Death Spins the Platter

1

Layton engineered his lanky frame from behind the wheel of his battered six-year-old coupe. He had parked in the middle of a long line of racy little foreign cars, most of them convertibles, and he half-expected some flunky to come rushing out of the building and order him to get his proletarian heap the hell off the premises.

The fantasy in white stucco that housed the TV station was only one story high, but it monopolized an entire block along Sunset Boulevard. The entrance from the parking lot brought him into the reception room of a dream world. It was presided over by a glittery blonde who looked as if she had stepped out of a time machine from the year 8162.

The futuristic blonde looked him over in a crystalline sort of way, and he said, “I’m Jim Layton of the Los Angeles Bulletin.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, thawing. “You’re covering The King’s Session final show. But it doesn’t start for over an hour.”

“I thought I’d interview the two principals beforehand.”

“Whatever you’d like,” the receptionist said. Whatever? Layton thought. She looked good enough to eat. “Mr. Hathaway said you’re to have the run of the station. Would you like to talk to Mr. King first?”

“Is he here?”

“I think he’s in his dressing room. Number 2.” She pointed a long platinum-colored fingernail toward a corridor to the left. “Go past those offices and turn right at the end of the hall. Or...” Swiveling in her chair, she indicated another hallway. Everything swiveled with her. “This one takes you around to the main entrance to Studio A, where King’s Session is telecast. You might like to see it before you talk to Mr. King. If you’ll go on through Studio A and out the opposite door, you’ll find yourself at the same turn in the hall as if you went the other way.” She smiled at him. “Get it.”

“I’d sure like to,” Layton said regretfully, “but, baby, I’m working.” He decided on the official studio route.

The door marked Studio A opened into a big functional room with a naked floor. Spotted about were three unmanned TV cameras, three overhead microphone booms, and, off to one side, a record turntable. The King’s Session had the 3 P.M. time slot and it was only ten of two, but already about fifty teenagers of both sexes were clustered like grapes around the dance floor, and others were lying all over the folding-type chairs lining the walls.

As Layton moved past one of the clusters he heard a boy say, “After he opens the show, at my signal everybody start clapping and whistling and yelling and don’t stop, and I mean don’t. Let ’em all know what we think of this crummy deal.”

Layton paused curiously. The boy was thin and serious-faced, wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses with thick lenses. He was about seventeen. This might be as good a time as any to get a typical Tutter King fan’s viewpoint about the disc jockey’s troubles.

Edging into the group, he said to the boy, “I’m from the Bulletin. If I get your pitch, you’re organizing a claque for King—”

“A what?” the boy said.

“Well, it’s a kind of rooting section, only it gets paid.”

A rather ominous quiet fell. The bespectacled boy said, “You mean, mister, you think Tutter King’s paying us — or me — to whip up a storm today?”

“Is he?” Layton asked.

“No,” the boy said. He turned away.

“Wait a minute, kid,” Layton said. “No hard feelings. If it’s not for dough, then why are you doing it?”

The boy turned back. “To show the viewers and the brass of this station we’re still behind Tut a hundred per cent.” They were all around Layton now, making multiple sounds of approval. Absurdly, he began to feel uneasy.

“You don’t think King should have been fired?”

A plain-looking girl, no more than sixteen, thrust her plump face toward Layton. “Tutter’s done more for us kids than anybody on television. They’re always yacking about juvenile delinquency, but when a good, clean program like the King’s Session comes along, they kill it!”

“You think the station had any choice?” Layton asked. “In the face of public opinion?”

“They were probably pressured into it,” the boy with the glasses admitted. “But the public’s all wet. What did Tut King do that was so bad?”

Layton said dryly, “He admitted to a congressional investigating committee that he’d accepted more than a hundred thousand dollars a year under the table to plug second- and third-rate records, that’s all.” He took a notebook out of his pocket. “Mind giving me your names?”

“I don’t mind one dam bit,” the boy said. “I’m Wayne Mission, and I’m president of the L. A. Tutter King Fan Club. And you can quote anything I say.”

“Me, too,” the plump girl said. “Nora Perkins. I’m vice president.”

Others in the group volunteered their names, and Layton dutifully wrote them all down. He turned back to the boy with the glasses. “Wayne, don’t you think Tutter King was morally wrong in accepting payola to plug inferior records?”

“Morally, shmorally,” the boy retorted. “He paid his taxes, didn’t he? Who isn’t on the take these days? Cops organizing burglary rings. Politicians on big lobbyists’ pay rolls. Labor leaders robbing union tills and selling out their own members. Industry in price-fixing conspiracies, doing phony advertising, mislabeling. And all those great big marvelous TV giveaway shows a while back — all fixed. Payola’s everywhere, mister. So why all this jazz about Tutter King plugging some records for a fee? Who’d he hurt?”

“You,” Layton said.

“Me?” Young Mission was astonished.

“Aren’t you sore, having bad music crammed into your ears just to line a disc jockey’s pockets?”

“Aaah, you squares all act as though Tutter’d violated a sacred trust or something. What’s the difference what records we go for? It’s the beat we dig, anyway. You’d think Tutter’d been selling us dope.”

One of the other boys said mockingly, “Yeah!” and they all laughed.

The kid’s got a point, Layton thought. Maybe in a morally anesthetized society the only sin was to be caught.

They’re all out of step but me, he thought.

“What’s your opinion, Nora?” he asked the girl.

“Tutter’s the dreamiest” she replied. “I wouldn’t care if he’d robbed the Bank of America.”

“Thanks, both of you.” If nice kids like these thought that way, what hope was there?

The reporter shook his head and drifted toward the other studio door, the one lettered Studio Employees Only. He pushed through and found himself at the joint of an L-shaped corridor. At the end of the branch to his right he could make out the fluid glitter of the receptionist Straight ahead, dressing rooms lined both sides of the L’s other arm. At the far end of this hall gleamed the glass of a control booth to another studio.

The door of the dressing room labeled 2 was open.

Layton was about to negotiate the few yards between him and the open dressing, room when the sound of a bolt being turned over made him look to his left. As he turned, a door opened noisily; in the silence of the corridors it was startling. A perky little redhead, all curves, was just coming out of a room adjoining Studio A, adjusting her blouse. She frowned when she saw Layton, walked quickly past him, and went into dressing room 2.

Curious, Layton strolled over to the room she had just vacated. The door had remained open, and he looked in. He grinned. It was a tiny room, windowless, with a washbowl and an unscreened toilet; on the door, he now saw, was the legend Ladies — Employees Only. No wonder the redhead had frowned!

In her embarrassment at being caught still adjusting her clothing she had forgotten to shut the door. Layton pulled it to; its self-closing device was out of order.

He drifted over to room 2, wondering who the redhead was. She had looked familiar.

The curvy redhead was seated at a small table across from a man; between them lay two containers of black coffee, apparently cold. Her hand cupped the man’s chin across the table and she was leaning far forward, smiling, her rather thin lips a tantalizing two inches from his.

They became aware of Layton in the doorway simultaneously. The woman sat back, annoyed. The man turned his head to give Layton an inquiring look. He was slim, on the Ivy League side, with a smooth, clean, open face that just missed being handsome. Close up, in the flesh, he seemed even younger than the thirty-five years he publicly admitted to. He reminded Layton of a jockey — the horse variety, ageless.

“Mr. King? I’m Jim Layton of the Bulletin. Spare me a few minutes?”

“Well, hello, Jim.” The disc jockey rose and shook Layton’s hand warmly, his features slipping by long practice into the charming and boyish smile that was his public expression number one. “Sure enough. Hathaway sent me a memo you’d be here with the rest of the mourners. Oh! Lola Arkwright, my assistant.”

“Hello, Miss Arkwright,” Layton said.

“Hello,” she said. She was furious.

Layton was amused. According to his publicity, Tutter King was an incorrigible bachelor without a libido in his make-up — a sort of two-dimensional man, an image on a screen, exuding sex but with the untouchability of a monk. It was his principal appeal to the teenage girls; there was no more danger in him than in a dream. It was no accident that Nora Perkins had called him “the dreamiest.”

Layton doubted that Lola Arkwright thought of King that way. He remembered her now. She was the girl on The King’s Session who operated the turntable.

“Here, sit down, Jim,” King said, holding out the chair he had been occupying. The only other seat in the dressing room was covered by the redhead’s full little bottom. “How about some coffee? There’s a coin-operated machine down the hall. Lola, go get Mr. Layton some like a doll.”

“For you I’ll do anything, darling,” the redhead said. “But on your dime, not mine.”

“I don’t care for any, thanks just the same,” Layton said. He remained standing, and so did King. “Mr. King, how do you feel about having your show canceled? Think KZZX was justified in firing you?”

“Call me Tutter, or Tut,” the disc jockey said with a smile. “I don’t go for this formal stuff.”

“Okay, Tut. Do you think you got a raw deal, or don’t you?”

King’s smile faded effortlessly into an expression of frank gravity. “What do you think, Jim?”

“Reporters aren’t supposed to have opinions. It’s yours I’m paid to get.”

King sat down at the table and reached for one of the coffee containers. “Nobody’s even suggested that I did anything illegal. I’m not under indictment for any crime. There’s no law against accepting fees to plug records. And every cent I’ve ever received I’ve reported on my tax returns.”

“My paper knows the legality of your position,” Layton said. “What I’m here for is your opinion of the ethics involved.”

King drained the cup of its cold contents.

“I’ll give you my opinion,” Lola said acidly. “I think this whole deal stinks. Tutter’s one of the finest guys I’ve ever known.”

“Shut up, doll,” King said. “Well, Jim, I’ll match my ethics against the next fellow’s. I gave the record companies what they paid for, and I can’t see that I damaged a darn soul in the process.”

“Then it’s your position that there’s nothing wrong in accepting payola in return for popularizing songs you know to be dogs?”

King’s slight shoulders shrugged boyishly. “Most pop tunes today are pretty bad, Jim. If I only spun the platters I really go for, I couldn’t run The King’s Session for a week.”

Layton wrote the answer down in his notebook. The slightest vertical line appeared between King’s eyes. He said suddenly, “How old are you, Jim?”

“Thirty-four.” Layton was surprised.

“Then you must remember — when we were kids — how people flipped over ‘Flat-foot Floogie,’ ‘Mairsie Doats,’ and all the rest of them. They were a lot worse than some of these rock-’n’-roll lyrics.”

“I’d appreciate a direct statement, Mr. King.”

“Tutter,” King said, smiling again.

“Tutter. Do you or don’t you think that what you did was wrong?”

“I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t have done in my place.”

“That still isn’t answering the question.”

“Suppose you’d been running The King’s Session, Would you have turned down a hundred G’s a year for slanting your plugs?”

“All right, you’ve sucked me in.” Layton grinned. “You want my answer? Yes, if I had to take it under the table.”

The red-haired girl said softly, “That’s why you’re a two-bit reporter.”

“I said shut up, Lola,” King said just as softly. “I respect your views, Jim. But I honestly think my only offense was getting caught, and having the whole thing twisted to make it look as if I were a crook or something.”

Layton wrote it down.

“As far as KZZX is concerned,” the disc jockey went on, “they just folded under the heat. It took some folding, because The King’s Session has been their biggest moneymaker. I’ll tell you something else, Jim.”

“Yes?” Layton looked up alertly.

“The whole story hasn’t come out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say some of those who’ve yelled loudest for my scalp could stand a little investigating themselves.”

“You mean others were involved in the payola?”

King’s smile this time was not charming. “You staying for the show?”

“Now I am,” Layton said.

“Good, because I’m making an important statement just before I sign off.”

“About these others being involved, or have you changed the subject?”

“Just stick around. Nice meeting you, Jim.”

“Thanks,” Layton said, putting away his notebook. He nodded to the redhead and turned to the doorway.

Lola said poutingly, “Now don’t you print anything bad about my Tutter.”

“Where do I find Hathaway’s office?” Layton asked.

“Just around the corner, Jim. Second door to the right.”

King was breathing down the redhead’s neck as Layton left.