“People get excited at these things.” She let go of the pages, stabbed at her pocket a couple of times before she got it in. One, then the other, the pages flipped back down. “If somebody says something they shouldn’t, it’s likely to be more than the usual ‘shit,’ ‘God,’ or ‘fuck.’ Teddy’s a good tape jockey. I brought him along because he can edit on the run. Just don’t let anybody make any mistakes over ten seconds long.” She took her cigarette out her mouth, looked at it—it still had an inch to go—and put it back. “I’ve directed some strange radio shows before but, really, this has got to be it!”

A man came up. “Here’s your mike, Mr. Sawyers. You want to leave the wind-ball on it, Mary?”

She frowned at the sky. “It’s pretty calm, but I think I felt a breeze a minute ago. Besides, it’ll cut some of the crowd rhubarb. We’ll keep the ball.”

“Okay.”

The man in the red string tie took the mike.

The other man fell behind him, dragging lots of cable and spreading it out in big S’s.

“At least he only got two this time,” the man in the string tie said, not into the microphone. “I suppose that’s something to be thankful for.”

“You mean they found the baby?” the woman asked, looking up from her clipboard.

“Well, I guess it is three, counting the baby. No, they haven’t found it. I just hope they don’t trip over it when we’re on the air!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” The director leered around her cigarette. “I doubt Martin feels that way. It’d probably make his week.”

“You know, I really think Martin’s getting a charge out of all this. The on-the-spot was his idea.”

“Not only do you have the sweetest voice on the A.M.—” The cigarette bobbed again—“you’re even beginning to get some smarts. Go on. I’m calling One Minute.”

“On my way, Starshine.” The man in the string tie touched the microphone’s gray plastic ball to his forehead in salute, grinned, and started forward.

The producer, holding her mike in one hand, spoke down into it. Once she stopped to move her cigarette from the center of her mouth to the side, but noticed it was all ash and dropped it, ground it under the brown leather toe of a low flat, and went on whispering.

I followed the man in the string tie.

Once he adjusted his earphone and said, softly, into his mike: “Sure, Mary … ready when you are.”

The light on the police car was still turning, but as I came up beside the open windows I saw no one was inside. Someone had left the radio going. “American Pie” was playing, though not very loudly. About ten feet away, the man in the string tie began.

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