LITMIR.BIZ

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      “How did you get the job of station manager? You said you’d been a volunteer here, but had you ever worked elsewhere, in radio?”

      Mbolo was silent.

      “Is that a sore point?” Marvia asked.

      “This was my first broadcast experience. In fact, for the promotion I was jumped over several people who had been here longer than I. Much longer. Naturally, there was a certain amount of resentment.”

      Naturally. “How did that happen?”

      Mbolo steepled her long fingers and gazed into the distance. “The previous manager was under a certain amount of pressure. You know, there was a difficult permit process involved in having this building constructed. The old Oceana/KRED offices up on Spalding Street—do you know them?”

      “I remember passing by.”

      “KRED was in there from the very beginning. The place was poor at best, and as the years passed, it became an utter eyesore. I mean, our programmers would arrange for the presence of guests, world famous authors and musicians as well as scientists and educators, and it was an embarrassment. So KRED and Oceana raised a capital fund. The usual pleas over the air, surely you have heard them, Send us a hundred dollars, send us five dollars, send us anything you can, we need your help.”

      “I’ve heard them many times.”

      “Meanwhile, we had fund-raisers in the field running guilt scenarios on corporate donors and foundations and a few very liberal philanthropists. And of course our dear friends, as we call them, ‘the Feds.’”

      “The Feds?”

      “Quite. We get a lot of money from the government.”

      “But you blast the government every day. At least that’s KRED’s reputation.”

      Mbolo smiled and spread her hands.

      “All right,” Marvia resumed. “Let’s get back to the point. How you got this job.”

      “Indeed. Very well.” Mbolo nodded. “There were some permit problems and there was a major tax abatement issue, and we had to appeal to our friends on the city council. Especially our champion there, Councilmember Hanson. I will say our manager did a grand job, the way was smoothed before us, but then there were nasty questions raised about the permits and the taxes and the overly familiar relationship between KRED and Ms. Hanson’s office. Ultimately, the board at Oceana felt that our station manager was garnering too much unfavorable publicity.”

      She swung to the left, then to the right, then placed her elbows on her desk and leaned toward Marvia.

      “So she moved up to a less visible job with Oceana, and someone with a much lower, much less controversial profile at KRED was elevated to the Awful Office. And here I am.”

      “You say that your predecessor moved up to Oceana? This was punishment?”

      “Not punishment, Sergeant Plum. Protection.”

      Marvia nodded. She’d seen that kind of move before, both in the army and in the police department. It was all too common a maneuver. “What was this person’s name? And where is she now?”

      “Her name is Parlie Sloat, Sergeant, and she is still at Oceana. Right in this very building.”

      Marvia made a mental note to chat with Parlie Sloat at some point. There seemed no particular connection between her and Robert Bjorner, but at this early stage in the case, a great deal remained to be learned. In the meanwhile, there were more immediate matters to pursue.

      She sent a uniform to fetch Jessie Loman, the receptionist in the vivid lipstick and the bright yellow beret. She moved to the conference room, now deserted, and waited until Officer Rosetti, a bright female a decade younger than Marvia, showed up with Loman.

      “I already gave my statement,” Loman complained. “It’s getting late and I have to get home. I’m officially off duty now.”

      Marvia said, “We’ll make this fast.”

      “I have a date tonight,” Loman said.

      “We’ll make it fast.”

      “I mean, I’m sorry Mr. Bjorner died, but I have a date.”

      “Okay. Sit down. Relax. You want to call your boyfriend and tell him you’ll be a little late, this shouldn’t take very long.”

      Loman pouted for a moment, then she said, “If you promise it really won’t take long, I guess it’ll be okay.”

      Marvia nodded. “Thank you.” She’d removed the microcassette with her conversation with Sun Mbolo on it, labeled it and slipped it in her pocket. For Jessie Loman she started a new cassette.

      “But I already gave my statement,” Loman repeated.

      “I just want to ask you a few questions. Mainly about Mr. Bjorner. Did you know him well, Jessie?”

      “Not very.”

      “I thought he was an old-timer here at KRED.”

      “I guess so.”

      “You don’t know?”

      “I’ve only been here a few months. I want to be a producer. I used to listen to OTR Heaven and I got interested and came to KRED.”

      Marvia nodded. “What’s OTR?”

      “Old-time radio. You know, like they had in the thirties and forties. Shows like The Shadow and Inner Sanctum. Lon Dayton does an OTR show, and I wrote him letters about it and I’m learning to be a producer. But I have to work as receptionist the rest of the time.”

      Marvia put that away for future reference. But for now, it was back to the present. “Was Bob Bjorner blind?”

      Jessie Loman licked her dark crimson lipstick and tugged at the corner of her yellow beret. “Not exactly.”

      “What does that mean?”

      “Well, he could see a little. And he didn’t want anybody to help him. I remember when I started working at KRED, the first day when Bob came in to do his show, he looked as if he knew his way around and he could see everything. He had on these Coke-bottle glasses and his eyes looked weird but that was just distortion.”

      She paused and looked at her wristwatch. It had the KRED logo on its face, a little red radio with the station’s call letters spelled out in jagged lightning bolts.

      Marvia nodded and said, “Yes. And then.…”

      Jessie Loman cleared her throat. “And then, there was a package on the floor. UPS had just delivered a shipment of CDs for the music department. Somebody was supposed to put it away, but it was still in the hallway and Bob tripped over it and fell down. He was a heavy man, you know.”

      Marvia agreed that Bjorner was a heavy man.

      “He had a hard time getting up,” Loman continued. “I came out from behind the switchboard and tried to help him and he got bright red and started screaming at me. He was really mad. I don’t think he hurt himself falling but he was so mad, he felt humiliated. Then he went into Studio B and did his show like nothing happened.”

      Then Jessie Loman shook her head and added, “He didn’t like people to see his scripts, either. He used Braille scripts. So I guess his eyes were really bad, I mean really, or he wouldn’t have needed to use Braille scripts, would he?”

      “No, he wouldn’t,” Marvia agreed. “Do you know how he lost his vision? Did he always have bad eyes?”

      “I remember they did an anniversary show, the end of World War One. Or Two. Whichever. Nikki put together this documentary, she interviewed Mr. Bjorner. I never heard him open up like that, just only that once. He said he got burned by white phosphorus on Tarawa. That’s an island.”

      “Yes.”

      “I

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