Wizard of the Wind Read online

  "Cable systems are even poorer than radio stations, Jimmy. They’re not going to want to pay anybody like us for programming when they can re-broadcast the local television stations for nothing."

  "No! That's the beauty of it! First, we teach them how to sell their own commercials locally and insert them in the shows themselves. Then, we’ve got a shock for them. We pay them...so much for each home, let’s say...to carry our shows. Then we make all the money on advertising and the stuff we sell and what the preachers pay us. Hell, we’ll even furnish them the satellite dish, the receiving equipment, the whole kit and caboodle. All they got to do is wire us to their system and collect the dollars. How much you figure something like all that will cost us?"

  For a few seconds Detroit actually thought about it, then realized he had no idea.

  "Hell, Jimmy, I don't know! But I'll bet you want me to find out. And probably before breakfast, too."

  "Nah! By lunchtime will be fine."

  Jimmy Gill laughed out loud, the first time he had done that in weeks, and he loved the sound of Dee’s chuckle coming back at him through the phone. Their differences were forgotten for the moment. They had found a new challenge to attack and conquer together. A new toy to wire together from scrap wire and discarded transformers.

  "Damn," Detroit said, "I might've known you'd want to take on television before it was all over. Television! Damn chewing gum for the eyes!"

  "Just radio with pictures, Dee. That’s all she is. Shoot, man, if we don’t do it, somebody else will."

  “And somebody’s going to build a rocket ship and go to Mars, too. I hope you’re not planning on tackling that one.”

  “Well, now that you mention it...”

  And then they talked and laughed some more until Rachel screeched and prodded and finally convinced Dee to hush and go back to sleep.

  “‘Night, Mr. Dee-troit.”

  “‘Night, Jimmy Gill.”

  But Jimmy did not go to bed. He took two more pills, spent a good hour making notes, hurriedly read over the contracts from his briefcase, ran through the shower, dressed and headed directly for the station. It would be seven o’clock before he got there now. Middle of the day!

  He had to hustle. He had a whole new world to explore. He didn’t want to take the risk of having someone else beating him to pay dirt while he rested, wasting precious time.

  Twenty-seven

  One of the jocks stopped him in the hall and hit him with the news the instant he walked in the door. Somebody named DeWayne George, claiming to be one of the investors in the company, was waiting for him in his office. The jock apologized for letting him in, but what could he do? The guy seemed convincing enough and he had seen him around before so he figured it would be okay.

  Jimmy told him it was fine, for him to get on back to the booth and do a great show. Then he swallowed hard, checked the front desk, and found he also had messages in his box from four different attorneys, two accountants, the engineers’ union shop steward in Dallas, the landlord for the studio building in Houston, and two record company promotion men who were mad enough to murder him because he had not yet added a couple of their records to any of the network playlists.

  It was a typical day at the office at Wizard Broadcasting.

  Dammit! He had a hot idea he wanted to set aboil instantly. He did not have time to deal with all the bullshit! And especially with the slithery likes of DeWayne George.

  The more he thought about the cable television idea in the shower and in the car on the way in, the more excited he became. He hardly remembered showering, was not even sure he had brushed his teeth, and he had made three wrong turns driving in as if he had somehow forgotten the way to the office. He was ready, primed to get things moving before the plan got cold.

  DeWayne sat there behind Jimmy’s desk as if it was his own, brazenly examining confidential papers that were stacked there. He didn't even flinch when Jimmy walked in. He kept reading whatever it was he was looking at until he finished it. Or until he was ready to look up at him.

  Jimmy closed the door behind him, locked it from the inside, vowed he would keep it locked from now on when he was out of the office, and then stood there for an awkward minute while DeWayne pointedly finished his snooping. The grubby man did not offer Jimmy his own chair, not even when he finally looked up at him. Then, George only sat there, staring through his slitted eyes, waiting for Jimmy to speak first.

  It had to be some kind of gangster territorial thing, Jimmy figured. First one to speak loses face.

  "What do you need, DeWayne?"

  "And a gracious good mornin' to you, too, Brother James," George said, turning on a crooked grin. “Fine time of the day to be coming to the office. I figured you'd be here by five-thirty. Since when do you keep such bankers’ hours?”

  Jimmy finally eased down into the chair across the desk from him. DeWayne George had lately taken to wearing his black hair slicked straight back from his forehead and tied in the back in a long, dangling ponytail. He also had a beard that he kept clipped to the length of about three days' growth. He had recently abandoned his jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts, too, and now dressed in expensive suits, his tieless pastel shirt collar buttoned tightly at the neck.

  He could have played a dope-dealer in the movies or on television with no wardrobe changes. Jimmy thought his look was more reptilian than anything else.

  It had been a long time since Jimmy had seen Duane, the twin brother. It seemed he was usually away somewhere, running some mysterious operation in an isolated, exotic, unspecified location in a far corner of the southern United States or in the Caribbean or Central America. A job that seemed to always require him to keep late hours and drive fast vehicles and be unavailable and out of touch for prolonged periods of time.

  “It’s only seven o’clock and I’ll be here ‘til ten tonight.”

  Lord. Why did he feel the need to respond to this fool?

  "Duane sends his love, Brother James," he hissed, now flashing him a snake's smile.

  "Well, tell him I sent the same sentiment right back at him."

  "I was passing through town and I just wanted to stop in for a minute and get a little state-of-the-stations report from you, buddy," DeWayne said through his frightening smirk. "How's it all going these days anyhow?"

  "Everything's peachy, DeWayne. Every property is well ahead of projection except Houston. That'll be a tough nut to crack. We’ve got some serious competition from some big group owners down there."

  "Who's giving us the most trouble, then? K-Rock?"

  Once again, the twin glanced down to a ledger sheet on the desk in front of him, as if he could actually make sense of all the columns and rows and endless figures.

  Jimmy still resented DeWayne and Duane using "us," not so subtly including the twins in any way with Wizard Broadcasting. As much as he appreciated their seed money, and the risk the twins had taken early on, he desperately wanted a divorce from them now. Wizard had repaid the twins completely. The company was making it on its own, had been self-sufficient and turning profits for several years. Every borrowed penny since the Dallas purchase had come from actual banks. Clean money from respected lending institutions with loan committees and buildings and vaults and daytime office hours.

  "Yeah, K-Rock for sure will be the toughest competition we’ve faced anywhere. They're a good station and they've got a war chest to fight us with. But we're going to do it right. We’ve commissioned a strategic research project to find some chinks in their armor. We’ll put a plan together and attack them with both barrels. We'll get them eventually, but it'll take some time and money. But hell, that’s the fun part. Beating good competition. And we’ve got the war chest to do it."

  Might as well let him know that Wizard had money now. That there was no need for his dirty stuff anymore. But there was no indication that DeWayne had heard a word of his answer. He blatantly continued to read the correspondence on the desk, nodding only slightly at Jimmy’s words. Then,
when he was once again ready, he looked up.

  "Did you know that I can drive just about anywhere I want to go and still not get out of range of at least one of our stations. It sure makes me proud to know me and my brother and my momma had a little bitty bit to do with the success of it all."

  Jimmy blinked once and swallowed hard.

  "You know we appreciate what you and Duane did for us," Jimmy offered. He was still of the opinion it was best to humor DeWayne George. He did not doubt for a moment that he could be a very dangerous man if he got the impression he was being slighted. "We’re at a very sensitive time right now. We are a major player in the business, and we’ll have plenty of other groups taking pot shots at us since we started up the networks. We’re going to make some enemies and you can bet on that. We’ve got to walk a fine line or the government could come poking around, too. I don't need them riding in, questioning our financing or how much Lulu Dooley or Greta Polanski or your momma...or even Detroit Simmons, for that matter...really have to do with running this whole shebang. We’ve come a long way on ‘integration of ownership and management.’ If they decide all those folks are just figure-heads, the feds could throw a wrench in the gears in no time flat."

  "Yeah, yeah. But me and Duane, we feel like we took some big risks backin' you and the nigger when you was gettin' all this shit started," DeWayne went on, waving a hand, again ignoring Jimmy and his cautions.

  George suddenly uncoiled and jumped to his feet so quickly he startled Jimmy. The taps on the heels of DeWayne’s snake-skin cowboy boots clattered loudly as he turned his back and strode to the window, stopped there, and stared outside. From that window, he could see the new bank skyscraper downtown with the studios inside and the huge satellite dish on top. If the humidity was low enough, the broadcasting tower for The River was even visible from there, beyond the city on the mountain top.

  "If you boys had gone bust, we'd have lost ourselves a lot of cash money for sure. Cash money me and Duane worked awful hard and took some powerful risks to accumulate, you understand. And there wouldn't have been any way to sue you and the nigger or take you to court or nothin' to get it back if you all had gone belly up. Our names weren't on any piece of paper or a promissory note nowhere. But we put it all right there on the line for y'all, didn't we, Brother James? Me and Duane? We were there for you when you needed us, weren’t we?"

  He seemed to be asking the panes of window glass the questions, but the answers came from Jimmy Gill.

  "Like I said, no doubt about it. Dee and I appreciate what you guys have done. And we paid you every cent back plus fifty-percent interest, too, DeWayne. Good clean money that you could put in any bank and spend just like you came by it all perfectly on the up and up."

  "Yeah, we scratched one another's backs didn't we, Brother James? We make a hell of a team."

  And then there was silence for a bit, broken only by the slight squeaking of the hardwood floor as George shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  "Okay, DeWayne, what do you want?" Jimmy could not stand the dancing any more. His impatience forced the question.

  The twin turned abruptly from the window, eyes squinted, teeth clinched, as if he was about to strike out at something or somebody.

  "You got any idea how big me and Duane's business is? How much cash we get and the volume of the commodities that we move? How many people we got working for us now?"

  "No, and I sure as hell don't want to know, either, to be perfectly..."

  "Well, we're a damn sight bigger in what we do than you and the nigger are in the radio business. We’re so big now, in fact, that we're attracting attention from some folks we don't necessarily want to mess with just yet. And I ain't talking about the law, neither."

  Jimmy had no idea where this was all heading. It had been a long time since he had seen DeWayne so worked up. Finally, Jimmy stood up from the chair, circled the desk and claimed his own executive’s seat. He felt better there. More familiar. More at home. More in control. Then he began reshuffling the papers on the desk, carefully placing the ones the twin had touched into their own pile, as if in quarantine.

  "Well, DeWayne, I'm really happy that there are enough idiots out there who want to get swimmy-headed and messed up that they can keep you boys in business. I hope you can keep on making money as fast as the mint can print the stuff. More power to you. But, DeWayne, tell me. What's all this got to do with me or Wizard Broadcasting?"

  George’s eyes narrowed. He walked back to the office chair Jimmy had just vacated and sat down heavily.

  "We want to grow our business, Brother James. That’s what it’s all about. Just like you want to own every radio station on the planet. It’s time for us to expand into South Florida and make a move up the East coast. Probably into New Orleans and spread out into more of Texas, too. Cocaine's the next big thing. It’s worth more money than 'smoke' by far, and not nearly as much trouble as heroin. We can sell the shit by the boxcar, just as fast as we can import it. But there is a basic law of marketing that’s getting in our way, Brother James. I’m sure you will understand perfectly. We got to already physically be in them places to make it worth the risk. We can't do a deal with the suppliers in South America if we don't have the franchises and the organizations already set up. Trouble is, they got some mean sumbitches where we are goin' that don't cotton to any kind of competition. The only way we can bust in is by bein' legit first. Have us some front to work out of that's legal. We could go in as a trucking company or something like that. But the competition is already wired into the unions like nobody’s business, and they'd know what we were up to, know we were pissing in their pot, in a New York minute."

  He stood again, walked over and sat on the edge of the desk, then bent to within six inches of Jimmy’s face. Seven-fifteen in the morning and his breath carried the smell of whiskey already.

  "I’ve been watching the way you do things, Brother James. You are one impressive bastard, you know that? And there’s a way you can put some of that skill to work for me and old Duane. Just to show how much you appreciate what we did for you. There's plenty of those little piss-ant, low-power AM radio stations in every one of the places where we plan to expand. What we need to do is quietly buy some of them, get our asses in there, and set up business without anybody being none the wiser. Poor as them stations are nowadays, nobody would pay us any mind at all.”

  “DeWayne, I still don’t get it.”

  “You are going to help us buy ‘em and get the licenses for 'em."

  Jimmy was stunned. The last thing he needed now was to be in bed with a couple of cocaine cowboys.

  "Damn, DeWayne. You don't need me! Just go on to wherever you want to go and buy the damn things. Your pot-head lawyer buddy in D.C. can get you filed and granted while he drinks his lunch."

  Jimmy had fired Grover years before. He hoped no one would ever have to know he had once represented Wizard Broadcasting.

  "Well, there’s one little crimp in that plan, buddy. Me and Duane both got a few black marks on our record. A drug conviction apiece, possession with intent to distribute. It didn't cost us much time, but it put something of a stain on our otherwise stellar credentials. You know we can’t be a radio station licensee with a felony conviction."

  Jimmy felt sick. His ulcer screamed just below his breastbone, and massaging it wasn’t helping at all. He should have eaten something for breakfast. He was always forgetting to eat unless Cleo was there to remind him.

  "Look, there are probably plenty of people out there who would front for you for the easy money. Why me?"

  "You’ve already proved that you can get things like this through the FCC without a hitch. Having the niggers involved and all ought to help, too. Nobody’s going to look too hard at you when you go buyin' some more stations. And God knows, me and my brother can't afford to have anybody lookin' too deep into our little business operations just now."

  "No, DeWayne. Not just no. Hell, no! Even if I was willing to do this, I
can't legally buy but three more AMs. We’ve got four already. You can only have seven, total. We're right now negotiating to go into some bigger markets and to do it, we'll have to take some AM/FM combos to make the financing work, to put the deals together. We can’t afford to get boxed in like that. No! No way!"

  Slowly, DeWayne drew back from Jimmy’s face, his anger appearing to be a smoldering fire somewhere deep inside. He dropped his cold stare, eased off the corner of the desk and clanged back to the office window. Seconds passed while Jimmy stared at the paperwork in front of him without seeing a word on the pages, listened to the floor squeaking with DeWayne’s rocking.

  "I was really hoping you'd be a little more enthusiastic about helping out your old neighbors, Brother James."

  "I can't risk it, DeWayne. You boys are into too much heavy stuff. We could lose everything! Just a whiff of something like this and our whole house of cards comes crashing down, just when everything’s going crazy. What if the banks, our advertisers, even the listeners, got wind of something like that? Damn! Don't ask me to get into something this dirty!" Jimmy knew his voice had taken on a pleading tone, cracking in exasperation and fear. He could not help it. "Please. Do this with somebody else and leave us alone!"

  George whirled around to face him again.

  "Shit, Brother James. It seems like to me you're into the cesspool waist deep already. I'd hate for the wrong people to find out where all that cash you were flashing at the closings in Nashville and Atlanta and Dallas really came from. And exactly who it was that busted up that newspaper bastard in Dallas when he crossed us that time.”

  The sudden sneer that crossed George’s face was chilling. The temperature in the room seemed to drop noticeably.

  “Oh. By the way. You'll be hearing in a few minutes about a really terrible thing that happened last night down there in Houston."

  Something sharp seemed to penetrate Jimmy’s gut then, twisting and grinding like a knife, swiping his breath in the process.