Читать книгу The Radio Red Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

She staggered back and bounced off the door. Her right hand moved to her holster and her fingers reached for the snap that secured her S&W .40 automatic. Night had fallen but light from a streetlamp on Barbara Jordan Boulevard combined with the glow that penetrated the frosted glass of the KRED doors. There was enough illumination to show her the man she had collided with.

He looked a lot like Bob Bjorner. A little thinner—not much—and a little younger. And his skin wasn’t bright red. It was the khaki-tan shade that Marvia had seen on many brothers and sisters of mixed ancestry. His hair was crinkly. His eyes were pale blue. He wore a quilted jacket and patched khaki trousers.

Marvia dropped her hand to her side. Paranoid cop. Typical paranoid cop reflex.

An old woman swathed in sagging layers of colorless sweaters stopped and watched the encounter. She was singing something unrecognizable and nodding vigorously to an invisible companion.

“Move along, please,” Marvia urged the old woman.

Eyes opened wide and the woman waved her arms like a bird trying to take wing. “Help, sister? Is this bruiser bothering you? You need help, sister? This brute pigess harassing you, brother? You need help?”

Marvia moved toward the woman. “There’s nothing happening here, ma’am, please just move along.”

The woman spun around and wandered back toward Huntington Way. A street crazy, that was all Marvia needed now, a street crazy on her hands. She focused on the big man.

“Are you Herbert Bjorner?”

The man nodded. Behind him a huge Oldsmobile ticked like a time bomb. Probably just the engine cooling. It was parked behind Marvia’s cruiser. It was in a ten-minute zone but by this hour the parking limit was off for the night. And besides, he must have his priorities.

Bjorner tried to push past Marvia but she stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He said, “Let me in. My brother—let me past, please.”

Marvia stepped back.

Bjorner tried the frosted-glass doors but they wouldn’t open. They’d locked automatically behind Marvia Plum.

Bjorner cursed.

Marvia said, “There’s nothing to see in there. Did you know—”

“Bobby’s dead,” Herbert Bjorner said.

“That’s right. I’m sorry.” The brother seemed fairly calm. That was a relief; Marvia didn’t want a three-hundred-pound elderly man having hysterics on her hands. Why did the Bjorners carry that much weight anyhow? Didn’t they know they were looking for an early grave?

Right, she thought, just look at poor Bobby.

“Were you notified, Mr. Bjorner?”

“I heard it on KRED.”

“When was that?”

“Uh—I don’t know. I dropped Bobby off like always and went home and lay down. I haven’t been feeling too good lately, I was a little worried about my health. And what would happen to Bobby if anything happened to me.”

“And you had your radio tuned to KRED?”

“Bobby has one of the old monitors. Sure. But I must have dozed off. I woke up and heard Nikki Klein’s voice, I thought maybe I was dreaming.”

“Please—?”

Herb Bjorner shook his head. “What?”

“Nikki Klein.”

“Oh. She does KRED news. She was talking about Bobby. His years of faithful service to the cause. Steadfast in the years of trial, unwavering before the winds of travail, a fighter who would be missed.”

He stopped and looked at the ground.

Marvia said, “You knew then?”

“No.” Bjorner shook his head. There was a smile on his face, a very sad smile. “I thought she was talking about him going off the air. I know they’ve been trying to dump the old-timers. Sun Mbolo, Jon Lennon, Serita Sunset, Willem O’Hare, Sojourner Strength, Lon Dayton, that whole disgusting bunch. They were trying to get rid of all the real movement people, the fighters, the strong revolutionary-fronters. I thought there had been a coup at KRED, they were finally firing everybody who wouldn’t turn their coats and join the capitalist sellout gang that’s running KRED now.”

He looked flushed. She thought, All we need is for him to kick, too. “Are you all right? Do you need any medication?”

He waved her objections away. “You know what they were doing to Bob? Salami tactics, salami tactics. Your opponent starts with the salami and you start with the knife and you take a tiny slice off the end, and another tiny slice, so thin he hardly notices each one, but you keep slicing and taking and eventually you have the whole salami.”

That was a puzzler. “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.