Free At End of Day by George V. Higgins

in his senior year as a guard in basketball, while his sister had made the Girls’ All Scholastic in girls’ basketball for three years.
    “There’s something people want, or need, or simply got to have, they’d rather buy it from someone that they know. Keepthe money close to home. And if they know you served your country, well, there were times when I wasn’t sure that that’d be a plus, all the protests going on, but as the years’ve gone by, some of the old wounds’ve healed, I’d have to say it has been.”
    The workmen who’d converted the garage had removed the overhead doors and walled in the entries. In the left portal they installed a triple-glazed picture window with a planter underneath; the previous summer’s petunias drooped brown and dry over the front edge. Where the right garage portal had been there was a twelve-pane window with a window box below it crowded with brown dead geraniums, and an aluminum combination door beside it. The carpenters finished the job with an improved grade of lima green vinyl that still hadn’t faded quite enough to match the original siding around it, and a wheelchair ramp made of marine plywood, now delaminating, that led up to the door from the driveway. Rascob parked beside the custom-stock metallic-blue Dodge Ram Maxivan with flag-crested red, white and blue Massachusetts Disabled Veteran plates. When he crossed between the front of the Lincoln and the studio he could see Tim back to in his wheelchair at his light grey Formica control desk, black padded earphones on over his brownish grey hair gathered with a rubber band into a ponytail, hunching toward the microphone on the boom rising from the panel top.
    Inside, the small black speaker cube on the reading table in the reception area broadcast a raspy male voice Rascob didn’t recognize. “
Hell
the Indians, ’s what I say—bleedin’ hearts moanin’ and groanin’, we stole this country from ’em. Did no such thing. That was four hundred
years
ago, almost. Never mind what happened then—we weren’t the ones that did it.
    “
Now’s
what we should be concerned with, and the crying need in this state now’s for better education. And, as we now know, quickest way to fix it’s with charter schools. Need more ofthem, better funding for the ones we’ve got. And the way to get it’s
not
to sit back, twiddle our thumbs; let the Indians start up casinos here, like they got Connecticut and so forth—and keep all the money. It’s to do the same’s Nevada does—license private-run casinos. Only we do it
right
, here, and really screen the people who apply, so the Mafia stays out. Which you can’t do in Nevada because the mob
owns
the place—didn’t
exist
before they got there.
    “And then really
soak
’em, everyone comes to gamble. Get the money for ourselves. And
our
needs, for a change. We’re the ones who pay for ev’thin’.”
    Through the double-glazed big window set into the maple-veneer sheet-paneled wall between the reception area and the studio, Rascob could see Sexton in right profile, his right hand at his throat and the microphone aimed at it, the ponytail swishing back and forth across his shoulders as he moved his head. His reddish muttonchop sideburns and goatee looked freshly trimmed. Over the padded door next to the big window a red bulb encased in a cage made of thick grey wire burned over a white sign with red letters: “S ILENCE P LEASE —O N A IR .”
    Tim’s wife, Theresa, was at her desk talking on the phone. “Two to four,” she said. “Then we cut away for Mutual News, weather forecast, Today in Sports, Market Reports and Outlook, so forth, ’til seven. Then Musical Selections for the Dinner Hour, which we buy all on tape, no local announcing except station breaks. Then we come back on again live with Nashville Sounds, which we do right out of here, eight ’til ten. Then Evening Wrap-up, national anthem, and sign off at ten-thirty. Back onnie air at five-thirty A.M.