Charlie All Night

Joe shrugged. “I think they’re just going to abandon it. Too hard to heat or something. They’ve got a new building all planned. There’s a model of it in the basement of the old building. It’s awful.” Joe turned a corner and a few minutes later it was dark.

“What happened?”

“East Tuttle, better known as Eastown.” Allie pointed out the window. “See? Streetlights out, but nobody fixes them. This is not a Good Section of Town.”

“In defense of the city department, they try.” Joe slowed to let a weaving pedestrian cross. “The vandalism around here is pretty frequent.”

“Not that frequent,” Allie said. “These people get taken for a ride.”

Charlie looked around at the peeling paint and broken steps and a derelict corner grocery store, and tried to make it fit with what he’d seen of Tuttle before. “A lot of drugs down here?”

Allie shrugged. “Probably, but I hear the best place to score is right by the old bandstand in the park.”

Charlie started to laugh. “So much for Tuttle, the perfect small town.”

Allie sighed. “It used to be sort of like that. A lot of mom-and-pop businesses run by people who called you by name. Most of them are gone now, run out by the chains.” She peered out the window at another corner store left standing empty. “You know, I don’t think there are any independent groceries left in the whole city.”

“That’s a shame,” Charlie said absently. Tuttle was not a hotbed of crime. What the hell could be going on at a radio station in a town like this to make a man like Bill Bonner lose his cool and his father send him in as an amateur detective?

Something here didn’t make sense. And since his father and Bill were involved, two men notorious for getting their own way no matter what the cost, Charlie was especially wary. They were up to something.

He sat silently while Joe drove and talked and eventually they came to a slightly better part of town full of old frame houses with big front porches, and Charlie smiled in spite of himself. Tuttle was a nice little town, the kind of town he’d always liked when he’d driven through one on his way to someplace else. He avoided stopping in any town like this one on the grounds that if he really liked it, he’d stay, and then he’d take a permanent job. And if things went the way they usually did, he’d get promoted, and then he’d be in charge, and pretty soon he’d be his father.

No town was worth that.

Then Joe turned again, and in a few minutes they were in a more modern neighborhood, passing a mall.

“Tuttle has a mall?” Charlie asked, amazed.

“There’s a lot more to Tuttle than meets the eye,” Allie said, and Charlie wondered exactly how much more there was, how much of it Allie knew, and how long it would take him to get it out of her.

IT WAS LATE when they got back to the apartment. They’d picked up Charlie’s car at the restaurant and he’d followed them home, parking behind Joe on a side street away from the blare of the traffic. He joined them, and Joe gestured to a three-story white brick house. “This is us. Three apartments. We’ve got the second floor.”

The house was simple but elegant in its proportions, and Charlie felt good just looking at it. “Very nice,” he said and followed them up the wide stone steps and into the cream-walled hallway.

It was a great house. A comfortable house.

That made him uneasy. Getting too comfortable would be bad because he was leaving in November. Maybe he’d be better off in a really ugly motel.

“Come on up, Charlie,” Allie called to him from the stairway, and her voice was husky, and he began to climb the steps to her without thinking about it.

ALLIE SHOWED HIM around the apartment: a big cream-and-peach living room with two couches and lots of lamps and bookcases, a white kitchen big enough for a full-size oak table and a mass of cooking gear, a large sea-green bathroom about the size of the bedroom in Charlie’s last apartment with an old claw-foot tub about the size of his old bed, and two large bedrooms, one in gray and red for Joe, and one in peach and white for Allie. It confirmed all Charlie’s suspicions that Joe and Allie were wonderful, warm, generous people who shouldn’t be allowed out without a keeper.

“This is great,” Charlie said when they were back in the living room. “But you people are nuts.”

Allie flopped down on one of the overstuffed couches. “Why?”

“I’m a complete stranger and you just invited me into your apartment and showed me everything you own.” Charlie shook his head at both of them. “You’re asking to be ripped off.”

“Nope. We know Bill.” Joe headed back to the kitchen. “Want something to drink?”

“Iced tea, please,” Allie called after him, and Charlie sat down across from her.

“What does Bill have to do with it?”

Allie snuggled down into the couch cushions, and Charlie let his mind wander for a moment. Allie was as well-upholstered as the couch. A comfortable woman. The kind of woman without angles or sharp bones or—

“Bill owns the station,” Allie said. “And nothing or nobody gets in the station that Bill doesn’t know everything about. If he hired you, he’s seen your baby pictures.”

Since Bill was Charlie’s father’s college roommate, this was truer than Allie knew, but Charlie was still not convinced. “You’re telling me it’s impossible for Bill to have hired a creep? Then how did he get Mark?”

Allie grinned. “You’re biased. Mark’s not so bad. He’s a little insecure, and he’s ambitious for his show, but who wouldn’t be?”

“Me,” Charlie said.

Joe came back in the room bracketing three iced-tea glasses in his hands. “You’re not ambitious?” he asked as Charlie took one.

“Nope. I’m just here to have a good time.” Charlie leaned back and sipped his tea. It was full and rich, sun tea laced with just enough lemon and sugar. He settled more comfortably into the couch. “And it’s a good thing I’m not ambitious since I’m on from 10:00 to 2:00 a.m.”

Allie smiled at him brightly. It was a smile he was learning to associate with Positive Career Talk. “The time could be a lot better,” she told him. “But don’t worry. I’m going to make you a star.”

“No, you are not.” Charlie narrowed his eyes at her. The only thing that was going to save him was that he was on late enough that nobody would notice how inept he was. All he needed was Allie drawing attention to him as he stuck a microphone in his eye or something, and then questions would be asked. “Don’t you even think about holding up a cue card for me. I told you. I don’t want to be a star.”

Joe snorted. “You don’t have any choice. If Allie wants you famous, you’re going to be famous.”

“Forget it,” Charlie told Allie. “Wipe the thought from your mind.”

“We can talk about it later,” Allie said smoothly. “Now, tomorrow night’s your first show and I thought—”

“Don’t.” Charlie scowled at her. “Thinking is bad for a woman. Tell me about the other people at the station. I already know about Mark and Lisa.”

Allie sat silent with her tea, obviously regrouping, so Joe chimed in. “Bill owns the station and theoretically runs it as general manager.”

“Theoretically?”

Joe exchanged a glance with Allie. “His wife, Beattie, decided about six months ago that she wanted a career. Bill gives Beattie anything she wants, so she’s pretty much running the place now.”

Charlie quirked an eyebrow at Joe. This was news Bill hadn’t shared. “Is that good?”

“I think so,” Joe said. “She fired Weird Waldo.”

“He thought Martians were invading the station through the consoles,” Allie said. “He kept announcing during his show that they were getting closer. It was actually kind of interesting if you suspended logical thought. Beattie wanted him gone, but Bill said he was just being colorful.”

“And then he shot the console,” Charlie said.

“Yep, just last week. Blew the whole thing away.” Allie sighed. “At least we gained a new console. And lost Waldo, thanks to Beattie.”

“Wouldn’t even Bill have fired him at that point?” Charlie asked, incredulous.