Lyle reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his NC badge, and set it on the table. His first name in large letters was just above the NC logo. Below that, in small type, was his department and his full name, Lyle S. Deming. Instead of putting it on, he toyed with it absently.
“Amazing how Max persuaded restaurants and stores to locate here,” he said. “NC doesn’t have to run them, but they’re all a part of the place.”
“Not too amazing. Disney started the idea of sponsored rides and attractions. It was part of Max’s early game plan. It fills the park with attractions and well-known retailers and restaurants, but it keeps the costs down.”
“So where did Max get his money? I read a little NC history, but finance is not my specialty.”
“Are you going toward the offices? Let’s go. We’ll talk on the way.”
As they walked out, Kate glanced at a black-and-white TV in the waiting area. “Shouldn’t that be a color set?”
“Not necessarily,” Lyle said. “Color televisions didn’t start to become popular until the mid-to-late ’60s. We didn’t get a color set until later than that. I was in junior high.”
“Really?”
Chapter 23
“So is a theme park a risky investment these days?” Lyle asked as they walked toward the executive offices.
“Not necessarily. U.S. amusement parks take in more than $13 billion every year.”
“That’s a lot of thrill rides.”
“That thirteen billion includes admission, souvenirs, and meals. But NC’s more than a park. That’s where Max hopes to make money. We have hotels and attractions in one place. When you add the Indian casino, we’ll be like a combination of Disney World and Vegas.”
“Sounds hard to beat.”
“That’s one of the reasons I came to work here. But it turns out, the park is leveraged.
“In debt?”
“Yes. Max didn’t pick a great time to start building. As the recession got worse, labor was cheap, but Max had huge problems with his contractors. They grossly underestimated the cost of creating a city from scratch out here. Max stopped construction a couple of times and two of the contractors went out of business in the middle of the work. There were some lawsuits and Max wound up having to pay for a lot of materials he ordered ahead of time, and the stuff just sat and deteriorated in the desert. Of course, he was years behind schedule and was not taking in anything.”
“Sounds like a mess.”
“That’s just part of it.”
Kate paused as they passed a clothing store. She glanced up at mini-skirted mannequins in white vinyl go-go boots and matching belts. As Kate looked in the window, Lyle looked up at her.
“How tall are you?”
Kate didn’t appear startled by his out-of-the-blue question.
“Six-two and a half.”
Surprised, Lyle glanced down at her shoes. Her heels gave her at least another two inches.
“Sometimes I wear flats, but in my size there aren’t a lot of choices for work.”
When Lyle first met Kate, she struck him as all business. Since then, he’d seen a more complete person. For a woman to be a successful executive, even today, Lyle judged she had to be focused, usually smarter, and more driven than a man in the same job. He knew a police lieutenant who fit that mold. Back in the ’60s, and later, Lyle’s dad did not expect--nor want--his wife to work. His authoritarian philosophy and seeming inability to compromise was one of the reasons Lyle’s mother had divorced him.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt the finances,” Lyle said, “I just don’t know too many women over six feet. Do people call attention to your height?”
“Uh huh. Sometimes it’s disparaging.”
“Men or women?”
“Either.”
Lyle nodded. He could imagine situations where men and women could find Kate’s height distressing. He found it intriguing. “So you said Max had money problems.”
“He was stuck. He could either cancel the whole project--after he’d already acquired the land with his own money--or find more money. It was in the news. Remember?”
“Vaguely. I don’t usually read the business section.”
“I missed some of the details myself. I knew he found the money he needed, but I didn’t remember where it came from. He’d been in predicaments before.”
“So where did he get the cash?”
“He got money from two wealthy individuals, but the biggest loan came from FedPat, the financial services conglomerate.”
“I’ve heard of that, I think.”
“They’ve got a guy working here, a CPA named Kevin Waterman. His title is liaison officer.”
“Liaison for what?”
“That’s all I know. He goes to staff meetings. He looks at performance standards. Whatever that means. You think NC investors might figure into this?”
“Big money’s always an incentive for crime. But what’s the motive for sabotaging the park?”
Before Kate could answer, an ambulance, siren wailing, screeched around the corner. The paramedic unit raced down the street, an NC fire engine close behind. Lyle watched as the emergency trucks made a left turn a few blocks away.
He glanced back at Kate. “Maybe somebody tripped.”
“I hate to wish for a simple heart attack, but--”
They looked down the street to see an NC security black-and-white tear through an intersection and follow the path of the trucks.
Lyle threw up his hands. “I better check it out.”
“I’m not sure I want to know. But you’d better call me when you find out.”
He jogged back to his cab, parked in a nearby lot, and was soon chasing after the emergency procession. He followed the sirens to the edge of Centerville near the auto repair garage.
An NC patrol car blocked access to an alley that led to a behind-the-scenes work area. Gayle LeBlanc and other employees gathered at the entrance to the alley.
A burly security officer stood guard, arms folded across his chest.
“Is Clyde Bates around?” Lyle asked Gayle.
“He’s that security guy, huh? Yeah, he’s over there.”
Lyle shouted at Bates and motioned for him to tell the guard to let him in. Lyle followed Bates down the alley, which ran behind the Nostalgia City Bowling Lanes.
“Maxwell call you?” Bates asked.
“I heard the sirens. What happened?”
“Take a look.”
As Lyle walked around the corner of the building, he saw it. An open-air, canvass-topped tour bus had failed to make a turn in the alley and plowed into a block wall. The rainbow-colored bus was one of several small converted school buses used for guided tours. Painted on the side were the words, “Woodstock or Bust.” It appeared to be empty, unless the passengers were on the floor inside.
Lyle walked up to the door. The driver was slumped over the steering wheel and a paramedic was putting an oxygen mask over his face. Next to them, on the floor, an NC employee in a garish orange tour guide uniform lay motionless. A second paramedic was trying to find a pulse.
Lyle shuffled backward and stopped to lean against the ambulance.
“This is lucky,” muttered Bates who appeared next to him.
Lyle stared at him. “Lucky?”
“Lucky it happened back here. No tourists involved and we got the area sealed off. This is one accident the press won’t find out about.”
Chapter 24
“A bus crash? What are you saying?”
“This is Rene Reynolds, Impact News, Phoenix. We want to know about the tour bus crash there on Wednesday.”
Shit. Kate clenched her teeth as she gripped the phone. “Bus crash?”
“One of those open buses of yours with an awning on top?”
Kate faltered for a second.
“Well, was there a bus crash or not?”
“Yes, there was. No guests were involved. It happened in a service area.”
“The pictures we have look pretty b
ad. Front of the bus is smashed into a wall.”
“Pictures? Where did you--”
“I can’t divulge our sources, Ms. Sorensen. Was anyone hurt?”
“You doing a story?”
“Yeah.”
“Two of our employees were injured. I’ll check out the details and get back to you with a comment. When’s your deadline?”
Kate hung up and glanced at her watch. Just past 9 a.m., the end of her second week at Nostalgia City. She and her staff, worn out from responding to the media, now faced additional grief. Two employees were hurt in the bus crash, something she couldn’t deny, as much as she wished it hadn’t happened. Impact News would make this the top story that night. And how did they get pictures? She scribbled notes to herself. At least she could say the employees were out of the hospital and suffered no permanent injuries. She had tried to tell the media that little mishaps were not unusual at large theme parks--or small towns for that matter. But now any little accident at Nostalgia City made news.
Max wanted magic, wanted the bad news to evaporate. Kate hadn’t heard from Lyle since he’d called her Wednesday about the bus crash. That probably meant he was no closer to solving the mystery. How could she continue to explain that the park was safe and make excuses for new accidents? She kept asking herself why someone was trying to destroy Nostalgia City.
Joann came in and handed her new phone messages.
“Don’t tell me, Joann. More reporters.”
“Just one call from the media,” Joann said, “plus others.”
Kate took the slips from her secretary. The first one said, Nick Lassiter, president of United Veterans of the Vietnam Conflict, wants to see you soon. Joann had underlined soon.
“Now what?” Kate asked.
“This group has called us before,” Joann said. “Your predecessor met with someone once. They wanted to put up a memorial on the grounds.”
“What happened?”
“I think Bob brought it up to Mr. Maxwell. Don’t know what happened after that.”
“I can guess. I’ll give this guy a call. Maybe we can interest him in dedicating a crash dummy as a memorial.”
Joann wrinkled her nose and gave Kate an I-hope-you’re-just-kidding look.
“I know,” Kate agreed. “It’s bad. Nine o’clock and I’m already tired. After I give Impact News a comment, see if you can distribute the media calls to the rest of the staff for a while. I’ve got a meeting.” Before she got up, she glanced at her other messages. Bruce had called.
“You’re on the phone all the time now,” Bruce said when he recognized Kate’s voice. “I miss you.”
“Me too. I wish you could postpone your meeting this weekend. After all, you’re going to be quitting pretty soon.”
“They don’t know that yet, so I couldn’t say no. You could have come here.”
“Be serious. You know what’s going on here. We’ve been over that,” Kate said taking a breath. “What have you been doing? I called last night.”
“I know. I went out with Dave and forgot to take my phone with me. That’s why I called you back at work.”
“Did you find a real estate agent to list the condo yet?”
“No, but I’ve got a list. I’ll settle on someone tomorrow.”
Kate wished she and Bruce were settled somewhere nearby, but that would happen when it happened--if she still had a place to work. In a way, she was glad Bruce was not around because she could devote all her time to the continuing disaster.
***
“It looks bad,” Kate said, “but we can’t just sit by, stay in one place.”
“I know,” Drenda agreed. “I’m trying not to let it get to me.”
They sat in a small plaza near the edge of Centerville where outdoor tables clustered around a snack bar. An open-air gift shop sold newspapers, magazines, and souvenirs. Few tourists were out. The faint smell of eggs frying mixed with the odor of damp pavement drying in the late spring sun.
“At least we’re off the front page.”
“Temporarily.”
“Anything new?”
Kate shrugged. She didn’t even want to think about bus crash photos on the evening news.
“It’s horrible,” Drenda said.
“It is, but right now, the cops and security have to deal with it. We have to do what we can to improve the image around here, no matter what happens.” Kate tried to smile. “And you have the ideas we need.”
Drenda nodded and unrolled the architectural drawings on the table between them. “This plaza is the best spot. The timeline exhibit can go along here. And we haven’t stocked those two shops in the back.” She pointed to the rear of the square. “We could change our merchandising and have something finished in five or six weeks.”
“Wouldn’t it take longer than that to remodel the whole square?”
“We wouldn’t need to. I’ve learned a myriad of tricks working with the designers and our construction crews. It wouldn’t be difficult to change the ambiance and the visual effect. Here’s the look we originally had in mind.” She pointed to a rendering.
“This looks great.”
“It’s completely period-authentic.”
“I think the time has come for an update on realism. Don’t you?”
Drenda smiled. “It may take a while. Normally something like this has to be reviewed by the senior management committee and integrated into the budget. Then marketing will want to do focus groups. Finally it would be submitted for approval to you-know-who.”
“Drenda, this has just been approved by Nostalgia City’s two-woman executive committee. And I’ll take it to the president and he’ll approve it, too.”
“You sound as stubborn as Uncle Max.”
“Where do you think I learned it?”
Chapter 25
“Kate, tell me the publicity is going away,” Max said. “I can’t believe this.” He held up a printout of a popular Phoenix-area news commentary website. “This asshole says I carried my Nevada jinx with me to Arizona. Listen to this. ‘Unless Maxwell can figure out how to make his scary rides a little less scary--and a whole lot safer--he won’t get the last laugh on the Vegas crowd.’” He folded up the pages noisily and slapped it on his desk. “This is crap.”
Kate nodded her head, but she knew the truth in what the blogger had written. “I know, Max. But you said we were going to get a clean bill of health from the outside safety engineering firm. Then, wham, that bus crashes. But maybe we can start over.”
“Start over? May have to start over, from scratch. Hotel reservations are down over 30 percent and attendance, ha!”
Kate sat opposite the president’s desk listening to the anger and frustration in his voice.
“We’ve got to do something,” he said. “We need to boost attendance.”
“We can deal with this. It’ll be tough. But we’ll make it. We have to stick to the crisis plan. If everything would just stay quiet for a little while, the stories will fade away. I promise. Then we just have to build ourselves up again.”
“Hope you brought some miracles there.” He gestured to the tablet computer she’d set up on a corner of his desk. “Because if we don’t get attendance up soon, it won’t matter what happens next.”
Kate wasn’t always an optimist, but she could summon a positive outlook, something she learned from sports. “We’ll bounce back,” she said. “I know it.”
Max stared at her in icy silence.
“Remember when people put hypodermic needles in Pepsi?” she asked. “You couldn’t give the soda away. And the Tylenol scare? Crises pass. We can come back, too. It’ll just take a little time.”
“We don’t have a little time.”
“We don’t?”
Max looked as if he’d said more than he intended. He started to say something but stopped. Then he was silent. His mouth formed a tight, straight line.
“What’s the matter? Max, it’s me. Kate Sorensen, spin doctor to the rescue.” Please, no
more surprises.
When he finally spoke, he began by repeating that increasing the turnstile figures was paramount. Then, reluctantly, he told her why.
When he finished, Kate asked only a few questions. It was her turn to sit in silence. After the past few weeks, she was almost immune to bad news. Now this.
She tried to focus on the brief presentation she’d rehearsed. As she spoke, she realized that what had started as a pet idea, would become the centerpiece to her strategy to save Nostalgia City. “The plan I have here will grab the media’s attention--in a positive way. And get quick results,” she added.
Max looked sullen, and she knew what she was about to tell him would not improve his mood.
Ultimately, however, her plan--as she modified it on the fly--would lead to success. “Remember me telling you I persuaded Charles Dumond, a columnist from NY Town Magazine, to come out here? His article on us just came out. I have an advance copy.”
“Is it good?” Max didn’t sound enthusiastic.
“He acknowledged the monorail accident, but really focused on the park itself and our future. Let me read you part of it. He says that our people are friendly and he liked the food. He was intrigued by the re-created TV newscasts in our hotel rooms. But he said the news was, quote, ‘a little more cheery than I remembered.’”
“Sounds okay.”
“So, far. But here’s his conclusion:
“Something is missing in Nostalgia City. It’s not that the cars and buildings are inaccurate. The hardware is perfect, right down to the vintage telephones. What the park lacks is heart.
“As I remember it, the ’60s and ’70s were about change and a questioning of social, political, and moral values. It was a time of disorder brought on by an undeclared war. It featured civil rights marches, the free speech movement, Timothy Leary, love-ins, hippies. An era of both idealism and skepticism. None of this is evident in Nostalgia City. What you see instead is the Brady Bunch version, a sanitized history.”
Death in Nostalgia City Page 10