Charlie All Night

4

Charlie was still scowling when he got back to Allie’s office. Threatening Mark had been stupid. He hated being stupid, although Lord knew he should be used to it by now.

“What’s wrong?” Allie peered at him over a blanket-covered basket on her desk. “You look upset.”

“Not me.”

“You sure?”

Charlie tossed the handbook on the desk, feeling like a fool. “Well, Mark sort of fell over.”

Allie froze. “Fell over?”

Charlie sat down and sipped his coffee. “He’s not hurt. It wasn’t that far to the floor.”

Allie looked severe. “I suppose you had a reason.”

Charlie shrugged. He insulted you, and for some reason I lose my mind every time I think of you. “I didn’t like his looks.”

“Right. What did he say about me?”

That was another problem with Allie. She was too damn sharp. “Don’t be so conceited.”

“He doesn’t know you well enough to insult you. What did he say about me?”

“His very existence insults me. Can we get back to business?”

“I’ll find out anyway.” Allie waited and then opened the folder in front of her. “Okay. Fine. We’ll do business. Any questions so far?”

Charlie gave her the one that had been bugging him since the day before. “Yeah. How did an idiot like Mark get to be a star around here?”

Allie blinked at him. “He’s not an idiot. He’s a good broadcaster. His voice is clear and it makes people feel good. Plus he’s great at PR. He’s good-looking, and his picture’s been plastered all over the city on billboards. He pulls a pretty good female audience.”

Charlie scowled harder, not sure why he cared. “So why isn’t he on TV?”

“He’s really shy.” Allie’s face softened, and Charlie got more annoyed. “I know he comes across as a conceited jerk, but he’s really unsure of himself. He’s never even thought about TV. All those cameras? He’d have a nervous breakdown.”

“Shy,” Charlie snorted.

“Hey, not everybody is as comfortable with himself as you are.” Allie surveyed him. “You’re exactly who you want to be, doing exactly what you want to do. That’s pretty rare. Mark doesn’t have your confidence, so he relies on his good looks to get him through, but he’s still anxious. All the time.”

Charlie focused on the part of her argument he liked the least. “He’s not good-looking.”

“Yes, he is. He looks like Richard Gere before he went gray.”

“Mark’s gray?”

“Richard’s gray. Mark is still tall, dark and handsome, and women swoon.”

Charlie slumped lower in his chair. “He’s medium, dark and dweeby.” He looked at her suspiciously. “Are you still swooning?”

Allie leaned back in her chair. “Nope. I’ve been cured. Thank you very much.”

His spirits rose miraculously. “My pleasure, believe me.”

Allie smiled at him, and Charlie felt himself slipping into lust. Oh, no. He yanked himself back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. No more Allie. They would work together at the station where it would be almost impossible to make love-he shoved the desk thoughts firmly from his mind-but he was definitely finding another place to live. He’d take her to dinner tonight and let her down easy and then move to a motel. Good plan. He suppressed a sigh of relief at being back in control and returned to the problem of the station. “Who’s on before me?”

“Harry the Howler. The big guy you met in the hall.”

Mark’s companion in the break room. “I think I just met him again. Calm sort of guy.”

Allie nodded. “Exactly. That’s what I keep telling him, but he insists on howling. Which is not your problem. In fact, I don’t see that you have any problems.” She beamed at him, the Positive Career Talk smile.

“I’m taking over for a paranoid gun-nut, and you think I have no problems.”

“Of course not. After Waldo, anybody is a step up. And we’ve been at the bottom of the ratings for so long, you can only go up. Just remember, we’re an easy-listening station, and you can’t go wrong.”

“Well, that’s our first problem. I’m not an easy-listening kind of guy.”

Allie looked exasperated. “You must have known we weren’t hard rock when you signed on.”

Charlie shook his head. “Bill told me I could play what I wanted.”

“Which is?”

“Everything.” Charlie leaned back and tried to sound as if he knew what he was doing. “I like rock, country, rap, jazz… I like it all. The way I figure it, I’ll talk to people and they can call in and talk back and in between I play music I like.”

Allie shrugged. “Well, Bill is a lot of things, but a liar he isn’t. If he said you could do that here, you can do that here. You better go look at our library. I don’t know how much of a variety we have.”

“Well, I’ll just have to give Bill a shopping list.” Charlie shoved the handbook back across the desk to her. “I don’t need this. As long as I don’t do anything to give the FCC heart failure, I’ll be okay.”

“All right. Now, what do you need to get your show started?”

“Nothing.” Charlie leaned back and spread his hands out o embrace the world, back in control again. “I can do it all.”

“Great.” Allie pulled the basket on her desk closer to her. “There’s just one other little thing we have to do tonight.” She reached under the blanket and pulled out a doll’s baby bottle. “Samson needs to be fed every hour. We’re going to have to cover this until two. Grady will do the rest. I’ve already called him, and he’s fine with it.”

“Samson?” Charlie said, totally confused.

“The station puppy.” Allie pulled back the blanket and Charlie peered over the edge.

The tiny dark shape inside looked like an undersize chocolate Twinkie. “That’s a puppy?”

“Well, he’s small right now, but he’s going to get a lot bigger.” Allie tried to nudge the bottle into the puppy’s mouth, but he made no movement to take it.

Another one of Allie’s lost causes. First Mark, then Charlie’s show, and now this puppy. Charlie squinted at the tiny scrap of protoplasm Allie insisted was a dog. “Are you sure it’s not dead?”

He stepped back as Allie’s eyes came up blazing. “This puppy is not going to die.”

“All right.” Charlie had some small experience with animals on the farms he’d worked on during his summer vacations, and all of it told him Samson was doomed, but he wasn’t going to fight Allie on it. “Where’s his mother?”

“He’s the runt. Things didn’t work out between them.” Allie tipped the bottle so the formula ran into the puppy’s mouth without him sucking, and his throat made weak swallowing movements. “See?” she said triumphantly. “He’s going to be fine.”

Charlie sat back and watched Allie work over the puppy, tickling its throat to get it to swallow. Well, if anyone could save an embryo dog, Allie could. He’d only known her twenty-four hours, but he already had a healthy respect for her determination.

“We may have to do this every half hour,” Allie told him. “He’s not getting enough this way. He’s got to learn to suck.”

So now he was a dog nurse, too. Well, he liked dogs. And if this was what Allie wanted… “All right.”

Allie covered the basket again. “He’s going to make it. I know he is.”

At least when the dog died, he’d be there to comfort her.

Platonically.

Charlie spent the next two hours checking out the tape library and meeting Stewart, the night engineer. Stewart looked like a peeled egg and was not a ball of fire when it came to engineering, but he was something that Charlie found a lot more useful: a talker. After a half hour with Stewart, Charlie knew more about the station than Bill probably did. And the one incontrovertible fact he gleaned was that Allie was universally admired. Mark wasn’t.

“Allie’s good people,” Stewart told him. “She gets things done. Mark is just a…”

“Yuppie scum dweeb?”

“That would cover it,” Stewart agreed.

Cheered by the knowledge that not everyone at WBBB was certifiable, Charlie went back out into the city to find something to say about Tuttle on his first show. Nothing too controversial, he told himself. No waves.

Allie was standing in the lobby with her hands on her hips when he walked in an hour before his show. “Bill was looking for you earlier. You were supposed to meet him at five. Mark apologized for whatever it was he said. Bill says that you are never to strike another employee here again. Also, don’t play liberal garbage on the air. Where have you been?”

Charlie grinned at her. She looked like an aggressive cocker spaniel, her hair swinging like a bright bell around her face, her eyes warm and challenging behind her glasses, which had slipped down her nose, as usual. He resisted the impulse to push them up for her. They weren’t that close. They weren’t ever going to be that close. “I missed you, too,” he told her. “And I didn’t hit Mark. He fell over. What do you know about the city building here?”

Allie turned and went down the hall to her office, and he trailed after her, trying not to admire the swing of her hips in her brown jersey dress.

“It’s one of the oldest buildings in the city,” she told him over her shoulder. “The marble is Italian. My mother and father were married there. The mayor wants to build a new one. That’s about it. What do you want me to find out about it?”

“Nothing.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and followed her into her office. “The tape library here isn’t too bad. I can fake it for a while.”

“Good.” Allie looked at him. “Close the door and sit down.”

“Why?” Charlie looked wary as he closed the door.

“I just need to talk to you for a minute.” Allie swallowed nervously. “This is about us. I’ve been thinking all afternoon-”

Oh, Lord, he should have said something earlier before she started making plans for their future. “Listen, before you say anything, I think you’re a terrific lady, but I’m not ready for a steady relationship, so if you’re planning-”

“Great.” Allie sank into her chair. “Don’t think I didn’t enjoy last night. I did. But I don’t think it should happen again.” She beamed up at him. “I’m so relieved you feel the same way.”

“Well…” Charlie stopped, confused.

“Not that we can’t still be friends,” Allie went on. “And even roommates. I talked to Joe while you were in the bathroom this morning, and if you’d like to stay with us on the couch for the time you’ll be here, it’s all right.”

“Oh, well…” Charlie nodded four or five times, his head wobbling a little as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Uh, sure. Good.”

“Great.” Allie picked up some papers from her desk, clearly eager to get back to work. “I’ll tell Joe when I get home tonight.”

“Good.” Charlie stood up. “Well, I’m glad that’s settled. Uh, I think I’ll go watch Harry for a while.”

Allie waved her hand at him as he left, already working on those papers. Efficient at all times, that was Allie.

It was really irritating of her.

Why don’t I feel better about this? Charlie thought as he headed for the booth. This was what he wanted. She’d just taken care of it for him. Just the way she took care of everything. He shook his head at the acidity in the thought. This was probably just stupid male pride. He wanted to be the one to break things off. Oh, well. Her loss.

He walked off down the hall, wondering why he felt so empty if it was her loss.

Inside the office, Allie threw the papers down on the desk beside Samson’s basket, and sat back. She was really glad. Glad, glad, glad. At last she’d made a mature adult decision about a man, and now she could concentrate on the important stuff like making Charlie’s show a hit.

Boy, was she glad.

Really.

Charlie watched Harry through the window into the booth. He was talking animatedly into the mike, his hands moving up and down the console like a maniac’s. Howlin’ Harry.

Great. First he got kicked out of Allie’s bed and now he was following an insane person.

When Harry stopped talking and leaned back, Charlie knocked on the window and Harry motioned him in.

“Nice job on Mark in the break room today.” Harry grinned at him as he came in. “Look, Ma, no hands.”

Charlie grinned back. It would be impossible not to grin at Harry. He radiated goodwill. “I should have known better,” Charlie told him.

“Why? Mark didn’t.” Harry gestured to the console. “Anything you need to know about here?”

“Why don’t you give me a fast refresher?” Charlie said, and Harry looked at him strangely and then explained how the noise level on the cassette and CD players were controlled by the red plastic sliding tabs on the console. Charlie did fine until Harry told him that if more than one slide was up at the same time, they’d all be heard, and then began to discuss the three thousand ways the slides could be combined for effect. “Great,” Charlie said when Harry was finished and Charlie was lost. “I think I’ll just stick with one at a time.”

Harry shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Can I sit in here and watch the rest of your show?” Charlie asked him, hoping that he’d learn by watching what he hadn’t gotten by listening.

“Hey, you’re welcome anytime,” Harry told him and then went back to the mike to announce that Tuttle had just heard a Howlin’ Harry triple play.

His howl was actually worse in the booth than it was on the radio.

At nine fifty-eight, Allie took her seat at the production console and watched through the window as Charlie leaned on the wall of the booth and Harry hunched over the mike. Charlie’s loose-limbed body relaxed against the white acoustic tile, and she followed the lines of his arms with her eyes, focusing finally on his long, large-knuckled fingers. He had big hands, but they were agile, she remembered. Lovely, long fingers.

She wrenched her mind back to the show. Fingers didn’t count in radio. Just in bed. And from now on, they were just in radio, not in bed. Tonight was the first night of the rest of her career. If she was going to make Charlie a star-and she was-tonight was the night she studied him to see how he worked. Then she’d know how to shape the show, how to publicize it, how to make Charlie the Tuttle flavor of the month. She felt her heart beat faster and grinned at herself. She’d be back on top in no time. She turned her attention back to the booth, keeping her mind firmly off Charlie’s body and strictly on his potential. For radio.

Harry was shrieking, “And that’s it for tonight for all you wild and crazy Howlers out there. Next up is the new boy on the block, Chucklin Charlie Tenniel. So here’s one last Howler from Harry. Harooooooof.”

Harry moved the mike slide down and the disk slide up, and Allie heard the “The Monster Mash” come up on the speakers.

Chucklin’ Charlie Tenniel? Poor Charlie. Well, she could fix that. She could fix everything as long as she kept her concentration. She was going to make him a star if it killed them both.

Harry talked to Charlie for a minute and then came out and joined her. “The news is punched up and ready,” Harry told her, then frowned slightly. “I thought Bill said Charlie had a lot of experience.”

“Yes.” Allie checked the phone lines in front of her while she talked. The chances of anyone calling in were slim, but she was prepared to nurture anyone who did, even on the first night. “He had a couple of years with a Lawrenceville station.”

“Sure doesn’t act like it.” Harry shrugged. “Oh, well, it’s not like it’s brain surgery. If I can do it, he can.”

“Stop that.” Allie looked up at him, exasperated. “You’re very good. You’d be better if you stopped that damn howling, but you’re still good. And, Harry, that Chucklin’ Charlie thing has got to go. We’re running a class program here.”

“That I wouldn’t know anything about. How does he want to be intro-ed?”

“Well, he hates Ten Tenniel for some reason, so that’s out.” Allie sat back. They needed a good tide. A catch phrase. “Just Charlie is too bland. Charlie Late Night?”

Harry shook his head. “Sounds like Letterman.”

“Okay, uh, Charlie At Night?”

Harry shook his head again. “Boring.”

Allie cast around for more ideas. “Charlie Overnight? Charlie Midnight? Charlie All Night?”

“Last one’s good,” Harry said. “Kind of sexy. He’s got that voice.”

Allie tried not to look hopeful. “You think he’s going to be good?”

“Hard to tell.” Harry shifted on his feet. “Listen, Al, I was wondering…”

His voice trailed off and Allie was left with the unheard-of occurrence of a speechless Harry.

“Yes?” She nodded at him, trying to be encouraging.

Harry swallowed. “I know you don’t have time to work on my show, but if you could give me a few tips, well, I’d really-”

“Stop howling,” Allie said firmly. “You’re a lovely, warm, intelligent man. Use it.”

“Howling is my life.”

Harry didn’t appear to be joking. Allie sighed. “Let me think about this and get back to you tomorrow.”

Harry grinned, lighting his whole face. “Thanks, Al, that’s great.” He looked over his shoulder at Charlie, who was surveying his new domain with what looked like terror. “I’d stay on top of him tonight, if I were you. He looks like he’s going to blow.”

“Not Charlie,” Allie said loyally, but she wasn’t reassured by the look on her new star’s face. “He’ll be okay once he starts talking.”

“That’s usually when I screw up,” Harry said.

When the news was over, they both watched as Charlie leaned over the console, pushing the mike slide up and the cassette slide down, and then spoke into the mike. His deep, voice filled the production room for the first time.

“This is Charlie Tenniel for WBBB, and I never chuckle. I just play good music and talk to people. I only got into town yesterday, and a beautiful little town it is, but I’ve already got a few questions, especially about your new city building.”

Allie looked at Harry and saw her own confusion reflected in his eyes.

“But mostly I just like it here. This is a great place to do a little late-night talking and play a little late-night rock and roll. I’m assuming this city does rock and roll? I thought so. This one is for my new hometown.”

Jefferson Starship came oh with “We Built This City,” and Allie grinned. It wasn’t inspired, but it was fun.

Now if he’d just give her some scope, she could move him from fun to fantastic. He had a great voice and a terrific personality, and wonderful hands-

Scratch that last part.

She pulled her mind back to the show. He was really good. Harry listened for a while and then left, giving Charlie a thumbs-up through the booth window as he went. Charlie nodded and then looked out at Allie.

“You’re doing great,” she said to him, doing her cheerleader imitation through the production mike. It was like being back with Mark, except this time she was telling the truth. “Your voice is terrific. No wonder you were a hit in Lawrenceville.”

Charlie shook his head. The song ended, and he worked the slides and leaned into the mike again. “Like I said before, I never chuckle, but I don’t mind having a few laughs now and then, for all the right reasons. One of those reasons seems to me to be this new city building His Honor the Mayor wants built.”

Allie froze at the console. No. Not the mayor. Bill played poker with him every Thursday. This was not the way to build an audience, this was the way to build an enemy. An enemy they didn’t need, especially if it was the boss. She tried to shake her head at him through the window, but he was oblivious, concentrating on the mike.

“Now, I’m new in town,” Charlie went on, “so maybe you can call in and tell me I’m all wet here, but I was in your old city building today, and it’s a beautiful place. Marble floors, frosted glass, lots of wood paneling, and that’s real wood paneling, not that splintery stuff they sell for two dollars and ninety-nine cents at the back of the lumberyard. This is a building that was made with good materials, fine workmanship, and above all, pride. It’s the kind of building that might inspire a politician who worked there to take the service part of being a public servant seriously. Now, if you laughed at that, my friend, you’re a cynic. Shame on you.”

Allie clasped her hands in front of her and prayed, Don’t say anything dumb, Charlie. Please.

“So where’s the joke? Well, have you seen the model for the new city building? Hey, take a trip downtown to the old building to the planning office and have yourself a laugh. It looks like a one-story parking garage with windows. Which might be pretty appropriate for the politicians around here-a place to park and watch the world go by. Of course, like I said, I’m new in town, so I don’t really know much about your politicians. Except that if they prefer this new concrete bunker to their old marble palace, they have lousy taste in architecture.

“If you think the old city building deserves another hundred years, call in and let the city know why. And if you think the new plan is better, well, call in and tell me I’m wrong. In the meantime, this one’s for the city building. Hang in there, old lady.”

When she heard the beginning of Aretha Franklin’s “Rescue Me,” Allie put her head in her hands and gave herself over to a moment of panic. Then reality claimed her. Bill never listened to the show, and she was pretty sure the mayor didn’t, either. The station had been playing opera for the past week, and before that there had been Waldo and the aliens. Charlie couldn’t have more than four people listening to him, and they were going to be mad he wasn’t discussing the Martian question. There was nothing to worry about.

Then the phone rang.

“WBBB, the Charlie Tenniel show,” Allie said.

The voice was an old man’s, raspy and loud. “Yeah, let me talk to that disc jockey fellow.”

“Certainly, sir. Can I tell him what you’d like to say?”

“No, damn it, I’m gonna do that.”

“Uh, right. Sure.” Allie hesitated, knowing she should find out what the caller wanted before turning him over to Charlie. On the other hand, he obviously wasn’t going to tell her. And it would be a bad idea to alienate any callers. After all, this might be the only one Charlie got. And it would be a chance for her to find out how he handled himself with callers. “Could I have your name, please?”

“Eb Groats.”

“You’ve got a caller,” Allie told Charlie over the production mike. “A Mr. Eb Groats.”

Charlie nodded and Allie punched up the call. Samson whimpered at her feet, and Allie stuck her head under the desk to see what was wrong. He actually seemed hungry, and she hurried to drip more formula into his mouth, giving all her attention to him until Charlie came back on the air a few minutes later.

“I’ve been talking to Eb Groats from up north of the city limits. Eb tells me he was around when part of the building went up. Right, Eb?”

“Well, son, like I was telling you, we put that back wing up about ’35. My first job, I wasn’t more’n seventeen.”

“Well, Eb, you did a great job.”

“Hell, yes.”

“Don’t say hell, Eb. The FCC doesn’t like it.”

“My wife doesn’t either. The hell with her.”

“But about the city building, Eb.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing. That building was built to last. Any dang fool could see that.”

“Even me.”

“Even you. Even that other dang fool Rollie Whitcomb.”

“Mayor Whitcomb seems pretty sold on the new building.”

“’Course, he does. His brother’s gonna get the contract.”

Charlie said, “What?” and Allie raised her head so fast she smacked it on the underside of the producer’s desk.

“You check into it, boy. The contract will say Somebody or Other Construction, but you follow the trail back and you’ll find Al Whitcomb’s name on it.”

Oh, no, not this. Allie rubbed the back of her head and thought fast.

No. Charlie felt the waves he wasn’t supposed to be making lapping at his ankles. No scandal. Do not call attention to yourself. That would be bad. “I think that’s slander, Eb.”

“Not if it’s true, it ain’t. I’m old, but I ain’t stupid.”

“That’s for darn sure. Well, Eb, you’ve certainly made my first night on the job one to remember. And possibly my last night on the job, too. Thanks for calling. And call back and tell me I’m a fool again sometime, Eb. You sound just like my grandpa. I’m glad you were listening in.”

“I wasn’t. My great-grandson listens to that fool Harry the Howler and we kind of slopped on over into your show.”

“Well, slop on over anytime.”

“Will do, son. Good luck on savin’ that building.”

“Thanks. I’m going to need all the luck I can get.” There was a click on the line, and Charlie spent a nanosecond cursing his lousy luck. He looked out the window at Allie, who was rubbing her head, probably as stunned as he was. He shrugged at her and went back to his regularly scheduled patter, steering as far clear of the city building as he could. “Of course, I’ve already had more luck than any new guy in town deserves. My first caller is a great guy like Eb, and the first lady I met in town yesterday is the kind of woman a man never forgets, even when she says goodbye, which she just did today. Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of experience with rejection. Anyway, this is for that lady who said I insulted her in the bar yesterday. Trust me, honey, I meant it in the nicest possible way.”

Allie shook her head when she heard Patsy Cline slide into “Crazy.”

“Very funny, Charlie.”‘ she said into the mike. “About the city building-”

“I didn’t mean to, believe me,” he told her. “I thought it was just a nice, friendly kind of topic.”

“Bill’s a backer of Rollie Whitcomb.”

Charlie laughed shortly. “He would be. He’s just like my dad.”

“Your dad backs mayors?”

“My dad buys mayors.” Charlie swiveled away from the window to refill the cassette stack. “Oh, well, at least nobody’s listening.”

Just me. Allie watched Charlie pushing the slides happily or the next half hour, playing music and talking to three callers who wanted to put in their two cents about the city building. Things were going well. In fact, four callers in the first half hour of a new show was phenomenal.

They were safe.

But safe made for lousy radio.

She could fix that.

Of course, they didn’t want to make enemies, but since nobody seemed too upset about the mayor’s brother, that wasn’t a problem. And Charlie was great with callers, absolutely brilliant. More people should know that. Of course, Charlie didn’t want to be famous. But this was a civic issue, he had a civic duty.

And she wanted the show to be a hit.

“I’m a slime,” she told Samsom, fast asleep in his basket. “A career-obsessed, pathetic slime.” Then she picked up a clear phone line and punched in the mayor’s phone number.

Charlie was feeling pretty good. He liked Eb and the three people who’d called after Eb, the console was state-of-the-art so it was a piece of cake to run, and it didn’t really matter whether he was a success or not at this hour of the night. And actually, it was fun. Once again his life was under control. He’d have all his days to track down that damn letter and figure out who wrote it, and then he could play radio at night until he finished the job and left in November.

Life didn’t get much better.

Then Allie’s voice came through his headphones. “Caller on line two.”

“Who’s this one?”

“The mayor.”

He swung around to stare at her through the window, but she just shrugged and smiled and punched the button that transferred the call to him.

“Who the hell is this?

“Uh, Charlie Tenniel.” He shot an agonized glance at the digital readout on the console. Fifteen seconds till the last song was over.

“Well, what the hell is going on down there? Where’s Bill? What is this garbage?”

He sounded like an overbearing, handshaking politician. Charlie had met a lot of them growing up and he hadn’t liked them. Still, it wasn’t his job to make waves. “We’ve been talking about the city building, sir.”

“Well, stop it. It’s none of your damn business.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “Well, it’s the taxpayers’ business, since they’re going to be paying for it.”

“Screw the taxpayers. You shut up about that building or I’ll have your job. I can do it, too, don’t think I can’t. Bill’s a good friend of mine. You just shut up, boy.”

Five seconds. Charlie knew he was going to regret it, but laying low had been a lost cause as soon as the Mayor had started yelling. “We’re going to be on the air now, mayor, so whatever you say is broadcast. Might want to ease up on that ‘screw the taxpayers’ bit since most of them are voters, too.”

“I don’t want-”

“And welcome back, Tuttle,” Charlie said into the mike. “We’ve got a real treat tonight. Mayor Rollie Whitcomb has called in to talk about the city building. You’re on, Mayor.”

“I’m what?”

“You’re on the air.”

“Oh. Well-”

“Now, you want to explain again how you feel about the taxpayers and the city building?”

Through the window he saw Allie put her head down on the producer’s console. Rollie must have been right about Bill. Oh, well, win some, lose some. He went back to listening to the mayor tie himself in knots. Public speaking was evidently not what had gotten him into office. His sentences didn’t seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action.

When the mayor wound down, buried under his compound subjects, Charlie stepped in. “So what exactly was the rationale behind the new city building, Mayor? I understand the new building actually has less space than the old one.”

That set Rollie off again, babbling about heating bills, big windows, all that marble, and the stairs. Rollie didn’t seem to have a grasp as to why the last three were a problem, he just knew they were factors.

“Anything you want to say about your brother, the contractor?” Charlie asked him when he’d sputtered to a close.

“Fine businessman. Pillar of the community. Mason. Knights of Pythias. Proud to be in the family.”

Rollie meandered on, while Charlie waited for a verb. “Does he have the contract for the city building?” Charlie asked when Rollie trailed off again.

“Of course not. I don’t know. I don’t award contracts. Building committee. Stalwart citizens. Pillars of the community.”

Charlie gave up. “Well, thanks for calling, Mayor. I’m sure Tuttle is reassured now.”

“Proud to do my duty,” Rollie said.

Charlie punched the cassette button and shoved the slide up and music came through his headphones. Unfortunately, it was Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years.”

He was screwed, as usual. He thought about it and began to laugh.

Allie sat stunned in the producer’s chair, not sure whom she was in the most trouble with-the mayor, Bill or Charlie. She’d thought that maybe talking with the mayor would boost Charlie’s credentials. The mayor could give his side of the situation and Charlie could discuss it with him. Serious talk radio. Maybe a nice mention in the Tuttle Tribune tomorrow since the mayor pretty much owned the paper.

And then Charlie turned out to be a hell-raiser. Asking about the mayor’s brother. Sheesh.

“You still there, Tenniel?”

She adjusted her headphones. “Uh, no, he’s not, Mayor Whitcomb. This is Alice McGuffey, the pro-”

“Well, you’re fired. And so is he.”

Then all she heard was a dial tone.

She sat back and tried to figure out the probable outcome of the mess she’d created. Bill wouldn’t fire her, she was pretty sure. He wasn’t that dumb, and if he was, Beattie wouldn’t let him.

Charlie could be vulnerable, though. And it was her fault.

All right, she’d just go in first thing in the morning and tell Bill she’d called the mayor.

Then the phone rang and she got back to work.

At one, Allie shut down the phone lines at Charlie’s request. By then he’d talked to eleven callers about the building, all of them telling him he was right and one asking if the mayor was drunk. “No, I think he always talks like that,” Charlie said, and the caller said, “And we voted for him?” There were a few nonpolitical calls: one male caller wanted to know what he’d said to the lady in the bar, and four female callers offered to show him the city and let him insult them all he wanted. “Get me out of this,” Charlie said to Allie from the booth, and she shut down the lines for the night.

“Go home,” he told her through the mike. “Stewart’s here if I need anything technical. I’m just going to play music from now on. I don’t ever want to hear about the city building again.”

Allie had been working since four, Charlie’s show was off to a better than great start, and besides, guilt was making her groggy. She’d done her job and then some. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll take you up on that.”

She gave Samson to Charlie and told him how to feed him and then watched while he gave the puppy a bottle to the rhythm of Gloria Estefan. Samson was almost lost in Charlie’s big hand, and Allie forgot her career entirely as she watched him try to drip the formula into the puppy’s mouth. Sam tried to drink a little and then gave up, but Charlie kept on coaxing, his blond-brown hair shining in the booth light like brass as he bent over the little body, massaging Sam’s tummy with his thumb. “C’mon, Sam,” he coaxed softly, and Allie shut her eyes and prayed the puppy would make it.

She really didn’t need any more trauma. She was due for a success here, and Sam might as well share it. “He’s going to make it,” she said out loud, and Charlie looked up at her and said, “Well, we’ll give it our best shot. Go on. You’re beat.” And she nodded and left the booth.

Charlie sounded even better at home when she was in bed, wrapped in her quilt. His voice was sexy and soothing, and he played a lot of different music including one memorable triple play of Boyz II Men, Aaron Copland, and the Everly Brothers, always leading so smoothly into the songs as part of his patter that it seemed like the music was part of what Charlie was saying.

She was almost disappointed when he wrapped up the show at two.

“Well, that’s it for tonight, folks. Grady Bonner’s coming up next with some background on crystals and healing and your sun sign’s lucky numbers for tomorrow, and he tells me he’s also going to be playing some whale songs a little later. Now, for those of you who haven’t heard whale songs, that probably sounds like a joke, but keep an open mind and you’ll hear music that is truly unearthly. And to get you over to Grady, here’s Judy Collins doing her duet with a whale. Listen closely out there, this is the music of the deep.”

Collins’s “Hunting the Whale” began and Allie closed her eyes and listened. The song was so lovely that the last notes seemed to hang in the air next to her.

Then she heard Grady’s reedy voice saying, “This is Grady Bonner taking you into the hours when the city sleeps. If you missed Charlie Tenniel’s show just before this, you missed what he said about our lovely city building. There are so many old voices echoing through the old city building. Tearing it down would be ripping those voices apart. Go to the old building tomorrow, feel the power in it, and then go to the mayor and tell him that destroying that structure is destroying the spirit of public service in this city. And now, before I begin tonight’s discussion on the healing power of the crystal, let’s listen to a recording of some North Atlantic whales. This one’s for you, Charlie.”

Good for Charlie, Allie thought. He’s got Grady on his side. She felt comforted by that. Grady might be a little strange, but his people instincts were excellent. If he liked Charlie, Charlie was good people.

She turned off her light and listened in the dark to the whale songs, and she drifted off in a dreamless sleep.

She hadn’t been asleep more than half an hour when Charlie poked her in the back.