The Face Out Front

Copyright © 1977 by R. R. Irvine

E-book published in 2015 by Blackstone Publishing

Cover design by Sean Stanton

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced

or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission

of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

and not intended by the author.

Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4821-0202-4

Library e-book ISBN 978-1-62460-665-6

Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

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OUTSIDE THE LAW

The psychiatrists said Harold Franks was sane, despite what he had done to Tim Bishop’s wife three years before. They said that Franks was sorry now, and that they were letting him out.

The police said that legally Harold Franks was free, and that they couldn’t protect Bishop or Bishop’s new wife from this man. It was too bad, but that was the way it was.

Harold Franks, though, had another message for Bishop. He smiled as he told Bishop just what he was going to do to the woman Bishop loved, and how little Bishop could do to stop him.

It was Bishop alone now against this crazed and conscienceless creature—and only the better killer would win …

In remembrance of Rollo

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Even now a cold knot forms in my stomach at the sight of the mail boy, though it has been more than two years since delivery of that deadly package.

I keep telling myself that time should have dulled my memory. But at ten o’clock each workday morning all I hear is the sound of my heart thudding against my ribs and the ragged scrape of air in my throat as I await the arrival of the mail.

And today, Victor, the mail boy, was taking his time about it, pausing to pay his respects at every desk in the newsroom. Victor wants desperately to escape the mail room, and at Channel Three the quickest way to freedom is through news, which accounts for more than half of all station personnel.

He brown-noses everyone, from copyboy on up. But me, Tim Bishop, he’s wary of, though he knows as producer I could probably get him hired if I wanted to. He senses my antagonism. I’ve seen it in his eyes.

Victor has a special built-in radar allowing him to home-in on soft touches while skirting trouble. So when he carries innocent looking brown packages for me—like the one before—he swoops by my desk like a dive-bomber releasing its load quickly in order to escape the blast zone.

God help him if he ever hands me a brown package with red lettering!

I pulled in a deep breath, then stood up from the desk to get a better view of the red-carpeted newsroom. You’ve got to watch it, I told myself. Keep the old blood pressure down. I yawned to clear my ears, remembering the rushing sound that had become chronic two years ago, and which now came only with nightmares.

Come on, Victor, I muttered, as if urging on a balky horse. Get it over with or I’ll never get any work done.

He moved on, only to stall again in front of the news director’s office. Naturally, Victor lingered there whenever he could. Our news director, Herb Reisner, ruled the Channel Three news operation with godlike authority. Only an anchorman could challenge him.

Tenacious as a terrier, Victor constantly hounded Reisner for a job, any job. But today, with the news director out of his office, the mail boy concentrated on the News Princess, the name by which Reisner’s secretary was known to the rest of us.

His groveling approach annoyed me. At any moment I expected him to fall on his knees and kiss her hem. But then I couldn’t blame him. The News Princess was in a position—supine, if rumors were true—to provide Victor’s big break.

But dammit, I was the one in need of a break. Just yesterday a sex killing had dominated The Six O’Clock News, touching off my dreams again, filling my sleep with bloody packages so huge I had to crawl over them like an insect in order to read my name scrawled in letters five feet high. The real package, the one that arrived two years ago, had been small enough to hold in my hands. Yet it had carried death.

For Christ sake! I grumbled. Waiting made me think. To avoid that, I abandoned my production rundown for The Six O’Clock News and strolled over to the assignment desk. I use the term stroll loosely. In television news you never approach the assignment desk without being armed for a fight, preferably with bayonet at the ready, pin already pulled from your grenade. There were two reasons for such caution. At the moment only one was present, Hap Taylor, a hyperactive twenty-five-year-old whose goggle glasses intensified his black eyes to the point of omniscience. He was known as Channel Three’s answer to Hitler. His counterpart on the desk was Wayne Gossett, a sort of Torquemada, whose religious passion was sixteen-millimeter news film, the bloodier the better. Between them, they made life hell for reporters and producers alike.

Taylor glared up from his phone, the assignment editor’s pacifier, and gave me the finger. Without really knowing why, I liked him. Perhaps because I always knew where I stood with him—a little to one side. If I got in his way he’d run right over me. But at least he treated everyone equally: with total disrespect. He moved film crews, the life blood of TV news, as offhandedly as a dictator ordering executives. Taylor knew as well as I did that excitement was the key to news as practiced by Channel Three. After excitement—according to a Herb Reisner memo—came happy news. Something light and frothy to sandwich between famine and war. Never let the folks at home be more than one story away from a smile, the news director had codified.

Taylor repeated his obscene gesture, this time with arm-jarring emphasis, and then hung up his phone with a loud clunk. Another fucking screwball, he said. Jesus, now I have a form to fill out every time a nut calls in.

An assignment editor’s life is hell, I said.

From the shelf next to his desk a radio hissed static. He hissed back and then said, Sorry, Tim-boy, there’s not a disaster in sight. You’ll have to feed them pablum tonight.

I can live without a disaster, Hap.

"Maybe … but The Six O’Clock News can’t. He sounded like he’d been taking lessons from Reisner. What we need is a good murder. A psycho on the loose. That kind of thing."

I cringed. Murder had driven me from the tube and into the comparative sanctuary of writer-producer. The money wasn’t as good, but I’d stopped being a target.

I coughed. So did the two-way. Then a reporter’s voice came in loud and clear. Taylor stretched toward the radio as if to confront an opponent; he shouted into the microphone. I don’t care what the senator says! Tell him we’re tired of handouts and spoon-fed pap.

What the assignment editor was really saying was that Herb Reisner’s latest dictum had pronounced press conferences as dull, without action, and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Even if reporters had to haul newsmakers outside and into the nearest foliage to provide on-the-scene atmosphere.

From the two-way, reporter Carl Johns complained, The senator says he has another appointment. He won’t go into the bushes.

I don’t care if he’s getting laid, growled Taylor. I want an exclusive interview outside.

But, Hap … Johns pleaded.

Tell the senator to play ball or he’ll disappear from Channel Three forever.

Nobody could be that lucky, I quipped.

Taylor ignored me. Johns said, Now wait a minute. I can’t tell a US Senator that.

Taylor played trump. I just talked to Reisner. He said no press conferences, even for a senator. That’s final.

In the game of one-upsmanship, Chanel Three’s evil-eyed news director was as good as the king of spades. Our anchorman, Lee Barnes, held the ace, though I doubted if he had the smarts to finesse his power correctly.

I’ll do my best, Johns sighed.

If you don’t, retorted the assignment editor, "your face won’t grace tonight’s Six O’Clock News."

Taylor was pulling out all the stops. Removing a reporter’s face from the tube was tantamount to murder.

One thing for sure, Hap Taylor had a way of taking my mind off my troubles. I started to say so just as he turned on me, face stretched into a malicious grin, and said, You look nervous, Tim-boy.

Who wouldn’t be? I nodded at his plexiglass assignment board. Here it is almost eleven and no lead film story yet. I can’t go with the senator up front, bushes or no bushes. Too boring.

This is your life, he said.

I reached over to tap the plexiglass. And that’s yours, Hap, looking terminal at the moment.

He waved his arms. The day is still young. A 747 could go down any minute. A school bus could explode. I’ve got plenty of time for a disaster.

I forced a smile. I knew sick jokes were a part of the business, a way of making tragedy more bearable to most of us, but Taylor used black humor as a weapon. At the moment, however, his negative buoyancy was keeping my head above the murky waters of memory.

Tim, old buddy, he said suddenly, his tone softening to pugnaciousness. You’re my favorite producer, you know that.

Here it comes, I said. The king of freebies strikes again.

Taylor tossed his head as if receiving a compliment. I need half a dozen tickets to the Dodger game tonight. Some friends of mine just came into town.

How much are you charging them?

He winked. I know you’ve got pull from the old days. Hell, you’re the only producer around here with complimentary season passes. No one else rates. Grinning, he began to polish his goggles with a crisp white handkerchief.

I sighed. Sure, I had an in with the Dodger flacks—but just because I’d once been a pretty face on the tube, not for any reasons of friendship. Half a dozen tickets would put me in hock. Sooner or later they’d call in that kind of debt and want special coverage for some public relations gimmick. Still, the Dodgers were in their usual mid-August slump, and attendance at Chavez Ravine was down to hard-core fanatics.

I shrugged. All right, Hap, on one condition.

He eyed me warily.

I want a crew staked out at the city council hearing tomorrow. All day. The subject is consumer fraud.

His reaction started with a whistle and grew to a scream of protest. But I’d expected that. Assignment editors never give up film crews without a fight. Film is the single most important component of television news, after anchormen. Assignment editors have perished from the earth for failing to get their daily quota of exciting celluloid. So, under normal circumstances, Taylor would go for consumer fraud only if it involved dramatic illustrations.

This time, however, freebies tipped the scale. We had just reached a gentlemen’s agreement, tickets for news, when Channel Three’s silver fox, otherwise known as anchorman Lee Barnes, made his grand entrance. As was his practice he came right for me. Well, well, he boomed, if it isn’t Tim Bishop, boy producer. What biggies have you come up with today?

Oh, nothing much, I responded with studied casualness. Just the usual search for a new anchorman.

Barnes wasn’t amused. You wouldn’t know an anchorman if he fell on you.

Which happens all the time around here.

Are you suggesting that I’ve been drinking?

Well?

A red Bush began to spread up from his neck. Screw you!

I just wondered why your hair looked like that.

What’s wrong with my hair?

Nothing. Not if you like it that way. I was having trouble holding a straight face. We both knew he looked great as usual. But he couldn’t stand having his appearance questioned, especially by me. He thought of me as a potential rival.

Jealous fear flared in his eyes, though I preferred to pass it off as a ninety-proof glitter. Yet with or without bourbon-bright eyes, Lee Barnes was beautiful. Silver locks crowned his head, though he was young enough to call the color premature; his cherub face radiated that fresh-scrubbed look, the kind of complexion that drove women wild with envy; his deep voice had sex appeal.

He’d been my replacement at Channel Three. But then that had been another lifetime ago, when I had been the youngest anchorman in Los Angeles—a boy wonder with a fantastic future ahead of him. My future had ended that day when the brown package arrived. I could never go back on the tube. But Barnes wouldn’t have believed that, and I wasn’t about to waste time trying to convince him. Besides, he wasn’t the kind of guy to listen.

Once an anchorman, always an anchorman, he’d said to me once when he’d stoked his eyes beyond the point of caution. He saw me as a real in-the-flesh threat.

When it came to insecurity, Lee Barnes had cornered the market at Channel Three. He saw plots everywhere and constantly accused Herb Reisner of looking for a replacement. Yet somehow, through it all, Barnes’ ego had ballooned until I imagined it as a gaseous rival to the Goodyear blimp.

Since I was feeling aggressive and willing to try anything to keep my mind off backlogged mail; I decided to try my hand at puncturing him. Is Reisner back yet? I asked Hap Taylor, secure in the knowledge that the assignment editor rarely admitted he couldn’t answer any question.

My faith in him was justified. He shrugged elaborately and said, No, not yet.

Damn, I muttered How long can it take to screen a few video tapes?

How the hell should I know, Taylor answered. That’s another union.

Barnes, who couldn’t tolerate being left out of a conversation, jumped in. I hope he’s looking for a new producer. God knows, we need one.

Producers don’t come on video tape, I said.

The anchorman scowled.

Taylor acted out his part. What’s he looking for?

Oh, you know, I replied, playing it deliberately too ingenuous.

"Oh … that!"

Yes, I said. I heard him say something about Jim Jenkins in St. Louis. Jenkins, I knew and so did Barnes, was a top-rated anchorman rumored to be on his way up to a network slot.

Jenkins is damn near sixty, Barnes countered. He’s over the hill. He’s … His voice petered out.

He’s not much over forty, I said, looking to Taylor for support.

The assignment editor nodded.

I added,