CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I followed Saunders to the Fox News station on bustling Kennedy Boulevard. The building was sleek and ultramodern, with large tinted windows that faced the street and a hundred-foot-tall white tower with the station's number, 13, printed on its side. My impression of Tampa as a sleepy burg was changing, one piece of architecture at a time.
I parked in the shaded Visitors parking area. Buster was still put out, and he refused to make eye contact with me.
Saunders and I went through a revolving door into the building's main reception area. The receptionist was a white-haired guard with an engaging smile. A small sign on his desk said Director of First Impressions. Saunders asked to see Kathy Fountain while displaying his badge and laminated ID. The guard pointed at the flat-screen TV hanging over our heads.
“She's in the studio doing her show. I'll tell her assistant you're here. Please have a seat.”
We sat on a leather couch and watched Kathy Fountain interview two guests in her studio. An attractive woman in her early forties, she was blond and fair skinned, and had the sympathetic manner of someone who'd raised kids.
At one o'clock her show ended. Sixty seconds later she was standing in front of us, out of breath.
“Hello, Scott,” Fountain said. “Is something wrong?”
“We need your help with an investigation,” Saunders said.
“Certainly,” she said.
“This is Jack Carpenter,” Saunders said. “He's working with me.”
A flicker of recognition registered in Fountain's face, and I was glad that I was with Saunders, and not by myself.
“I'd like to talk to you about Neil Bash,” I said.
Fountain rolled her eyes. “Neil was one sick, sick man.”
“So I hear.”
“Has he done something wrong? It wouldn't surprise me.”
“Yes,” I said. “Is there someplace we can talk in private?”
“My office. Follow me.”
Fountain took us to her office on the other side of the large mazelike building. The shades were drawn, and the air-conditioning was turned down low. A family photo sat on her desk, confirming my earlier suspicions. Saunders and I remained standing, as did she.
“Gary Haber at the
Fountain crossed her arms in front of her chest, and her pleasant demeanor vanished. “A local high school girl had an affair with her history teacher. One day the affair became public, and the history teacher was arrested. Somehow, Bash got the girl to call his show. Although the show was broadcast live, there was a fifteen-second time delay on the broadcast, which let Bash bleep out crank calls and obscenities. Bash used that delay to manipulate the girl's answers. He asked questions like ‘You asked your history teacher to sleep with you, didn't you?’ The girl said no, and Bash said, ‘So you didn't ask him to sleep with you?’ The girl said yes, and Bash would bleep out the first answer and substitute the second. It made listeners think the girl had said yes to the first question, when she really hadn't.”
“Wouldn't the girl know she was being manipulated?” Saunders asked.
“That was the clever part,” Fountain said. “Bash made her turn off her radio to prevent feedback. She didn't hear the interview until after it was broadcast.”
“How did you figure out what Bash was doing?” I asked.
“To tell you the truth, I didn't,” Fountain said. “There's a magician in town who's been on my show a few times. He heard the interview and called me. He said Bash was using a trick invented by a mind reader named the Amazing Dunninger. Dunninger did a radio program, where he used the trick to ‘read the minds’ of listeners who called in.”
“Did you expose Bash on your show?” I asked.
“You bet I did,” Fountain said, nodding vigorously.
“What happened?”
“At first he denied it and threatened to take us to court,” she said. “Then the girl went to the newspapers and said she'd been tricked. Bash recanted and said some of her answers were edited. That's when the excrement hit the air-conditioning.”
Saunders and I both smiled.
“What happened to the history teacher?” I asked.
“There was a trial, and he was found guilty and sent to jail,” Fountain said. “If I remember correctly, Bash showed up at the courthouse to support him. Right after that, Bash's show was cancelled, and he left Tampa.”
“Did your station cover the trial?”
“Of course. It was big news.”
“Is there any available footage that I could see?”
Fountain offered to check and left us standing in her office. Saunders had a spark in his eyes and was nodding, a sign that he agreed Bash needed to be investigated. In criminal investigations there was no such thing as coincidence or happenstance. Saunders and I both knew that Bash was connected to Simon Skell. The trick would be proving it.
Fountain reappeared a few minutes later, wearing a smile.
“You gentlemen are in luck,” she said. “Follow me.”
The station was like a small factory, with shows about cooking, the weather, and raising children being recorded in different sound studios. Fountain led us to the back of the building to the station's video library and introduced us to a lanky young guy with curly dark hair named Kevin Ford. Fountain told Kevin what we were looking for, and Kevin searched his computer's database for footage of the history teacher's trial.
“This might take a while,” Kevin said.
Kevin's desk was loaded with work, and I offered to buy him lunch.
“You're on,” he said.
Fountain and Saunders also took me up on my offer, and I left the station and drove to a deli a few blocks from where Rose worked. I hadn't stopped thinking about her, and I was thrilled to see her picking up a lunch order when I walked in. Edging up behind her, I lowered my voice.
“Excuse me, miss. Aren't you Jennifer Lopez?”
“Get lost,” she said without turning around.
“You sound just like my wife.”
She stiffened, then turned around. I kissed her on the lips.
“Hey, Rose,” an aproned woman working the register said.
My wife would not take her eyes off me.
“Yes, Cynthia,” she said.
“That your husband?”
“Yes, it is.”
“About fricking time he showed up.”
I ordered four Cuban sandwiches to go. While my order was being prepared we took a table, and I told Rose everything that had happened since we'd parted. My wife believed that God talked to us through signs. If we chose to believe in Him, those signs would become apparent to us. To her, my seeing the defaced billboard with Neil Bash's picture was a sign, and she nodded approvingly when I was done.
“Everything happens for a reason,” she said.
“You really believe that, don't you?” I said.
“Yes, Jack, I do.”
