Radio Activity (The Rick Shannon series)

by Bill Fitzhugh

  A little before three, they took the stage. Rick had planned to emcee the actual drawing but Clay pushed him toward the prize barrel and grabbed the mike himself. “Hey, all right, how’s everybody doin’? I’m Clay Stubblefield, general manager at WAOR, the station with rrrreal rrrrock, rrreeeaaalll cash!” He thrust a fist in the air to punctuate the line and the crowd responded with a tepid round of golf applause that gave Rick perhaps more satisfaction than it should have. “Okay, before we do the drawing I’d like to introduce somebody who probably doesn’t need an introduction, but what the heck. She’s a McRae native, folks, so let’s give a big WAOR Classic Rock welcome to the newly crowned Miss Loblolly Pine, Joni Lang!” He turned and offered his open palm to the side of the stage and Joni sashayed out sporting a big tiara and doing the beauty queen wave. She stopped midway across the stage and, in one deft motion, yanked off her sweatsuit to reveal a thong bikini. Clay flashed the ‘okay’ sign and said, “All right! Joni Lang! Let’s hear it!” He waved a fist in a circle over his head while making a whoop, whoop, whoop sound as Joni crossed the stage to where Rick was standing next to the barrel.

  “Well, okay,” Clay said, “Let’s get this show on the road. Rick, why don’t you give it a spin and let Joni draw the name for third prize?” He held up a stack of CDs. “The folks over at T-Bone Records put together a collection of their top ten classic rock discs and man are they good ones!” Rick cranked the big barrel around half a dozen times then opened the hatch. Joni drew a name and handed it to Clay. He called out the name and a young woman in the crowd let out a happy scream and came running up to collect her prize. They repeated this process and gave away dinner for two at Steak & Surf.

  “All right,” Clay said. “Everybody ready? It’s time for the moment of truth. Can I have a drum roll please?” The DJ back at the station played the sound effect. Rick popped open the hatch. Joni reached in and pulled a name then handed it to Clay. He fumbled it a bit then looked at the entry form and said, “WAOR’s grand prize winner is . . . Ken Stigler!” He shaded his eyes, looking out over the audience. “Ken Stigler! You out there?”

  A big guy in the back of the crowd let out with, “Yo! Right here!”

  “We have a winner,” Clay said, pointing at the guy who -- based on his mutton-chop sideburns and worn leather coat -- Rick figured for a Steppenwolf fan.

  The DJ back at the studio went into the Beatles singing, Money (That’s What I Want) as Ken made his way to the stage. People clapped him on the back and gave him the thumbs up for his good fortune. Clay made a big gesture and said, “C’mon up here, Ken. Get your one thousand twenty-nine dollars from WAOR-FM, the station with rrrreal rrrrock, rrreeaalll cash!”

  Ken whooped and hollered and gave high fives to everybody with a hand in the air. A photographer from The McRae Monitor came on stage and took some pictures of the winner accepting the poster-size check from Clay with Joni Lang and Rick standing alongside.

  After the photos, the party continued. The Beatles segued improbably into a flashy set of Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and Roxy Music. Rick was standing over by the WAOR van talking to J.C. when he noticed Joni Lang still on the stage putting her sweatsuit back on. He thought about asking her if Clay had ever judged any of the pageants she had competed in and, more to the point, if there had been any contestants named Tammy. But that got sidetracked when he noticed Joni looking around as if to see if anyone was watching her. She walked over to the edge of the stage and looked into a cardboard box that had become an impromptu trash can. Joni quickly reached into the box and pulled something out. Then she stuck it in her pocket and hurried off the stage.

  46.

  After the event, Rick and Traci went back to his place. “That’s a nasty burn,” Rick said as he untied the knot on Traci’s halter top. “You should’ve let me put some sunscreen on you.”

  “I know,” Traci said. “I was bad. But I was having so much fun.”

  Rick squeezed a dollop of aloe vera into his hand and said, “Brace yourself.”

  She tensed when Rick brought the cold gel to her skin but as he slowly rubbed it in she began to relax. “I think the backs of my legs got burned, and maybe my feet too,” Traci said. “You better just rub everything, and not necessarily with that goo.”

  The last light of the summer sun bathed the room in gold and, as happens in situations like this, Rick and Traci made love. They started on the sofa, then moved to the floor and the Barcalounger. Afterward they moved back to the sofa where they drifted to sleep, spooned in the advancing darkness.

  A few hours later Rick woke to the patter of a steady rain. He opened his eyes. It was pitch black in the trailer. Traci was pressed against him, breathing deeply and lost in a dream. It was as close to a scene of domestic bliss as Rick could recall being part of, and he liked it. He thought about how it would be nice to have this, or something like it. Really have it. He touched Traci’s hair and wondered if she would go with him when he went to his next station, because there was always a next station. And would she follow him to the next and the next after that? Was it fair to ask someone to do that? And if it was, and if she would, Rick wondered if they would still have it each time or would it disappear and leave them disappointed?

  Rick smirked at his gloomy musings. Probably just his mood. He was in that displaced zone he got in whenever he fell asleep in the afternoon and woke up in the dark. He turned his head and listened. The rain had finally come but only a drizzle. It was quiet. Peaceful. Rick draped his arm over Traci and figured that if it was possible for good things to fall away and disappoint, it was also possible they could evolve into something better. After a moment’s reflection Rick thought, Yeah, but what are the odds?

  A distant light passed through the windows and Rick watched as shadows moved across the walls. He figured it was the moon finding a break in the clouds. But a moment later a pair of headlights switched to bright and lit the room like a fuse.

  Rick sat up, waking Traci. “What’s going on?” She was still half asleep.

  A car pulled up outside and the lights went out, leaving them in the dark with dilated pupils. Traci was dazed and sleepy. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Rick said as he got up and put on his jeans.

  “Is someone here?” Traci sat up and looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s nine o’clock.”

  “Yeah, and the last time somebody dropped by this time of night I ended up with dental problems.” Rick pointed toward the bedroom. “Go to the back and lock the door. And don’t turn on the lights. If it sounds like I’m getting the shit kicked out of me, call the cops. And a dentist.” Traci grabbed her clothes and did what he said.

  Rick went to the kitchen and grabbed his cast-iron skillet, then crossed to the door. It was unlocked. He expected the Ted Nugent fan would just let himself in again. Only this time Rick would get the first shot. He took his back swing and held it, waiting.

  There was a small knock at the door followed by a woman’s voice. “Hello? Jack?” The knob rattled and turned and the door opened and she stepped inside.

  “Hold it right there,” Rick said in his deepest voice. “I’ve got a gun.”

  The lights came on and virtually blinded Rick who hit himself in the head with the skillet when he went to shade his eyes. “Oww!”

  The woman stood there with her hand on the switch and said, “You lied.”

  Rick blinked a couple of times before he said, “I felt entitled what with you breaking into my place in the middle of the night and all.” He lowered the skillet to his side. “Who are you?”

  “The door was unlocked,” the woman said.

  Rick shook his head. “Just because someone leaves their door unlocked, doesn’t mean you’re invited in,” he said. “I mean, what if my zipper was down?”

  The woman didn’t respond. She was tired and she looked it. She took off her coat and laid it across the back of a chair. “I was under the impression that my brother lived here,” she said. “At least
until he disappeared.”

  Rick opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted when Traci entered the room and said, “You’re Carol?” Traci gestured back and forth between them. “We’ve talked on the phone. My name’s Traci. I’m the receptionist. That’s Rick, the program director. Rick, this is Captain Jack’s sister, Carol.”

  “Oh. Hi.” It was all Rick could think to say. He handed her a clean kitchen towel so she could dry herself.

  They stood there for a moment looking at one another before Carol said, “I came to get Jack’s stuff.” She made a weak gesture to the west. “I just drove from New Mexico.”

  Rick nodded sympathetically and said, “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone and--” He looked at Traci then back at Carol. “Stubblefield told me Jack’s brother was coming to get his stuff.”

  “Yeah. He was supposed to,” Carol said. “But here I am.” She pointed at Rick. “And there you are.” She gestured around the trailer. “But Jack’s nowhere to be found,” she said as she reached into her purse and pulled out a cassette. “And I think I know why.”

  47.

  Rick made some coffee and they went into the living room to talk about Jack Carter and the infamous tape. Rick told Carol everything he had learned since he’d been looking into it. He tried to keep the litany from sounding too grim but the facts weren’t open to a lot of happy spin. Carol allowed that Rick’s theory was more or less what she suspected. “Jack had a problem and everybody knew it,” she said. “Frankly, we’re surprised it took him this long to self-destruct.” She sounded both disappointed and fed up. “We got him into rehab a couple of times but he never took responsibility for his actions, never exercised a bit of self-control.” She looked around the trailer. “That’s why he ended up here.” Carol looked at Rick and Traci and said, “No offense. But Jack was good. He worked New York, LA, Chicago. He was a major market talent.” She looked at the floor. “With a major market nose.”

  A lightning strike cracked thunder and turned everyone’s head. Traci cocked her ear toward an open window. She could hear the raindrops starting to get fat.

  Rick asked Carol about the tape’s origins.

  “A couple of months ago?” Carol waved a hand in the air to imply the passage of time. “He calls and tells me this story. Says he went to work one day after the engineer had installed a new phone, uhhh, thing, a connection. . .”

  “A phone patch?” Rick said.

  “Yeah, a phone patch in the production room. Well, apparently the engineer left the phone line feeding through the board when he was done and when Jack’s boss took this call, it happened to be on that line, right? Jack was walking past the production room a little later and heard his boss talking about things he might not ought to have been.” She cocked her eyebrows as she said the last part. “As soon as Jack realized what had happened, he put a tape on the machine and recorded the rest of the conversation, just for the fun of it.”

  Traci looked at Rick and said, “That’s why it starts in the middle of the conversation.”

  “So I said, ‘Well, that’s interesting, Jack,’ and he says, ‘Yeah, well, the reason I’m telling you is that I need to borrow some money.’ Of course I knew it was for coke, so I told him I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t,” Carol said. “He tells me he understands but he wants me to know about the tape because he figures if I won’t loan him some money he can make some using the tape. I guess he figured I’d loan him the money if I knew the alternative was him using that tape like that, but I told him he was crazy and that he was going to get in trouble. He just laughs and says he’s gonna send me a copy of the tape, you know, so if something happened to him, I could give it to the cops. So I figured I’d do that before I left town.”

  “At least two problems there,” Rick said. “Based on that story, the tape was made illegally, so even if it got the cops to investigate and it led to something, it would probably all be tossed out since the underlying evidence probably isn’t admissible in court.” He noticed Traci eyeing him skeptically. “I watch a lot of Law & Order,” he said. “The second problem is the cops. They’re Clay’s pals. There are some other possibilities though, like the county sheriff or maybe the district attorney who might look into it, but I think we need to know who knows who before we just hand the tape over to anybody. If we hand it over.”

  “What do mean if?”

  “I’m just not sure if it makes sense, that’s all.” Rick looked to Carol. “You should hang on to that one in case. . . well, just in case.”

  Carol didn’t argue the point. She said she was curious about what had happened to her brother but that even if someone had killed him, they’d only finished what Jack had started and seemed bound and determined to do to himself. She seemed more resigned about his fate than angry.

  They talked some more about Rick’s investigation.

  “So this Dribbling guy is the only one you haven’t talked to?”

  “Well, him and our boss.”

  “The guy on the tape?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t really figured out how to handle that yet. But I’ll think of something.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Traci said. “Hey!” She sat forward on the sofa and pointed at Rick. “What happened to his car?”

  “That’s right,” Rick said, having wondered the same thing. “You know what he drove?”

  “Corvette,” Carol said. “Like a ‘95 or ‘96.”

  “Torch red,” Traci said. “It was beautiful.”

  “The ultimate mid-life crisis car, I suppose. Bought it in his last major market, the last time he had a chunky paycheck. I told him he should sell the thing if he needed money, but he said he’d start selling body parts before he got rid of his Vette.” Carol sipped her coffee and said, “Know what I think? I think he was a depressed, self-medicating, middle-aged man in a business that no longer needed him. He didn’t like change and he had a habit to support and, given his reputation, he was looking at the rest of his life going from one small market to the next. Who wouldn’t be depressed?” She shook her head. “God bless him, but he was a mess.”

  Rick squirmed as her description of Jack’s life brushed too close to his own. He gestured toward the back of the trailer. “I boxed up his clothes and personal stuff. But you’re going to need a truck and some strong backs to move all these records.”

  Carol shook her head. “I don’t want ‘em.”

  “They’re probably worth ten or twenty thousand dollars,” Rick said. “Maybe more.”

  “Not to me. I don’t care about music. You keep ‘em. I just came to get the stuff out of here like they asked.” There was another crack of thunder but more distant this time and Carol stood to leave. “I’ll just take the stuff you boxed up. And if you find out what happened to Jack, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.” She stopped at the door to put on her coat. She turned back to Rick. “Oh, and if you find the car, you can give me a call, too.”

  48.

  Rick and Traci talked for a while after Carol left. They agreed that finding out what had happened to Captain Jack’s car might give them clues to his fate, but they had no idea how to do this. Had it been abandoned somewhere, burned up on some back road with Jack in the trunk? Or perhaps driven into a lake with a cinder block on the accelerator and Jack strapped into the driver’s seat?

  Rick and Traci also realized that they needed to find out what they could about the Deckern County Sheriff’s Department in case they found some real evidence and needed some cops who were unburdened by a conflict of interests.

  Traci left a little before midnight. She needed to go back to her place so she could be ready for work the next day.

  After she left, Rick stayed up for a while, listening to Uncle Victor who was working a weather-themed set that went from Traffic’s Coloured Rain to Dylan’s Shelter From The Storm followed by Chi Coltrane’s Thunder and Lightning and James Taylor’s Fire and Rain. Rick went to bed around two and eventually fell asleep to the sound of a steady thund
ershower. He woke up around nine the next morning to ominous gray skies. He made some coffee and turned on the radio. The Allman Brothers were wrapping up their version of Stormy Monday.

  “Now I know T-Bone Walker said Tuesday’s just as bad,” Rob said. “But according to the National Weather Service, it’ll actually be a little better because right now we’re officially under a tornado watch.” Rob said this over storm sound effects playing in the background. “We’ve got some unstable conditions with warm, moist air colliding with cooler, dry air blowing down from up north. Remember,” Rob said. “This is just a watch, which means the conditions are right for tornadoes to develop but none have been sighted. This watch is in effect until eleven o’clock for all of Deckern County along with parts of Lamar, Forrest, Jones, and Jefferson Davis Counties. For the latest weather information, keep it tuned to one-oh-two-point-nine FM, WAOR.” A swelling synthesizer washed up and over the howling wind sound effects as Rob launched R.E.O. Speedwagon’s Ridin’ The Storm Out.

  Rick looked out a window to see how bad it was. It was raining again and the gray clouds were growing black. He had some grim thoughts about living in a tornado magnet such as he did and he suddenly wondered if his was tied down. He was about to step outside to investigate when REO Speedwagon faded abruptly halfway through the second verse.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Rob said. “But the national weather service has just issued a tornado warning for Deckern County. This is a warning, not a watch. This means a funnel cloud has been picked up on radar or was visually sighted. Be prepared to go to a basement or an interior room or hall in the lowest level of the building you’re in. Stay away from windows. If you’re in a low lying area, be aware of possible flash flooding.” Rob continued reading the standard tornado warning tips that Rick had read a thousand times.