Beach Street
by
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Maggie McClendon's family had owned The Guardian for more than one hundred and fifty years and she'd learned at her father’s knee the first two commandments of small town journalism: Spell the names right and don't rile the advertisers. The other commandments, if there were any, weren't important. No matter how many lines of type might be required to produce the daily paper, the most important of them was the bottom line. "That's the one to watch," Maggie would remind her managing editor. "It pays your salary." In a recurrent nightmare Carl found himself wrestling with a story in which a major advertiser is found drunk behind the wheel of his crashed automobile, a woman not his wife lying dead at his side. "You wanted to see me, ma’am?" "Jesus, Carl, can't you loosen up? Sit down." Her family had sent Maggie away to school, and then finagled internships for her on some of the country's leading newspapers. Somewhere along the line she'd picked up a veneer of toughness, possibly from an old Bogart movie, but nothing much else had rubbed off on her, despite her abrasiveness. The only lessons that stuck were the ones her father had taught. "Whadya you make of it, Carl?" "The murder? A drunken brawl; Smoky Joe lost." "That's too easy, and you know it. The whole town's up in arms over the mess on Beach Street, and you can't see beyond the end of your nose." "You think vigilantes are running amok? Why would they pick on Smoky Joe?" "Why not? It's worth looking into. People are fed up with the bums on the street. They're afraid to come downtown. Business is drying up. In a year Beach Street will be deserted. This town's heading down the tubes economically, and it's the fault of all those tramps and those college kids, those delinquents and those crazies. People are afraid to go shopping. Why not a secret vigilante organization dedicated to frightening the panhandlers out of town? It'd be a helluva story." "Unless the vigilantes turn out to be Chamber of Commerce members. Then what?" She lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke across her desk into his face. "I hadn't thought of that." "I had. The bottom line, remember?" "Well, why don't we get the facts, then we'll decide how to handle it?" "I thought that was a police responsibility." "My God, Carl, don't you know anything about investigative reporting?" "Sure. I know it takes time and money. How much do you want to spend?" "Not five goddam cents!" she flared. "You've already got a staff that's bleeding me dry. Use it!"
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About the Book
The natural beauty of the fictional Surf City, plus its mild climate, once lured tourists by the tens of thousands. But in recent years it also attracted hundreds of less desirable visitors, street people who turned to panhandling in order to survive. At first their numbers included the truly helpless – the mentally disturbed, drug addicts, maladjusted war veterans, alcoholics. Then came an economic recession and corporate "down-sizing." The homeless population swelled with unemployed factory workers, salesmen, engineers, dot com techies, single mothers with kids, teenagers abandoned by families unable to afford them and unwilling to care, and the usual bums who elected to live on the street out of sheer cussedness. Residents could no longer shop on Beach Street, the city’s main commercial artery, without running a gauntlet of beggars and drug dealers. Tourism was threatened. Some charged that the transients were destroying the community. Others argued that panhandling is a right protected by the Constitution and cried out that it was not a crime to be homeless. Then, just as Surf City braced for all-out class warfare, street people began turning up dead, victims of grisly slayings. One, two, three – the body count grew. Soon a cry arose: Vigilantes!
About the Author
Author Jim Kruger spent ten years as city editor in a town similar to his fictional Surf City. He saw firsthand how fear and frustration can rip the social fabric and leave an ordinarily peaceful community in emotional tatters. In his novel, Beach Street, the culture clash culminates in murder and mayhem. In reality the problem of opposing lifestyles persists to this day in communities along the California coast. Kruger, retired after more than forty years in journalism, is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. He has lived in the Golden State for forty-five years and served newspapers in San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Cruz. He currently makes his home in Capitola on the shores of Monterey Bay.