by Steve Thayer
Andrea watched co-workers turn out lamps and monitors and filter out of the newsroom. In the weather center across the way, radar screens tracked the storm clouds now stuck over the cities. The iridescent sheen they emitted cast an eerie pall over the darkening newsroom. She could make out the shadow of a large man moving across the weather center wall, and for a moment she got caught up in the spacey mood created by the high-tech gadgetry.Then news director Jack Napoleon emerged from his office in the glassy corner. He turned out lamps in the outer area and shut off the monitors. He retreated to his office without looking her way. The door was left slightly ajar. The ceiling light went out, leaving only the translucent light of a television set peeking out at her.
Up at the assignment desk the overnight dispatcher retreated to his shack to listen to scanner chatter. She heard him radio the photographers in their vans asking them to watch for flooding, shoot tape. Then the lights went out there too, leaving only a lamp to read by.
Andrea pulled tissues from her Boutique box and wiped the perspiration from her palms. She put the tissues to her mouth and spit out the mint. She shut down her computer, stood, swung her purse over her shoulder in a done-for-the-day manner, and searched the newsroom one more time. It was all but empty now. She took a deep breath, walked with purpose to the news director’s office, and pushed open the door, purposely leaving it open.
“Close the door,” he told her.
Andrea palmed the door shut. Outside the skyscraper’s top floor windows, the two cities were being pounded with rain.
He was seated on his office couch as if he were at home, his hands clasped behind his head, his feet up on a coffee table, watching a console television set with a VCR stacked atop it. He was a handsome man. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing muscular arms thick with hair. Black slacks were stretched tight across his legs, accenting his height. At thirty years old, he did not look like an ex-college athlete, but more like a former class president. Jack Napoleon enjoyed controlling people, not scoreboards.
Andrea couldn’t see what he was watching, but she heard some moaning and groaning, and she assumed it was a steamy love scene from a movie on videotape.
On the wall above the overstuffed couch hung a large oil painting of Jesus Christ rising through the clouds, ascending into heaven, his palms outstretched, blessing the poor souls he was leaving below. On a wall in the corner was a small crucifix. A white bible lay on the desk beside the picture of his wife and two children. It seemed more like the office of a Baptist minister than that of a news director. Jack Napoleon was a born-again Christian.
He wasn’t the first news director Clancy Communications had dropped into the Sky High newsroom, but he was the most bizarre. When he arrived at Channel 7 Napoleon shocked believers and nonbelievers alike by making his religious beliefs known at his first staff meeting. He wanted it understood the new Sky High News was to reflect Christian values, with heavy emphasis on community involvement and the family. He reminded them that if they all worked to be better Christians they would be a better newsroom. At that bit of heavenly advice, one staff member raised his hand and caustically asked if the Jews in the newsroom could be excused from becoming better Christians and just concentrate on becoming better reporters. There was little preaching after that, but his message was Christian clear.
“That was really a good stand-up you did yesterday, Andrea.”
“Thank you. I’m still concerned about my anchor work.”
“It’s coming along well. You’re getting there. And your research is good.”
“I’d like to do more anchoring.”
“Charleen will be back soon. Ratings always go up after an anchor comes back from maternity leave. We’re going to begin promoting her return next week. Got some really cute stuff of her and the baby.”
It was not the answer she had hoped for. Andrea had a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’d be in a much stronger position if she were married and knocked up. They fell silent. He kept his eyes glued to the TV screen. She watched the cold rain on the hot earth. Their transparent images were mirrored in the storm. Great splashing drops smeared the glass.
The moaning and groaning coming from the television set was growing intense and loud. Andrea walked over to the couch and stood beside him. “My God, what are you watching?”
“Porn,” he told her, matter-of-factly.
Indeed, it met all of her standards for obscene, but Andrea Labore couldn’t take her eyes off the coupling. “Why?”
“Because I believe that we are living in the last days before the start of the tribulation, and the entree of the Antichrist.”
Andrea didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it sounded so god-awful that she almost burst out laughing.
“People are getting hurt by this,” Napoleon went on. “Pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Let’s find out how it works. Who’s behind it? Where does the money come from? An investigative piece. Maybe even roll it into a one-hour documentary after it airs on our news. Are you interested?”
The cop-turned-reporter didn’t waste words. “No, not in the least.”
Jack Napoleon shrugged wide shoulders. “Maybe I’ll give it to Beanblossom.”
“He won’t do it. He probably watches this stuff.”
Then for one frightening moment Napoleon’s breathing became as loud as the breathing on the videotape. He caught his breath and relaxed. “This weather plays hell with my asthma.” He wiped the water from his eyes. “You don’t like him, do you?”
“Rick? It’s he who doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m a bimbo.”
The easiest way to hurt Andrea Labore was to call her a bimbo, a Barbie doll. In college a drunken frat boy once joked that if you dropped Andrea’s pants you’d find a smooth plastic crotch. She thought it was the cruelest thing ever said about her. On the police force, the boys often referred to her as the Barbie doll in the badge. Then with television news credentials and the most beautiful face in town came an immediate stigma. Bimbo! She fought this unfairness daily.
Thunder broke outside and startled her. City lights below were disappearing in the wind and rain.
Napoleon glanced over at the window. “Dixon Bell has been on top of this storm for twenty-four hours. At six o’clock the other stations were still predicting sprinkles. God, what a find he’s turned out to be. I’m from Chicago. I know the importance of the weather.”
“Yes, Dixon’s good.”
“I heard he asked you out.”
Andrea rubbed a chill from her arms. “It was no big deal.”
The news director turned his attention back to the noisy couple on the TV screen. They changed positions and went back at it like Pavlovian dogs. “I looked into the record books. In the history of television this station had never been rated number one in this market. Now it is. Do you know why we’re number one, Andrea?”
“Because of the tornado.”
Napoleon enjoyed her wit. “No, Andrea. Because we stress family values. We accentuate the positive. People tune in and see good news. If we tried to do hard news every day like the other stations, they’d kill us. But do you know what the other stations have that we don’t have? Awards. They promote their awards. Sky High News has no awards. That’s embarrassing. I’m looking for an award-winning investigative piece.”
“This stuff is legal,” Andrea reminded him, as the man in the video pulled out and ejaculated over the woman’s belly and breasts. Disgusted, she turned her back to the television set and raised her voice a notch. “Jack, will you shut that stuff off. I thought you were a religious man. Do you have some other story in mind for me?”
He ignored her request. “You’re a poli sci major. Tell me everything you know about Per Ellefson.”
At last there was a break in the action. A couple in clothes appeared on the TV screen and exchanged some lifeless banter.
Andrea rattled off everything she’d seen and read about Ellefson. “He’s a successful businessman
running for governor. Wants the Republican nomination. Probably won’t get it. The party has been taken over by the religious right.” Napoleon flinched when she said that. Andrea enjoyed the shot. She took another. “Personally, I’ve never met a born-again Christian who wasn’t a born-again hypocrite.” Napoleon’s face was turning red. “Ellefson’s not one of them,” Andrea went on. “Too moderate. He opposes abortion but also opposes the death penalty—a cause they’re zealous about. He’s tall and handsome, looks good on television. Of Norwegian descent. Married. I think he has two daughters. Latest polls show him beating all Democrats. His problem is getting the nomination. I wouldn’t mind covering his campaign, at least through the primary. It’ll give me some badly needed credibility. I think the stories I’ve been doing have been too soft.”
The news director was biting his lip. His breathing was growing louder, either his asthma or his anger. Jack Napoleon eyed the woman standing over him. He regained some of his composure, then returned his attention to the TV screen.
Andrea, too, turned to watch. Had she pushed too hard? The couple with their clothes on soon had their clothes off. They joined another naked couple in front of a fireplace. Andrea Labore had never seen so much sucking and fucking in her entire life. By her own admission she had poor taste in men—the ugly curse of beautiful women. Her head was swimming with confusion and anger. The intense weather didn’t help. Was she being forced to watch this stuff ? She thought this was a form of sexual assault.
He’s as good as raping me
As the men in the video worked their magic, fast and furious, the women began to scream with pleasure—primal screams of raw sex before the flames. Lightning lit up the room. With that bolt Andrea remembered that Jesus Christ, on his way to heaven, was looking over her shoulder. Her eyes fell on the door.
She couldn’t shake the haunting feeling that she was being watched, that some evil force in the newsroom knew what was going on.
Andrea started for the door. She was going to fling it open when Jack Napoleon finally spoke up, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“Yes, Per Ellefson would be a good assignment for you. You can move to the political beat next week. But you watch your mouth, Andrea,” he warned with a malevolent voice. “I don’t like uppity women. I won’t have them working for me.”
Andrea opened the office door and left the news director to his dirty videos.
The newsroom was dark but for the occasional flash of lightning. Police calls echoed over the assignment desk. Andrea’s police instinct still told her something was amiss. Up across the news set, the weather center appeared to be bathing in the dancing brilliance of the northern lights. Again she saw a shadow breeze across the wall. It wouldn’t hurt to check on the storm before she ventured home.
But Andrea Labore found Weather Center 7 abandoned. Ghostly. There was no weatherman to explain the thunderstorms moving across the bright green radar screens, no meteorologist to interpret the red fluorescent numbers emanating from the chrome instruments. The glowing computers had only each other to converse with. The overnight man wouldn’t arrive until midnight—another twenty minutes. A printer sprang to life. Andrea jumped. She grabbed her heart. Strange, she thought, that Dixon Bell would leave his station in the middle of a storm. A bathroom break, perhaps; or maybe he had gone to the roof to measure the storm in his own special way. He was like that.
The new political reporter for Channel 7 filed her suspicions in the back of her mind. She noted the time. Then she started for the Sky High parking ramp, grateful she was parked in out of the weather.
***
"Three-ten Able. Metrodome Municipal Ramp. On the roof. Report of one down. We'll start ambulance."
It was just past midnight and raining so hard headlights couldn’t cut it. Cloudto-cloud lightning illuminated the tempest. Thunder was a bass drum rumble. Lieutenant Donnell Redmond brought the unmarked squad car to a halt in a bumper-to-bumper crop of downtown traffic at the foot of the IDS Tower.The Twins had beaten the White Sox in extra innings. Fans fresh from the game sprinted from bar to bar. Cars snaked slowly through the flooding streets. The lights of Minneapolis blurred in the storm. The lieutenant had his window cracked open, allowing the weather to slip in and Captain Les Angelbeck’s cigarette smoke to slip out. Redmond put up with it. They inched through traffic, talked, and listened to police calls in the rain.
“Car Four, make twenty-one-seventeen Lyndale on a domestic assault. Husband, wife. He’s beating her with something.”
Like the windshield wipers, the two cops were working overtime. “When I made lieutenant I thought I finally had a nine-to-five job.”
“Sorry, Donny. I was sure our boy would be there tonight.” Angelbeck brushed ashes from his raincoat.
The street corner was turning swampy. Redmond, a tall, imposing man, arrested a mosquito and smashed it against his window. “That man we’re after tonight ain’t nothing but a glorified bookie anyway. Don’t hardly seem worth the effort.”
“Gambling here used to be restricted to sleazy kitchens off back alleys,” said Angelbeck, reminiscing. “Now it’s a two-billion-dollar concern and a whole new criminal division. Minnesota has more casinos than Atlantic City. We’ve had horse racing and dog racing. We’ve got pull tabs and lotteries. We’ve got riverboat gambling paddling up the Mississippi. We lead the nation in the number of dollars spent per person on gambling. What other scheme could the politicians possibly devise to take from the poor and give to the rich, and tell them they’re having fun while it’s being done?”
“Cock fighting and pit bulls.”
The old captain laughed. “That’s what it’s coming to.”The rain intensified, pounding the car. Straight-line winds sent waves of water racing down the busy street. “Don’t you own a raincoat?”
“All squads. Report any closed streets due to flooding. City works will be notified. All squads at 0-fourteen.”
They were moving again, slowly parting the waters. They rolled by Solid Gold, a high-priced strip joint. The doorman, torn umbrella in hand, was opening the door to a limousine.
“Yeah, I own a raincoat.”
“And how long have you been living here now?”
“Almost twenty years.” Donnell Redmond had come to Minnesota from Florida to play basketball. The university boasted it didn’t recruit for four years, it recruited for forty. Despite the hyperbole, it was often true. They came, played, and then they stayed.
“I’d think by now you’d have learned to dress for the weather.”
“I watched the weather,” Redmond told him. “The man said chance of sprinkles. He didn’t say nothing about monsoon season.”
“What channel did you watch?”
“Five.”
“See, there you go. Watch Channel 7. That guy is right on the money. Every day.”
“Channel 7 is a white-ass conspiracy. They haven’t had a black face on their news in two years. Just stuck-up, uptight, funky white bitches, hairdo white guys, and that big fat white weatherman with the baby face. You don’t seriously watch them, do you?”
“They’re number one now.”
“I’d rather drown.” He clobbered another mosquito on the dashboard.
Angelbeck coughed, then cleared his throat. “I’m old, Donny. We old people have to know the weather.”
“Right, yeah. You watch the weather like a goddamn weatherman so you can dress right and not get the sniffles, then you blow two packs of smokes every day. That cough of yours ain’t gettin’ any better, raincoat or none.”
“Speaking of raincoats and cigarettes, look at that billboard.”
The tall lieutenant bent his head over the steering wheel. “Looks like our boy Splat Man got another one. Your hero, too.”
Under bright lights above the street the Marlboro Man was riding through the rain. But his head had been blown off and his horse was bleeding profusely.They’d taken two hits: one fluorescent orange splat to the cowboy’s face and a bright yellow splat to the
horse’s neck. In the copious rain the dripping paint took on the hue of surreal art.
They worked their way past the stadium and started for the freeway. Angry cops in black raincoats directed traffic. It was the seedy end of town: parking lots and vacant lots, railroad tracks and decaying shacks. The nasty weather only added to the gloom. Angelbeck glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a red blur of flashing lights leave the county medical center. The siren could barely be heard above the storm.
“Three-ten Able.”
“Three-ten.”
“Metrodome ramp. We need a supervisor on the roof. Cancel the ambulance. Call eleven-ten. Suspect is GOA.”
Donnell Redmond hit the brakes. “Man, we just passed there.”
“Turn around. Let’s have a look.”
To most people the police chatter that night was routine mumbo jumbo, mostly weather-related. But to cops, newsrooms, and scanner freaks the message was as clear as the night was stormy. A supervisor was needed to seal the scene. Cancel the ambulance because the victim is dead. Eleven-ten was homicide.
