"And maybe it brings in the cops and the feds," I said, "and everybody's investigating the blackmail and they look more closely into Browne and you've lost your tame congressman."

Vinnie pursed his lips and shrugged.

"And you've thought of all that," I said, "or you'd have done it already. You wouldn't be here."

"And if Alexander were willing to go that route, he wouldn't have you gumshoeing around looking into it," Vinnie said.

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe he won't unless he has to.

I say we have a standoff. You blow the whistle on Mrs. Alexander, and I'll blow the whistle on Robert Browne."

"'Course we could kill you," Vinnie said.

"Hard to do," I said.

"But not impossible," Vinnie said.

"Can't prove it by me," I said. "But say you do, what happens then?"

"People look into it," Vinnie said. He was looking out the window as he spoke, and a small thought-wrinkle appeared vertically between his eyebrows. "I don't know how many people you've talked with about Browne's connection. Knowing you, not many. Still, we buzz you and people will wonder. That G.o.dd.a.m.ned n.i.g.g.e.r could be bothersome."

"Especially when I mention that you called him a G.o.dd.a.m.ned n.i.g.g.e.r."

Vinnie shook his head and made a slight pushing gesture with his hand. "It's the way I talk," he said. "I know Hawk. Something happens to you, he'll be a royal pain in the a.s.s till he gets it straightened out."

I waited. Vinnie thought some more. Then he smiled.

"So for the moment, say we don't buzz you. We still got things our way. We got Browne in our pocket, and if he loses, then we got Alexander in our pocket, 'cause we got the films."

"So far," I said.

"So far," Vinnie said. "We'd rather have Browne, all things being equal. He's in place, and we know him, and he's not as stupid as Alexander. But Meade would do in a pinch."

"He'll be pleased with the endors.e.m.e.nt," I said.

Vinnie grinned his cold, genuine grin. "He'll have to be," he said.

I thought about things after Vinnie left. It didn't sit right, none of it.

I'd thought up a lot of good reasons why they didn't just go public with Ronni in the buff, but they didn't persuade me. The reasoning was too subtle for Joe Broz. Broz was old-fashioned and direct. His idea of finesse was to wire a bomb to your ignition. He wouldn't p.u.s.s.yfoot around with this. He'd spread the picture around and expect Alexander to go down the tube. And he'd be right. Alexander's const.i.tuency would not swallow having their hero married to the Wh.o.r.e of Babylon. And his opponents would be so heartened and amused that Alexander couldn't get elected to Cuckolds Unlimited. I knew something Vinnie didn't. I knew that Alexander would go in the tank for them rather than let his wife be smeared. I looked at my watch: ten of eleven. Too early for Irish whiskey.

The more I thought about things, the more they didn't make any sense. It wasn't Broz's style. It wasn't even Vinnie's. It was about Ed's style. It was something that should have been simple and was being complicated. Usually when that happened to something I was trying to figure out, it meant that there was too much I didn't know.

Why didn't they just use that film? Why the fancy blackmail? It didn't make sense. Not Broz's kind of sense. It made amateurish sense. But Broz was not amateurish. I looked at my watch again. Eleven o'clock. I had to see the film. I didn't like to ask, but I had to. I had nowhere else to go. I spent some time rea.s.suring myself that my interest in the film was simply professional. And it was. Completely. Like a doctor. Detached. Maybe if I got an early flight to D.C. I could watch the movies in the afternoon.

I called Alexander's office in Washington and told him that I was coming down and why. Then I pulled out my typewriter and wrote up what little I knew about things. It took one page, double-s.p.a.ced. I folded it up, put it into an envelope, sealed the envelope, and took it over to the Harbor Health Club to leave with Henry Cimoli.

Henry had a problem with T-shirts. If he got them big enough for his upper body, they tended to hang down to his knees like a dress. If he got them the right length, he couldn't get his arms through the sleeves. He'd solved it so far by getting the right length and cutting the sleeves off, but as his health club got tonier and tonier, he'd begun to look into custom tailoring.

"If anything happens to me, give it to Hawk," I said. "Otherwise don't open it."

"Can't be a list of the people who don't like you," Henry said. "Envelope's not thick enough."

"It's my secret formula," I said. "How to be more than five foot four."

"I'm five six," Henry said.

"So how come when you fought Sandy Sadler he kept punching you on the top of the head?"

"I was trying to bull inside," Henry said.

I went home to pack.

Chapter 15.

Alexander's Washington home was a three-story yellow frame house on the corner of Thirty-first and O Streets in Georgetown. He let me in.

"Ronni's away for the afternoon," he said. "It's in the den."

He led the way. The house was elegant Victorian, entirely immaculate. The den was fireplaced, paneled, leather-chaired, and hokey. There was a bison head mounted on the wall above the fireplace.

Alexander said, "You know how to operate one of these?"

I said I did. The videotape player was in a cabinet under the television. The connection wires ran up behind the cabinet.

"The tape is in there," Alexander said. "Everything is on. Simply push the play b.u.t.ton."

He handed me a key. "Lock the room while you are watching. When you are through leave the tape in the recorder and lock the door. I have another key."

I nodded.

"I'm going to work," he said.

I nodded. He paused at the door to the den, looking at me. He started to speak and stopped. His face looked hot. I said, "I'm sorry I have to do this." He looked at me another moment then went out and closed the door behind him. I went and locked it and left the key in the lock, then I went back and pushed the play b.u.t.ton and sat in a leather chair and looked at the TV screen.

There was an interval of blank screen then some miniature polka dots against a black background and then a full-face medium shot of Ronni Alexander. She was doing a kind of inexpert dance, her arms above her head, her hips swaying. The sound cut in, not very clearly, as if the microphone were too far away, but I could hear that Ronni was humming as she danced, and, by listening hard, I could tell that she was humming "Night Train." I felt itchy with embarra.s.sment. She danced past a table and picked up a gla.s.s, the shallow kind that people serve champagne in and shouldn't. She drank off the contents and threw the gla.s.s against the wall. Still dancing, she unb.u.t.toned her blouse and slowly peeled it off. She was looking at someone in the room. I couldn't see much of him. Just the back of a dark head with a very expensive haircut. Ronnie unb.u.t.toned her skirt at the side and slid the zipper down and held it momentarily with a look of contrived coquettish-ness, then let it drop. She wasn't wearing pantyhose. She was wearing underpants and stockings and a garter belt. A garter belt. Jesus Christ. The last garter belt I could remember was the year Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown. She took off her bra. She unsnapped her garters and rolled her stockings off, one at a time, slowly, still making pseudodance movements and humming "Night Train." She drank several more gla.s.ses of champagne and tossed the gla.s.ses away. Tempestuous. Finally she slid out of her last garment and was naked. I thought of Alexander watching this and my throat felt tight.

"You b.i.t.c.h," I heard myself say aloud in the quiet, ornate room. My voice sounded more sad than angry. Her partner became part of the scene now, a soft-faced young man with a mustache, maybe a few years older than Paul Giacomin. He stretched out on the bed and let her undress him. I could hear sc.r.a.ps of their dialogue. What I could hear made me wish for "Night Train." I was glad the mike had been badly placed.

When they were both naked they had s.e.x. They did more than that. They put on a clinic. Ronni's dance had been artless, but her s.e.x was expert. She did things I had rarely contemplated, though nothing I objected to. And she made a good deal of noise while she did it. Her partner clearly enjoyed himself, but he was also careful to arrange her full face to the camera as often as possible. He wore sungla.s.ses during the entire performance.

When the tape ended it simply ended, there was no dramatic resolution, it merely stopped in medias res. I rewound the tape and played it again. This time around I noticed that the room was brilliantly lit by sunlight and at one brief shot saw an uncurtained window wall off camera right. Most of the action seemed to take place on a double bed with a pale blue comforter on it. The champagne was on a bureau. In the background on a bedside table was a clock radio, with a digital display. The time seemed to be 2:08. With the sun shining in like it was early afternoon it meant the windows faced west or southwest depending on the time of year. From their clothing I couldn't tell the time of year.

The camera must have been concealed behind the mirror over the bureau. It covered the whole room from there, though its focus was on the human activity. In another shot there was a desk, apparently on the window side of the bed. I ran the tape back and forward over the desk several times. There were books on the desk, but the spines were turned away and I couldn't make out a t.i.tle. There were pens and pencils in a beer mug. There was also a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter. I rewound and ran the tape again. There was an emblem and lettering on the beer mug. I couldn't make it out. I found a magnifying gla.s.s in the drawer of a rolltop desk and tried again to read the mug as it drifted by on the screen. But I couldn't. The gla.s.s merely reduced the picture to its component dots. The best I could do was see that it looked like one of those mugs they sell in college bookstores with the college or fraternity emblem on them.

I ran the tape three more times, but there was nothing else to get from it. Ronnie seemed drunk. She postured in some childish fantasy of Salome; she was skillful in all of her s.e.xual activity, but a little self-conscious about it, and her companion patronized a very good barber and wore sungla.s.ses while s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g. The action looked to be in someone's bedroom, not a motel, and the bedroom had a western exposure, probably not at ground level or they would not have left the shades open, even for camera light. Unless Ronni was even more unusual than I thought.

I rewound the tape one more time, left it in the machine, shut everything off, closed and locked the door to the den, and let myself out Alexander's front door.

I knew why he'd left me there alone. I was glad he had.

My rental car was parked on O Street. I got in and drove a short block to Wisconsin, turned left, and headed in-town. I hadn't learned much, and I'd embarra.s.sed my client and myself. I was getting used to that.

Chapter 16.

I had taken a room at the Hay Adams. When I was alone I was a Holiday Inn man. But I was hoping for some time with Susan while I was here, and Susan was worth the Hay Adams. My room overlooked Lafayette Park and beyond it the White House. I hung up my clothes and had room service deliver a couple of beers and The Washington Post. Then I called Susan at her hospital. I could feel tension buzz in my stomach while I dialed. Of course she was with a patient, and of course she couldn't be disturbed. I left word that I was at the Hay Adams if Ms. Silverman got a moment free from succoring the afflicted.

Then I stood for a while and drank my beer and looked out at the White House. A guard leaned against one of the columns on the front porch. The people with the signs had them propped up against the fence out front. On the lawn to the right a television crew was filming a stand-up with the White House in the background. The President was in there somewhere, and the First Lady. She was there too, with the President. She wasn't off someplace far studying to be a doctor.

I got tired of looking at the White House and sat down in one of the chairs and put my feet on the double bed and read the Post. By the time I finished the Post it was getting dark outside. I looked at the White House some more. I could go for a walk, but if I did, I might miss Susan if she called.

I turned on the TV and watched the early news and wondered why the early-news people in every city were wimps. Probably specified in the recruitment ads. Early-News Person Wanted. Must Be Wimp. Send resume and tapes to... I shut off the television and looked out the window some more. I could order up some Irish whiskey and get drunk. But if Susan did call... It was dark now and the White House gleamed in its spotlights. I thought about Ronni Alexander trying to be Yvonne De Carlo and the look on Alexander's face when he left me there to watch. I thought about the lucky people that Susan was treating. Her undivided attention for fifty minutes. Son of a b.i.t.c.h.

They were having a party at the White House. Limousines pulled up the circular drive and let people out. Some people didn't come in limousines. They simply walked up the driveway. Maybe they took a cab. I'd always wondered how you said that. Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, my good man, and don't spare the horses. The President and the First Lady were probably dressing. Or maybe they were necking. Or... Someone knocked at the door of my room. I went and opened it and there was Susan wearing a silver racc.o.o.n coat and carrying a bottle of champagne and smelling like Eden in springtime.

"Did you really say 'succor the afflicted' to the department secretary?" she said.

"Yeah," I said. "I think she was offended."

I stepped aside and she came in and put the champagne on the bureau and turned and smiled. I stood and stared at her. There were times when I wanted to strangle her. But never when she was with me. Her presence overcame everything.

"Jesus Christ," I said.

She opened her arms and I stepped in against her and hugged her. She raised her face and I kissed her. I felt liquid and dispersive, as if I might dissolve into the floor.

Susan was brisk and cheerful. "Now you have a decision to make," she said. "Do you want to drink the champagne before or after you jump on my bones?"

That was easy.

Afterward we sat up in bed drinking the champagne from water gla.s.ses.

"See," Susan said. "I do succor the afflicted."

"Yes," I said. "You give good succor."

Susan drank some of the champagne.

"Was Paul with you on Thanksgiving?"

"Yes. We ate out. How about you?"

"Super. There were five or six of us from the program and John, our supervisor, had us all out to his home in Bethesda. There were twenty-five people in all, including some very big people in the profession."

"Yeah, but how many of them can do a one-armed pushup?"

Susan smiled and drank more of her champagne. "Tell me about what you're doing down here," she said.

"Besides seeking succor?"

She nodded.

"I'm working for a congressman," I said.

"You? That doesn't seem like you."

"Maybe it was an excuse to get to Washington," I said.

"I wouldn't think you'd need an excuse."

I shrugged. "Anyway," I said, "I'm working for a congressman named Meade Alexander."

"Meade Alexander? Good G.o.d, what does he think of you?"

I poured the rest of the champagne evenly into our two gla.s.ses. "He has not been fortunate in his marriage," I said.

Susan settled back a little against her pillows and I told her about Meade and Ronni Alexander.

When I got through, Susan said, "The poor woman."

"I hadn't thought too much about that," I said. "I've been kind of identifying with Alexander, I suppose."

Susan nodded. "She must be very desperate."

"Most people are," I said.

Chapter 17.

I dropped Susan off at 8:15 the next morning in front of the Medical Center on Michigan Avenue.

"When you come to work wearing the same clothes, won't people suspect you of shacking up?" I said.