Stranglehold

Chapter 1

All roads lead to motels. A private detective told me that once, and I remembered it as I watched Susan Cooper, United States Congresswoman Susan Cooper, aim her green Volvo into the last parking slot on the west side of the Family Inn.

The date was the second of October, which meant we were about one month away from the election. As a political consultant, I divide my life up by election cycles. And I was worried that this cycle might see the end of Susan’s political career, for which my Chicago office was largely responsible.

I wore a Cubs cap and sunglasses and drove a rental car — a scruffy disguise. I’d followed her through Aldyne, the Illinois city where her family name was still formidable. Though I wasn’t handling her campaign personally — I was working on a gubernatorial campaign in Michigan — a call to me yesterday afternoon had made her reelection campaign my problem.

The motel was on the south end of the city. The noontime sunlight was welcome but not warm.

After getting out of the Volvo, Susan stood on the walk looking around, a graceful blond woman in a well-tailored navy-blue suit and conservative black heels. She had the kind of face that had been chic for thousands of years. The family fortune had allowed her to go to Smith and learn how to dress handsomely without making too fine a point of it.

She continued to look around. If she’d been in an acting class, I would have guessed that her instructor had just told her to look frightened because she sure as hell did. A man and woman emerged from a room three doors down from where she stood. She turned away from them so they wouldn’t be able to see her face. After all, this was her hometown and she was its congresswoman.

The couple headed for a once-red Dodge with a cracked windshield and a broken taillight. They carried their belongings in duffel bags. They paid no attention to her.

After their Dodge disappeared, Susan spent another minute glancing around again before making her move to the door at the end of the walk. She moved quickly now. Furtively.

I watched all this from the parking lot of a McDonald’s that flowed into the motel lot. It was lunchtime, and with all the traffic in and out she didn’t notice me.

Apparently, the investors behind the motel had decided to spend most of their money on other projects. The macadam was cracked in places; a few of the windows had tape covering cracks; and the red-brick facing was filthy. I doubted this was the kind of place Susan Cooper frequented very often.

She knocked on the door. As she waited for a response, she started looking around again. I thought she had spotted me as she surveyed the merged parking lots, but her eyes moved on past me.

Ben Weinberg was running this campaign for my firm. He’d told me that for the past few weeks Congresswoman Cooper had been disappearing twice a week and had acted nervous, even distraught, when she returned. This was damaging her campaign. She’d been in a debate three weeks ago that had made her look unprepared and irritable. Internal and external polling showed that even her admirers thought she’d done poorly and wondered if something was wrong with her.

Our opponent, a man named Steve Duffy, was outspending us two-to-one and was starting to close in on us. Susan Cooper was a distraction for me, but Weinberg had insisted that I spend a few days here trying to find out what was bothering the congresswoman even though she refused to acknowledge that anything was bothering her. Weinberg had tried following her once himself. He hadn’t been good at it. She’d figured it out after only twenty minutes or so, pulled over to the shoulder of the road, and waved him to stop. According to him, Susan had come close to firing him.

She knocked again, but this time the door swung inward. Apparently, it hadn’t been closed or locked. She went inside.

For the next ten minutes I listened to NPR. The reporter was discussing all the jobs that had been lost in the past two weeks. He raised the most frequently asked question among talking heads: Are we already in a real depression? Just today three major corporations had laid off a total of twenty-four thousand people. With statistics like that, this should be an easy win for us, but Duffy was smart, good-natured, and appealing. He believed in the holy creed his side had been pushing for more than a century, but he dispensed it with smiles. There wouldn’t be any landslides here. Victory would be close.

She came out quickly. She tried to close the door, but it appeared to be resisting. She gave it a sharp tug, but I could see that it still wasn’t closed right.

This time she didn’t look around. She walked right to her Volvo, opened the door, slid inside. She put her head to the curve of the steering wheel and stayed that way for a brief time.

The brake lights flared and she started to back out. A van from a local electric company was behind her as she hit the gas. He leaned on the horn. She slammed on her brakes. She fluttered him a wave of apology. Her head dropped down. I wondered if she was crying. Or if she was going to lay her head against the steering wheel again.

When the van passed, she backed out, this time slowly. I could almost feel her forcing herself to get control of the moment. She pointed her car to the exit and left.

There wasn’t any point in following her. Something had happened in the motel room, and I needed to know what it had been.

My instinct after so many years in army intelligence was to reach for the glove compartment, where I’d stashed my Glock. I had a license to carry in Illinois. We’d gotten some serious death threats on a campaign and packing it seemed — to quote the first of the two failed Bush presidents — prudent at the time. But that was a little too much drama for what I was planning to do.

I got out of my car and stretched. In case anybody was watching, I would look like just another weary traveler.

When I reached the door I saw that the metal frame had a small jagged piece sticking out. The rust on the edge of it showed that it had gone unrepaired. Getting in or out took some effort. I knocked. The traffic noise made it difficult to hear. I pushed my ear to the space between door and frame and knocked again. Still nothing.

I pressed the door with two fingers. It opened wide enough to let me pass through. I was pretty sure that whatever I would find inside would not make me happy.

Beer and marijuana were the dominant odors, thick enough to slice. Everything swam in muzzy darkness, the drapes closed. The TV set bolted high to the wall was on but the sound was turned off. Two arch actors performed a soap opera scene. On wire hangers in an open closet were three or four blouses and a dress. The stand between the beds was filled with used Bud cans. I walked over to them. One had a tiny roach on its top. In my day we’d eaten the roaches. Roaches were the best part of smoking weed. Or so the myth had gone, anyway.

A large old-fashioned cardboard suitcase lay on the bed, coffee colored, tan stripes on either end. The edges were worn away. They had a gnawed look, as if rats had feasted on them.

In most motel rooms there are the spirits of lust and loneliness in the corners. If you listen carefully late at night, you can hear them. They speak to you. They’d told me many things over the years about others as well as myself.

I walked over to the small desk. The surface of it was covered with a plastic-like coating. Never mind that the blond desk wasn’t worth saving. The coating had done its job. It had stopped the small pool of blood from leaking onto the floor.

In the bathroom I found traces of pink water in the white sink. In the waste can I found a balled-up motel towel. It was stained bloodred.

I went back to the bed and the suitcase. I’d been careful not to touch anything except the doorknob. I was tempted to open the suitcase. I took out my handkerchief and started to drag the case closer to me when somebody knocked on the door.

I didn’t say anything. I heard my heart in my ears. Finally, in singsong, a Latina voice said: “Cleaning rooms. You want it done now?”

A voice I didn’t own or control said: “No thanks. Later.”

“Aw right.”

I let my heartbeat slow before opening the suitcase. Inside I found a jumbled mess. I covered my hand with the handkerchief and started pulling things out to examine them. The clothes ran to two T-shirts, two sweatshirts, two pairs of jockey shorts, two pairs of socks, a pair of jeans, and then a range of toiletries from toothpaste to razor blades to pocket combs to mouthwash. There were four paperbacks, Camus and Sartre and Kerouac and William Gibson. I pictured a college student, though the owner could be older, of course. Stuck in a corner was a business card. I brought it up to my face so I could read it in the bad light. I didn’t like what I saw at all.

Larson-Davies was a group that specialized in opposition research. Detective work using not smoking .45s and bourbon but newspaper files and the Internet. They were ruthless and very good. For most of us in political work, elections are a contact sport. There are no saints in our business, just degrees of sinners. The Larson-Davies group believed in mortal combat. When their oppo people go after the background of their opponents, they rarely fail to dig up at least a modest scandal — or something that can be spun in the media as a scandal. They have helped bring down two or three senators once considered unbeatable.

Beneath the logo on the card was the name Monica Davies. Like Greg Larson, she was a former gossip columnist. She made considerably more money outing politicians than she ever made outing action heroes.

I’d learned something by coming in here, but I wasn’t sure what as yet. How did Susan Cooper tie into the blood and the shabby suitcase and the business card?

The door was difficult to close. I had to jerk it hard before I heard the lock click. I put my head down the way people do in a perp walk and headed to my rental car. The temptation was to run, but I forced myself to just move quickly. Only when I got behind the wheel did I look to see who might have seen me. The walk was empty. The cleaning cart was in front of an open door but there was no sign of the woman.

I started the car and drove away. I rolled the window halfway down. I needed the breeze to dry me off. Even the tops of my hands gleamed with sweat.

All the way back to campaign headquarters, my mind kept flashing on that splash of blood on the desk. And the bloody towel in the waste can.

Chapter 2

Earlier that morning, after an hour in the hotel gym and a light breakfast, I had driven over to the Reelect Susan Cooper headquarters in the business district of Aldyne. I’d picked up a rental car as soon as I got off the plane last night. I’d been here once before, but I wanted to spend some time seeing the downstate city of eighty thousand and I preferred to do it alone. When you’ve got a tour guide, your impressions end up being theirs as much as your own.

I was here because the man I’d put in charge of the campaign, Ben Weinberg, was having problems with his candidate. This was the only time in the eight years we’d worked together that he’d asked me for any real help. I had a sense of how unhappy Ben was when I swung the rental car behind the large one-story building that had previously been a warehouse but was now our campaign headquarters. He was leaning next to the back door and he was smoking a cigarette.

Ben had played fullback at Northwestern. He’d kept in reasonably good shape for a man who slept five hours a night, had two marriages in his past, dined mostly at McDonald’s, and had tried every possible gimmick to quit smoking. Last week he’d told me that he’d been off the smokes for five weeks and felt that this time he was going to make it. He waved at me with a burning cigarette in his fingers.

The morning was clear and bright. It was just after seven-thirty. I walked over to him and said, “You want a pep talk?”

He smiled. “Nah. Wouldn’t do any good, anyway, Dev. This thing is spooking me and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Ben is sartorially challenged. Even in the best of clothes he looks rumpled. And he looks happy about it. A big, smart man whose necktie is never cinched at the throat and whose suit coat is rarely seen. The face fits the form, a comfortable composite of kind brown eyes, a mouth quick to smile, and a nose that had been broken in a few bar fights. He’s of the old school of consultants. He’s not coiffed and polished and ready for sound bites. He started out working in school-board elections back in Winnetka. That was when he was first married and had twin daughters. Then he got involved in local politics and then state politics, and then he ended up asking me for a job. He was my most important employee. We had one major thing in common: Our obsession with the job had left us without wives. I ate at McDonald’s a lot, too.

“I appreciate you coming down, Dev.”

“I just hope I can help.”

“You had dinner with Susan that one night in Chicago. She said she really enjoyed it. Maybe she’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“Her stepmother’s no help?”

“Natalie Cooper? The Dragon Lady? Not hardly. Most of the money comes from her and she doesn’t let you forget it. She keeps threatening to fire me.”

“Yeah. Natalie said something like that to me, too. About both of us. That’s another reason I came down here. I figured things must be getting rough.”

“It’s getting a little tighter than we’d hoped, for one thing. You always said that Duffy was going to be a lot tougher than we thought he’d be. And you were right. And then with Susan...”

He flipped his cigarette into the air like a missile. We both watched it arc and then splash down on the concrete alley that ran alongside the building.

“I’ve got some coffee going,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

Just as he said that, a silver Aston Martin swung into the parking area behind the headquarters. A blond man waved at us as he pulled in and parked. I didn’t recognize him until he was out of the car and walking toward us, one of those compact, handsome men who would look good modeling expensive suits. Like the gray one he was wearing. His name was David Manning and he was Susan’s husband.

“I was on the way to the foundation and I thought I’d stop in and warn you, Ben.” He said this with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Natalie’s coming over here this morning. She wants to see the new commercials.” When he reached us, he put out his hand to me and we shook. “Good to see you again, Dev.”

Manning was one of those guys you shouldn’t like but did despite yourself. He’d known Susan in college. His looks made him popular, something that compensated for his background as the son of an alcoholic mother who’d raised him mostly on welfare. He now worked for Natalie as the head of the Cooper Foundation, the nonprofit that her late husband had established to do many, many good works. From everything we’d been able to learn about Manning, he didn’t have to work very hard. The heavy lifting was done by his staff. He was around to look good, be charming, and represent the foundation around the country. He gave good TV. He was Natalie’s paid boy, so much so that he sided with her as often as he sided with his wife. The relationship between stepmother and daughter had always been combative. Manning’s boyish blandness allowed him to calm them both down when the need arose. But he never forgot who handed him the check twice a month.

“Thanks for the warning,” Ben said.

“I shouldn’t have been so flip about it,” Manning said, apparently feeling guilty for making a joke about Natalie. “She just wants to make sure we win, Ben. That’s all.”

I was trying to concentrate on the conversation, but just then I saw a hawk riding the air and looking magnificent as hell doing it. In my days as an investigator for army intelligence I’d spent some time in the Rockies working on two different cases. I’d started to envy birds, serene and self-possessed.

I dragged myself back to the conversation. “How’s Susan?”

Manning shifted position. In terms of interrogation body language I could see that I’d made him uncomfortable. “Just very busy. And just can’t shake that cold of hers.”

“She has a cold, David? Since when?”

“Really? You haven’t heard her sniffling, Ben?”

“Oh, that. I figured she was using cocaine.”

Manning smiled. “Don’t say that around any reporters. Duffy’s trying to play up her past.”

“The polling we’ve done, her past doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Less than ten percent say it’s a concern.”

I said, “We’re having a little trouble with her, David.”

“Oh? Trouble?” And he shifted position once again.

“Ben tells me she disappears sometimes without telling anybody where to find her. And she’s lost her edge a few times in debates and interviews.” I tried not to sound confrontational. It wasn’t easy. I’d learned that Manning was good at evading direct questions.

“She’s had some problems and Natalie’s aware of them. She’ll probably ask you for a little advice about it, in fact.”

“You’re her husband, David.” This time I sounded angry and meant to.

“I’d rather let Natalie talk to you about it, Dev. And anyway—” He glanced longingly at his car, the golden chariot that would take him far from us and our questions. “Anyway, I need to get to the foundation. I hope it goes well with Natalie. Wyatt’ll be with her. He’s good at keeping her calm.” Wyatt was her husband.

He had a nervous smile for each of us and then hurried to his car. We watched him go. He even gave us a wan little wave just before he backed out.

“I can’t help it,” Ben said. “I feel sorry for him.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “That’s quite the family he married into.”

“A soap opera that doesn’t need any writers.”

“Oh, God, I’d forgotten that one.” A conservative columnist had written a piece about Natalie’s various “difficulties” with the campaign consultants she’d used on Susan’s first campaign. She’d gone through three different firms. He’d come up with the soap opera line and it was, unfortunately, a good one and a true one.

“Well, let’s go inside and I’ll rip up your innards with some coffee I made.”

I’d had plenty of Ben’s coffee in my time. He wasn’t kidding.

Chapter 3

Within half an hour the headquarters was open for business. The front part of the building was for the public and was manned by volunteers. In the rear was a long, narrow office for paid staffers. If you’ve ever worked for a newspaper you know what a campaign office is like: phones, faxes, computers; men and women who are the modern-day version of camp followers. Only in this instance they’re following campaigns. They’re political junkies who get paid for their obsessions. Both parties have them; neither party could function without them.

The modern political campaign has gone high-tech, of course, but it still serves the old masters. On any given day a campaign manager and his staff deal with a long list of jobs — fund-raising, Web sites, direct mail, grassroots organizing, yard signs, writing speeches, interpreting polling, dealing with the press, endlessly revising the candidate’s schedule, and trying to chase down any persistent rumors about the opposition, most of which turn out to be bullshit. There’s a lot of disinformation coming from both camps, disinformation meant to confuse the other camp and make them waste time trying to make sense of it. Then there are the staff wars. Some groups gather for a particular campaign function smoothly, a real team. Others are warring factions that can seriously damage a campaign or even destroy it.

In the three hours I sat at my computer in Ben’s office that morning, I saw nothing but professionals going about their jobs efficiently and cordially. This was a testament to Ben’s judgment. He’d chosen his people carefully. I checked on the other campaigns my firm was working on. There didn’t seem to be any serious problems with any of them. The only trouble was here with Susan Cooper’s sudden, mysterious loss of interest in her campaign.

I spent some time up front, too, meeting the volunteers and getting their assessment of the campaign thus far. During the day the volunteers tended to be retired women and men. A new category had recently been added — the unemployed. With the economic disaster facing the country these people divided their time between looking for work and trying to help the candidate they thought had a genuine interest in helping them improve their situation.

I was just wrapping up a phone call with one of our people who was spending the day at the state capital when somebody peeked in the office door and said, “She’s here!”

He made it sound as if we’d just been invaded. And he wasn’t far from wrong.

Chapter 4

Natalie Dowd McConnell Cooper Byrnes was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 4, 1960. Despite the fact that she remarried after the death of her second husband, Senator John Cooper, she continued to use his last name. Her family had been prominent both before and after the Civil War and had moved easily into national politics. Her great-grandfather, her grandfather, and her father had all served as senators. Natalie Dowd was so much of an elegant beauty that a famous portraitist named Ralph Hodges fell in love with her in the course of painting her for the family’s mansion wall. She’d been fifteen at the time, and Hodges forty-six. A rumor still persisted that they’d mated up. Natalie loved the attention. Not every Southern debutante found herself in the pages of People and The National Enquirer. Her father allegedly hired a man to murder Hodges but was dissuaded by his wife. Hadn’t the family reputation suffered enough already?

Natalie went to New York City, where she performed in several off-Broadway plays. This was where she met and married Randy McConnell, an actor who was plucked from the stage to play a TV action hero in a series that would run for several years. He took Natalie along with him and they were married in Los Angeles. Four years to the day after their wedding vows, McConnell broke the nose of his male costar, accusing him of sleeping with Natalie. Nothing was ever proven, but the incident did bring Natalie back into the public eye and led to many TV acting jobs. She’d worked hard with a vocal coach and lost her accent entirely. With her killer looks and competent acting skills she was able to support herself quite well when McConnell finally sued her for divorce after finding her at a party in a gazebo with another family friend. McConnell didn’t hold up well during all this. He went on three different talk shows pretty much snockered and hinted that his ex-wife was something of a tramp. Natalie’s father immediately sued him for slander.

Having grown up in a politically conservative family, it was logical that she would gravitate toward conservative functions. She was invited six times to the George H. W. Bush White House, where she used her passable voice to sing Gershwin and Porter songs. One of those times, her series coming to an end, she decided to stay in Washington for a while. She became a regular on the social scene. The men lusted after her body; the women lusted after her throat. She dated liberals and conservatives alike as long as they were powerful and not handsome enough to overshadow her when they were photographed together.

It was at one of these power parties that she met the recently widowed John Cooper. The local gossip columnists had immortalized this meeting, saying that when they first danced together people stood aside to watch them because they looked so perfect together. They were married soon enough. Though they spent most of their time in Washington, they kept their Aldyne mansion warm and cozy, hoping that his daughter, Susan, and his new wife would become friends. The two despised each other from the start and still do to this day.

A creature of Washington now, Natalie decided that she would lose some of her prestige if she was not represented by an elected family member. Her husband had died of a heart attack. Susan was going through her wild-child days. Natalie waited her out. Susan gave up drugs, drinking, and fornicating on car hoods. If this were a religious movie, you’d say she’d had a conversion of some sort. But as Susan insisted, it was just that she was sober enough for the first time in years to see what a spoiled and selfish bitch she’d become. She started working, and working seriously, in Chicago soup kitchens and inner-city hospitals. Though they rarely spoke, Natalie believed that Susan’s work with the poor had made her a formidable candidate in this election cycle. Susan resisted at first but then began to see that maybe she could play a small role in helping the kind of people she’d worked with and truly loved. She agreed to run. A Washington Post reporter noted that “payback” for the money Natalie had put into the campaign was her right to drag the new congresswoman to every important party of the season. Susan even had to pretend that she liked Natalie.

I’d learned most of this on the Internet.

I walked up front preparing myself for all the smiley faces I’d have to make. Natalie had flown to Chicago with Susan four different times when we were outlining the reelection campaign. I had a lot to drink after each meeting. She usually brought Susan’s husband, David Manning, as well as her own husband, Wyatt Byrnes. They were easy to get along with. Dealing with Natalie made the idea of keeping a cyanide tablet under your tongue sound appealing.

She stood now in the glowing autumn light slanting through the tall front windows of the headquarters. She wore a tailored gray suit. The jacket had only one button so that it would emphasize the curves of her breasts and hips. She was as sexual an animal as she’d always been. And her breasts were her own — no store-boughts for her — and if she’d had any facial surgery, it was impossible to detect. The brown eyes gleamed with the same intensity as the dark shoulder-length hair. She was Scarlett O’Hara, but in this version she got to keep the family manse. I remember waking up one morning and realizing that I’d had a fantasy about sleeping with her. A novelty: sleeping with a woman you despise. The mindless perversity of lust.

“Now, there’s a handsome man,” she said.

“How are you, Natalie?” I said.

“I didn’t sleep well last night. Worrying about the campaign. I’m sure I look it this morning.”

“She just wants a compliment. She knows she’s gorgeous.” On the other side of her, Wyatt Byrnes nodded a silent greeting to me after quick-drawing his compliment about her indisputable gorgeousness. There was something Western about him, the cut of his gray suit, the tanned good looks of a movie cowboy, and the spare manner of speaking and moving. Randolph Scott, maybe. When he watched her, as now, there was usually amusement in the brown eyes, as if he’d married a phenomenon as much as a woman. She seemed to entertain him. He didn’t seem to mind that she was still known as Natalie Cooper.

Ben walked up next to me. He had told me that Natalie had been particularly tough on him the past week. She phoned him three, sometimes four times a day with “suggestions.” Natalie’s interference was taking its toll on him.

“Ben, did you set up that editorial meeting I phoned you about?” Her voice was sharp, her gaze even sharper when she addressed him. No amenities.

“Natalie, we’ve already met with their editorial board.”

“Yes, and I told you that I listened to the tape and I wasn’t happy with what you had Susan say.”

I could feel Ben tense up. His hands were fists. Natalie had the money and thus the authority. Ben had the brains and the track record. But money trumped everything else, and he was getting that sad fact rubbed in his face right now.

“I didn’t have her say anything, Natalie. She told them what she believed.”

“Well, you’re the campaign manager. You should have told her not to say that she favored decriminalizing marijuana and that she still won’t vote for the death penalty. That radio bastard read her the murder statistics in Chicago and she still came out against it. And the station made that their lead when they endorsed Duffy, how he believed we should start executing people again in this state. All she needed to say was that she was looking at the issue again.” Then, “And where is she, by the way?” Natalie snapped, glancing around as if Ben might be hiding her somewhere.

I could see she was ready to go at Ben again, so I said, “Why don’t we look at the two new television commercials, Natalie? We have them ready to go in the office back there. I’m pretty sure you’re going to like these.”

Before she could speak, Wyatt Byrnes said, “That sounds like a fine idea, Dev. Let’s have a look at them.”

His wife didn’t look happy that he had interrupted what was probably another tirade. She frowned at him but then sighed. “These had better be much better than the last ones.”

I risked a quick smile at Ben.

Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, Natalie Cooper.

Chapter 5

Give a cable news talking head five minutes to bitch about politics today and he or she will likely mention the process consultants use to bring their wares to market. Focus groups seem to bother them especially. I’ve never understood why. A cross section of twelve people studying commercials and print ads can often point out flaws that the consultants miss. This doesn’t mean that you find every comment useful. Some of them can get pretty dumb. But most focus groups produce at least one or two insights that are worth discussing later on.

The two thirty-second spots I showed Natalie that morning had been produced, tested, reshot, and then tested again. The first focus group, which leaned toward the moderately conservative, complained that when Susan spoke about helping people, the ads sounded as if she was just another big-spending liberal. In this part of the state conservatives won three out of four elections. We retooled.

The new spots showed Susan in a factory, on a farm, in an office building, talking to people with jobs. The word “hardworking” could be heard three times per spot. We needed to make it clear that while Susan was pushing for extended unemployment benefits and help for the needy, she had a great respect for average people still working their asses off five or six days a week. Conservatives never seem to understand that people collecting unemployment have usually paid for it from payroll taxes. Or that there really are people who would die without state or federal aid.

Kristin Daly, Ben’s number two, offered Natalie and Wyatt coffee and seated them in front of a big-screen TV, a black DVD player squatting on top like a parasite that drew power from all the electricity. They both declined the coffee.

By now Ben was sweating. The fluorescents gave the gleam on his face a ceramic glaze as he inserted the DVD. I don’t sweat much. I grind my teeth instead.

Just before the commercials ran, a woman of maybe thirty came in with David Manning. Walking in front of several people seemed to be an ordeal for her. She kept her head down and walked in quick, anxious little steps. In her inexpensive beige suit she was thin and prim and out of place here in this room filled with power and anger and harsh competence. She was pretty in a shy, almost sad way. Manning introduced her to Ben, Kristin, and me as his assistant, Doris Kelly. She managed a tiny nervous smile for us. Judging by Natalie’s laser-eyed glare, I was sure she didn’t approve of the Kelly woman. Wyatt Byrnes gave her a little salute. Natalie did not look pleased. Byrnes was so cordial most of the time it was difficult to imagine him in a boardroom of business thieves and pirates.

Ben, Kristin, and I didn’t watch the commercials. We studied Natalie’s face. Being an actress, she knew how to conceal her feelings. When the second spot ended and the screen went black she sat back in her chair as if giving the new commercials thoughtful consideration. Then she said, tossing it off, “Well, that’s an improvement anyway.”

Like most slave owners, Natalie had learned that giving real praise only encouraged laziness among the creatures who did your bidding. I had never heard her give anybody in my firm an honest compliment.

“Much better, I think, Natalie.” Byrnes gave me a nod and a hollow smile.

Manning said, “I think you folks nailed it this time.”

Doris Kelly offered no opinion. She was no doubt afraid to.

If Natalie hadn’t given her reluctant approval of the commercials, Byrnes and Manning would either have said nothing or expressed mild disappointment. They’d been trained to wait for Natalie to tell them what their opinion was.

She looked at me. “I want another shot at that Gil Hawkins radio show. Ben doesn’t think it’s important, but I do. I want her to go back on there and tell that man’s audience that she’ll at least reconsider reinstituting capital punishment in this state. Obviously she can’t vote in the state legislature, but she needs to make herself clear that she might vote for it if she could. And I’ve been thinking about the marijuana thing. What she should’ve said was that we might be forced to legalize certain small amounts of marijuana because the police are so overworked that they should be concentrating on more serious crimes.”

Manning’s eyes showed tension, Doris Kelly’s misery, and Byrnes’s a hint of amusement. He was like the little kid you knew in second grade who wanted to see what would happen when you rode your bike off the roof of the garage.

“We can try to get her back on the show,” Kristin said. “But first of all I wonder if it’s a good place for us. You have a hostile host and pretty much of a Limbaugh audience. I don’t think we’re going to make a hell of a lot of converts there.”

“He’s got the best afternoon numbers of anybody in the state. Or don’t you people read radio ratings?” She turned her angry voice on Ben. “I expected you to prepare her better. But as usual you let me down.”

I knew he wasn’t going to put up with it anymore. I shut up and let him talk. The way he was hunched over, you could see he was thinking of throwing a punch. Not at her but maybe at the wall. And the way his breath was seething forth from his nostrils made me think of an animal waiting to charge. But he knew the game, and he’d been slapped around by the best and the worst of them, as had most of us, so he managed to sound almost civil when he spoke. “Natalie, the night before the interview I took Susan out to dinner. And for one solid hour that’s all we talked about. The show. And how she should handle herself. And what she should say when one of his fascists called in and accused her of being a communist or a whore from her old days. I even had a list of likely topics for her. And we went over them one by one. Capital punishment and legalized marijuana were right up there with taxes and war. I gave her my suggestions on how she should talk about them. Just kind of shave them a little bit so that he wouldn’t jump on her. But she said, and I quote, ‘Fuck him. These are two things I really believe in and I’m not going to kiss his ass.’ I went with her to the studio and on the drive over we went down the list again. I suggested one more time that maybe we could go easy on these two particular subjects, but she went through the ‘Fuck him’ routine again. Now, if you want to take it up with your stepdaughter, that’s fine with me. But I’d appreciate it if you’d quit telling me that I’m not doing my job.”

Most people would have apologized, said, “Hey, I didn’t know any of this and I’m sorry I jumped on your back.” But this was Natalie Cooper.

“You’re paid to handle her.”

“Not manhandle her, I’m not.”

Byrnes said gently, “Come on, Natalie. They’re serving panfried trout at the club this afternoon.” He smiled at Ben.

Natalie stood up. I made the mistake of thinking it was over. But Natalie frequently had a surprise ready. She took two steps toward Doris Kelly, hovered over the small woman where she sat, and said, “I’m not quite sure what you’re doing here, Doris.”

There was no way Doris was going to defend herself, so Manning, getting awkwardly to his feet said, “I invited her, Natalie. We handle a lot of things at the foundation for your campaign. I thought she might like to visit the headquarters here and see how things are done.”

“I’m more interested in her seeing how things are done at the foundation, David. She’s not exactly the best secretary you’ve ever had.”

A noise that might have been a sob caught in Doris’s throat. She looked as if she’d just been stabbed — and in a way, she had.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Doris,” Natalie said. “I didn’t mean for you to get all upset. I’ve already talked to you about being a little more outgoing. You’re not only David’s secretary, you’re also the receptionist. Your secretarial work is satisfactory, but you need to work on greeting people. You’re so damned shy. Now, don’t make a big production out of this. You’ll just look like a fool.”

Then she was gone.

Chapter 6

Susan Cooper stood in the doorway as if she wasn’t sure she should come in. “Hello, everybody. Sorry I missed the morning meeting.”

The only person who spoke to her was Ben. “You look like you’re scared to come in. C’mon, for God’s sake.”

As she entered, her gaze swept the office and the eight people working at their desks. “I’m sure you’re pissed off at me, so let me apologize for being late. But the important thing is, I’m ready now for anything we need to do.”

As lovely and stylish as she was — and despite the fact that she was the client — she didn’t have the authority Natalie did.

She tossed smiles like flowers until her eyes settled on me. The gray gaze narrowed and the smile pursed. She wasn’t happy to see me because my presence told her that Ben had sent for me because he was having problems with her.

“Hi there, Dev.”

“Morning, Susan.”

“I’m sort of surprised you’re here. I mean, I thought you were working on the Michigan campaign.” Her look strayed to Ben as she spoke. There was a tone of accusation in her voice now.

“Michigan’s going fine. I like to drop in on our campaigns and see how things are going. You know, firsthand, one-hundred-thousand-mile checkup.”

“Well,” she said as she walked across to the coffeepot, her long legs perfect in shape and tone. Her ankles could break your heart. “I read the internals every day.” She poured herself a cup, then turned around and faced me. “It’s tightening up a little, but we expected that.” Then, “By the way, Peter — you know, my stepbrother — he’s very unhappy that you’re not using any of the speeches he’s writing.”

“He’s a terrible writer, Susan, you know that.”

“Oh, I forgot. You two had a little disagreement about that.”

Peter Cooper was a failed politician. He’d run for Congress in this district but lost. He was terrible on the stump and worse on TV — nervous, irritable. He resented the fact that Natalie browbeat Susan into running for the same seat years later. She’d won and he hated her for it. His job was running her constituent services office and he was damned good at it. Every once in a while he’d write speeches and send them to Ben. He got pissed that Ben bounced them all, so he started bombarding me with them. We’d had sharp words.

“I’ll talk to him about it,” Kristin said. “It’s my turn.”

Susan frowned at me. “You didn’t look as if you agreed when I said things were tightening up but that we were doing all right.”

“He’s coming on strong, Susan,” I said, “very strong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her words were sharp enough to get everybody’s attention. Now they were all watching us, her leaning against the coffee bar, me sitting on the desk chair I’d just turned around to face her. This was better than TV. The boss and the client getting into it.

I walked over next to her so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. As I refilled my cup I said, “It means just what I said, that he’s coming on strong. Which means we have to come on strong.”

We were having two conversations, the one everyone could hear and the unspoken one, the latter being about her not staying focused, not fighting hard enough.

“His side has a lot more registered voters than ours does, Susan. And we have to remember that.”

She turned that chic face on the staffers and said, “I appreciate all you’re doing for me. I’ve had some personal things I’ve had to attend to. But they’re being handled now, and I promise you I’m going to start kicking ass again.”

A few of them laughed. She was a hard worker and a no-bullshit boss. She didn’t play any games and she was generous with her people. We knew this because we always talk with the client’s staffers to get some kind of fix on who we’ll be working with. Some clients resent this. Susan was happy we were doing it.

“And to prove it I’m going to humiliate Steve Duffy in the next debate. I was too nice the last time. This time I’m going to slap that frat-boy smirk off his face.”

I was smiling with the rest of them. Ben high-fived me. Susan had good instincts. She knew why I was here, and she was going to shut me down fast so that I’d hop on that plane and head back to Chicago. “Could I see the internals, Ben?”

Then it was back to work. I finished up my e-mailing while Susan and Ben went over our own tracking polls. These polls weren’t as simple as how many points we were up and down. They detailed how we were doing with various groups broken down by income, education, ethnicity, religion, and address. I’d looked them over a half hour ago. I was still unhappy with the blue-collar vote. Though we were nine points ahead of Duffy right now, in economic times like these we should have been hitting fourteen, fifteen points ahead. But Duffy’s days as a sportscaster — and not a loudmouth, either; a good, solid pro who knew what he was talking about — gave him an edge with males across the board.

After going over the internals, Susan and Ben talked about the scheduled radio interview she’d be doing this afternoon. This interview would be different from the one she had done with Gil Hawkins. He hated her politics and had done everything he could to make her look bad. Don Stern was a real reporter. His questions this afternoon would be tough but fair.

Like most politicians, running for reelection meant stealing days from her duties in Washington. Generally she’d fly home for weekends and the weekends were packed with speeches, events, interviews. For example, when she finished with the radio interview, she’d be attending a women’s business conference. She was the keynote speaker at this conference, which started on a Friday afternoon. It was a regional gathering of successful businesswomen. Duffy would be speaking tomorrow. There would be a lot of press. We needed to make a good showing.

“A friend of mine is in the hospital here, Ben. I want to run over there and spend an hour with her if I can. The interview isn’t till one, so I’ll have plenty of time to just meet you at the radio station.”

“I was hoping we’d have lunch together and go over a few more things, Susan.”

“There’ll be plenty of time for that tonight.” A studied laugh. “Don’t worry, Ben. I’m not going to wander off again.”

“Think I’ll head down the hall,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

When I left, Susan was still trying to reassure Ben that he could trust her again. They were so busy talking that they didn’t notice that I’d grabbed my topcoat on my supposed trip to the men’s room. I went out the back door, slid under the wheel, and backed a quarter of the way down the alley. There was a narrow spot in front of a loading dock where I could hide. Susan didn’t know what my rental looked like, and as far as she was concerned, I’d just made a trip to the john, nothing more suspicious.

She didn’t emerge for another fifteen minutes. She’d probably spent the time showing off the shiny, fine, trustworthy Susan to the staffers. She hesitated before opening the door of her new green Volvo. She took a deep breath. Her blond hair gleamed in the sunlight. Then she eased herself into the car and left the parking lot. I gave her a half-block head start. I’d done a fair share of tailing in my army intelligence days. I hoped I hadn’t lost the touch.

At the time I had no idea where she’d be leading me. My first shock was seeing the shabbiness of the motel. The second was seeing her rush from the room as if she’d witnessed something terrible. The third was going into the room myself and finding the bloody towel in the bathroom.

The new, improved, trustworthy Susan wasn’t any of these things at all.

Chapter 7

On the way back from following Susan, I called Ben on my cell and asked him if he’d seen anybody from the Larson-Davies oppo research group in town here.

“Oh, yeah. Monica and Greg Larson himself. The Chronicle is doing profiles of state political people who went on to become national. Since Monica and Larson are working for Duffy, the Chronicle had them come here for photos, you know, his hometown and all. Why, you thinking of asking her out again?”

“Don’t remind me.”

Several years earlier, in a zombie state following my divorce, I ended up in the arms, if not the bed, of Monica Davies. We missed the bed part because we were both so drunk we passed out on her hotel room couch. Just before we were to stagger into bed she brought out a joint the size of a finger and it made us both comatose within ten minutes. This had been in Vegas at a convention for political soldiers. Hard to say who was more disgusted — me for betraying my side or her for betraying hers. The few times we’d met since then we’d been resolutely cold.

“Any particular reason you’re asking?”

I could have told him about her business card being in the cheap suitcase I’d found in the motel room, but I decided against it for now. “Somebody said they thought they saw her in a restaurant here. I was just curious.”

“Yeah, in fact I ran into Larson the other night at a bar where the local reporters drink. He was telling them all his war stories and they were eating it up. According to him, everybody on our side is a traitor, a terrorist, and a sexual deviant who would put de Sade to shame.”

“Good old Greg.”

“Hey, are you insinuating he’d lie?”

“Of course not. Not our Greg.”

The only hotel in town with four stars was where I happened to be staying, the Commodore. If they were in town it was likely they were staying there also. I could double up lunch with finding out if they were under the same roof.

For lunch I had a BLT and a glass of ginger ale and then I went looking for them. Detective work should always be this easy. She was in room 608 and he was in room 624.

I stepped off the elevator to find a bellhop leaning against the wall talking fast into a cell phone. He looked and sounded agitated. I’d spent a year reading Jim Thompson novels set in hotels that were actually concentration camps of sorts. This guy looked like he’d fit in there.

He dropped his voice when he saw me emerge but not so low that I couldn’t hear him: “So I made a mistake. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?” He clicked off, stuffed the phone in the pocket of his gray-trimmed blue uniform. He was in his thirties, chunky, balding. He had one of those put-upon faces that not even a smile would light up. “Help you with something?” he said.

“Just looking for room 608.”

“Right down here, sir.” He pointed to his left. The corridor was carpeted in dark brown to complement the tan walls and brown trim. The wide window at the end of the corridor gleamed with thin autumn sunlight. He walked down to the room and stood beside it like somebody in a print ad pointing out a product.

I knocked. He started walking back toward the elevator. I knocked again. This time of day the sixth floor was quiet except for elevator doors opening and closing. I knew nobody was going to be answering here. I saw the bellhop starting to get on the car and I said: “Could I talk to you a minute?”

He turned around and shrugged. “Sure.”

“The woman in room 608. Do you know who I mean?”

“The Davies woman.”

“Have you seen her around today?”

He bit the inside of his lip and looked past me. His mind was still on the phone. “Today? I don’t think so.”

“I need to talk to her about something. I’ve had a hard time reaching her.”

He was suspicious. “So you know her, you mean?”

“We work for the same company. I was supposed to meet her for lunch. I just got in about three hours ago. But she didn’t show up.”

“Oh.”

“One of our men might have been around here, too. Did she have any visitors that you know of?”

“You mean Mr. Larson? He’s staying right down the hall. He sees her two, three times a day.”

“Anybody else ever see her?”

He just stared at me and said, “Did I mention that Mr. Larson is a good tipper? You must know him. She told me that he’s her partner in some kind of political firm.”

I reached for my wallet. I gave him a ten.

“You kidding, man? You know the kind of shit this place would give me for even talking to you about stuff like this?”

I gave him a second ten.

He stuffed the bills into the same pocket the cell phone rode in and said, “One guy. Big redheaded guy. Expensive suit. Gold watch. But there was something rough about him. You’ve seen guys like him. No matter how well they dress they still come across as rough.”

“How many times have you seen him?”

“At least three times in the past two days. Last time they had a real argument. Bad enough that somebody called down to the desk about it. I came up. He was in the doorway when I got here. He was still arguing, but when he saw me he left right away. Damned near knocked me down getting out of here. She was standing there looking really pissed at him. She slammed the door in my face.”

“You ever hear her call him by name?”

“Oh, yeah, she called him a name all right. A couple of them. ‘Piece of shit’ and ‘bastard.’ Once she even got him with ‘motherfucker.’ ”

“So no ID on him at all?”

“No.”

I took out my card and gave it to him. I scribbled the number of my cell phone on it. “There’s another twenty in it for you if you call me when you see her next time. Call me right away.”

“So you work with her, huh?” He smirked. “The hell you do.”

“All right, thirty if you call me.”

“I’m working through the dinner shift tonight. I need to buy my lady a nice gift. I had a little fun with one of the girls who work in the kitchen and she took it serious. Called the apartment for me where I live with my lady. I’ve been trying to tell her it didn’t mean anything — my lady, I mean. You know, a little nookie on the side? She’s making a big thing out of it.” He grinned. Not smiled, grinned. He was presenting himself as a man of the world and happy with his self-image. The nudge as ass-bandit.

“That’s a tough act to sell. That it didn’t mean anything.” I was thinking of my own ruined marriage. It had meant something to my wife when I’d betrayed her and it had meant something to me when she’d betrayed me.

“She’ll come around. Especially if I can hit you up for ten more right here.”

“Yeah, and what’s that going to get me?”

“I could always forget to call you when Ms. Davies shows up.”

There were at least three radios going in headquarters when I got there. Small groups had gathered around each. A few of the more ardent listeners were using their bodies as well as their mouths to show support. They’d bob and weave like fighters when the host asked something they didn’t like and they’d victory-jab their arms in the air when Susan scored a particularly telling point. But the on-air atmosphere was friendly. Don Stern’s questions were on point but not malicious. Unlike radio assassin Gil Hawkins, who’d done everything he could to humiliate Susan, Stern genuinely wanted to know where she stood on issues and how she felt about her two terms in Congress.

I stayed for ten minutes. The questions I heard dealt with the economy. Jobs and mortgages. Susan was prepared, smooth, and confident. I admired her ability to put aside what had happened in the motel room earlier.

Ben and Kristin had their own radio going in the office. I slid into a chair and listened.

The rest of the ninety minutes went well, too. A few of the callers were harsh. They were obviously for the other side. But she handled them easily and with humor whenever that seemed appropriate. Even more impressive, she was a human computer when it came to facts and figures and the intricacies of Washington. Stern complimented her a few times for her grasp of subjects. Our opponent was good on his feet, too, but not as good as Susan Cooper.

Toward the end of the show Kristin started talking about this new cocktail dress she was going to wear tonight to the fund-raiser downtown. Kristin was a vivid redhead of thirty. I’d hired her because of her background in planning events for large hotels. Political events can unravel if they’re not planned well and overseen with steely diligence. You’re always up against places that don’t care about your client the way you do. Right now Kristin was prom-night excited. All Ben had to say was: “I hope there are some single women there. It’s been a long time for me.”

“Gee, that’s a good approach,” Kristin laughed. “Be sure to mention you haven’t had sex for a couple of years.”

“See the kind of bullshit I have to put up with?”

Kristin smiled at me.

“Well, I guess I’d have to agree with Kristin on that one. I wouldn’t mention that you haven’t been with a woman until you’re at least on your fourth drink.”

“Or sixth,” Kristin said. “You know, when she can barely hear anything anyway.”

I stayed around to go over some fresh internal polling. Ben was disappointed we’d only gained back 1.5 percent of the previous internal dealing with blue-collar voters in the northernmost edge of our voting district. Kristin thought we were trending up and should be happy. Then Ben wanted to talk about bringing a senator into the district to campaign with Susan. He was hoping for a man I respected but who was given to saying the wrong thing at key moments. You had to exorcise him before you put him up on the platform or the demons would take him over. We decided to ask a safer if slightly dull choice who had a good relationship with unions. He had never been known to make a joke about his opponent’s rather large nose.

When I got to the door, I said, “I may see you tonight. Right now I need to do a couple of things.”

I spent ten minutes up front with the volunteers, getting their read on the day. Everybody was still high-fiving. And hugging. And beaming. Susan had done very well indeed. I did a bit of acting, slapping hands and backs with a few of them I knew. And then I was outside in the melancholy autumn dusk that was a perfect match for my mood.

Chapter 8

I pulled up in my former spot at the Family Inn. A couple was unloading an SUV. A baby sat in her car seat crying. The couple took turns trying to calm her down as they trekked back and forth to their room. The door I wanted was four slots away. I knocked, waited. The lights of tall buildings and towers pierced the gray haze covering the half-moon. The McDonald’s across the way was crowded. The drive-through had two long lines going. The baby continued to wail. I knocked again.

The door opened about an inch. She had to jerk it open because of the swollen frame. “Who is it?” A female voice, young.

“My name is Dev Conrad. I’d like to talk to you if I could.”

“I’m not supposed to talk to anybody. Please just go away.” Her fear made her sound even younger.

The door started to close. I risked shoving my hand between it and the frame. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t slam it on my fingers.

“Maybe I can help you.”

“Please. Don’t get me in trouble. We don’t need any more trouble.”

“I was in this room earlier. I saw the blood.”

From inside I heard the sound of a TV newscast turned low. At the far end of the lot a pickup truck blaring country music pulled in. “Are you alone in there?”

After a pause: “Yes.”

“You’d feel better if you had somebody to talk to.”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“Somebody who wants to help you. And maybe you can help me.”

“I’m not sure—” Then: “Oh, God.”

She rushed off making sounds that I remembered from early in my marriage. My wife was sick a lot during her pregnancy with our daughter. We used to joke that she should just take up residence in the bathroom. I couldn’t be sure that this woman was going through the same thing, but that was my first impression.

She hadn’t bothered to close the door. I gave the door a shove and walked in. I flipped on the light switch. The bulb was dim, the light itself dirty yellow.

The cheap suitcase was still on the same bed. The other bed was messy from sleep. The first thing I did was go over to the desk. The cleaning had been crude but had gotten rid of most of the blood if you didn’t look closely. There was a residue of cleaning solution on the desktop now. Amateur job. The cleaning woman would have had a more formidable solvent and she wouldn’t have left traces of her work.

The vomiting started behind the closed bathroom door. I went over and sat down on the desk chair. On the screen starving children in Africa looked out at me in confusion and despair. When I took over the world I was going to kick a lot of ass. A whole lot.

Water ran in the sink. An electric toothbrush clicked on. When the nagging motor of the toothbrush clicked off she started to gargle.

When she emerged from the bathroom she looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, one of those waifs who is often painted with butterflies and rainbows all around them, out of a Victorian children’s story. She was lovely in a pale anxious way. It was the kind of sorrowful appeal that brought out the protectiveness in men. Doubly so in her case because in addition to her jeans she wore a light-blue maternity smock.

“That’s the only part of it I really hate. Barfing all the time. It makes me feel guilty, though. I shouldn’t complain about it. We’re actually going to have a baby this time. The last one — we lost it at four months.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, so were we.” Then: “You really shouldn’t be here. You’d better leave.”

“Who cleaned up the blood?”

“I did. But I didn’t do a very good job, did I? I was really sick the last few hours.”

“Whose blood was it?”

She walked over to the mussed bed and sat on the front edge of it. She put tiny frail hands together and placed them in her lap. She had a pink barrette in her long golden hair. It only emphasized the impression of her being very young. But now that I saw her more closely I saw a spent quality to her mouth and eyes that suggested she was probably in her early twenties. She looked at me and said, “I would really appreciate it if you’d leave. Bobby has everything under control now, so there’s nothing you need to know anyway.”

“That easy, huh? Bobby taking care of it?”

“Don’t make fun of Bobby. I love him. He’s a good husband.”

“I’m not making fun of him, but if he’s taken care of it, why are you so upset?”

She raised her head, taking the dusty air of the room deep into her lungs. When she fixed on me again she said, “This man came and—” She stopped talking and pressed her splayed fingers across her belly. “That’s how I lost the first baby. I’m sure it is. All the stress we were going through. I don’t want to lose this one.”

“I want to help you. I don’t like to see you like this.”

“People are always saying bad things about Bobby. They don’t understand that he’s a good person.”

She started to cry. Put one of those fragile hands to her face and wept. She kept the other hand on her belly, as if to reassure the infant inside.

I went over and sat next to her on the bed and put my arm around her. She didn’t resist. I’d done this a few times with my own daughter, especially in her teen years. She leaned against me. “It’s just so hard sometimes. And sometimes I think it’ll never be any easier.”

“You have to tell me what you’re talking about.”

“But if I do, he’ll think I’m betraying him. He always says that about people. And he’s right. But I don’t have anybody else to talk to about it. I’m just cooped up here all the time.”

“You can talk to me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“You said you need to talk to somebody. I’m trying to be your friend.”

She dragged the palms of her hands down her gleaming face and snuffled up her tears. “Oh, God. You really should leave.”

I waited a minute before I spoke. She had put her hands on the horizon of her belly and was staring at the wall.

“You’re in trouble. Maybe I can help you.”

The sigh was ragged. “It’s just everything he tries — it never comes out right.”

“What never comes out right?”

She raised her head. “I just feel so sorry for him. And for our baby.”

“You’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

“Oh, damn,” she said. And started staring at the wall again. And then she said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll feel better if I talk about it.” When our eyes met this time she said, “Why did you come here?”

“I followed a woman here.”

“A woman?”

“Her name is Susan Cooper.”

“You know her?”

“Yes. Do you?”

She looked away. “It all looked like it was going to work out for a while. This band he was in got a good gig in Vegas, but then they dumped him. He’d been their lead singer for two years. Went behind his back and got somebody else.”

If this had been a puzzle you’d have realized that she’d just contributed at least two major pieces. And a picture was beginning to emerge. Bobby was a musician and she’d hinted that while there’d been trouble they hadn’t had anything to do with it. Giving a picture of the kind of people they knew. The kind whose visits left blood behind.

“Was he hurt today?”

She pulled her head back so she could see me. “Hurt?”

“The blood. Was that your husband’s?”

She shook her head. “No, no. Bobby can take care of himself. It was—” A deep sigh. She smelled of tears and shampoo. “I really can’t say anymore.”

He was there then. He managed to slam the door back against the wall in what seemed a second. And then he was charging me with a fist ready to smash me in the face.

I got my elbow in front of my face to block his punch, rising to my feet as he attacked. He was a few inches shorter than my six-two and on the slim side. But the arms at the end of his T-shirt sleeves were muscular and he knew how to fight. He stepped to the side of me, forcing me to turn and throw myself off balance in the process. He managed to hit me hard just below my cheekbone. But he made the mistake of hurrying in to follow up, and I was able to smack him with a blunt right hand to stun him. I cut his lip. He fell back against the desk.

“Stop it, Bobby!” she shrieked. “Do you know that our baby can hear everything that’s going on? Do you want to lose this one, too?”

Her words had a powerful and immediate effect on him. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Gwen. I’m sorry.” His words were troubled by what I’d done to his lip. His arms dropped to his sides. Then he ran a hand through his dark curly hair.

I walked to the door and closed it from inside. My head hurt from where he’d hit me. I was glad we weren’t throwing punches any longer.

I came back and said, “We need to talk.”

He wiped the blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. “Who is this jerk, Gwen?”

“I’m not sure, Bobby. But he didn’t hurt me. He was nice.”

“Nice. Right.” To me: “You know, I could call the cops and get you in a lot of trouble.” He had a spiky beard that gave his handsome features a diabolical look. That was the whole idea. He was a standard-issue rock star type. The losers looked about the same as the winners. But the winners wouldn’t have to stay in motels like this one.

“Go ahead and call them. You want to use my cell phone?”

“You trying to be funny?”

“Bobby, calm down. This isn’t good for me. Or the baby.”

He made dramatic futile gestures with his hands and turned to face the wall. He pressed his forehead against it and stayed that way for a full minute. I glanced at Gwen. She just shook her head.

“Something happened here this morning, Bobby,” I said. “I’m trying to find out what.”

He came off the wall and said, “Nothing happened here.”

“There was a lot of blood on the desk. Somebody got hurt.”

“How the hell did you know that?”

“I came in here and saw it.”

“Yeah? How’d you get in?”

“The door was ajar. I walked in.”

He shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and then closed his eyes and lifted his head to the ceiling. I recognized the move. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Nice to know that Bobby’s generation was still honoring him. “This is really bullshit.”

“Maybe we should tell him, Bobby—”

“No!” He dropped the pose and crossed to Gwen. “Honey, we don’t know who this jerk is. Or why he’s so interested in everything. You want to see me go to prison?”

“Oh, God, Bobby, don’t even say that.”

“Then don’t say we should tell him anything.”

Right now I was invisible to them.

Bobby got down on his haunches and put his head on her lap. She stroked it the way she would a child’s. Her eyes glistened with tears. Bobby spoke, the words muffled: “You have to stay with me on this, Gwennie. Otherwise I’m going to be in real trouble.”

It might have been an act. Hard to say. Maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought and was using his wife as his mommy. Or maybe he had to keep her on his side and this moment of fear and sadness was his way of ensuring her loyalty.

He stood up and pulled down his T-shirt and hitched up his jeans. “Pack everything, honey. I’ve already checked us out.”

“Checked us out? Where are we going? I don’t want to leave, Bobby.” Obviously this grim room had become a kind of home to her. The prospect of leaving it scared her.

“A nicer place, honey. Much nicer.”

“But we don’t have the money.”

“What did I say about not talking in front of him? I’ll explain all this later. My suitcase is ready to go. You just get your stuff ready.”

He turned to me. “So that’s it, man. We’re leaving and I don’t want to see you following us.”

“How’re you going to stop me?”

“I could always shoot out your tires.”

“God, Bobby, stop talking like that. And you’d better not have a gun. You promised you wouldn’t get one, remember?”

To me he said, “Get out of here. Now.”

Gwen sat with her hands on the swell of her belly. She was crying again, silently.

I took out one of my cards and wrote my cell phone number on the back. I walked over to her and dropped it in her lap.

“What the hell you think you’re doing?”

“I’m letting her know how to get in touch with me.”

“Let me see that.” He reached down to grab it, but I got his wrist before he could pick it up.

“This is between your wife and me. She needs a friend.” To Gwen I said: “If he tears the card up, just remember the name of my business. They’ll put you in touch with me. That number is answered twenty-four hours a day. Same with my cell phone.”

I let go of him. He didn’t face me for a while. I think he was more embarrassed than hurt. I had made him look weak in front of his wife. I wouldn’t have appreciated that, either.

“Oh, God, Bobby, this is not going the way you said it would.”

“Just shut up. And I mean right now.” Then he walked to her and kissed her on top of the head. “It’ll be all right, Gwen. We just have to stay cool is all.”

“Remember, Gwen. Night or day, I’m ready to help you.”

“You always sniff around other men’s wives?” Bobby said.

“Just when they have husbands like you.”

When I reached the door I looked back at them. She was weeping again. He sat down next to her and took her to him. They’d changed roles. Now he was the adult and she was the child. He kept stroking her head and kissing her on the side of her face. He was like most of us, a person of parts, in his case a violent punk capable of great tenderness.

Chapter 9

This was probably as close to the Hollywood style of red carpet as a small Midwestern city was going to get. The guests at the fund-raiser were dressed in evening clothes, and as they trekked across the lobby to the ballroom door a variety of digital cameras and video cams noted their appearance. They carried themselves with an air of prosperity and importance. The men favored dinner jackets, and the women cocktail dresses. There were gorgeous women of several ages, from the young to the elderly. This wasn’t the faction of our party where you would find schoolteachers and union members. These were the people with money and they were vital to Susan Cooper’s campaign.

The ballroom had been decorated with a diamond-flashing disco ball in the ceiling like God’s eye overseeing the foolishness of the mortals beneath. The tables with their brilliant white tablecloths looked like large lilies. On stage was a local band called Black Velvet Elvis. Right now they were doing some very fine Chuck Berry. The singer was tall, lean, rock-star handsome, and his bass guitarist was a very young, pretty girl who even from here resembled him. Later I got a glimpse of the drummer. Very young but the same resemblance to singer and guitarist. A family affair? Even though few people had been seated, four or five couples were already on the dance floor going at it.

On the right corner of the stage was a rostrum. Susan would be introduced from here and would give a brief speech. An enormous black-and-white photograph of her formed the backdrop.

The only person I recognized was Peter Cooper. He was obviously still pissed because I didn’t use his speeches. He gave me one of those reluctant little waves you give the man who’s about to dump offal on your lawn and then scooted in the direction of the bar.

I didn’t see any of my people. I wondered why they were late. I was just about ready to call them when I saw Ben hurry into the lobby. He washed a hand across his face. He was sweating. He looked around anxiously. When he saw me he took a deep breath and hurried over.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. After I’ve had three or four drinks I will be, anyway.”

I pulled him into the cloakroom. There would be reporters roaming the ballroom tonight. The program itself wouldn’t be much in the way of a story, but given the number of drinks that would be drunk tonight, a loose tongue just might give them a piece of gossip worthy of a lead story. I kept my voice low. “What happened?”

Ben wiped his face with his handkerchief. He needed to pull himself together. “There was this guy.” He shook his head. “I was talking to Susan, going over this list of people she had to make time for tonight. The heavy rollers. There was a knock on the office door and I went to it and there was this guy standing there. Susan had her back to me. She was studying the list. But when she turned around — I don’t know how to describe it. I thought she was in shock or something. She just stared at him. And then he smiled at her. He scared her and he was enjoying it. All he said was, ‘I’ll talk to you later, babe.’ Babe. I couldn’t believe it. Who the hell calls Susan ‘babe’?”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he left. Just like that.”

“What was Susan doing?”

“Sitting down. She just went over to the green armchair and sort of collapsed into it. I asked her if she was all right and she said yes, but I could tell she wasn’t. She looked miserable — and scared. Then Kristin came back and she had notes she wanted to go over with Susan, so they got to work. It took a few minutes for Susan to be able to focus. But finally she got herself together as she worked with Kristin and then she finished up with me.”

“And that was it?”

“I wish. I told her I’d drive us to the hotel here. So we go outside — by this time it’s pretty much dark — and as we’re walking across the parking lot, there he is again.”

“Same guy who knocked on the door?”

“Right. He just walks out of nowhere and stands in front of us. He doesn’t look at me at all. Just stares at Susan. And then he says: ‘I need a couple of minutes with you, Susan. Alone.’ All she says is that she’s in a hurry. She was lucky to even say that. I could tell she was in shock again. She grabbed my arm and damned near broke it, she was squeezing so hard. I told him to get out of our way and started for him. Then he said: ‘Tell him about me, Susan. Tell him what I do to people.’ Then she kind of came out of it. Out of the shock, I mean. She said, ‘Ben, wait in the car, would you please?’ I started to say hell no I wouldn’t, but she shook her head and said that she’d be all right. She said, ‘This is something personal, Ben. And I need to handle it.’ So what could I do? I went over and got in my car. I kept watching them. I wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt her, physically, I mean. He’s a scary bastard.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Big, redheaded guy. Good-looking, I’ll give him that. But he’s rough. Everything about him is rough.”

I thought of the bellhop’s description of the man who’d visited Monica Davies. This was the same man who’d visited Susan in the campaign office and who had accosted her in the parking lot.

“What did she say when she got in the car?”

“Quote: ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It’s personal, Ben, and I ask you to respect that.’ Unquote.”

A man came to the doorway and helped his wife out of her evening coat, ending my conversation with Ben. We all smiled at each other the way people do in commercials. Ben and I went back to the lobby, where we saw a small woman with a TV camera mounted on her shoulder and a sterile blond reporter interviewing an attractive older woman standing next to her attractive older husband. He seemed pleased that his wife would be on TV.

We went back into the ballroom. The tables were filling up. Black Velvet Elvis was doing a very nice arrangement of two Ricky Nelson songs. The front man could really sing.

Because this was Ben’s territory he started table-hopping. He’d come to know the important people in district politics and he had to pay them their due. More TV toothpaste smiles.

I was just about to go over and get myself a glass of pop from the bar when somebody stumbled into me from behind. I turned to find Kristin there.

“Sorry, Dev. I tripped. I’m so upset I’m crazy.” Her blue eyes were frantic. She nodded to the lobby. “We need to talk.”

There were two more reporters in the lobby. Local TV. They were interviewing anybody they could grab because most of the attendees were hurrying inside. The formal ceremonies would start in less than ten minutes.

We found a shadowy corner next to a darkened gift shop.

“They have a little dressing room backstage. She’s in there and she won’t come out. She keeps telling me to go away.”

So much for Susan’s ability to stay focused no matter what was going on around her.

“Any chance she’ll come out in a few minutes?”

“I asked her that three times now. She won’t answer. She just says to go away. And I have to pretty much whisper when I talk to her. There are a lot of people around backstage. They’ll pick up on everything if I talk any louder. And there’s press here. They’ll love this.”

“How do we get backstage?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you. I know a way without going through the ballroom.”

The kitchen resembled a war zone. Shouting, bellowing. Men and women in various uniforms cooking, carrying trays, filling glasses, opening ovens, preparing salads, sampling soups, the enemy being a collective appetite that had to be fed and satisfied.

A door in the far wall led to three steps that ended on the cusp of backstage. Black Velvet Elvis was just starting on a Fats Domino song in front of the curtain. I looked for press. The only people I saw had big plastic badges strung over their necks. They were with the campaign. But even so they weren’t paid staff. I didn’t trust them.

There were stand-up microphones, flats, long tables, chairs. Probably most of the business here would be conventions and conferences.

I said hello to a number of people as we walked slowly toward two doors near the back. One door read Stage Crew and the other said Private. Kristin knocked on the latter one. It was one of those apologetic little knocks.

She didn’t get any answer.

I put my ear to the door, listened. What I heard was the wrong kind of silence.

“She’s gone.”

“What? No way, Dev.”

It was my turn to knock. No surprise, no response.

I put my hand on the doorknob, twisted it, and pushed into the room. A long metal coatrack on wheels, two comfortable armchairs, a long dressing table with the standard bulbs around the circular mirror. The lights were off. The dressing room was empty.

“Oh, shit,” Kristin said behind me.

I didn’t see anybody backstage. Black Velvet Elvis was now on to Buddy Holly. Kristin had followed me out of the dressing room. She was on her cell phone asking Ben if Susan was by chance in the lobby. “He’ll go check. And I’ll go out front and keep looking.”

At times like these, even though you like to think of yourself as a rational, sensible being, all the end-game fantasies start preying on your mind. Where was Susan? Maybe she was preparing her resignation speech, trying to beat the press to the revelation it would soon be sharing with the world. Might as well get it over with. Maybe sitting in a nearby bar right now scratching out her speech on note cards — she did everything on note cards — preparing herself for one final news release.

She came from the west end of the stage. I got on my cell and let Ben and Kristin know I’d found her. She was small against the back of the looming curtains. She had her head down, didn’t see me until she was ten yards away. She looked composed but pale. “I suppose you were looking for me, Dev. And I suppose Kristin told you I wouldn’t let her into the dressing room. That was silly. I owe her an apology.” The smile was faked but fetching. “I just went out for some air and I didn’t want company.”

I watched her carefully. Anxiety played in the gray gaze, but she managed to give the impression she was in control of herself.

“We just wanted to be sure you were all right.”

She laughed. “I have one mother already, isn’t that enough?”

I walked with her to the dressing room. The door was still open. She walked inside and started to close it. Black Velvet Elvis had stopped playing. Somebody was addressing the audience. Telling jokes that weren’t getting great responses.

I got as far as saying, “Susan, we really need to—”

“I’ll see you in a little while, Dev,” she said. And closed the door.

I went back to the ballroom and grabbed myself a scotch on the rocks. Kristin took my hand and led me around to meet numerous people. This was a good time for socializing. People were drinking but not yet drunk. The band started playing again, this time a series of Stones songs. An elderly man in a gold lamé evening jacket took Kristin to the dance floor and started bumping and grinding as she pretended not to notice. Every once in a while, though, she’d look over at me and smile and give me a helpless little shrug. If this guy got any more enthusiastic he was going to end up in traction. Then I saw her frown suddenly and I wondered why.

As soon as I sensed somebody stepping up on my right side I knew what had caused Kristin to frown. Greg Larson had invaded our fund-raiser.

Like his partner Monica Davies, Larson had come out of the entertainment business. He’d started life as a studio publicist but found gossip to be more fun and much more profitable. He wrote a syndicated column known for its nastiness and was frequently seen on talk shows with updates on anything that involved stars and scandals. He’d married three different aging stars and had managed to cadge a fair amount of change from each divorce. Eight years ago he’d turned his love of gossip toward politics and set up his own opposition research firm. He had connections all over the world and this made him especially valuable to politicians. He hired the usual suspects to do the grunt work of sifting through newspapers and other documents to dig up their kind of scandals while he practiced the kind of assaults that divorce detectives once did.

There was a senatorial reelection campaign two years ago. A friend of mine was working with an Iraqi vet named Bill Potter who’d lost both of his legs in Baghdad. Potter was ahead in the campaign until his opponent signed on with Larson. Larson did his usual job. Potter’s father was a college professor who’d written a number of antiwar pieces. Potter’s brother was gay. And Larson dug up a high-school photo of Potter grinning and smoking a joint and giving somebody the finger. Then he discovered that he had been treated for post-traumatic stress syndrome after his second tour in Iraq. Larson came up with a commercial he called “Family Values” — Potter’s family — a pinko father, a queer brother, and a dope-smoking smart-ass who couldn’t handle a couple of tours in Iraq without needing some psychological help. So he’d lost a couple of legs — he was still a whiner and a candy ass. It was ugly and it worked. Larson’s man had started twenty points behind and ended up winning by nine points.

“Nice crowd.”

“It was till you got here, Larson.”

“Aw, still bitter about that commercial, are you?”

Larson had the look of a Wall Street CEO, one whose fleshy body needed a lot more time in the gym and a lot less time at the table. But he had the hard good looks and the silver-gray hair that kept him dominant even in the company of younger men — younger men more ruthless than he was.

“Heard you were in town and just thought I’d stop by to say hello.”

In idle moments I’d had many daydreams of smashing his face in. Back when I was in army intelligence and investigating the sins of various officers I frequently met Larson’s type. They were usually West Pointers and they were convinced of their superiority based on little more than that they knew the secret handshake of that institution. Their weapon was the sneer. To question them was to challenge them as they had not been challenged since they’d graduated. They would always bring up West Point at the first opportunity and commiserate with me because I’d never had the privilege of attending there myself. Putting me in my place, of course. I’d had a lot of daydreams of smashing them in the face, too.

“You always wear a dinner jacket?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve got a dinner party to go to tonight. It’ll be a little higher class than this, Conrad, but I have to admit I haven’t seen any of your guests eating with their hands yet. So I’m impressed.”

He hadn’t stopped just to say hello. We’d had too many near fistfights for him to be comfortable. One night in Chicago I’d gone so far as to throw him up against a wall. We had both been pretty drunk. Both staffs had jumped between us, stopping the fun.

“You haven’t seen Monica around here tonight, have you?”

“Monica? What the hell would she be doing here?”

For once he’d dropped his drollery. “There’s something going on. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s got me worried.”

“Why would I care what happens to you and Monica?”

The smirk was back. “Because, old boy, your people may be involved in it, too.”

But I was sick of him now and his game, whatever it was.

“Hold this,” I said, pushing my empty glass into his hand and walking away quickly. It is small victories like this that make life worthwhile.

Around ten o’clock, after the dinner and the speeches, the band started playing again and Kristin forced me onto the dance floor. For fast songs I have invented a series of miniature movements that to the casual eye seem to be what you could call dancing. But if you look carefully you’ll see that I’m actually standing in one place and cleverly using elbows and hips to fool any dance critics who might be looking on.

“C’mon, Dev, move around a little. Look at me.”

I was looking at her, which was a pleasure. That cap of gorgeous red hair and the slash of grin and the lithe body moving sinuously to the music. Since I’m neither pretty nor sinuous, I kept on dancing the only way I knew how. Stiff middle-aged white man gets his groove on.

Neither of us could go for much longer than thirty seconds without looking to the center of the floor where Susan was dancing. A long line of men had queued up to be the congresswoman’s brief partner. Each of them got about a fourth of the song. She could really dance. Apparently, all her nights in clubs had taught her well. The TV people loved it. So did the guests with digital cameras. As long as we could see her, we were happy. She wasn’t going to wander off without giving me the talk I deserved, as to just what the hell was going on.

Susan had competition in the form of her stepmother. Natalie had an even longer line of beaus, and where Susan was dancing just for fun, Natalie was putting on a show. In her mauve cocktail dress, her dark hair and makeup flawless, she was one of those absolutely perfect middle-aged women gerontologists are awed by. She was here to show the younger ones how to do it.

The few times she and Wyatt danced together, the cameras rushed to make the moment immortal. They danced to the slower songs and with such grace I wondered if they hadn’t taken ballroom lessons together; their steps and their physical attitude had that kind of drama and poise.

Natalie was no doubt pleased to see that the cameras had now shifted in her direction. She wouldn’t get as much screen time as her stepdaughter, but at least she’d be on the tube.

When they finished dancing, Wyatt Byrnes stepped aside so that a group of women could surround Natalie and gush. Byrnes’s gaze met mine and he walked over.

“Enjoying yourself, Dev?”

“Do I look as uncomfortable as you do?”

“You noticed, eh?” He laughed. “I like dancing with Natalie. That’s the fun part. On one of the cruises we took we got into ballroom dancing.”

“What’s not the fun part?”

He leaned in and said softly, “The people. I’m not much for parties and things like that. I’d rather be home with a beer, watching Western movies. My father read them and watched them all the time. Westerns, I mean. I guess I picked it up from him.”

The rich man with the taste of the common man. Hard to know if it was genuine. Political spouses and important relatives are trained to be good copy. When the press comes around, have a good story for them. And make that story something the largest number of people can identify with. And make it an “Aw” story, as in “Aw, that’s so nice he’s just a regular guy.” You have to be careful of “Aw” stories because they can get out of control fast and sound contrived and unctuous. For instance, never have your guy say that his lifelong ambition is to work in a leper colony.

“For what it’s worth, Dev, I think you people are doing a good job for Susan. I know that Natalie can get a little testy now and then, but when we’re alone she admits that you’re doing everything you can. The problem is Susan.”

On the edge of the dance floor Natalie stood with her admirers. When she was a little girl she’d probably dreamed of being popular in this way, show-biz popular. But now she’d begun looking around, her smiles stage tricks and her attention wandering.

“I think she’s looking for me,” Byrnes said. “I need to go and rescue her. Nice to see you, Dev.”

I had a fresh drink and listened to the band for a time. They did a pair of Stones covers that were especially good. Then I needed a break. I was on my way to the men’s room when my cell phone bleated. I stopped and answered it.

“Mr. Conrad?”

“Yes.”

“This is Tommy Nickels.” Whoever he was — and I didn’t have a clue — he was excited about something. “From the hotel? You said to call you?”

“Oh, right, Tommy.”

“Something happened in her room. I was carrying bags past her room and I heard her arguing with somebody. I couldn’t stop because I was loaded down and this guy was in a hurry to get into his room. I had to spend a few minutes before I got him all set up. Then I got back to the Davies woman’s door and there wasn’t any sound.”

“Maybe the other person left. Was it a man, by the way?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely a man.”

I wasn’t sure why he had called. Did he think this kind of information would get him more money?

“There was a security man up here checking on something, Mr. Conrad. So just for the hell of it I had him knock on her door and see if everything was all right. I mean she and the guy were really arguing when I heard them. He knocked, but he didn’t get any answer. I wanted him to let me in, but he wouldn’t do it until he got the night manager’s approval. Which he ended up getting. And that was when he found her.”

Somebody would have to teach Tommy how to write a news story. The lead was always the most important part and it was now obvious what that lead was going to be.

“Is she dead, Tommy?”

“Yeah. Whoever nailed her got her with this small brass statue we have in some of the rooms. Like I said, it’s small, but if you use it like a weapon, it’ll get the job done for you. So is this worth another twenty?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I was too troubled by what he’d just told me to pay much attention.

Chapter 10

I drove over to the hotel where the three of us — Monica Davies, Greg Larson, and I — were staying. Given the hour, the crowd was sizable. The police had the entrance cordoned off. Two TV crews were interviewing men in the uniform blue sport coats worn by hotel employees. And the ghouls drank it all in. I call them ghouls with complete hypocrisy. I’ve been a ghoul many times myself. Proximity to death is exciting because it isn’t us who are dead. It might scare us and make us sick — people burned to death can haunt you for a long time — but it makes us feel lucky, maybe even for a moment or two, immortal. We’re alive and they’re not.

I parked my car and took my place with my fellow ghouls.

The entrance to the hotel was wide and well-lit, with long windows stretching across the entire width of the front. Beyond the glass I could see guests standing in small groups, talking about the invasion of the police and emergency workers. This was a better-dressed collection of ghouls than the one I was with. A pair of uniforms burst out of the front door. The white box-style ambulance that had been parked on the front walk now went into reverse and got as close to the doors as it could.

She came down in a black body bag on a white gurney. Comments crackled through the crowd like summer thunder — flashes of pity, excitement, and even black humor. Not even professional wrestling could beat the death of a young woman. It was devoutly to be hoped that she’d been good-looking and nude when they’d found her.

The crowd on the far side of the rope line had the preferred view of the ambulance. They were mere feet from it. Several of them were pointing things out to one another as the ambulance team raised the gurney up and over. The first thing I noticed about the people over there was that two or three of them were attractive women. I’d never meet any of them, but glimpsing them was fun in a melancholy way. Then, behind the tallest of the women, standing next to the building in the cold autumn night was the red-haired man.

Tan Burberry coat, collar up, long red hair with a curl that touched his forehead. A blunt harsh face that was handsome in a severe way. You saw them in Chicago working for businesses that were secretly owned by the mob. They knew how to talk properly, dress properly, and be polite. They were never executives — their actual titles were as murky as their actual jobs. But guessing what they were used for was all too easy.

And then he was gone, pushing his way back through the crowd.

I did the same thing with my crowd. From what I could see, the quickest way to the other side was to run to the parking lot in back. I didn’t get far. As I rounded the corner of the hotel a uniform appeared and held up his hand. He also raised his flashlight and burned the beam into my face.

“Hold on. You have some ID?”

“Look, Officer, there’s somebody I need to see on the other side.”

“You a guest in the hotel?”

“Yes.”

He snapped his fingers and held his palm out, a thickset middle-aged man with dark, suspicious eyes and the mannerisms of a hall monitor.

The best thing to do was get it over as quickly as possible. When I handed him my wallet, the beam fell from my face to my ID. “From Chicago?”

“Yes. Look, I really am in a hurry.”

“Who is it you need to see so bad?”

“Old college friend. Just spotted him in the crowd on the far side.”

“You know a woman was killed here tonight.”

“I know. But I didn’t do it and neither did Paul.”

“Paul?”

“My college friend.” I was tempted to say that I was working with Susan Cooper but decided against it. I wanted to keep her name out of it. I could see over his shoulder. Cars were leaving, flashes of headlights turning the cop into silhouette.

He still had my wallet. “Dev Conrad.”

“That’s right.”

He beamed his light on my driver’s license again. He was either memorizing it or trying to levitate it. He frowned and handed it back. He’d been hoping to plant my ass on death row, but he hadn’t been able to come up with a good enough reason. “Get out of here.”

“Thanks.”

He waved me past as a couple came up behind me. I walked when I wanted to run but running would only make me interesting to him again. The rear of the hotel was lined with Dumpsters. A loading dock protruded from the center of the building. Parking space was limited to fifteen yards of macadam.

The two cars closest to me were empty. The silver Pontiac near the alley had a driver. The red-headed man. His headlights came on and he started backing out.

I yelled for him to stop and darted toward him. He laid down a long strip of rubber getting the car into the alley. For three or four seconds I had a good look at him. The brutal appearance was lessened by his cold smile. He was under the impression this was some kind of game. Then he was gone in a fishtailing, tire-screaming exit that went on all the long way to the end of the alley. I couldn’t even get close enough to identify the license plate.

When I turned back to the hotel, my good friend the cop was standing there. He looked happy. “Guess Paul didn’t want to see you, huh?”

“Yeah. Guess not.”

“How about letting me see that wallet again?”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I said so is why.” He shook his head and addressed an unseen person. “He asks why.”

I gave him my wallet. He flipped it open, then used the communicator on his shoulder. “Tell Detective Kapoor there’s somebody here she should probably talk to.”

“What the hell’re you doing?”

He held up a finger to quiet me. “Right. I’ll bring him to the back door now.”

After he finished talking, I said, “This is a waste of time.”

“Maybe to you, but this whole little deal is strange.”

“What ‘whole little deal’?”

“You’re in a big hurry to get back here, and then this supposed friend of yours races away. Somebody was killed here tonight, and that makes this whole little deal suspicious. At least to me.” He returned my wallet. “I’m covering my ass, man. You go in and talk to the detective and she asks you a few questions and you’re out of here.” Then: “This isn’t Chicago. People’re used to murders there. We aren’t. Anybody look a little weird at all, they got to be questioned. Hell, I should’ve sent you to the detective when you came running around the corner.”

No point in arguing. He was just doing his job, and by admitting that he was covering his ass he dropped the tough-guy stuff and became a human being. Still and all, I doubted if I’d invite him to my next birthday party.

The back door was under a long narrow canopy. He had to knock twice. While we were waiting, he said, “My name’s Bob Sullivan, by the way.” He was amused again. “In case you want to file any complaints. Badge number 205.” He was a tough guy again.

Another uniform answered the door and led us through the kitchen and then the dining room and then out to the lobby. This late, everything had been shut down for a few hours anyway.

Three detectives had divided up the lobby. Each had a short line of people to interview. Most of the interviewees were hotel employees, but there was a handful of guests, too. Sullivan steered me to the shortest line. I assumed the detective I would be seeing was the slim woman in the dark-blue suit. She was talking to a bellhop. She was attractive in a dark silken way. Indian, I guessed.

“You want some coffee? They’ve got a big pot of it going over there.” Sullivan nodded to a table that had been set up with snacks and coffee.

“Thanks.”

Despite the line being short, I was on my second cup of coffee by the time the detective was ready for me. She indicated a chair that had been brought in from the dining room. I sat down. There was a matching chair for her, but I’d yet to see her sit down. She offered me a long, slim hand and another smile. “I’m sure you want to get to your room as soon as possible, Mr. Conrad, so I’ll make this as quick as I can.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“My name is Detective Priya Kapoor. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of a cop with that name before.” Unaccented English. “I was born and raised in Chicago. I’m a White Sox fan.”

I wondered how many hundreds of times she’d said this in her time on the force. “No, I never have.” She wasn’t beautiful but she was erotic, the dark velvet eyes and the wide tender mouth inspiring flare-ups of lust in my drained body. It had been a while.

“First of all, Mr. Conrad, I take it you’re in town on business.”

“Yes.”

“Would you mind telling me what that business is?”

“I work with Congresswoman Cooper on her campaign.” Usually an occupation wouldn’t tell her anything. But Monica Davies had been in politics and so was I. “I’m a political consultant.”

“That’s very nice. I voted for her.” The cruise director voice again. I’m just a friendly lady going through the motions, Mr. Conrad, said the voice. But the erotic eyes had become the dubious eyes. “That’s very interesting.”

“Oh? How so?”

She sat down on the dining-room chair opposite me. The first time I’d seen her park her fine small bottom anywhere. “Mr. Conrad, it’s late, as I said. So let me ask you, do you really want to put me — and yourself — through the charade of pretending that you didn’t know Monica Davies?”

“I met her a few times, yes.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. You’ve saved both of us at least ten minutes. May I ask where you were tonight?”

“If you’re asking for an alibi, I have a good one.”

“Fine. Good alibis make my job a lot easier. Believe it or not, I enjoy eliminating people as persons of interest. That way I can concentrate on the guilty party.”

“There was a fund-raiser for Congresswoman Cooper at the Royale Hotel tonight. I was there all evening. I didn’t leave until about thirty or forty minutes ago.”

“And I’m hoping that a good number of people saw you.”

“A large number of people. And all night long.”

Somewhere in the pocket of her jacket her cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”

I tried to make sense of her and the phone conversation, but I couldn’t. The county morgue was mentioned. The rest of it was lost on me.

After putting her phone away again, she said, “Do you know Greg Larson, Ms. Davies’s partner?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of him?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Why not?”

“Because we hate each other. Anything I’d say about him would be prejudiced.”

“Why do you hate him?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me, Mr. Conrad.”

My fingers started drumming on the table. As if I didn’t control them.

“Mr. Conrad?”

“I’m in a business that can get dirty. I’ve been dirty myself and I’ll be dirty again. But it’s a matter of degrees. Most people on either side have lines they won’t cross. Larson crosses them all the time.”

“You’re quite angry, Mr. Conrad. I can see it on your face.”

“You asked how I felt about Larson. I told you.”

“Have you seen Mr. Larson?”

“Yes. He came to the fund-raiser tonight.”

“Isn’t that strange? Him coming to a fund-raiser for his opponent?”

I made it a joke. “He came to torment me.”

“And did he succeed?”

“He sure did. I don’t like being in the same room with him.”

“Did you feel the same way about Monica Davies?”

“Pretty much. They both did the same kind of work.”

“One more question, Mr. Conrad. The patrolman told me that you had some kind of altercation with somebody in a car behind the hotel a few minutes ago.”

“It wasn’t an altercation. I just wanted to say hello to an old friend.”

“Apparently he didn’t want to say hello to you. The officer told me that you were shouting at him and chasing after his car.”

“He obviously didn’t recognize who I was. He might not even have heard me. In college he always played the radio very loud.”

Her sly smile was a review of my story. It closed opening night. “I’d never take up fiction if I were you, Mr. Conrad.”

She stood up. “I see I have two more people I need to talk to, and I’m sure you’re ready for some sleep.” She offered her long, sleek hand. As I stood up I took it. She was strong. “I’m sorry I had to trouble you with all this.”

“Doing your job.”

She gave me her best broadest, emptiest smile. “Now, that’s not what you’re really thinking, is it?”

“No,” I said as I started to turn away. “No, I guess it’s not.” I was too tired for any more of her droll inquisition.

“Give the female patrol officer all your contact information, if you would. I hope you have a good night’s sleep.”

I muttered through room number, phone number, home address, home telephone number, and headquarters phone number with the officer taking down all the information. Then I turned, yawning, toward the elevator.