The Switch

23

The noise of the crowd, the babble, was nearly deafening, everyone yapping at once, spirits high. People were clutching flutes of tepid champagne, getting buzzed, and letting loose. It was also way too warm, approaching hot, an already overheated room jammed with warm bodies. And smells: competing penumbras of perfume, the marine scent of shrimp piled high on melting ice.

He overheard snatches of conversation. A woman next to him was saying, “So I told him, your dick is never getting out of committee. Not with me.”

A guy was saying, “So I’m, like, you don’t have the votes, why are we even having this conversation?”

Another woman: “The difference between God and a US senator? God doesn’t think he’s a senator.”

His collar still pinched, and he had that vertiginous feeling like blood was pooling in his head. Sweat ran down Will’s forehead into his eyes. Luckily he’d remembered to bring his handkerchief. He blotted up the perspiration on his forehead and around his eyes and on his neck, and then he sidled up to the senior senator from Massachusetts, Owen Sullivan.

“Senator.”

Senator Sullivan was in his sixties, spoke with a heavy Boston accent, and had teeth that hadn’t been orthodontically straightened and a pockmarked face, evidence of a long and losing struggle with teenage acne. His dinner jacket looked frayed. It looked like it hadn’t been dry-cleaned in the last ten uses. He looked like what he was, a working-class guy from Charlestown, which was next to Boston. The only discordant note about him was his glasses, which were horn-rimmed and professorial-looking, sort of preppy.

Will could see the expression on the senator’s face morph quickly from the initial faux friendliness underscored by wariness — What crazy person is accosting me now? — to relaxed and genuine — I know this guy; he’s part of my everyday world; I can trust him. Senator Sullivan had dealt with Will plenty of times and, Will believed, respected him too.

“Hey there, Will.”

“Can I have a minute? I promise, no more.”

“It’s not the best time. Can it wait till tomorrow?”

“Wish it could.” To his surprise, his heart was thudding. He realized then that he was about to cross another line, taking the hunt for the laptop in a potentially dangerous direction.

The senator shrugged. Reluctantly, he said, “All right.”

“Susan is quite intrigued by your energy-storage incentive bill.”

“Really?” Senator Sullivan looked suddenly pleased. He took a sip from his highball glass, which he clutched with a paper napkin.

Will nodded. This was blatant, crude horse trading, but that was the currency of the realm. “More on that to come. For now, I need a — I need a name. You had someone who, uh, helped you out last year, when you had that stalker problem.”

Now the senator’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

“The guy from Charlestown.”

Sullivan just blinked uncomprehendingly.

“The kittens. The, uh, ‘problem solver.’”

A couple of years ago, Sullivan had had a stalker problem. Someone kept leaving dead kittens outside the front door of Sullivan’s brownstone in Charlestown. Sullivan took out a restraining order, but it didn’t deter the stalker, who wasn’t much concerned with legal niceties like restraining orders. Sullivan’s family was terrified. The stalker even broke into Sullivan’s house once and disfigured the senator’s daughter’s American Girl doll. Nothing could stop the sicko. And the dead kittens continued.

Finally he made the problem go away. The story had been passed around among senate staffers, always in whispers, with the illicit thrill of an urban legend, though everyone swore it was true. Sullivan called in someone he knew in Charlestown, an ex-Marine who had done time in prison and had once been in the Charlestown Mob. A guy known as the Problem Solver. Apparently the Problem Solver staked out the house and captured the stalker and then broke pretty much every bone in his body. The problem went away.

Now Senator Sullivan spun away abruptly, and Will realized, with a sick feeling, that the guy was ditching him, probably furious at being asked about this in such a public setting. God, how he’d screwed up! He should have been less impatient, should have waited until tomorrow, not asked him about something so sensitive in a place crawling with journalists, a place where the senator was watched closely. What an idiot he’d been!

Then Sullivan looked back at Will and gestured with his chin to follow him. Will had misunderstood. The senator was just taking precautions. He led Will to a deserted alcove outside an unused function room, away from the crowd.

“I don’t want to hear any details, but what’s this for?”

“It’s for Susan. She has a real serious problem. I should probably leave it there.”

“Understood. All right, look.” He set down his highball glass on a nearby table. He took out a ballpoint pen and wrote a number down on the rumpled napkin. Then he handed the napkin to Will.

Will took it and, with one fluid motion, suavely went to slip it into the front flap pocket of his dinner jacket, which unfortunately turned out to be sewn shut. Then, recovering quickly, he jammed it in the back pocket of his pants.

“I don’t want to hear about this ever again,” Sullivan said. “Not by e-mail or text or phone call or anything. This guy— Let me put it to you this way: this isn’t a water pistol I just gave you. It’s a goddamned M16, you understand? You don’t go there, you don’t go to this guy, unless you’ve used up every other option. So just make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

Will swallowed with effort. His mouth was dry. He nodded. “I understand.” With raised eyebrows, slowly and deliberately, he said, “Thank you. I won’t forget.” Then he immediately regretted saying that. That was how people of power talked to each other. Not someone who merely worked for someone powerful. For him to say it to a senator was presumptuous and silly, maybe even offensive. He added at once: “I mean, Susan won’t forget.”