That seemed to please Mary Ann, who was wearing this morning a feminine yellow-and-white print dress that I could not picture her wearing in Tower Town.
I took a quick look at the morning Democrat: hailstorm damage locally amounted to one hundred thousand dollars; one of the Scotsboro boys had been found guilty in that rape case; Roosevelt was asking Congress to approve of something he called the Tennessee Valley Authority.
"Can I give you a ride over to the college, sir?" I asked him, as the conversation between father and daughter seemed to have wound down.
"I usually walk." he smiled, "but I'm willing to be a loafer this once."
"Hope you don't mind the rumble seat." I said.
"I've put up with worse indignities." he allowed.
"That must mean I'm invited along," Mary Ann said.
"Sure," I said. "For right now."
She went mock-snooty. "Well, I like that" she said, getting out of the nook, going after her purse. Her father and I let her lead us out to the car, where the drive and lawn were strewn with melting hailstones; it was cloudy and a little cold. Somebody somewhere in town was burning garbage: the smell hung in the dank air like rotten fruit. Soon we were going down Harrison, cutting left on Seventh Street, and heading up the steep hill of Brady.
At the crest of Brady, across from a mortuary, was Palmer College, a collection of long rambling brown-brick buildings crowded together, taking up two square blocks. In front of what seemed to be the central building was a round deco clock on a skinny pole and a neon sign that said:
RADIO STATION
W
O C
VISITORS WELCOME
and, beneath that. CAFETERIA, inside a neon pointing arrow. From atop adjacent buildings, twin black antenna towers rose like derricks.
I found a place on the street to park and followed Beame and his daughter into the building the neon hung from. There were students in their twenties all about, mostly male, but a few female. Inside, the place looked like pretty much any college, with one strange exception: epigrams were painted in black on the cream-color plaster walls, just about everywhere you looked: over doors, on the ceiling, on the wall going up the stairs, everywhere. Their wisdom seemed a bit obscure to me, at best: "Use Your Friends/By Being of Use to Them"; "Early to Bed, Early to Rise/Work Like Hell and Advertise"; "The More You Tell/The Quicker You Sell." Was this a medical school for bonesetters, or a training school for Burma Shave salesmen? Mary Ann must've caught me making a face, and shook her head no. letting me know this was not a subject to get into with her father.
We went up an elevator to the top floor of the school, the doors opening onto the reception room of the radio station, which was even stranger than the motto-strewn floors below: it resembled, more than anything, a den in a hunting lodge. A heavy chunk of wood with wavy letters spelling RECEPTION ROOM carved out of it hung by chains from a ceiling that was crossed by several varnished tree trunks; the rustic wood-and-brick room was wall to wall with photos of celebrities, both local and national, in misshapen roughhewn frames. Visitors were apparently expected to sit on benches made of varnished tree limbs and branches; amid this rustic nonsense was an electric sign with lit-up red letters that demanded SILENCE and reminded you, vaguely, that this was the twentieth century.
This time Beame noticed me smirking, I guess, because he seemed a little embarrassed, as he gestured to the area and said, "B.J. does have his eccentricities." He meant B. J. Palmer, of course, head of the school and the station, and judging from the sotto voce Beame used, which wasn't just because of the SILENCE sign, B.J.'s being eccentric wasn't a thought you expressed openly, at least not loudly.
There was no receptionist, but we hadn't been there long when, through a rectangular window that seemed at first to be just another (if oversize) photo on the wall, a face peered, belonging to a handsome collegiate-type with crew cut and glasses, wearing a brown suit and green tie.
He came into the reception room, moving with an athlete's assurance, and Mary Ann smiled at him and he smiled shyly back at her and then the smile turned almost brash as he held his hand out to me, saying, "I understand you're from Chicago."
"That's right," I said.
"I tried to get work there," he said "They said I should try a station in the sticks." He grinned and nodded up at the wood overhead. "So I took 'em at their word."
Beame put a hand on the kid's shoulder and said, "Nate Heller, this young man is Dutch Reagan. He's our top sportscaster. In fact we're losing him to our sister station WHO in Des Moines, in a few weeks."
"Glad to meet you, Dutch," I said, and we shook hands: Yes, he was an athlete all right. "Hope we're not interrupting you."
"I don't go on the air for another fifteen minutes yet," he said.
Beame introduced Reagan to Mary Ann, who was obviously impressed by the handsome kid.
"Mr. Beame said you're here to talk to me about his son," Reagan said, adjusting his glasses, "but I never knew Jimmy. I've only been at WOC four months."
"But you were a close friend of another announcer here who aft/know Jimmy."
"Jack Hoffmann. Sure."
"Mr. Beame thought Jimmy might have come up in conversation with Hoffmann."
Beame said, "It's a long shot. Dutch. But Jimmy had so few friends…"
Reagan thought about it; his face was so earnest it hurt. "Can't think of anything, sir. I'm really sorry."
I shrugged. "Like the man said, it was a long shot. Thanks, anyway."
"Sure. Oh, Mr. Heller. Could I have a word with you? Could you step in the studio for a second?"
"Fine," I said.
Beame looked curious, and Reagan said, "I want to ask Mr. Heller to look up a friend of mine in Chicago. No big deal."
Beame nodded, and Reagan and I went into the studio, a room hung with dark blue velvet drapes, for soundproofing purposes, though the ceiling was crossed by more trees, bark and all, attached to which were various stuffed birds, poised as if in flight, though they weren't going anywhere.
"I didn't want to talk in front of Mr. Beame," Reagan said. "I do know some things about his son, but they aren't very flattering."
"Oh?"
Beame was watching us through the window; stuffed birds watched us from tree beams above.
"Yeah. He was in with a rough crowd. Hanging around in speakeasies. Drinking. Fooling around with the ladies, using that term loosely, if you get my drift."
"I get it. You know what joints he might've been frequenting?"
Reagan smiled on one side of his face. "I'm no teetotaler. I'm Irish."
"That means you might know where some of those places are."
"Yeah. Jack Hoffmann and I used to hit some of 'em, occasionally. And those I haven't been in. I know about. Why?"
"You working tonight?"
"No."
"Busy?"
"Are you buyin'?"
"That's right."
"I live at the Perry Apartments, corner of East Fourth and Perry. I'll be waiting out front at eight tonight. Swing by."
"I'll do that." I said, and we shook hands, and he smiled at me. and it was an infectious smile.
"Irish, huh?" I said.
"That's what they tell me." he said, and went back in his announcer's booth, which was visible through a window in the left draped wall, where a bulky WOC microphone could also be glimpsed.
In the rustic reception room, Mary Ann's father said, "What was that all about?"
"Old girl friend of Iris he wants me to check up on."
"Oh."
"Nice guy."
"Yes. Yes, he is. Now, then. I've made an appointment with Paul Traynor, for ten o'clock, at the newspaper. In the meantime, I've got to stay up here and get to work. I'll leave you at my daughter's mercy."
"Come along," Mary Ann said, taking my arm as we got on the elevator. "That appointment's at ten and it's only half past eight now. I'm going to take you on a tour of my favorite place in the world. Or anyway, the Tri-Cities."