Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  Rick got out of the truck and stretched for a minute before heading for the building. Here we go again, he thought. He opened the door and stepped into the station. The receptionist was on the phone. She didn’t notice him at first. Rick guessed she was in her late twenties. She tore the message from the pad and said, “Mmm hmm, buh-bye.” She speared a message onto a brass spindle and looked up from underneath the shade and quantity of blue eye shadow that had thrilled Rick in his pubescence. He had believed it was an indication of a woman’s willingness to sin, specifically with him. If only he had known what to say, which he never had. But he’d always had a thing for blue eye shadow, and lots of it.

  The receptionist was about to speak to Rick when the phone rang again. She held up a finger then pushed a button on the switchboard. She was wearing one of those headsets so she didn’t have to pick up the receiver. “Dubya-ay-oh-ahhr,” she said. “Mmm. Hold please.” She transferred the call then looked up at Rick with a sweet-tea smile and said, “Can I help you?”

  He liked her already. “Yeah, hi, I’m Rick Shannon. Here to see Mr. Stubblefield.”

  “Oh.” She pointed at him. “You’re the new guy.” She held her hand out. “Hi. I’m Traci, with an I.” She tilted her head a bit and squinted. “Where’re you from?”

  “Jackson, originally.”

  She looked skeptical. “Sure don’t sound like it.”

  “I’ve been out of the state for a while.” Rick shrugged. “Guess I lost the accent.”

  “That’s okay. You’ll get it back.” Traci held up an index finger. “Just a sec.” She punched a button on the switchboard. “Mr. Stubblefield, Mr. Shannon is here.” She looked back to Rick. “He’ll be right with you.” The phone rang again. Index finger in the air. “Dubya-ay-oh-ahhr. Mmm. Hold please.”

  Rick glanced around the lobby. The station’s call letters were mounted on the wall behind Traci. The opposite wall sported a couple of framed gold records from the seventies and an aerial photograph of the radio station that looked to be at least thirty years old. A speaker in the ceiling piped in the FM signal. Hair of the dog by Nazareth. Funny how things change, Rick thought. You couldn’t have played this in McRae, Mississippi when it came out. Too vulgar. But after rap, I guess it’s tame. Rick absentmindedly sang along with the chorus in his head, now you’re messin’ with a son-of-a-bitch.

  Clay Stubblefield came into the room like he was approaching the line of scrimmage. A bullneck in a salesman’s sports coat. “Rick? Clay Stubblefield.” His big hand reached out. “Glad to meecha, buddy.” After a handshake, he pointed at Traci. “This is Traci Foster, if you didn’t already . . .”

  “We did,” Traci said, never taking her eyes off Rick.

  “All right, good.” Clay clapped his hands together once then pointed at Rick. “You sure made time gettin’ here. It must be, what, eleven, twelve hundred miles?”

  “About sixteen hundred,” Rick said.

  “Whoa!” Clay shook his head slowly. “Never been there myself.” He folded his arms and continued by saying, “Played a game in Nebraska once, got our butts kicked too, but never been to North Dakota. I think we mighta won there.” He winked.

  Rick guessed the obvious. “You played for CMU?”

  “A few decades ago.” Clay laughed a bit. “How fast the time goes. I tell you what.” Clay gestured toward a door. “Hey, lemme show you around real quick.” He pointed down a hallway at one end of the building. “Sales, traffic, bookkeeping, and all that’s down there.” He turned to lead Rick in the opposite direction. “Studios and staff offices are down here, c’mon.”

  Rick followed Clay but paused to look back at Traci. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

  She smiled. “You, too.”

  The station was exactly what Rick had expected. The equipment was a mix of analogue and digital. There were old Collins rotary-pot control boards in the on-air and production studios. They were still using a single Ampex reel-to-reel for commercial production. The walls and ceiling were yellowed acoustic pegboard. The AM side, mostly syndicated news and talk programming, was directly across the hall from the FM. Large double-paned windows allowed you to see from one studio to the other.

  Clay stopped at a cabinet at the far end of the hall. “Hey, listen,” he said, reaching into the cabinet. “Somethin’ came up.” He pulled out a WAOR-FM T-shirt. “And it’s good news for you.” He handed the shirt to Rick.

  Rick fingered the cheap fabric. The iron-on logo was curling off. He looked at Clay and said, “Why do I doubt that?”

  Clay looked down at his shoes and scratched his head. “All right. You’re right. Shoot.” He hemmed and hawed for a moment before saying, “Here’s the deal. The past twenty years we been the only rock radio game in town, right? Well, about a month ago the local beautiful music station went to some kinda damn adult contemporary pop rock format that’s squeezing our numbers. I talked to a consultant and we agreed the problem was we were too broad. Hell, we were playing stuff from 1970 to the present, just all over the damn road, you know, long as it was rock. So we gotta narrow it down to a stricter format for a little older demographic. Since we already got a pretty good library, I figured we’d go with classic rock. Then I lost my program director and you were on your way here and I figured with all your experience, you’d be the guy for the job. Think of it this way,” Clay said. “You ain’t been here a day and you already got a promotion.”

  Rick forced a diplomatic smile. “Well, Mr. Stubblefield, that’s not what we agreed to.”

  Clay ducked his head then looked up at a boyish angle for forgiveness. “I know and I’m real sorry. I am. But all that happened after we talked. I was gonna call but, well, hell, it’s done and I swear I’m ‘onna make it up to you.” He straightened up to full size, pointing at Rick. “Anyway, look at the bright side, you get the morning show.”

  Rick’s diplomatic smile dissolved. “I’m not what you’d call a morning person.”

  Clay chuckled, shook his head. “Shit, I know how you feel, but the other guy left and, well, it’s what we got.” He shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed. “You don’t want it, I sure understand, since it ain’t exactly what we talked about.” Clay pointed back down the hall. “C’mon.” He led the way back to the reception area. “I tell you what,” he said. “You think about it. You decide it’s not for you, you can be back in Bismarck by the weekend.”

  Funny guy, Rick thought. Is he daring me? He knows I don’t want to make that drive again. He knows he’s the lesser-of-two-evils. I suspect he’s done this before and gotten his way. Probably why he hired me instead of someone who didn’t have to drive so far. But the morning show? And programming on top of that? I don’t think so. “Look, I just want the night shift. Nothing else. I prefer to come and go in the dark.”

  “Awww, c’mon.” Clay clapped a fraternal hand on Rick’s arm. “Give yourself a little time to think about it. A PD job on the resumé looks good if you bring in a couple of nice books. Besides, it’s classic rock, how much work can there be?”

  “Uh huh. And what tax bracket would this ‘promotion’ put me in?”

  Clay snickered and ducked his head some more. “Oh yeah, we’ll talk about that,” he said. “No question we’ll make it worth your while. You can count on that.”

  Rick shook his head. He’d been railroaded before, but never so soon after walking into a building. “Let’s see this apartment,” he said.

  Clay clapped his hands once. “Good idea.” He led the way out to the parking lot. “You’re probably pretty tired after that drive.” Clay checked his watch. “Tell you what, I gotta meet a client in a little while. Just sold him a big run of schedule, a six month campaign.” He pointed at Rick. “Maybe give you a shot at producing the spots. Pick up a little extra folding money, you know?” As was his habit, Clay paused and sucked some air through his teeth. “Tch. So. Why don’t you follow me out to the place, get your shoes off, have a cold one, and think about it.”

  Rick follo
wed Clay’s Crown Victoria for six miles before they turned down a dirt road. A couple of hundred yards later they came to a stop in a clearing and got out of their respective vehicles. Clay was beaming. Rick wasn’t. “There she is,” Clay said with a sweeping Century 21 gesture. “Whaddya think?”

  “Well, it’s not an apartment so much as it’s a trailer, is it?”

  “Manufactured home,” Clay said. “Double wide. Great floor plan, too.”

  “When you said it was close to the station?” Rick gestured at the dirt road. “I got the impression it was like walking distance.”

  “Hell,” Clay said, “North Dakota’s walking distance. It’s just a long walk’s all.” Clay smiled and slapped Rick on the back. “C’mon, wait’ll you see the inside.”

  Clay keyed the door and they entered. The place was filled with someone else’s stuff. It was a mess, like the place had been ransacked then put back together by someone who didn’t really care. “You didn’t mention it was furnished.”

  Clay waved a hand at the living room. “Yeah, well, no, all this belonged to the guy you’re replacing.”

  “Which one? The night shift guy, the program director, or the morning show guy?”

  Clay ignored it, pointing instead at the massive record, tape, and CD collection. “That’s a helluva record collection, iddnit?”

  Rick nodded. “You don’t think he’s gonna miss it?”

  “Shiddif I know,” Clay said with a friendly shake of the head. “I figure if he wanted it, he’da taken it when he left.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Shiddif I know,” Clay said again with a little laugh. “Just didn’t show up for work one day. Disappeared, left all his stuff behind. And me, high and dry.”

  “Cops?”

  “Said they didn’t find any foul play.” Clay shrugged. “Not a clue.”

  Rick pointed around the room. “Looks like there was at least a little foul play in here, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, no, Chief Dinkins and his boys poked around in here trying to find some clues, see if something mighta happened but said they didn’t find nothin’.” Clay looked at his watch. “Meanwhile I gotta fill this job.” He poked a finger at Rick’s chest. “And you da man. The place and the job are yours if you want ‘em. And we’ll talk about that money, too.” Clay headed for the door, talking over his shoulder. “Guy’s brother’s supposed to come collect all this in a week or two, so don’t think I’m gonna stick you with that.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The jock?” Clay stopped at the door. “Guy named Jack Carter.”

  “As in Captain Jack?”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure, by reputation.”

  “Yeah, and he had one too, didn’t he?” Clay turned around and took a step toward Rick. “Listen, I’m sorry about all this. I hope you don’t think it was intentional or anything. It all just kinda happened, outta my hands. And I swear. . .” Clay aimed a finger at Rick, his thumb up like a gun’s hammer. “I’m gonna make it up to you. Tch.” The hammer dropped.

  4.

  Rick parked his truck under the fiberglass carport next to the trailer. He was too tired to unload anything but a suitcase. He found a couple of tall beers in the fridge and was working on the second one while he tried to decide his future.

  He was sitting in Captain Jack’s Barcalounger, possibly the most comfortable chair Rick had ever sat in. A joint was burning in the ashtray stand next to the chair. Rick wondered why anybody would abandon something this cozy, let alone this record collection. It seemed way past weird that a collector would just leave it. But there it was, staring at him. It was twice the size of what Rick had been dragging around the country for the past two decades.

  Rick pushed himself out of the chair and moved closer, looking at the spines of the albums, his head tilting to the right. The dark swirling colors of Abraxas, the green and silver Hissing of Summer Lawns. Rick had one of his bad impulses and looked for the tiny streak of rainbow on the spine of Dark Side of the Moon. Right next to it was a copy of The Piper At The Gates of Dawn. He took it to replace the one he’d sold in North Dakota. It wasn’t signed by the band but at least it gave him his favorite Floyd tune, Scarecrow.

  Rick closed his eyes and reached for the shelf. He let his fingers thrum back and forth across the long row of albums. He stopped at random, his index finger on Beggars Banquet. Brian Jones’s last record, Rick thought. Except for the two cuts on Let It Bleed. Rick put it on the turntable, a beautiful old Bang & Olufson 4004 with the linear tracking arm. A four hundred watt McIntosh amp pushed a pair of JBL studio monitors hanging in the corners. He turned it up half way, then a little bit more. He pushed the button on the turntable and watched as the arm tracked over to the lip of the disc. He turned and tilted his head back to the angle of the speakers and closed his eyes. He loved that rich thump when the needle settled into the vinyl groove and made the woofers jump. Thump. Rick smiled and started moving with the congas and maracas. Decent rhythm for a white guy. He went, “Yoww!” along with Mick’s echoed yelp. He turned it up a little more. “Yoww!” Please allow me to introduce myself. What a song. It was one of the rare songs that classic rock stations couldn’t burn out, no matter how many times they played it. Been around for a long, long year.

  Rick toked the joint and stood in front of the wall of music. He started looking through the collection. Albums, 45's, 78's, CD’s, DATs, a few eight tracks, several boxes of reel-to-reel tapes, but no cassettes. That’s weird, Rick thought.

  There were a dozen boxes of reel-to-reel tapes, all labeled. Some were air checks, some were programs Captain Jack had produced, others were interviews he had done with rock legends during his own, storied, career: Dylan @ WNYW-FM 1971; Townsend @ WRKK-FM, 1970; Clapton @ KMEL-FM, 1972.

  Rick returned his attention to the albums. As he expected, they were arranged alphabetically by artist’s last name or first letters of band’s name. Jethro Tull was filed under ‘J’ not ‘T’. Rick saw a record collection as a peek into the owner’s mind. Was he a closet Abba fan? (Carefree, peppy, and chatty?) Did he have the entire Leonard Cohen oeuvre? (Morose, despairing, unstable?) Were blues mixed with rock or was the collection segregated? (Purist, fanatic, fence builder?) Was he devoted to complete artist catalogs or was he interested only in worthwhile output? (More interested in collector value than artistic value?) Of course the technique worked better with people who actually had to buy their records. Radio folk tended to have everything in their collections since the records were free.

  The collection was dotted with box sets. Springsteen live, the Phil Spector collection, Clapton’s history, All Things Must Pass, and a dozen others, including Chicago IV, the famously bloated four record live set from Carnegie Hall, released in October 1971. Strange thing was, all the albums were filed right next to the box they came in. Rick thought that would make sense only if you listened to the records so often you didn’t want to waste time pulling them from the box. But since Rick figured nobody had listened to Chicago IV since approximately November 1971, this piqued his curiosity.

  He pulled the box from the collection and looked inside. There, he found something wrapped in a hand towel. Rick unfurled the towel. Inside was a standard seven inch reel, unlabeled, with five or ten minutes worth of tape on it, depending on the recording speed.

  Rick put the tape on Captain Jack’s old Crown SX-700 reel-to-reel machine. He switched the amp to auxiliary, cutting Mick off in the middle of shouting out about who killed the Kennedys. Then he started the tape deck. A moment later, Alvin the Chipmunk began chattering. The machine was set at 7 1/2 IPS. The tape had been recorded at 3 3/4. Rick rewound it, corrected the speed setting, and started again.

  A man began talking. His first words were these: “And you know that bitch wanted me to come back to her motel room and piss on her?”

  Well.

  Rick had to laugh at that. From the sound of the tape it was a phone conversation between two men. Ric
k listened to the whole thing. It was a six minute, forty-two second litany of crimes and indiscretions, delivered in a smooth redneck swagger. One man did most of the talking while the other listened, giggling now and then, sometimes asking questions, almost like he was taking notes. The talkative man sounded vaguely familiar but neither voice belonged to Captain Jack Carter.

  Rick listened to the tape three times. Now and then he had to rewind it to figure out what the men were saying, they were so colloquial. After the third time through, some words triggered a thought. Rick rewound the tape. “Wonk I fiddihs.” He listened again. “Shiddif I know,” the one man said, the man who did most of the talking. Rewind. “Wonk I fiddihs.” Play. “Shiddif I know.” Rick laughed again. No question. It was Clay Stubblefield.

  Rick shook his head in amusement. You just have to love the quality of people you meet in radio, he thought. He switched back to the turntable and started Beggars Banquet over at the second track, No Expectations. He sat down in the big soft chair and toked the joint, wondering what had happened..

  Radio legend Captain Jack Carter had somehow ended up in McRae, Mississippi. Then he disappeared, leaving behind his possessions, chief among which was a record and tape collection worth many thousands of dollars. Okay, that was mysterious. Just as strange, in Rick’s estimation, was the absence of cassettes from Carter’s collection. He had 78's, 45's, LPS, reels, eight tracks, DATs, and CDS – why wouldn’t he have cassettes? Very odd indeed.

  Granted, this wasn’t exactly crop circles, but these facts begged for an explanation. The only fact that had been explained was a fourth anomaly, namely, that Captain Jack’s place had been ransacked. According to Clay Stubblefield the cops had done that before declaring there were no signs of foul play in Carter’s disappearance. But given Clay’s extravagant credibility problem, Rick had no reason to believe that was true.