Charlie All Night Read online

  “I’m probably going to regret this.” Charlie looked at Joe. “What do you think?”

  Joe shook his head. “I’m staying out of this. Although we do have a couch, and I do put pecans in the waffles.” He looked at Allie. “On the other hand, I do think she’s up to something.”

  “They better be great waffles,” Charlie said.

  “They’ll be unforgettable,” Allie promised.

  * * *

  Charlie wasn’t used to struggling with his conscience, but then his life wasn’t usually this complex. His conscience said, stay away, lie low, don’t get involved with these nice people. But he never listened to his conscience, anyway.

  He was going to do it, he realized as they got up to go. He was going to move in with Allie and Joe and pump them for background on the station, all the news and rumor that only friends would repeat to friends. It would be low and slimy of him, but it was a great opportunity, and he’d been around long enough to know that great opportunities in life were few and far between.

  Just keep your hands off Allie, he told himself sternly. It was one thing to use her for information; it was another thing entirely to use her for… He glanced down at her, and she smiled, and he remembered how warm she’d been in his arms. Just thinking about her was a bad idea.

  Waffles and gossip, yes. Allie, absolutely no.

  He excused himself and went to find a phone to cancel his motel reservation. Remember, he told himself. Be virtuous.

  It would be a nice change for him.

  * * *

  “What are you up to?” Joe asked Allie when Charlie had gone.

  Allie shoved her chair in, squaring her shoulders. “I’m going to seduce him.” It sounded pretty stupid when she said it out loud.

  “What?”

  “I have a plan. He’ll be like penicillin.” Joe looked at her as if she were nuts, so she elaborated, warming to her topic as she explained. “Mark’s just a bad habit, like a virus. All I need is an antidote. I’ll sleep with Charlie, and then I’ll be over Mark.”

  Joe put his head in his hands. “Even for you, this is a dumb idea.”

  “Why?” Allie blinked down at him. “It’s worked great so far. I don’t mind about Mark much at all when I’m around Charlie.”

  “And what are you going to do to get over Charlie?”

  “I won’t need to get over Charlie. From now on, I’m concentrating on my career. Charlie is just a fling.”

  Joe looked at her as if she were demented. “Except you’re not the kind of woman who has flings. And you’re already concentrating too much on your career. That’s how you ended up with Mark, because he was convenient. And I don’t think Charlie is the kind of guy you forget.”

  “Well, I’m thirty-six,” Allie said, exasperated. “If I don’t start having flings now, I never will. And I’m tired of getting all wrapped up in a gay and then trying to cope when he’s gone. I want a nice, simple, short, purely sexual one-night stand, and then I can forget about Mark. And Charlie’s out of here in six weeks, he said so. This is perfect.’”

  Joe spoke very slowly to her. “This. Is. A. Dumb. Idea.”

  “Listen.” Allie fought back the anger that suddenly threatened her voice. “I know how dumb I am. I know Mark is worthless. I knew it when I was with him, but I kept making excuses. And now I’m stuck in this stupid thing where I want to be with him, and I don’t even know why. Haven’t you ever wanted somebody you knew wasn’t worth it?”

  “Yes,” Joe said. “I imagine almost everybody has.”

  “Well, all I’m trying to do is get over it.” Allie stuck out her chin. “Is that so bad?”

  “No.” Joe stood up and the sympathy in his eyes almost laid her low. “No, of course not. But Charlie is… well… I don’t think I’d mess with Charlie.” He looked over her shoulder. “He looks like the kind of guy who makes an impression.”

  “Not on me.” Allie turned and saw Charlie walking toward them. He looked wonderful: big and broad and solid and fun. But not permanent. She could take him or leave him. Or take him and leave him. No problem.

  Charlie came back to the table and smiled at them. “Let’s go. You can tell me all about the station. Leave nothing out, no matter how disgusting. I’m braced for anything.”

  “Good,” Allie said.

  * * *

  They gave Charlie a quick tour of old Tuttle in the late-September dusk. The town unfolded before him like a set of sepia-toned postcards: a white filigree bandstand in the park, a narrow Main Street mercifully free of aluminum storefronts, and a city hall that looked like a glowering, gargoyled sandstone castle.

  “Historic preservationists, bless them,” Joe told him. “They fight tooth and nail to keep old Tuttle pure. Of course, over on the other side, new Tuttle is a symphony of aluminum siding, but who cares?”

  “But even the preservationists can’t save city hall,” Allie said.

  “They’re going to tear down that building?” Charlie craned his neck to look back at the ornate structure. He wasn’t a historic-building nut, but tearing down something that magnificently outrageous seemed a waste.

  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 some place 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 pic