Warren Murphy: Political Pressure

Frank Krauser had already received his fifteen minutes of fame. Tomorrow he would be famous again, but he wouldn't live to see it. Frank Krauser was on his way out, about to meet his Maker. He was eating his proverbial final doughnut.

Doughnuts were what got Frank Krauser in trouble in the first place. He ate a lot of them, and he spaced them out throughout the course of the day. The problem was that he never left the Dunk-A-Donut shop in between doughnuts—even while he was on the clock for the Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department.

Somebody at Channel 8 News did some hard-core investigative reporting, which involved sitting in a car on the street and aiming a video camera at the front of the Dunk-A-Donuts, turning the camera on and letting it roll. The place was all windows; the camera saw everything that happened, clear as day. Channel 8 came back with six hard-hitting hours of video of Frank Krauser sitting in the corner booth at the doughnut shop, reading the Chicago Sun-Times, talking to cops and other city workers, chatting with the locals and the staff, reading the Chicago Tribune, reading the back of the sugar packets and generally not performing his duties as an employee of Streets and San.

At the end of six hours, Frank pushed himself to his feet, spent a good ten minutes making his farewells to the staff and he walked down the street to the work site, where the crew he was supervising was cleaning up after its day of street repairs.

Channel 8 didn't show all six hours, but it did broadcast forty-five seconds of it during a sweeps piece called "Slackers at Streets and Sanitation." The mayor held a news conference in his rumpled suit and promised an investigation and immediate reforms. Frank Krauser was suspended.

The Committee for a Cleaner Streets and Sanitation Department roamed the city of Chicago for days, then public interest waned. The committee turned in its official Report, which was actually the same report turned in years ago by a similar committee made up of the same committee members. They did go to the effort of changing the dates in the margin and, unlike the 1999 report, they ran the spell check. So you could say it was a new report.

Frank Krauser's suspension was lifted, which really irritated him. Unknown to Channel 8 News, it had been a paid suspension. Krauser was getting paid for doing nothing and found he really enjoyed it. Now he'd have to drive all the way out to the work site, every single day.

"It's inconvenient," he told his cousin, who was one of the top dogs at Streets and San. "What kind of a sham investigation did they do, anyway? You can't tell me they did a complete job in only two weeks."

"It was very thorough," his cousin said defensively. "I keep telling you to throw your back out or something, Frank. Go on disability. You can milk it until retirement."

"Easy for you to say," Frank said. "They only pay you like seventy percent of your salary."

"You'll save that much buying your doughnuts by the box at the grocery store, Frank."

Frank slammed the phone. His cousin was a moron. Supermarket doughnuts—he hated supermarket doughnuts!

So, unhappily, Frank went back on the job. Instead of getting his own four-block zone of the city, his cousin insisted on putting Frank's crew on a rotating schedule of work sites, so Frank always had to be looking for a new doughnut shop. Sometimes, after arriving at a new work site, he'd find himself without a doughnut shop within a mile or more! He was not walking that far!

So nowadays he had the crew drop him off first thing in the morning—he never even went to the work site.

Even worse, not every doughnut shop was the same. Even among Dunk-A-Donut franchise outlets there was a noticeable inconsistency in the quality of the product. Sometimes there would be no franchise, just a local bakery-type place, where they frowned on his hours of loitering even though he bought doughnuts one after another all day long.

On the very last day of his life, Frank Krauser discovered Krunchy Kreme Do-Nuts.

He'd heard about Krunchy Kreme. Who hadn't heard about Krunchy Kreme, the doughnut chain from the Deep South? People said eating a Krunchy Kreme doughnut was like taking a bite out of heaven. You could watch them being made! You could watch the doughnut move through a waterfall of doughnut glaze! Frank watched the news about the first Krunchy Kreme opening in the Chicago suburbs. Lines of patrons gathered outside at four in the morning—and the shop didn't even open until six! The first customers came out munching doughnuts and beaming for the news reporters. "Delicious! Scrumptious! The best doughnuts I have ever eaten!"

"Oh, give me a break!" Frank said to Officer Raymond O'Farrell. Ray and Frank often shared coffee and French Delights about midmorning—when Frank was working anywhere near Ray's beat.

Ray shrugged. "I hear they're good."

"Maybe good, but how much better can it get? I mean, you believe these idiots?"

But Frank Krauser's interest was piqued. Krunchy Kreme shops started opening inside the Chicago city limits. Finally the day came when Frank Krauser's crew was transferred to a new work site within two blocks of Krunchy Kreme.

"Drop me there," he told his assistant supervisor. "I'm gonna see if these damn things are as good as everybody says."

The morning rush was over, but the place was still pretty packed. Frank bought a couple of Krunchy Kremes and a big coffee, then paused for a moment to gaze at the famous doughnut factory through the windows.

Dough was extruded in rings onto the stainless-steel conveyor, which carried them down into a vat of hot oil. They bubbled and bobbed before emerging golden brown. Up the little roller coaster they moved, cooling for a twenty seconds or so, and then they reached the famous waterfall of glaze.

The rich-looking glaze spilled thick and gooey over the hot doughnuts, drenching them in sugary goodness. Frank Krauser had to admit, it looked delicious.

Then came a series of gleaming steel dispensing machines, which coated the doughnuts with a shower of multicolor sprinkles or toasted coconut or crushed nuts, or drenched them yet again, with chocolate or white frosting. A select few doughnuts were penetrated by a rapid-fire cream-filling machine, whose nozzle dripped cream between thrusts.

Frank Krauser felt himself becoming aroused.

"All for show," he told himself as he broke away and took the only empty booth in the place.

It was a nice enough place. Clean. Polite people behind the counter. Coffee smelled good. But none of that mattered if the doughnut failed the Frank Krauser quality test.

At 9:18 a.m. on that momentous Monday morning, Frank Krauser bit into his first Krunchy Kreme.

At 11:56 a.m. on that same morning, he bit into his eighteenth.

"So, they as good as they all say, Frank?" asked Officer Ray, who stopped in about two that afternoon.

"Better believe it!" Frank leaned back in his chair and pulled tight on the bottom of his T-shirt. "They gave me this."

'"Krunchy Kreme Konvert,'" Ray read aloud from the front of the shirt.

"And proud of it. I ain't never eatin' no other doughnuts!" Frank didn't know how prophetic his words were.

When Ray went back to work, Frank noticed the Ford SUV parked across the street. He was sure he had noticed it before. Like an hour ago. He could see the silhouettes of two men sitting inside. Frank got worried. If he got busted again on Channel 8 News, it might not blow over so fast. He might be forced to take unpaid leave.

At four o'clock the SUV was still there, and Frank knew it was another damn news camera in there, violating his privacy. His assistant supervisor showed up at five.