Charlie All Night by Jennifer Cruise Page A

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 vindow 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 j 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 he 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