Chapter Five: The Sunset
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As I speed walked from Red’s back to my car, I called Isabella to tell her I would not be on scene to do the noon live shot. I told her which bites from the mayor and Mira to pull and that I would do the shot from the car. We also arranged for Mario to go over and babysit the scene until the body was removed.
I was in my car on I-280 passing Mariposa when I asked Isabella to transfer me into talk with the News Director, Guy Gregg. Guy had been, well yes, the guy who recruited me to the station from Sacramento about eight years earlier. As I waited on hold, I pictured the boss in his wrinkled white dress shirt and stained tie sitting in his tiny office overlooking the newsroom. Chances are the trashcan was already half full of Styrofoam coffee cups and a mostly eaten doughnut leaving a sugar stain on the left side of his desk.
Midday anchor James Myron was doing a story about the latest research into the city’s bed bug infestation on the hold system on the phone. In the middle of the word “infections” the line went silent and Gregg picked up the phone.
“You better have your ass here by 7:00 tonight just like everyone else, McKay,” I could hear the boss unwrapping what I assumed was a Danish from the vending machine behind his gruff voice. “You ain’t gonna wanna miss this one.”
“Can you give me a hint about what it’s about?” I continued on 280 over 101 and passed the Glen Park exit.
“You goddamn newspeople are all the same,” I could hear Guy chewing on the Danish then washing it down with some cold coffee with a gulp. “You think you’re going to break the story before the meeting and spoil my fun. Well it ain’t gonna happen, McKay, so you can just go back to work and leave me alone.”
“That’s not why I called, Guy,” I fairly shouted to catch him before he slammed the phone down in my ear. “I need to fill you in on the latest on this story I’m on. I don’t want you to be blindsided with it.”
I slowed to get around the traffic backing up from San Jose Avenue and Gregg chewed and swallowed his Danish as I told him about the meeting with Vince and the simultaneous phone calls the police captain and I had received. I took the John Daly Blvd exit as I told the boss my current location and destination.
“It’s our job to report the news, not to be the news,’ that’s what the old man always told me,” Guy resumed his own irascible tone as he quit the thick Irish brogue he always used to imitate Tony Escalante, the man who mentored him in broadcasting at a time when I was still mastering the physics of Tonka Trucks.
“I know, Guy, but I could hardly have said no to the woman, especially after what happened to her brother.”
“True, true,”
“So whatcha think?”
“You gotta run with it,” I could hear Guy licking the stickiness from the Danish off his fingertips which still wouldn’t keep it from gumming up the keyboard keys of his computer. “Just make sure you know where the boundaries are and stay at least half an inch inside them.”
“Thanks boss,” but he had already hung up as I turned right on Lake Merced Drive and headed towards the Sunset.
The Sunset is one of those euphemistically named neighborhoods San Francisco is so good at. If you expect a place to watch spectacular sunsets, you’ll be happy about 20 days a year and depressed the other 345. Actually the sunset comes sooner to the Sunset than in most other parts of the Bay Area when the late afternoon fog rolls in and obliterates the sun hours before the traditional siesta time ends.
I made a right on Sloat then a hard left into a neighborhood just across the street from the Ono Hawaiian BBQ location. About a half of a block ahead I spotted a white unmarked Crown Vic that pretty much screamed “Cop Car!” parked illegally facing the wrong direction on the west side of the road in front of a white stucco home with red trim. I pulled up on the right side of the street in the legal parking pattern just as the top of the noon hour network news came on the radio.
I dialed into the station as the network guy announced yet another “breakthrough initiative” sure to lead to peace in the Middle East. Sometimes I wonder if they don’t just pull old scripts out of the bin from a couple of years back to fill the time. I can tell you this, I will be chasing chicks in wheelchairs in the old folks home while some kid now in the elementary school a block away announces yet another breakthrough in that part of the world.
I was halfway through my live-shot on the body on the feather and the Mayor’s “breakthrough initiative” to end crime in San Francisco when I saw flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror. I glanced back to see Vince giving me his “bad cop” stare from behind the wheel of his command car SUV. I gave him the finger, another advantage of live radio over live television, and finished my report.
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