KPID was but one of ninety-seven radio stations in the United States and Canada owned by the publicly traded entity known as Consolidated Radio Communications Corporation, or CRCC. Most of those stations, like KPID, focused primarily on popular music, but they owned a decent variety in other formats as welclass="underline" Soft Rock, Hard Rock, Country, and even a few talk radio stations. Their headquarters was in the Library Tower Building in downtown LA, the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River, where they occupied the entirety of the 66th Floor.
It was those popular music stations owned by CRCC and that latter ten percent of airtime in which new music was played that concerned Michael Riley, not just on this day, but on every day. Mick, as he liked to be called, was an independent record promotor, though that title—which did appear in bold on his custom designed business cards—was a wee bit of a misnomer. While he did promote music, he was not really independent, per se. He was paid by and answered to the National Records Music Promotion Department, an entity that took up the entire sixth and seventh floors of the National Records Building and carried an annual budget of forty million dollars, with access to another twenty million in emergency funding if such a thing became necessary. For legal reasons, however, Mick and those like him—National contracted with at least one independent music promotor in every major market in the nation—were not allowed to actually be employed by the record company itself.
The reasoning behind this was because of little thing called payola. It was illegal under FCC rules for a record company to directly pay a radio station or a DJ or a program director or anyone else affiliated with a radio station or radio stations to play certain music. However, if the person paying the radio station or the program director to play certain tunes was an independent contractor, well, that did not technically violate the letter of the law, though it did tramp rather ruthlessly over the spirit of it.
Mick Riley, at age forty-six, had long since made peace with the ethical concerns attached to his profession. Payola would go on with or without him. It was one of those things like police corruption, political corruption, or judicial corruption, that was just never going to go away. He considered what he did to be no different than being a corporate lobbyist who influenced congress members and senators. He was simply the conduit for delivering bribes in a fashion that was technically legal. And he made a pretty good living at it too. Last year he’d cleared a quarter million in taxable income plus another eighty thousand in under the table income. And that was not to mention the all-expenses paid trips he often made on National’s behalf, trips in which he was flown first-class, put up in five-star hotels, and usually treated to a round of golf at whatever the local country club happened to be.
He pulled his 1990 Corvette C4 into the valet parking area of the seventy-seven story building and brought it to a halt. He stepped out—after a moment of struggle to unwind himself from the low-riding driver’s seat—and stood up straight, stretching out to his full five feet eight and a half inches of height. His head was balding but he displayed it without shame, not bothering with a combover or a toupee. He had learned long ago that when one made more than a quarter mil a year, it did not really matter what one looked like to the opposite sex. When he wanted to get laid—and that was quite often, actually—he got laid, balding head, bulging stomach and all.
This was not to say that he did not display a certain amount of style. After all, in his business, image was almost as important as connections. He dressed his part well. He was currently wearing a stylish, custom fit Italian suit that had cost him four grand in a Rodeo Boulevard shop—one of six such suits that he owned. His shoes were custom fit wingtips, highly polished, that had cost him three hundred dollars in a different Rodeo Boulevard shop. In his left ear was a gold stud imbedded with a diamond. And, to complete the picture, a pair of three hundred dollar Ray-Ban Aviators were perched on his nose, completely obscuring his eyes.
Mick was here often enough that the valets all knew who he was, and he knew them. Jesus, an aspiring actor (of course) who worked the day shift, came rushing over when he saw Mick get out. He knew the record promotor was a good tipper.
“Mick, my man,” Jesus greeted. “How’s it going today?”
“Like an old man who just had a prostatectomy,” Mick replied, reaching into the car and retrieving his sixteen hundred dollar Louis Vuitton briefcase.
Jesus furled his brow a bit. “Does that mean good?” he asked.
“It means good, Jesus,” Mick assured him, holding out his hand. They had a shake and then Mick asked him about his career.
“I auditioned for a deodorant commercial last week,” he said. “Still waiting to hear back.”
“Good luck on that,” Mick told him. “Many the prestigious career was launched on the back of a good deodorant commercial.”
“That’s what my agent says,” Jesus said.
“He sounds like a wise man,” Mick said. “Now take care of my car for me, huh? I’ve gotta go talk some music with some people.”
“You got it, Mick,” Jesus told him, folding himself inside the sixty thousand dollar car. He fired it up and roared off toward the parking area beneath the building.
Mick walked to the large doors and into the spacious lobby of the building, going past the row of shops, the restaurant, and the main kiosk. He came to the primary bank of elevators. An armed security guard behind a desk guarded access here. He too knew Mick by sight.
“Welcome, Mick,” the guard greeted. “Heading up to sixty-six?”
“You know it, Jeff,” Mick returned. “I have a ten o’clock up there with Larry Justice.”
“Here you go,” Jeff said, handing him the keycard pass that would allow him into the elevators.
“Thanks,” Mick told him.
He used his keycard to call one of the express elevators and, two minutes later, he was on the sixty-sixth floor. The offices of CRCC were tastefully decorated, using primarily blacks and whites and shades of gray, the furniture and the artwork modern and incorporating the same basic color scheme. He checked in with the receptionist at the main desk—her name was Julie and, though she was friendly to him, she had rejected every offer he’d ever made to go out with him—and barely had time to sit down in one of the chairs before he was called into the office of Lawrence Justice III, the head of the music promotion department.
LJ3 was one of the higher ups in the CRCC hierarchy. Mick wasn’t sure what kind of coin he was pulling in, but he knew it had to be at least in the low seven figure range. He was a fit man in his late forties, the holder of a master’s degree in Business and Accounting and a card carrying CPA. He was also a former musician, having supplemented his family income through school by playing sessions on the drums at both National Records’ and Aristocrat Records’ studios.
There was no trace of that former drummer in his appearance now. He looked like something straight out of a Republican Party recruiting poster. His dark hair was immaculately styled and held in place by enough hair spray to constitute an explosive hazard. His suit was dark and he made a point to keep his jacket on whenever meeting with someone. The pictures on his desk were of his trophy wife and their two trophy children. It was common knowledge, however, that he was actually a fan of young men in their late teens—or maybe even a little younger?—who were willing let him into their back doors for a little game of may-I-push-in-your-stool?