In telling you about Ben Shirley in “Happy Hare…Mad as Hell. part 1,” there was some unfinished business. Ben was the embodiment of Howard Beal, the madman TV news host in the movie “Network.” He was exercised about everything, and gave vent to his fury every morning as the newsman on my show He was with me at KCBQ in San Diego, then joined me at WADO in Manhattan…...via Mexico. 

            People would tune in every morning to hear what was eating him,. No one was immune. He took swipes at a local hood, reputed to be the Mafia boss. Corruption among the local politicians was a favorite. Elmer Jansen, the Police Chief, was a whipping boy. He would blaspheme the chief, and tag it with tremulous proclamations like, “Elmer Jansen can take a knife and slit my throat, but he will never still these lips.”

A menacing voice called me one morning during the show and growled, “Tell Ben Shirley to lay off  (The name of the alleged Mafia Don) or he is going to get his tit in a wringer.” He hung up before I could talk…..just as well, because I was speechless.  

Another of Ben’s hot topics was Mexican illegals. He didn’t laugh when I joked that Ben himself was “borderline.”  He pouted for a while, but it was too good to pass up.

One morning I picked up the KCBQ request line and heard a man tell me  ominously in Spanish. “Dile a Ben Shirley que lo voy a matar.  

I said, “Quien es?.....Who is this?... 

And he said, “El lo sabe”…..He knows

The line went dead.

            He had  said,” Tell Ben Shirley I am going to kill him”

I put on a long song and ran into the newsroom to confront Ben, a red headed man with a florid complexion. I told him about the threat and his face grew even more crimson.

“You  know  who it is? I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “And he means it.”

“Who is he? I asked, then said in the same breath,” Wait! I don’t want to know.”  

He stared at me with a look I had never seen before. The smug facade had vanished. He slammed down his script, strode out the door, and was gone. I had “teased” for his next newscast, but he didn’t wait to perform his usual high wire act. A week passed, still no Ben. Now, I really began to  worry.

Lee Bartell was a hands-on owner who ran seven radio stations before the advent of E-mail and had a manager for each of his  top-rated stations. He ran things with a firm hand, yet, regarded some of us as family. I was family, and Ben was not. Lee valued him for what he did, but Ben was not loveable. It was a tough sell to persuade Lee to underwrite a formal search for Ben. “No,” said Lee.  If he’s gone, he’s gone.”

I said, “But, he’s family.”

He smiled faintly. He knew he was being played. He shoved his pipe further into his mouth, and took a long puff.. Family? Exhaling a large cloud of smoke, he said  quietly…”Okay.”

I produced a promo announcing Ben’s mysterious disappearance, and gave out a phone number to call, “If you know the whereabouts of this intrepid newsman……”

Of course, I milked it live on my show. I was not so devastated that I was mute. Besides, I didn’t really believe Ben was dead, but I had heard the man on the phone. This was no act.  Ben  had validated this by running for the exit like there was a fire.

My campaign aroused great public concern. Lee ran his picture in the paper, headlined in large black letters, “Where is Ben Shirley?”   

My promos became emotional pleas. It had finally come to me that I respected ….and missed him. I was on the air doing Happy Hare shtick in compensation for the misery that I felt, when my hotline lit up.

“I know where Ben  Shirley is,” A secretive  female voice said.

“Oh Yeah? Where:?” I demanded.

“He wanted me to tell you that he is safe, and in Matamoros, Mexico,” said the voice.. “He doesn’t want you to tell anyone where he is.”

“Where in Matamoros can I find…

She hung up on me………... 

Great! A Mexican had called threatening his life and Ben was hiding in Mexico..

I know Mexico. A red-haired American was going to stand out, and Ben would wind up as meat filler in a taco.

I ran into Lee Bartell’s office and breathlessly told him about Ben and, asked him for the money to fly down there to find him. “It’s too dangerous,” he said, obviously thinking of me as both family, and his ace ratings maker. “What if his killers kill you, too?”  Hmmm!  I hadn’t thought of that. ………Hell! I’m going,

Lee made out a generous check to me with enough for Ben’s return. “He has to come back with you,” he stipulated.  Of course.           

            Matamoros is a typical Mexican city, built around a large plaza cluttered with merchants hawking a wide variety of wares, including food no Norteamericano would think of putting into his mouth. Squid ink and goats head.  Ay Caramba!

An orchestra on a bandstand played spirited Mexican music, nothing you would hear on an Americano Hispanic radio station. It sounded more Cuban than Mexican. Many Mexicans favor Cuban music over theirs, and this band was muy caliente. They finished their generous set, then were replaced by a Mariachi group that drew an even larger crowd that sang along  with them in a rousing set of corridas, native songs..

An Indian-type Mestizo man stood next to me, smiling.  I assumed because I was an Americano who appreciated his music. To him, I was simpatico. I began to speak Spanish to him and he laughed, and out came a perfect Midwestern American accent. His face was sculptured like you see on an Aztec frieze, but this was no simple peon. He was decked out in expensive white cotton trousers, an intricately embroidered white shirt and beautifully tooled  huaraches….sandals.

“Where are you from? “ he asked in a soft musical tone.

“San Diego,” I replied.

“A beautiful city,” he said. “I have  been there often.”

Enough of the small talk. I busted right out with,” I am looking for a friend who is supposed to be here. He is a red haired man, a San Diegan, and I want to say hi to him while I am here.”

“A red haired man…yes.” He said. pensively. “I know him by appearance but..,” His expression darkened.  “I am afraid I have bad news for you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, fearful that the sinister caller had done Ben in before I could get to him.

“He is here…in jail…not the main jail, but a small jail outside of town. You can see him,  but the jail is filthy, and he won’t be the same as when you last saw him.”

Ben, in jail?. Well, at least he was safe…or was he?

 Reading my thoughts. he said, ”I will call a taxi for you.”

He gently prodded me toward a taxi parked on the corner of the Plaza. There was something imperious about the man. The cab driver, upon seeing him, jumped into his car and drove the distance separating us. My companion gave the man instructions about taking me to the jail, then opened  the back seat. door for me.

I told the driver to hold up and said to the man,.” Wait a minute, senor. Who are you?” He smiled and said, “I have already said too much. Now go!” He slapped the roof of the cab, and the driver stomped on the gas. 

Soon, I was into an area that reeked of intermingled choking odors. This was one bad barrio.

The cab squawked to a stop and the driver reluctantly told me he would wait for me, obviously  ordered to do so back at the Plaza.

I turned around to face a bunker-type cinder block building with a heavy iron  front door. It was the juzgado-the hoosegow. I tentatively opened the front door, which made a metallic squeal as it swung open..

There, sitting at a splintered desk was a bearded middle aged hombre with a brass badge on his shirt, a big buckled belt over a bulbous gut, topped off with a sweaty cowboy hat.. He was picking his  mottled teeth with a frayed tooth pick.

I introduced myself. And he nodded indifferently, but his eyes widened when he suddenly realized that an Americano was speaking good Spanish. Not because I was a nice man, but because if I spoke good Spanish, I might have some Mexican connections that could complicate his life. The phone rang, and the sheriff answered, and talked in an excited manner for a minute or two, then hung up, a changed man, “En que le puedo server, senor?” he asked obsequiously. How may I serve you, sir?

I told him that I was in the American media and had a friend who may be in this jail, and stated my purpose of being here to get him out. Firm words with a bureaucrat are always better. He held up a large hand, and motioned to me to follow. “Vengase aqui. Conmigo. Come here with me.” .

He unlocked the door to a long dark hallway flanked with rusty cell doors. I stood in the door and was almost blown away by the wave of stench. Seemingly impervious to the smell, he nodded to me to follow. .

As I groped my way through the darkness, I began to make out silent shapes, several in each cell  lumped on the floor, staring at me like a tree full of owls.

He led me to a cell on the end. There, I made out a red haired man lying on the floor faced away from me, his head lolled next to a bucket of human excrement. Then, I saw to my shock that…. no….too small a man…. it wasn’t Ben, but a younger man who looked like one of those wretched souls at Buchenwald..

I turned away and started to tell the sheriff that this was not the man when I heard a feeble voice coming from the cell. “Mister”, he said, “Help me. I am an American. I have been here for a long time and I am about to die” He stopped until he could regain some strength. “I don’t have any money, and I didn’t do anything, but they grabbed me and put me in here and….”  He broke down into wracking sobs..

I had heard enough. He was about to die, Forgetting about Ben, I turned to the sheriff and said in Spanish. “Sheriff, this boy is about to die. He’s been here a long time.  He doesn’t have any money. He didn’t do anything. You seem like a good man,” I lied. “Have mercy on him. Sheriff.  Why don’t you just let him go?” 

The sheriff stared silently, his face reflecting what passed for deep thought in his reptilian brain. It look a while., then     he shrugged and said……… “Bueno.”

That was it?  The  young man was sprung with just a  “Bueno?”

I almost jumped into his arms, but took out my wallet and gave him some dinero to give to his favorite charity. The sheriff filled out a release form, and I went into the kid’s cell, picked up his skeletal body, and half-carried him to the cab. His eyes were rolling in their sockets, and he was coughing and wheezing, but alive.. I ordered  the  driver to get out of there, pronto.  It had taken five minutes to undo a year’s imprisonment.

He was too feeble to speak as we neared the Plaza, so I let him alone to emerge from his prison cocoon and into a new world of automobiles, human sounds, and music, which I could hear rising from the Plaza. Within minutes, he was sitting up and breathing regularly, but we still said nothing to each other. He had sobbed deeply and tried to embrace me when we first got into the cab but, I gently fended him off. A simple thanks was sufficient..

My brain was whirring. What was I going to do with him? He needed a shower, shave, and new clothes, the right papers to get out of Mexico, and…. I still had to find Ben Shirley and rescue him from…son of a….I was stunned to see Ben standing on the curb, beaming at me through the cab window. By his side, even more ecstatic, was the man who had sent me to the juzgado, ostensibly  to find Ben.

When I got out of the cab, Ben grabbed me with a smothering abrazo, a Mexican embrace. My brain whirred even faster.

If The Man knew all along where Ben was, my trip to the juzgado was a sham. It hit me like I was a cheap piñata that The Man had been the one on the phone with the Sheriff, ordering him to release the kid. To save his dignity, the Sheriff had pretended to think about releasing the kid. It wasn’t my eloquence, after all, that had sprung him.                                   

I had simply been the delivery man, some kind of ……Fedmex.

                        But….

                        Who was The Man and why was Ben with him?

                        And how did the kid fit into all of this? 

                        Que the hell pasa? 

       Tune in next week………