Overton Dead Air

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-896350-59-2
Verlag: Scott Overton
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 315 Seiten

It's a hard thing to accept that someone wants you dead. It forces you to decide if you have anything worth living for.?When radio morning host Lee Garrett finds a death threat on his control console, he shrugs it off as a prank. Until a series of minor harassments turns into undeniable attempts on his life. The suspects are many-he's made enemies-and the police are strangely uncooperative. The radio career he loved has turned sour, leaving behind a dwindling audience and the wreckage of his marriage. Then the friendship of a newly blind boy and the boy's attractive teacher offer unexpected hope. Maybe he can make a fresh start.
But when the deadliest assault yet claims an innocent victim, Garrett knows he has no choice-he has to find his persecutors and force a confrontation. The extraordinary outcome will test the limits of an ordinary man
'A gripping, insightful debut from a veteran radio personality and gifted wordsmith.' -Sean Costello, author of Here After
'Scott Overton is a storyteller of boundless skill...a writer to watch.' -Mark Leslie, author of Haunted Hamilton and I, Death

Autoren/Hrsg.

Overton, Scott

Leseproben

Chapter 2
  Lee awoke sprawled across his couch. Adrenaline shot through him as he realised he wouldn’t have heard the alarm clock in the bedroom. What time was it? His eyes found the blue numbers of the DVD recorder above the TV and he released the breath he was holding. 4:07 a.m. Late, but not too much. He shaved a few minutes off his morning routine, snapping from one task to the next with total focus. His mind had settled during the night, and when images of the previous day tried to intrude, he pushed them aside. There were specks of red in the sink—he’d made his gums bleed a little. He shouldn’t have let things get to him. He was forty years old, goddammit—he ought to know who he was, not let other people define him. Not Michaela, not some crackpot with a radio and a red pen. As he wheeled onto Notre Dame, a bread truck pulled in front of him. The streets were empty, but the driver hadn’t waited for Lee to go by. The truck accelerated to just over the speed limit, but Lee stamped the gas pedal to the floor, swung into the left lane, and roared past. He didn’t slow down until he reached the radio station driveway. Unlocking the door of the building put his new confidence to the test. Another break-in wasn’t likely, but he listened with his full attention as he walked through the halls. The control room garbage can was empty. The cleaners must have done their rounds during the night, and the crumpled wad of brown paper had gone with them. Good. He felt his shoulders relax. He had work to do. People counted on him to help them start their day. He wasn’t going to let a few morons sabotage that. He went on the air at 5:30, and with each word he felt the old Lee Garrett return. After eight o’clock he told J.J. about the hate note. The young man nodded. “I knew there was something going on. You shouldn’t oughtta let a chickenshit like that get to you, man. What is it you always say? If they don’t have the guts to sign their name they ain’t got the balls of a ballerina. Fuck ’em, if they can’t take a joke.” Lee laughed. He turned on his microphone to talk over the intro of the next song. “620 The Box, Favourites of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Here’s Eric Clapton saying ‘Lay Down Sally’. These days Eric’d have to get her permission in writing.” He smiled to see J.J.’s eyebrows rise. Then the flashing of the phone line indicator caught his attention. “You gonna answer that call?” J.J. asked. “Nah. Probably a feminist with no sense of humour.” Lee shuffled some papers and made a show of checking the computer screen for the next song. “You want me to answer it?” “Be my guest.” J.J.’s face and voice revealed nothing as he muttered “Yes, ma’am” and “No ma’am”. At last he hung up the phone and shook his head with a sober expression. “She wasn’t happy. Wanted to know why we never play anything from the Partridge Family!” He gave a howl of laughter. “No doubt. I just played a promo for the Request Show, too.” J.J. brushed his eyes with a finger. “At least it wasn’t a femi-Nazi. Bein’ a man these days—it’s like you should have the words I’m Sorry tattooed on your forehead.” “Try being a white man.” Their laughter brought the receptionist into the room to investigate the noise.   •   Most of the on-air staff had gathered in the announcers’ lounge; the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement report was due in that morning. As Lee walked in, Doug Rhodes was talking about the Country Music station that had just signed on in town: CWLF “The Wolf”. “C-Bitch, the dog of the ratings. Tune in for a great piece of tail!”  He rubbed his hip suggestively against his counterpart on Z104’s afternoon drive show, Rick Johns. Johns reacted as if he’d been stung. Lee laughed with the rest, then said “So which one of you jokers likes to have fun with a red pen?” Their faces went blank. Z104’s evening host Damon Allen looked at him. His mouth twitched, and he asked, “Is it a big, long pen…?” Rhodes took over. “Yeah, with a vibrator function? Tracy, you’ve got one of those, don’t you?” Tracy Banderjee was used to jokes about the long evenings she spent in the CTBX control room. She curled her lip. “Not since you borrowed it and wore out the battery.” Lee waited to get their attention again and explained about the note. “Not your handiwork, Rhodesy?” Rhodes shrugged, then shook his head. “No hard feelings, guys. A joke’s a joke. But if we don’t know who did it, Ellis might have to assume somebody broke into the building, and get the police involved.” He wanted to make sure they didn’t hold anything back. “It wasn’t me,” Rhodes said to the floor. The faces of the others were sour. None of them liked to think an outsider could have invaded their inner sanctum. Lee forced a smile. “No sweat. Maybe Mayor Warden has decided to reveal his true skinhead self.” The mayor’s bad toupee was legendary. The laughter cleared the air, but Lee shuffled away toward the Production studio. His mood wasn’t improved by twenty minutes of recording hard-sell commercials. He could never understand why business owners thought their customers wanted to be yelled at. He should call Michaela—find out what she wanted. Instead he went to find Dan Arnott. The ratings report would be in by now. Arnott was with Rene Charette, the PD for Z104, in Charette’s office. The two men were taking turns calling up graphs on a computer screen. Z104’s morning man Barry Wright stood leaning over Charette’s shoulder and looked up as Lee entered. “Looks good so far, buddy.” “You picked up women,” Arnott said to Charette, running his finger along the screen that compared The Wiz’s performance figures to the previous book. “Softened the sound just enough without pissing off too many guys. Nice job.” He looked up. “Lee. I printed off some preliminary stuff. Uh…better come to my office and we’ll look at it.” He didn’t want to talk about it in front of the others. Not a good sign. Arnott dropped into his chair and spread a handful of printouts on the desk. “Close the door,” he said as he searched for the pages he wanted, then handed two of them to Lee. One was from the most recent ratings period, the other from the previous survey. Both showed the average number of listeners during each quarter-hour of the day in the 25 to 49 age bracket within the city itself. The so-called core numbers. CTBX usually had better results with the full coverage rankings that included listeners everywhere the station’s signal reached. But most advertising dollars came from the central core. Lee looked for the morning show, especially between 7:00 and 9:00, comparing the pages. “We’re down. A few small gains…mostly drops. 8:00 o’clock, 8:15….” He glanced farther down the page. “Not just mornings, though. Looks like a decline all through the day.” Arnott nodded. “Yeah. We especially lost women.” He handed over two more pages labelled “Time Blocks”. They showed the results organized according to blocks of time: morning show, midday, afternoon drive. The trend was downward and obvious. “What about thirty-five to fifty-four-year-olds?” The older audience was traditionally more loyal to The Box because of its older music. “Better. Down a little. I haven’t had a chance to get into too much detailed stuff yet. From this, I’d guess we’re down about five per cent in the twenty-five to forty-nine-year-olds, basically flat in thirty-five and older…down a shade in the mornings. And most of the loss seems to be women. Maybe they went to The Wiz—Barry and Sandy have had better chemistry lately.” Lee shifted in the chair. “And the company pours a ton of money into The Wiz—look at all the stuff they were giving away this time. And the TV ads.” “Sure, but our vacation packages were hot. We were counting on them to draw more women. Ellis isn’t going to be happy, and I’ll have to eat crow. No bonuses for us this time, my friend.” “Shit!” Lee slapped the desk. “Street talk was good, too. You think it’s an accurate book? For the money BBM pays, kids are the only ones who bother to fill out the ballots anymore. You can’t get the straight goods from a sample of a few hundred people when most of ’em are under twenty, with iPods glued to their hips.” Arnott waved the suggestion away. “We can’t cry ‘bad book’ every time it doesn’t go the way we want. Sometimes we have to accept that the listeners are trying to tell us something.” “How did CMOR do? Did they pick up the older women we lost?” “They took a tumble, too. But they’ve been struggling for a while now. Ron Wayne was the King of the Hill for years until you came to town. You kicked his butt off and he’s been getting grass...