LITMIR.BIZ

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“What’s the point?”

      “Bob used to have a two-hour time slot. That was years ago. He was the heart and soul of KRED. They cut him to an hour, then to a half-hour three times a week, then this latest round they stripped him.”

      Marvia frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”

      “They put him on Monday through Friday. Every day, three o’clock every afternoon.”

      “What’s wrong with that?”

      “Fifteen minutes a day. What can you do in fifteen minutes? What kind of serious theme can you develop in fifteen minutes? But Bob took it, he swallowed his pride and started running multi-part programs. They didn’t like that either, that Mbolo creature and the rest of her gang, the KRED Hebrew Lesbian Alliance. They wanted him to go on live on the morning show, three five minute mini-segments a day, five days a week. You understand the tactic? You can’t fire the man, even Mbolo didn’t have that kind of balls, so you make his life so tough he can’t keep up, and he either quits or you have an excuse to dump him off the air.”

      He grinned a bitter grin.

      “Then they can start taking oil money like PBS, the Petroleum Broadcasting System. Bob would have stopped ’em, he would have been the last holdout at the barricades, he would have blown the roof off. So they got rid of him this way instead. Now they’re rid of everybody. Radio Red was their biggest enemy. Mbolo’s probably balling Jon Lennon right now just to celebrate. She’ll dance on Bobby’s grave, the Ethiopian bitch.”

      This was getting deep. Marvia wanted to get Bjorner back to his brother, but she couldn’t resist one question.

      “John Lennon? As in, John, Paul, George, Ringo?”

      Bjorner looked confused. Then he said, “Jonathan Lennon, the all-night man. Stupid time-waster. He’s part of the new gang.”

      “Okay,” Marvia said, “then when did you learn of your brother’s death?”

      “She kept on going. Nikki kept on going. She’s on the side of the people, Nikki is. Not as committed as she should be, but she’s trying. Then she wrapped up by repeating the headlines, and one of them was that Bobby was dead. Right there in the studio. So I came back. It took me a while but I came back.”

      Marvia said, “Mr. Bjorner, I think you should go home. You can’t even get into the station now, and there’s nothing there to see. Your brother—the remains—have been taken by the county coroner. You may have to go down to Oakland and identify the remains in the morning. And we’ll need to ask you some questions.”

      “He was murdered,” Bjorner said.

      “Was he?”

      “Sure. He knew they were going to get him. You know he always brought his special lock to the studio.”

      “I know about that, yes.”

      “He expected a mail bomb. When that Unabomber character was sending packages, Bobby always thought he was going to get one. He knew it was a right-wing conspiracy.”

      Marvia wasn’t going to argue with that one. It wasn’t just cops who were paranoid.

      “He thought they’d get him in the studio. Remember that gunman at KGO a few years ago? Bobby was expecting something like that.” He looked into Marvia’s face. “How did they get him?”

      “Mr. Bjorner, we don’t know that your brother was murdered at all. He might have died of natural causes.” She didn’t believe that. Not with the scarlet face she had seen. In death, Radio Red had lived up to his name.

      “He was murdered, all right. He was going to blow the roof right off of everything. But they got him. They got him before he could get them.”

      “Mr. Bjorner,” Marvia said, “I can give you a ride home. In the police unit. You can come back for your car in the morning. I’ll make sure you don’t get a ticket.”

      Sometimes they cared about parking tickets more than felonies.

      Bjorner shook his head. “No. I’ll drive home.”

      “I’ll need your address, please. And phone number. We’ll need to contact you.”

      Marvia took out her notebook and pen and waited.

      Bjorner looked at her for a long time. He was a huge man and she was a short woman. She’d had trouble in the army and in the police force, about height requirements. You were supposed to be measured in your bare feet, but she always complained about the cold floor and wore a double pair of boot socks to make the minimum.

      Finally, Bjorner said, “All right. It’s unlisted. Bobby always worried. But I suppose it’s all right.” He gave her an address in north Berkeley. He shook his head. “Cooperating with the police. Bobby must be whirling.”

      Marvia gave him her card and waited while he climbed back into the Oldsmobile. The sedan tilted with his weight. The engine roared into life. She wondered how the car ever passed a smog check. The Oldsmobile’s headlamps blazed into yellow beacons and Bjorner pulled away from the curb and headed north on Barbara Jordan Boulevard.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Marvia Plum turned in her cruiser at Berkeley police headquarters and dragged herself upstairs.

      She was suddenly bone-weary. She wasn’t surprised at that, but she was surprised at how deep was the hole that she felt she’d fallen into. The adrenaline rush of the run to KRED and the feeling of getting back to work had lifted her to the heights, and now that the adrenaline rush had ended she crashed like a cocaine addict when the drug wore off.

      She felt stiff. She pushed herself into the gym. No one was using the heavy bag, so she pulled on a pair of gloves, blessing the genius who invented Velcro, then stood and pounded the bag to work off the soreness and help her relax. She locked up her uniform and equipment and luxuriated in a long, hot shower. She scrubbed her close-cropped hair with shampoo and rinsed it. By the time she toweled off she could feel her skin start to breathe again.

      She pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. She took her personal weapon out of her locker and tucked it into her waistband. Compared to the S&W automatic she carried on duty, the little .38 Airweight revolver seemed as light and as tiny as a toy. She’d never been caught up in one of those off-duty nightmares where a cop just happened to wander into a shooting situation, but she’d known people it happened to. The .38 had limited stopping power, but you couldn’t walk around with a bazooka in your pocket. You had to accept certain limits.

      She left the Hall of Justice and pulled her tan-and-cream Mustang out of the parking lot, onto McKinley Avenue.

      On the short drive home she bypassed her usual traveling music and listened to KRED. It didn’t do her any good. Not as far as figuring out the Bjorner case. Assuming that there was a case to figure out, and that Radio Red Bjorner hadn’t died of apoplexy or a new strain of Ebola virus or a sporkful of spoiled Oriental food. But maybe it gave her a little insight into the goings-on at KRED.

      Assuming that those goings-on had anything to do with Bjorner’s death. She made a mental note to think about that, about the show she’d been listening to. Lon Dayton’s OTR Heaven. Jessie Loman had mentioned Dayton; he sounded like a character with an obsession. Did that make him a candidate to commit homicide?

      Dayton was also one of the people Herb Bjorner had mentioned. Was he one of the, what had Bjorner called them, the capitalist sellout gang? Or was he one of the valiant fighters who were in danger of being dumped, the way Radio Red was supposedly slated to be dumped if he hadn’t made a more dramatic exit in Studio B?

      At Bonita Street, Marvia pulled the Mustang into the driveway and locked the car. She climbed the wooden steps to the veranda and slipped her key into the front-door lock. She stepped inside the foyer. The old Persian rug was still there. She’d crept around on it as a child, tracing its intricate pattern, searching for the end and never finding it. She blinked, and for a moment she was almost able to

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