would he come in and steal that catalog? I wonder why Ed had his phone number.”

  “You said you called it,” said Lukowski.

  “That’s right. I thought it might be someone who wanted to buy advertising. There were dollar signs after the name.”

  Her eyes widened suddenly. “Wow! Do you think Ed Costello was blackmailing this Chip person? I mean if someone is unscrupulous enough to run a vice ring, maybe he would stoop to blackmail, too. Maybe that’s what the dollar signs were there for!”

  She started bouncing a little on the park bench, and her cheeks turned a fetching pink. “Maybe Chip killed Ed because he was about to reveal that secret! I mean these nutcases are pretty unhinged—even more so than the KLEG staff, don’t you think? And they’re into guns. Ed was killed with a gun. What kind was it? Some huge-caliber weapon? That’s what Chip would use, I bet.”

  Lukowski found the scenario she was creating interesting. In fact, Ed Costello had been killed with a great big Glock.

  * * *

  Back at the office, MacNab bustled up to him, flapping papers. “I got the background on this Fleming guy. Apparently he was busted about fifteen years back for some porn shots he took. One of the girls was seventeen. I talked to one of the prosecutors on the case.

  “Fleming tried to say it was art, but the jury took a look at the stuff and exercised its own artistic judgment. He also said he was just doing a job for a buddy of his, and the buddy provided the girls. Some female gymnastics team, apparently. Guess who the buddy was.”

  “Ed Costello?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Interesting. Did he make it stick to Costello?”

  “Nope. Costello left him hanging out a mile. Fleming did some community service. An ad agency he was working for fired him.”

  “And now he’s after Caroline Payne’s money, according to the employees,” said Lukowski. “I also think it’s time to go have a chat with Chip Gilmore. It turns out he was once married to one of those Asian women like in the catalog. All set up, incidentally, by good old Ed Costello.”

  “No kidding,” said MacNab.

  Lukowski winced. “I hope we’re not talking about another Ruby Ridge or Waco. Maybe we better take some extra guys with us. You think he’s nuts enough to meet us at the door with some firepower?”

  “I don’t think so. I talked to the guy that busted him for that parking-lot fight over at the cable station. Basically, he’s got a little sleazeball lawyer he calls whenever he gets in troubl
e. If he sees eight cars pulling up with sirens he might get agitated. I think we’d be safer just knocking on the door.”

  “Let’s see if he’s got a Glock pistol lying around that matches the one that killed Costello,” said Lukowski.

  “God, that’d be pretty convenient,” said MacNab. “What kind of motive would he have for taking out Costello?”

  “Alice Jordan from the radio station came up with one that’s just crazy enough to make sense,” said Lukowski. “Where’s our copy of the Asian brides catalog the little jerk stole?”

  MacNab produced it. The quality of the Xerox copies wasn’t great, but on the back cover was a group of wedding shots under the headline “These Lucky Guys Found Lovely Oriental Brides in Our Pages—You Can Too!” One of them, a round-headed man, appeared to be Chip Gilmore in younger days. He wore a wide-lapelled suit and had his arm around a demure little woman in a wedding dress and lace veil who came up to about his shoulder.

  * * *

  “Hey, I’ve still got the old touch,” said Bob LeBaron, ambling back to the glass window. Carl and Daphne were watching in horror as Phil, wielding a hammer from the toolbox, proceeded to dismantle some shelving. Meanwhile, at the studio door, Judy was trying to dislodge the hinges with a jack handle.

  “Rex and his canine mascot, Fluffy, are on their way,” Bob announced.

  Daphne clapped her hands together and said, “Fabulous!”

  “First,” continued Bob, “they’ve got to cover an oyster-shucking contest over in Ballard. Rex will call back in about an hour to see if Phil’s still in there.”

  Carl pointed into the booth. “I think he will be. Look. It’s just like a Road Runner cartoon.” Phil was methodically nailing a two-by-four, stripped from the shelving, across the door and had two more propped up, ready to go.

  “Great stuff,” said Bob, nodding sagely. “Rex will love it.”

  “Seeing as I don’t think he’ll be out of there anytime soon,” said Carl, yawning, “I’m giving myself an extra long lunch. In fact, I might take the rest of the day off. God knows, after working for Phil all these years, I deserve it.”

  “Can’t you stick around and help with the phones?” demanded Judy, pausing in her efforts with the jack handle.

  Carl shrugged and picked up a line on his way out.

  “KLEG, good afternoon,” he said. “Oh, hi, Alice. Just a sec.” He went over to her desk and spent some time at the Rolodex. “No, it’s not here,” he said. “Definitely not. Okay. By the way, are you listening to the station? Phil locked himself in the booth and he’s having an on-air psychotic break.”

  * * *

  At a phone booth near the park where she’d spent longer than she had intended with Detective Lukowski, Alice gasped. She’d wanted to call Rosa Delgado to tell her she might be a few minutes late to pick up the tape, but as always, only the Yellow Pages hung from the shelf in the booth.

  Her initial surprise at hearing Rosa Delgado’s Rolodex card wasn’t there was superseded by her horror at the idea of Phil cracking up on the air. This wouldn’t make it any easier to sell time, that was for sure, she thought irritably as she went back to her car.

  Although she’d originally thought Ed Costello was out of line trying to establish dominance over the programming staff, now she understood perfectly why he’d wanted to get Phil out of the picture.

  In the car she turned on the radio. Phil was saying, “Remember, we’re running our reluctant farewell to the long-playing record completely commercial-free. In fact, I’ve torn up the log with all the ads on it. They were vulgar, horrible things anyway. I’ve always felt KLEG should operate for the public good, without these crude commercial pitches from advertisers. They just get in the way.

  “This is your announcer, Phil Bernard, behind lock and key, barricaded in the studio, bringing you the last gasp of civilization. We’ll get into the Hollywood String Quartet’s legendary 1958 release of Beethoven’s Opus 127 right after this announcement.”

  Announcement? Maybe he was going into a commercial after all. Maybe he’d just been kidding. But no, now he was saying, “This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.” A harsh electronic tone came on. Angrily, she turned down the volume.

  She could expect immediate and justifiable cancellation from any advertiser who’d happened to hear Phil’s tirade. As soon as she picked up the tape from Rosa Delgado, she would call Franklin and demand he fire Phil. The man was obviously out of his mind.

  She tried to pull herself together in the elevator. Above all, she must not let Phil Bernard’s antics make her eyes pool up with tears. She couldn’t let the formidable Rosa Delgado see her all frazzled. Not only was Alice determined to keep this account on the air, she also wanted Rosa to give her a real job—and soon.

  * * *

  Back at his apartment, Carl hummed happily as he flipped through the racks of dresses in Teresa’s closet. The red polka-dot rayon number with the short sleeves, he thought. It was a kind of flouncy Betty Grable thing, just brushing the knee. She’d wear it with the black patent pumps with Daisy Duck bows and the big I Love Lucy pearl choker and matching earrings.

  * * *

  Lukowski and MacNab stood on the sagging plywood porch of Chip Gilmore’s dingy yellow stucco box of a house, and Lukowski knocked his friendly signature knock. Marks on the door suggested that some large animal asking to be let in had removed most of the paint from the bottom half.

  The neighborhood had once been full of cute little surburban newlywed houses bought with G.I. loans after World War II. It was now a slummy suburb with the little boxes in various stages of dilapidation or held together with cheap aluminum siding, chain-link fenced yards and listing carports sheltering dead cars and the dregs of pathetic garage sales.

  From behind the door came loud barking, the scrabbling noise of claws on floor and a snuffling sound as one or more large dogs pressed noses to the cracks around the door and inhaled the scent of interlopers.

  “God,” said MacNab, “I remember in my patrol days there was a motorcycle gang lived on this block. We were out here every Saturday night. And notice the Christmas lights? There’s three Christmas-lights houses on this one block alone.” He shook his head sadly. It was one of his axioms that people who left Christmas lights on year-round were capable of anything. If there was a domestic-violence or child-abuse call and one house on the block still had Christmas lights tacked onto the eaves in August, that was invariably where the call was.

  Lukowski knocked again and tried not to think of the dogs tearing out his throat.

  “Some people have no pride,” MacNab went on, gesturing up and down the block at various ratty front yards. “How much would it cost these folks to mow the lawn? Or paint the goddamn trim? Even if you can’t afford to paint the whole house, just touching up the trim makes a big difference.”

  A young male voice from behind the door yelled, “Fritz, Hans, shut up!” The barking ceased. “Who is it?” demanded the voice.

  “Seattle police officers. Just want to ask you a few questions,” said MacNab in an amiable tone.

  “Not interested. We’re not opening this door for no agents of no illegitimately constituted so-called government body.”

  “Are you Mr. Gilmore?” persisted MacNab. “Maybe you’d like to step outside for a quick word.”

  “You want to talk to anyone from this house, you talk to our attorney, Ron Ott. He’s in the phone book.”

  “Jesus,” muttered MacNab as they left the porch. “Ron Ott. I’ve had dealings with that little slimeball. I can’t believe he hasn’t been disbarred yet.”

  Lukowski looked over his shoulder. Two skinny guys in their twenties with buzz cuts, jeans and bare, pale, underdeveloped torsos were staring at them out the window with stupid yet somehow worried expressions, while a couple of Dobermans slobbered on the window. “Hey, MacNab,” he said, “you get the feeling those bald geeks are named Fritz and Hans and we were talking to on
e of the dogs?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Alice had been afraid the tape would simply be sitting at the reception desk with her name on it and she wouldn’t get a chance to try to impress Rosa Delgado. Fortunately, Rosa, wearing a tiny but expensive turquoise suit and masses of pearls around her neck, came out to greet her. “Coffee,” she said in a gruff tone that sounded more like a command than an offer.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Alice. Rosa gestured imperiously to the receptionist, who scrambled away.

  “Come in. Sit down,” said Rosa as she made the long hike around her huge desk to reach the chair. “Sell anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Alice. “And I want to thank you for the tips you gave me last time I was here. They gave me more confidence.” She took in her breath. “In fact, I think I probably have what it takes to be very successful in sales. I mention this because you said last time that you might have openings here.”

  “That’s right. I like you. You have an honest face,” said Rosa. “I’m never wrong about anyone. I can tell you’re a hard worker, too. Fill out an application. I’ll teach you how to sell anything to anybody.”

  The receptionist appeared with two cups of coffee and gave Alice a friendly smile. “Get out an application form,” Rosa said to her. “Alice will fill it in on her way out.”

  “Certainly,” said the receptionist cheerfully.

  What a contrast to the surly Judy, thought Alice. And how different the slightly alarming yet wonderfully decisive Rosa was from the dithery, vague, maddening Caroline Payne Parker.

  “How are things at the radio station?” asked Rosa. Alice felt guilty not telling her about Phil’s on-air antics, especially as Rosa had just said how honest she was, but Rosa didn’t seem to require an answer. “Anyone find out what happened to Ed Costello?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Alice. “I’m afraid the police don’t confide in us.” Then, eager to please Rosa, she added, “We did have someone break into the station, though. Looking through Ed’s papers.”

  “Really?”