Chapter Four

ON THE WAY TO THE STRIP CLUB, I called Eddie and told him I’d be gone for an hour or so.

“What the hell, J.D., we’ve got a delegate-counting meeting in ten minutes and then a final walk-through at the Dome. The bastards are adding security.”

“I know,” I said. “I went there after I saw the veep last night. It’s a shit show. Look, I just have to do something. It’s stupid family stuff.” I could have come up with some elaborate lie for Eddie, but we had been through too much. And he probably wouldn’t believe me anyway.

There was a long pause, and I could see Eddie holding his phone, pacing. He always paced when he was on the phone.

“Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Does this have to do with Sandra?”

“Jesus, no. Why the hell would you think that?”

“Why? Because you still have a thing for her and she saw you last night after the bombing and for Christ’s sake, J.D. You don’t think I know you better than yourself? Are you giving her some kind of scoopy scoops thinking it’ll impress her?”

“Christ.” I sighed. “I would do something like that, wouldn’t I?”

“For Sandra, hell-goddamn-hell yes.”

I laughed. “You do know me.”

“Better than you do,” Eddie said.

“That’s not what I was going to do. But now that you brought it up, I think I will,” I said. I hung up while he was starting to shout into the phone. “J.D.!”

Sandra answered on the first ring. “Bitch? That Ginny girl called me a bitch?” Then she laughed. “I can’t believe you are calling me. I’d like to think it means you are done hating on me, but I’m a big girl, so I know you’re really calling because you want me to do something for you. So what is it?”

I almost hung up. But goddamn, she was so dead-on. “Off the record?” I asked. It was so weird to be asking a woman I’d lived with if we were off the record, but there were rules between reporters and campaign operatives, and sex and love past, present, or future didn’t change the rules. It was what you learned in politics, particularly with reporters.

“Oh, good,” she said, with that excited tone she got whenever she thought there might be a story, “you do have something. Yes, of course, OTR.”

“In about an hour, the vice president of the United States is going to be making an unannounced drop-by at the Ochsner Hospital to see the bomb victim.”

“Does anybody else know this?” she asked immediately. I knew she would. Every reporter did. If you told a reporter like Sandra that it would cost her one of her kids for an exclusive, her reaction would be, “Can I pick the kid?” But of course Sandra didn’t have kids, which I admired about her. “Who the fuck would want me as a mother,” she’d said the one time I asked her about it. I was so relieved by her answer that I never brought it up again.

“No, just you.”

“Thanks. Keep it that way.” She hung up.

“Bitch!” I yelled, banging the steering wheel. Why did I do this?

I found the club on the road to the airport in a stretch that I’d always found as depressing as any in America, a messy collection of dingy convenience stores, off-brand gas stations, tattoo parlors, and massage parlors. The Body Shop stood out like a UFO that had landed by mistake on Airline Highway: it was huge and brightly painted, with a flashing neon sign that towered over the strip.

I drove by three times before stopping, trying to make sure a reporter wasn’t following me. It was doubtful, given the general laziness and pack mentality that pervaded the press covering an event like the convention. But there was always the remote chance that some hotshot had read All the President’s Men one too many times and actually taken the initiative to shadow Hilda Smith’s campaign manager for the entire convention. It was also possible that dear brother Paul had already put a word in some reporter’s ear.

I parked in the rear, out of sight of the road. The asphalt of the parking lot felt sticky, as if on the verge of melting and swallowing me whole.

Inside it was twenty degrees cooler, a dark world of time suspended. Music blared, a medley of nineties hits. A large white man in a black turtleneck and blazer guarded the door.

“Where’s Tyler?” I asked.

The big guy, who was perhaps thirty but looked older, with the overdeveloped muscles and thinning hair of a heavy steroid user, looked down at me with heavy eyes, a look that made it clear he was not interested in just another guy who wanted to see Tyler. Everybody wanted to see Tyler.

“Name?” he asked, in a thick country accent. This was not a New Orleans boy, probably from north Louisiana or maybe Mississippi.

I paused, thought about lying, and then just said, “Tell him his brother is here to see him.”

“That the truth?” he grunted, and looked almost awake for the first time.

“You get a lot of people here claiming to be Tyler’s brother?”

He stared at me for a long time, then grunted again. “Ha. Ha.” He turned away to watch a pair of dancers walk by. One, a tall Asian woman, winked at him. She was easily one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.

“I thought the women at these clubs were supposed to be skanky,” I said to my new friend.

He turned and did his long-stare thing. This was something he was quite good at, actually.

“Man, you can’t be Tyler’s brother if you that ignorant.”

“I’m the slow one of the family, that’s all. Look, I really am his brother and really do need to see him.” This time I put twenty dollars in his shirt pocket.

He took the money out, looked at it. “Wow,” he said flatly.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, handing him two more twenty-dollar bills. We were in the midst of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression in a town that had unemployment through the roof, and I couldn’t get some good-ol’-boy thug to let me talk to my own brother for twenty dollars. What the hell was happening to this country, anyway?

The large man nodded his head toward a door across the floor of the club, where several women were doing their best to coax tips from the desultory crowd. I’d always avoided places like this, finding them sad and depressing, like a permanent bachelor party refusing to end for fear of the wedding. But I had to admit, these women were impressive. It wasn’t the ones with the large, fake breasts that I liked. It was the taut, athletic women who looked like more sexual versions of pro volleyball players or gymnasts. Like the two dancing together in front of a pair of Asian businessmen in their fifties. It was an aerobics show with sex. This I liked. If only it weren’t out here on Airline Highway in this dark cavern with lonely Japanese businessmen. What in the world were Japanese businessmen doing in New Orleans, anyway?

The door led to a drab hallway lit with bright fluorescents, the sort of hallway you’d see in any cheap New Orleans office building: brown carpet, Mardi Gras posters hanging on the wall, a row of plain doors. Somewhere very loud, grating music was blasting. Out of one of these doors stepped two women dressed in shorts. One wore a Loyola T-shirt, the other a New Orleans Saints jersey with cutoff sleeves tied at the waist. They looked like two young women headed for the Galleria Mall, which had been not too far away before it closed after the Crash. I realized that I had been watching them pantomime sex together a few minutes earlier.

“Do you know where Tyler’s office is?” I asked.

“You hear that shit music?” the blonde in the Loyola T-shirt asked. “That’s Tyler’s shit.”

“He always had the worst taste,” I said, hoping they’d stop and talk. It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation with an attractive woman who wasn’t involved in politics in some way. A stripper seemed like as good a way as any to break a bad habit. And they were both very attractive.

“Yeah?” She smiled, her mouth lifting up to one side, sort of an ironic smile. An ironic stripper. This was getting better. “You been knowing Tyler long?”

“All his life,” I said.

“No shit? You don’t look like one of his friends. You got some tattoos under that suit? Some kind of ring-a-ding metal hanging? Huh?”

I blushed. So help me, I did. The women I talked to in politics, they didn’t talk like this, at least not in the first two minutes of conversation. Not even Ginny. Or Sandra. And they were two tough women.

“He’s shy,” the other said. She had red hair and the developed arms of a gym buff. “Cute.” She reached out and touched my cheek. “Blush, blush,” she said, peering at me with striking green eyes.

“He’s here?” I asked, pointing toward the door, which seemed to vibrate with some of the worst music I’d ever heard.

“You’re not a cop, are you?” the redhead with the strong arms asked me.

“Do you like cops?” I asked. “If you want me to be a cop, I’d be happy to be a cop. You want me to be a fireman, I’ll be a fireman.”

“He likes you,” the other woman said.

“Sure he does. This one likes girls, you bet.”

I shrugged. In my pocket I could feel my iPhone vibrating madly. God knows what was happening while I was in here. Delegates could be changing sides right and left, more bombs going off, Armstrong George announcing he liked to wear a dress around the house to relax. But at the moment I didn’t really care.

“FBI,” the red-haired woman said. “You could be FBI.”

The other girl pulled at her T-shirt. “Let’s go.”

“Why FBI?” I asked. The way she said it and the reaction from the other girl struck me as curiously genuine. She didn’t seem to be kidding.

The redhead raised her eyebrows. They were carefully groomed. “You never know,” she said.

“Does the FBI hang out with Tyler?” I joked, but they knew I wasn’t joking and they had turned away, heading down the hall. The redhead waved behind her back without turning around. I waited until they were gone and then opened the door to Tyler’s office.

—

It was a large, bland office, with only two notable features: a metal gun case the size of a large refrigerator and a tattered Confederate flag hanging behind the metal desk. The one photo was a framed picture of Tyler with army buddies. They were all wearing camo pants and sweaty T-shirts. This was before Tyler had been “blown to hell,” as he put it, in a training accident, and he looked impossibly young and, well, perfect. He waved when I came in but kept yelling into the telephone.

I’d seen him maybe three times since what he called his “accident.” He claimed it didn’t really bother him, that it gave him “character.” But it still made me ache to see him. He was tall and thin and didn’t look like a kid anymore. He’d always had an impossibly pretty, boyish face with an elfish sort of glint in his eyes. Now it was hard to look at him, at least if you had known him the way he had been before. The right side of his face was scarred a bright red that twisted his mouth into a permanent half smile. His right arm hung limply down from his shoulder. I knew when he stood up he would cant to the right, the muscles in his right leg not strong enough to support him equally with his left.

He hung up the phone and sat back, looking at me. Yes, you could still see a little of that sparkle in his eye. He wore a tight, sleeveless white T-shirt and black suspenders, just like the last three or four times I’d seen him. I knew that under the desk there’d be the same heavy black boots with the stacked wooden heels he’d worn since he was sixteen or so. He looked at me for a second, head cocked to the side so that more of his unscarred side showed—I wondered if he realized he did this—and then said to me, yelled at me, really, since the music was so loud, “You know the hottest businesses in this town? Security guards and dancers. You can’t lose money in either no matter how stupid you are. And believe me, some stupid people have tried. Economy’s gone to shit, got unemployment like forty percent, don’t believe those happy-talk numbers, total bullshit, and people can’t hire enough guards or girls.”

I reached over to turn off the CD player. The sudden silence was extraordinary. My ears were ringing. “That’s the worst music I’ve ever heard.”

“You used to like my stuff,” he said, smiling a little more. “That’s my old group, you know.”

“Trust me, I know. And that’s a lie. I always hated it. Maybe I pretended to like it to be nice, but I always hated it. And, hey, it’s great to see you, too.”

The tall, scarred man who was my half brother stood up from behind the desk, holding out his hand. When he had mine in his grip, he pulled me toward him and pounded me on the back. He was very strong.

“We’re Irish, not Italian, what’s with this Godfather crap?” I teased him, pulling back to look at him. I always tried to make myself look directly at him so I wouldn’t be one of those people he had talked about once, the ones who look the other way. He had laughed about that, of course, about how all his life he had been trying to shock people, and now it looked like he might be succeeding.

“What about a stripper who’s also a security guard?” I asked him.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“A stripper who doubles as a security guard, wouldn’t that be a good business?”

“Dancer. Dancer, dancer. Got to get with the lingo. It’s a world of professionals, J.D. You know there is a goddamn dancers’ union? Like the Teamsters or something.” He shook his head. “Unbelievable. So I haven’t seen you in how long? I don’t know. You’ve been in town for days, you don’t get in touch, and then you turn up here in the middle of the goddamn afternoon when you’re supposed to be electing that silly woman president. So you want something. Right? Don’t lie to me, J.D.”

“Tyler.” I laughed. “It is good to see you.”

“You sound surprised. Why shouldn’t it be good to see me? I’m a wonderful, caring, loving individual who values friendship and the love of my brothers above all else!” He held me out at arm’s length. “So tell me what you want. Enough kissy face.”

“Yeah, I want something,” I admitted. “I’m just not sure what.”

He collapsed on a sagging couch in the corner. “That’s very goddamn helpful. You know what I like about being in the security and girl business? Everybody knows what they want. It’s real clear. I want to make sure some out-of-work asshole doesn’t break into my business, so I need some security. I’m having a party and don’t want some maniacs crashing it just because I got a band they like playing. That’s easy. That I can do. Or I need some dancers who know how to do what they do, that I can handle. But this existential shit, you want me to tell you what you want, that I don’t do.”

“You’re a good talker,” I told him, and I meant it. “I forgot what a good talker you are.”

“Yeah? Like maybe I got it from our father, huh?” We laughed again, but there was a little edge to it, a little ouch for both of us. “You having any fun?” Tyler suddenly asked me. “This is your big wet dream, right? Elect yourself a president, even if it is some weak sister socialist like Hilda Smith. Christ, J.D., what are you doing? I got strippers who I’d vote for before that woman.”

“Dancers.”

“Damn straight. ‘I think Armstrong George represents the dark side of America,’ ” he mimicked in Smith’s voice. “Give me a break. My girls are armed to the teeth and damn proud of it. Not a one of ’em doesn’t have a gun and would just as soon blow your ass off as not, you mess with ’em.”

“I’ll try to remember that. And you can rest assured that Hilda Smith is a firm believer in Second Amendment rights.”

“ ‘Rest assured.’ ” He mimicked me now. He was good at voices, always was. “Don’t give me that crap! She wants to give a goddamn IQ test before you can buy a gun. Get a note from your mother. And your priest. Christ, a goddamn communist.”

“There aren’t any more communists. And they love guns in Russia, everybody has one.”

“See! She’s worse than the Russians! Christ!” We chuckled. “You’re a famous son of a bitch,” Tyler said. “See you on television all the time.” He paused, then started laughing. “Why in God’s name did you make such a fool of yourself over that television woman? Sandra? She looks meaner than a snake and is old enough to be your mother.”

“Maybe it’s in my genes.”

“That Callahan screw-up-with-women gene thing going, huh?”

I didn’t answer, didn’t want to think about it, really. “What about you? You married or anything?”

He shook his head. “We going to stand around here all day or are you finally going to tell me what brought you out here in the middle of the day? I know. You want me to make a speech at the convention, right?”

I must have flinched for an instant, even though I didn’t realize it. But Tyler was smart and he knew me. Had known me, like I told the dancer outside his office, all his life.

“I get it,” he said. “Jesus, of course. You’re worried that somebody might find out I’m your brother—half brother, okay—and make some stink about it, right? Embarrass you, right?”

“It’s not about embarrassment,” I blurted, but I knew he knew I was lying, at least partially. “This thing is just a death struggle. People are going crazy.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” he sneered. “You guys in politics, you always try to make everything you do so goddamn dramatic. Death struggle, my ass. It’s an election, that’s all. Nobody’s going to die. Oh, Jesus, what a look.”

“You don’t really want that fascist thug Armstrong George to win. I know you don’t.”

“The hell I don’t.” He started to laugh. He had a quick, manic laugh. “I hope Armstrong George does win this thing, I really do.”

“You don’t mean that.”

He barked out a laugh. “Hell I don’t. I can’t stand that woman you work for and that Democrat is such a phony he makes me want to puke. The only reason I would even entertain the idea that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Hilda won”—he played with the name, raising his voice in a mocking soprano—“is that you work for her and I suppose if she wins you would be a big goddamn deal in the White House, and you could help me get good concert tickets and shit. That’s it.”

“I could do that.” I sat down in the metal chair in front of him.

“Be careful,” he said, nodding at the chair, “I just had sex with one of the girls in that chair and it might be kind of a mess.”

He cracked up when I shot up out of the chair.

“Forget about it. I wish. Worst thing you can do in this business. Screw the help. Not that I care about business that much.” He chuckled.

“You in trouble with the FBI?” I asked.

“Well, that came out of nowhere. Why you asking that?”

I didn’t say anything and then he smiled. “I know. One of the girls said something, right?” He held up his hand. “You don’t have to answer. But yeah, they did come out to talk to me.”

I kept waiting for him to laugh and say he was joking. But he didn’t. He looked at me, enjoying the moment. Finally I had to ask. “Why?”

“Because I’m on some list they keep of Bad Boys and they wanted to make sure I knew they knew.”

“What list?”

“Hell if I know. But it probably comes with my ‘known association with undesirables.’ ”

“Like?”

“Come on, J.D. All the whack-job skinhead white power crazies I’ve hung out with over the years.” He smiled proudly. “Us gun-loving nuts. You know. The kind that Hilda Smith thinks are…radical extremist.”

I didn’t know what to say. But I knew he was right. It made perfect sense that a guy like Tyler would have lit up some warning lights in his day.

“I know what you’re wondering. Did they know I was your brother. Half brother. Isn’t that what you were wondering?”

“Oh, Christ, Tyler.” I hated that I was so obvious.

“The answer is that if they did, they didn’t mention it. Look, J.D., as far as I’m concerned you’re the son of the famous Powell Callahan, who was a crusading goddamn civil rights journalist, devoted family man, a giant among men. You had a good Christian mama, God rest her soul, envy of all the Garden Club. You got a football-hero brother who had a little problem but is coming back. Great goddamn American story.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Great American story.”

“But let me tell you something, brother dear. You got it all wrong. You think I’m the embarrassment. You ever think it might be the other way around? You know what kind of crap I’d get if my pals thought I was related to the guy who was trying to help elect Hilda Smith?” He laughed.

“So I guess we’re good.”

Tyler shrugged. “Your father”—he paused, smiling, seeming to enjoy it, and I wondered if he did—“my father was the perfect idea of a liberal savior. Don’t try and tell me that’s not one of the reasons you became a Republican. You wanted to show the Old Man. And me, I did my own thing too. So really we aren’t that different, J.D.” He smiled again. “I just get laid more and have a lot more fun.”

“Tyler,” I said, “I am absolutely sure that’s true.”

He looked at me like he was going to say something else, then stopped. “You got to get back, I know. You got that ‘I’ve got to get back and do important work’ look. Happens all the time in here. Mostly after some guy sneaks away from the office and has himself a little lap dance and then starts thinking, Shit, what the hell am I doing out here on Airline Highway in the middle of the damn day? They get that same look you got right now.”

“Tyler, look…” I felt like I should apologize.

“Hey,” he grinned, “there’s your girl.” He pointed behind me to a silent television sitting on a Dixie Beer box.

“Jesus,” I mumbled, reaching for the sound. Right away I could tell nothing good was happening. It was at the hospital. Hilda was stepping from a town car in front of a seething scrum of reporters and television cameras. Sandra was there, but how did all these other reporters know? Worse, off to the side with a bemused look on his face was Armstrong George, who was just wrapping up a press conference. Right behind him was his son Somerfield, looking impossibly smug.

“I am here to see a friend and supporter who has had a very traumatic experience,” Hilda said, looking startled. She hadn’t been expecting this, that was clear. She was looking around, blinking in the sun, trying to take it in. Her eye landed on Armstrong George, and you could see her mouth tighten, her eyes narrow. This was an ambush. She could blow up, I thought. Oh God, this could be it. I instinctively reached for my iPhone and started dialing Lisa.

“This is not a political visit,” Hilda Smith said carefully. Behind her, Secret Service agents looked miserable. Quentin Smith stood to the side with Lisa Henderson. The press herd, realizing that they had stumbled upon that rarest of events, an unscheduled appearance by a serious presidential candidate, attacked in full fury.

“But Ms. Vice President, you are running for president. Governor George just told the press that this bombing is further proof for the need for his New Bill of Rights and the measures of the Protect the Homeland bill.”

“I am not here to make a political point. Or hold a press conference.”

From behind his desk, Tyler cackled. “ ‘I am not here to make a political point,’ ” he mimicked. “Christ, J.D., how do you work for this woman?”

The camera panned over Armstrong George, who was still looking calm and superior. “Because of that asshole,” I said. “I hate that asshole.”

“Bullshit,” Tyler barked.

“What?” I whirled around.

Tyler was grinning. “You’d work for Armstrong George in a heartbeat if you thought he could win and he asked you to. And if he paid you a bundle.”

“You are so full of shit,” I answered, and turned back to the TV. But I wondered if he was right. But so what? Lawyers work for anybody and manage to turn it into some kind of admirable duty. Why couldn’t I do the same?

“So is it fair to say that this latest incident has not changed your view on the need for new laws to protect Americans?” Paul Hendricks had that Boston above-it-all tone in his voice. I could have strangled him. This was a disaster. Why didn’t Lisa stop it? Jesus God, she was standing right there. Pull the plug, get out, and get her inside the hospital, away from the pack. I’d tipped Sandra so she could get a nice exclusive, put it out there that the VP had gone by the hospital. Now this? What had she done?

“My position is clear. We cannot sacrifice American values to protect American values. We must defend both.”

Sandra Juarez jumped in with a follow-up. “Yes, but polls show overwhelming support for the steps Governor George is calling for.”

“I know the governor’s position,” Hilda Smith interrupted, and her eyes narrowed slightly, her face visibly tightening. “And he is entitled to it. His freedom of speech is protected by the real Bill of Rights, the same Bill of Rights that he seems determined to undermine—”

“That Sandra bitch doesn’t look so bad,” Tyler said. “I mean, for an old woman.”

Lisa Henderson stepped forward and took Hilda Smith by the arm. “The vice president is here on personal business. This is not a press conference. Thank you.” She pulled gently on Hilda’s elbow.

“Why are you refusing to answer the question?” Sandra Juarez demanded.

The vice president started to turn and follow Lisa, ignoring the shouted questions. But then she stopped, face flushed, eyes flashing.

“I came here to visit a friend who was wounded in this futile attempt to disrupt our democratic process. The very notion that anyone could even consider holding a press conference in front of a hospital to score political points is barbaric.” She pointed a finger at Armstrong George, who had placidly watched it all unfold. “Ask that man how he could do such a thing.”

She turned, shaking off Lisa’s hand on her elbow, and disappeared angrily in a scrum of Secret Service agents into the hospital. Her husband followed.

“God.” I sighed. “That was horrible. ‘Futile attempt to disrupt our democratic process’? This is a convention, not democracy.” I turned around to look at Tyler. “Don’t you think that was horrible?”

“Depends,” Tyler grunted.

“Yeah?” I was suddenly hopeful. Maybe I was being too critical. Maybe it wasn’t that bad.

“If you were for Armstrong George, it was a hell of a thing.”

“Fuck you.”

Tyler shrugged. He got up and teetered for a moment on his bad leg. “You ever get to know that son of his?” Tyler asked me.

I couldn’t get the image of Hilda’s startled look out of my head. “Somerfield? No, not really. Why?” Tyler followed me out of his office and back into the club.

“He seems to love to get in all the shots.” Tyler slapped me on the back as we moved through the dance floor. “Buck up, Buckaroo.” There seemed to be beautiful women everywhere. How did Tyler get used to this? “She’s weak, admit it. Not just a woman but a weak woman.”

“Thanks for reminding me. Great.”

Tyler shrugged. “I’m just a dumb ex-skinhead who manages a tittie bar out here on Airline Highway and has a little muscle-for-hire business on the side. You can’t expect me to understand anything very deep. But you always did think you were smarter than any of us.”

“Paul told me the same thing,” I admitted. Tyler was smiling. I couldn’t tell if he was smiling at me or at the dancers who swarmed around us, teasing like younger sisters.

“Look out, girls, here we come. Hey,” Tyler said to one stunning brunette who towered over him, “have a drink. Have a couple of drinks, I get better looking.”

“Oh, I love you, Tyler, just like you are,” she said, reaching out to brush her hand over his scarred face. For a moment they made a striking tableau, the showgirl beauty and the guy who looked like he’d been dragged behind a car through flames.

“It’s not such a bad job,” Tyler said to me at the door. “I get by.”

“You want to come down to the convention, let me know, I’ll get you a floor pass.”

We looked at each other for a moment, then both laughed.

“Yeah, right.” Tyler laughed. “Great fucking idea. Maybe I’ll give the keynote or something. ‘My Life as a Misunderstood, Half-Fried Skinhead.’ It’ll bring down the house. I have a dream,” he suddenly shouted. “A dream of quality strippers for all mankind.”

On the way back to the Windsor Court, just as I turned on Camp, past the waiting homeless sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the Presbyterian Mission, I spotted Tobias Green walking toward his storefront office. I tried to duck, but that’s hard when driving, and Tobias spotted me, and motioned frantically for me to stop. He was so thin and frail he looked like a black scarecrow flapping in the breeze. Except this was August in New Orleans in the hottest summer in a hundred years and there was no wind. I kept driving.

—

I got back to the Windsor Court a little after noon. They were waiting for me in Hilda’s suite, Lisa Henderson not even trying to hide that she was furious and Quentin looking remote and calm, like he always did. They had been texting and calling me for the last hour and a half. Lisa made that point as soon as I walked into the room. Hilda was meeting with delegates and wasn’t there, which was a mild blessing.

“Where have you been?” Lisa demanded.

“At a strip club, actually. How was the hospital?”

“You don’t know?” she said, eyes widening, then saw my look. “Of course you know. Funny,” she snapped. “Very funny. That man Armstrong George should be shot.”

It made sense that Lisa would blame that little horror show on Armstrong George and not Hilda. That was her greatest weakness as a handler. She was too close to Hilda. She’d made the fatal mistake of falling in love with the meat.

“So you’ve seen it?” Quentin Smith asked. He pointed to the television, where Hilda’s disastrous hospital appearance was playing silently. He was calm, but then he always was, a low southern voice, steady, not particularly friendly or inviting but not openly hostile, either. A voice in control.

There was Hilda Smith stepping out of her town car and the rush of the reporters. She looked terrible, first startled, then angry. We watched in silence. It was almost pornographic, a political snuff film, horrifying, riveting.

“Any idea how Armstrong George knew to be at the hospital?” I asked. But I had the awful feeling I knew: Sandra Juarez would have tipped him off so she could have a more dramatic moment. She had probably told them not to tell any other reporters, but they had turned around and screwed her just like she had screwed me. It was all so perfect and predictable. And it was all my damn fault.

“George was holding a press conference in front of the hospital, attacking Hilda for opposing the national death penalty in his New Bill of Rights, when Hilda showed up,” Lisa said. “He even brought that little shit of a son with him. I hate that twerp.”

“Why didn’t our advance warn us that George was there?” I asked, more to myself than them.

“So this is my fucking fault!” Lisa erupted.

“No,” I said, and the sincerity of my reply seemed to surprise her. She stopped.

“We didn’t send advance. Hilda wanted it to be personal.” Had Eddie Basha known about the visit, he would have sent advance anyway. But I didn’t tell Eddie and no one else did either. My little game playing had come close to blowing the campaign. Quentin Smith looked at me as if expecting an answer or explanation. His face was worn with long days outside in the winter. He had blond hair, going gray at the temples, and dark eyes. He was a handsome man.

“We got ambushed,” I said, shrugging.

“Ambushed or set up?” Lisa Henderson spat out. “Armstrong George had to know we were planning to go by the hospital. Had to.”

She was right, of course. But there was no way I could come clean. “Why?” I asked.

Lisa sputtered. “Why? Why? He was waiting for us, that’s why.”

“He was there,” I said, “yes. But that doesn’t mean anything. He didn’t have to know Hilda was going to the hospital. It’s not such an odd thing for him, holding a press conference at the hospital. This bombing was what he needed. It’s a natural for him.” It sounded good enough that for a moment I wondered if maybe that was actually what had happened. Maybe Sandra hadn’t tipped him off. But I knew. She had to have.

“It does seem…odd,” Quentin Smith spoke up. “To be there at the right time, at the right entrance.” He shrugged.

“The front door?” I responded sharply, then regretted it. I was crazy to spar with Hilda Smith’s husband. It was the first rule of consulting: never, ever cross the candidate’s spouse. It was always a loser. And though Quentin Smith hung in the background and was rarely seen in public with his wife, he was still a powerful force, a guy who was used to getting his way. It was his money that had guaranteed Hilda Smith’s election as governor, as much as Lisa Henderson and all the Hilda Smith acolytes liked to think otherwise.

“Sandra Juarez was the worst,” Lisa blurted, then looked at me accusingly.

Quentin Smith raised an eyebrow.

I started to say something, then stopped. I wasn’t going to give her that satisfaction.

“There’s one other thing,” Quentin Smith said finally, after exchanging a look with Lisa.

“Yes?”

“The FBI wants to talk to you,” Quentin Smith said.

—

They were waiting on the ground floor of the Windsor Court. It was a windowless room that had been taken over by the Secret Service as their command post three weeks before the convention began.

Ernie Hawkins was hovering outside the presidential suite to lead me to where the FBI was waiting. There was something reassuring about seeing Ernie, but he only grunted in response when I asked him what the hell was going on. Then a gaggle of delegates and a couple of reporters packed into the elevator and immediately pounced with the usual mixture of advice, criticism, and requests for floor passes. Jammed up near the ceiling of the elevator, the six-five Hawkins watched it with a fixed expression that seemed halfway between disgust and amusement.

“Listen up, J.D.”—a delegate stuck his flushed face inches from mine—“when you needed us we were there, and goddamn it, we need you now. My daughter has been working her ass off for Hilda and that prick Basha won’t even give her a floor pass for one damn evening! For this I raised your ass over fifty thousand? You and I go way back, J.D., and let me tell you, on a strictly personal level, this bothers me no small amount.”

I couldn’t remember ever seeing the man before in my life.

“Your daughter is…?”

“Ricki Simmons. Junior at Stanford.”

“Right,” I nodded, and found myself wondering if she was good-looking. I’d have to ask Ginny. She might know her. I took a card out of the pocket of my tired sport coat and jotted down her name. “Where’s she staying?”

Ernie Hawkins looked down at me and winked. He got the joke. The elevator stopped on the lobby floor and everybody got out. Ernie put a key into the control panel and took the elevator down a floor to the basement. This was where the Secret Service had set up one of their command centers. I’d been down here once before, when Ernie and our advance staffer who worked most closely with the Service gave us a walk-through of the hotel set-up. At the end of the long, dim corridor was a secure room they had set up as the emergency fallback in case there was some kind of threat and they were unable to get the VP out. The Secret Service’s first response was always to get the “protectee” out of the area as fast as possible. In any motorcade of black SUVs, a couple of them were filled with a tactical response team, a Service unit that had the job of fighting off any threat and staying behind while the lead agents extricated whomever they were guarding.

But there was always a fallback plan in case they couldn’t get out. At every stop of anyone high up on the food chain of protection—and a VP was almost as high as it got—a location was picked to use and defend until it was possible to leave. Everybody called it “the Alamo,” as in, “Where’s the Alamo going to be?” The Alamo at the Windsor Court was down the hall, where an agent with an automatic weapon stood almost casually by the door. I nodded, and he waved back.

Ernie led me inside to one of the command rooms. There was the usual line of radios charging and locked gun racks with automatic weapons and maps of New Orleans on the walls. It smelled like bad coffee and Chinese food. A short man built like a fireplug stepped forward. I’d never seen him before. His black hair was longish in the back, his face framed by sideburns that swept past his ears, pointing to his small mouth. “Joey Francis,” he introduced himself. “I’m the bomb guy.”

I nodded. There were a couple of other men in the room, one black, one white, both muscular and staring down at their phones. They were doing what you do when you want to listen but don’t want to look like you want to listen. There were metal chairs and desks in the room, and Ernie sat down on the edge of a long table.

“I was one of these kids, always knew where the best illegal fireworks stands were.” The guy with the Elvis sideburns was talking to me. He had a funny half smile, like he knew some secret that amused him no end. “Loved that shit. M-80s. Cherry bombs. Made my first pipe bomb when I was nine. A piece of lead pipe stuffed with Red Dot shotgun powder, candlewick for a fuse. Tossed it into a gutter on our street, and when it blew it caught the methane gas and every manhole cover up and down the block blew up in the air like big dimes being flipped. That was it. I was hooked.”

“Quentin”—I stopped, correcting myself—“Mr. Smith said the FBI wanted to talk to me. But you’re with the Service?”

I saw the black man in the back shake his head slightly, as if this amused him.

“Nope,” Joey Francis said, putting out his hand. “I work for a living, so that means I’m with the FBI.”

“Funny,” the white man in the back said, “very funny.” He looked up at me from his phone and shook his head. This didn’t seem to bother Joey Francis.

“I wanted to ask you, J.D., you have any idea who might have wanted to kill the vice president’s delegates?”

The question didn’t make sense to me. “Don’t you think if whoever did this was trying to kill a bunch of delegates, they’d be dead? This was psychological warfare, right? Scare people. Freak ’em out.”

He shook his head as if humoring me. “Fine. I’ll rephrase. Do you know anyone who would want to frighten the vice president’s delegates?”

“We do that all the time to keep them in line. I have a whole staff dedicated to scaring delegates.”

He stared at me.

“You’re wondering how I got this job?” I said. “Either that or why I’m being an asshole.”

“Both.”

“I win elections. Beyond that, I have no socially redeeming purpose.”

“Which means that if you lose—”

“I’m a loser, yep.”

“Good to know. Is there some kind of master list of delegates and who they are supporting? Can anybody get that?”

“No offense, but doesn’t the FBI know these things?” My phone was vibrating constantly. I had already wasted half the day with my brothers, and being in this dark basement talking to a bureaucrat was suddenly seeming like an immense waste of time. I thought I heard one of the two guys in the back chuckle.

“If you could get us a list, I’d like to match it against the one we have. And a list of where they are staying.”

“Sure. We have everything from their cell phones and email to underwear sizes. No problem.”

Joey Francis nodded and looked a little surprised that I was agreeing so easily. But what did I care?

“Another question,” he said. It drove me crazy when people announced that they were about to say something instead of just saying it. It was a favorite rhetorical device of bureaucrats, as if they were afraid they wouldn’t be understood without a preamble. “Do you think your brother is dangerous?”

I stared at him. A little river of sweat was starting to run down my back. It was hot down here. The builders had not wasted money on air conditioning for the basement. “Paul?” I asked.

I could feel my phone vibrating. Why couldn’t people just leave me alone for five minutes? Then I wondered if the president had finally gone ahead with his delayed address and I wanted to get out of this room in a hurry.

Joey Francis was just smiling at me. I hated how this made me feel, defensive and off-balance. I wasn’t used to this. I was the guy who prided myself on making others feel defensive. I had made a lot of money advising clients how never to be on the defensive. I stepped in closer to Francis.

“What are you trying to say, Mr. Francis?”

“You have a reputation of a guy who will do anything to win. You have a brother—half brother—who is—”

“Crazy,” I said.

He shrugged. “Extreme. It was suggested that we talk to you about him.”

“Suggested? By whom?” He just stared at me. “Look, let me explain something about politics. What happened last night was a goddamn disaster for my campaign. Yes, I’m a guy who will do anything to win. I’m that obsessive guy who cares about nothing in the world but my campaign. Would I blow up the other guy’s delegates if I could get away with it? Hell, I’d burn their houses down, kill their spawn, and sow their fields with salt. I’d drop uranium isotopes in their drinking water. I’d do anything possible to help my candidate win. But this bombing was terrible for us.”

He let me finish, not changing his expression. “Sounds good,” he said, then held out his hand. “Thanks for coming by.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I left, with a quick nod to Ernie Hawkins.

—

In the hallway, I realized my heart was pounding and I’d broken out in flop sweat. I was getting into a service elevator near the kitchen, my standard way of avoiding the crowd in the Windsor Court lobby, when the black agent who had been in the command center stepped into the elevator.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he said.

“You were the guy in the room who pretended not to be listening to that Joey guy give me a hard time. So, yeah, I remember you.”

“Your brother’s right, you know.”

Boom. There it was again. My brother?

“He says you’re one smart smartass. But come on, you don’t remember me at all?” He took a key out of his pocket and locked the elevator to keep it from moving. “Old Indian trick,” he said.

I stared at him. I’d slept less than two hours the night before, not more than four or five hours every night for the past month. All the faces of all the people I’d met during the campaign swirled before me. I tried to focus. There was something familiar about the guy.

“You see,” the black man said with a smile, “it’s what I always told your brother. The big slow white boys are heroes for life and us fast nee-gros are invisible. He’s lumbering up and down the field like a truck and I’m a ninja night warrior. Invisible. Deadly.”

It was quite a little speech. I stared, feeling the grip on my arm relax. Then the man broke into a deep, loud laugh. “Ninja,” he said, chuckling at his own language. “I like that.”

Suddenly a face and name swam out of my subconscious. “Robinson,” I said. “Walter Robinson.”

“Hallelujah,” the man said. “Praise the Lord. His children have wandered in the wilderness long enough.”

“You were great,” I said, actually excited now. “The fastest guy I ever saw.” Walter Robinson had played with my brother at LSU. He had been a tremendous defensive back until something had happened. “You got hurt, right? Your knee?”

He nodded. “Bad ACL, bad doctor. Bad redo. Zip, it’s over.”

“Man, you were fantastic.”

“Your brother wasn’t bad. But you know why he got all the glory?”

“Did it have something to do with winning the Heisman?”

He shook his head. “You are confusing the effect with the cause. It was Title Seven in reverse.”

“Title Seven?”

“Quotas. Reverse discrimination. Call it what you will. Your brother was a freak—”

“Still is,” I agreed.

“He was a freak because he was WHITE! And a RUNNING BACK! Nobody could believe it. And a decent running back, at that.”

“Walter,” I asked with a sigh, “why are we having this conversation? You followed me in here for a reason.” I held up my phone. I couldn’t count the number of text messages and emails that had come in during the last forty-five minutes. “Are you with the Secret Service now?”

“A cop. And because I am such a charming son of a bitch and because I am a former football great—your momentary lapse of recall being the exception—and because I am a black man in a city that likes to call itself black and because the big boys in the department do not believe I am dealing drugs or killing people on the side for extra cash, they have made me the NOPD designated liaison with the Secret Service–FBI total federal goat rope during this little celebration of democracy.”

“So can you tell me what was going on with that guy? Why did he really want to see me?”

Walter Robinson grinned. “It was all about Joey Francis proving that he wasn’t going to be intimidated by anybody, even the vice president’s own campaign manager. This is his town, not some Washington big shot’s.”

“That’s crazy.”

Walter Robinson leaned in intently. For a terrible moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. Instinctively, I pulled back.

“Can I trust you?” he finally asked.

“Trust?” I asked. “Trust?”

Walter Robinson nodded. “You and me.”

“God, no,” I shot back instantly. “Of course not.”

Walter Robinson kept staring.

“Trust?” I repeated. “Like you were going to share something with me and I was supposed to value this something and then somehow take that something into consideration?” Walter Robinson shrugged. “No way. Not going to happen. All I care about is one simple thing: in seventy-two hours Hilda Smith is going to have more delegates voting for her than that psychotic asshole Armstrong George. That’s it. Period. That’s my sad little mission. And I am taking on no passengers or excess baggage. So anyone would have to be out of their mind to trust me unless that trust helped me get what I need to get done.”

“I think I’m not hearing the truth,” Walter Robinson said. “I think there’s one thing you care more about than Hilda Smith getting those delegates to vote for her.”

“Yeah?” Suddenly I wanted out of the suffocating elevator in the worst way. I was sick to death of this man leaning into my face. “Well, let me tell you something: if somebody told me that I had a choice between a cure for cancer and electing Hilda Smith, I’d laugh out loud, the choice would be so easy. And that’s the God’s honest truth,” and while I said it, I knew that it was the truth. There was a time when such a realization might have troubled me in some deep way, but I’d reached a point in the campaign—and my life—when I just didn’t care.

“I still think there is one thing you care about more than this election,” Walter Robinson repeated.

“Am I being kidnapped?” I asked, and reached for the control panel. His hand shot out and stopped me.

“You care about you,” Walter Robinson said in a quiet but menacing voice.

I paused for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Well, earth to Walter, come in. Of course I care more about myself. I’m a political consultant, for crying out loud, not a missionary. I’d get run out of the damn consultants’ union if it didn’t put me numero uno. So what?”

“So, can I trust you if it’s in your best interest?”

I put a hand on Walter Robinson’s shoulder. It felt like a warm piece of iron. Paul might be melting a little around the edges since his playing days, but Walter was still doing something right. “Walter, you can always trust me to put my interests first. Of that you can be sure. Now can I please get the fuck out of this elevator before I lose my goddamn mind?”

“I’ve got a letter from the bomber,” Walter Robinson finally said. “It talks about your girl.”

“My girl?” My heart started to race. “Sandra? The bomber talks about Sandra?”

He frowned. “Who the fuck is Sandra? Your girl. Hilda, the vice president.” Walter smiled a little. “It seems our boy don’t like your girl too much.”