Ellen swung her long, shapely legs off the bed and shook her tangled mass of carrot-red hair. She wore a short pale blue nightgown. Lowe plopped down next to her and began to knead her neck. “You can do it, baby. I know you can. Get her at work or the apartment, wherever you can. Come off sweet and caring-like you are naturally.” He grinned and pressed her neck harder to reinforce his words.

“Easy,” she said, pulling away, standing, stretching and heading for the bathroom.

Lowe went to the window and looked out. The rain continued to fall, hard and wind-driven. He’d pull this off. He had to pull it off. Once it was over, maybe it was time to move on, use the leverage of his position with Widmer to land a bigger and better job on the Hill. Hell, once Parmele lost his bid for a second term and a Republican was in the White House, there might be a spot there for Geoff Lowe. The new president would know it was the Widmer hearings that brought down Parmele, and that Geoff Lowe was the brains behind it.

He’d been pursuing a dream of having political clout since high school, where he was elected senior class president, not an especially impressive victory considering the caliber of the opposition, but heady nonetheless. In college, at the University of Wisconsin, he majored in political science and became active in a small but growing student Young Republicans’ Club, practicing the art of shaping the message and getting it out, proselytizing the party line, and basking in the satisfaction the wielding of power inevitably delivers. He returned home to Orange County, California, where he’d been born and raised, and worked on the campaigns of a variety of county and statewide Republican candidates, learning as he went and establishing a name for himself as a tireless, committed campaign worker with bedrock Republican beliefs. There was a time early in his life when he aspired to elected office for himself. Pragmatically, however, he soon realized that his political future lay not with running for office, but with pulling the strings behind those better suited to the more public act of asking for votes-and for money. Surprisingly-and it surprised even him-he developed a scorn for politicians and their need to straddle fences, abandon core values in order to win, and promise but only sometimes deliver on those promises. Public service? Self-service was more like it. But such occasional contradictory thoughts never dampened his fervor for the political process. It was all about power, and power was Geoff Lowe’s aphrodisiac. Ask his former wife, whom he married a few days after graduating college. That marriage lasted four months; her parents managed to have it annulled.

His first job in Washington was as an aide to a right-wing California congressman. When that pol lost his reelection bid, Lowe accepted an invitation to join the staff of Alaska Senator Karl Widmer. Lowe’s seeming tirelessness and commitment to the senator’s agenda impressed the aging Widmer, and promotions came quickly. Lately, he wondered whether Widmer was becoming senile, so intent was he on his crusade to deny Parmele a second term to the exclusion of myriad other legislative concerns. That was all that seemed to matter these days to the silver-haired Alaskan-destroying Adam Parmele, which was okay as far as Lowe was concerned. He didn’t carry a brief one way or the other about the president. What was important was that if Widmer, and by extension Geoff Lowe, succeeded in the effort, he, Lowe, would see his stock rise within Republican circles, leading to bigger things.

If there was one political operative Lowe admired, it was Parmele’s political guru, Chet Fletcher, and he enjoyed projecting himself into Fletcher’s role with a Republican president, the power behind the throne, the consummate insider, the one the president of the United States turned to in his darkest hours.

That was power!

He heard the shower go on and pictured a naked Ellen Kelly soaping herself. No doubt about it, she was a great-looking fox. But she was wearing thin, like Widmer and his tantrums. It would be time for a new job and a new fox, somebody with more sophistication. He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand, stood, and nodded in self-affirmation.

Winard Jackson lived in a basement apartment on upper 16th Street, on the edge of Washington’s so-called black Gold Coast, home to many of the city’s successful African-American men and women. He’d found the apartment shortly after moving to D.C. from Boston with a degree in jazz performance from the Berklee College of Music. While most of his fellow students at the prestigious jazz school had headed upon graduation for jazz hot spots like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, Jackson had opted for D.C. because it was home to legendary tenor saxophonist Buck Hill.

Hill had visited Berklee as a guest lecturer and was impressed with the young Jackson’s improvisational talents. He invited him to look him up after graduation and agreed to accept him as a private student. Jackson didn’t hesitate to accept the offer, and Hill not only became his musical mentor but helped the young black man acclimate to the city, introduced him to a wide circle of musicians, and found him the apartment in a well-kept row house owned by a friend who rented units to young jazz performers, especially those recommended by Buck Hill. With monthly financial help from supportive parents in Texas, Jackson managed to get by with occasional jobs playing around town, anything that paid-rock bands, Latin bands, occasional studio work, wedding bands, and when the planets were properly aligned, jazz groups.

The apartment consisted of a large living room, two tiny bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. Photographs and posters of jazz giants idolized by the young musician covered the walls. A Yamaha electric piano sat in one corner of the living room; Jackson used this to work out new chord changes to old tunes. There was a couch and two easy chairs, a TV, a small table off the kitchen that served as a dining table, and a state-of-the-art sound system for hundreds of CDs housed in tall, free-standing racks.

It was to this basement haven that Richard Marienthal had fled.

Jackson had been playing a job when Rich arrived at the apartment; he’d left a key with the landlady. When he returned from his job at four the next morning, he found his writer friend asleep on the couch.

“The bed in that other room is yours, Rich,” he said after his noisy entrance had awakened Marienthal.

“I wasn’t sure which bedroom to use,” Marienthal said. “I can’t thank you enough for letting me crash here.”

Jackson’s laugh was easy and frequent. “It works out great, man,” he said, pointing to a suitcase and two saxophone cases near the door. “The place is yours ’cause I won’t be around for a while.”

“You said when I called that you were heading out of town on a gig. What’s it all about?”

“It’s like a gift from heaven, man. When Charlie called me-Charlie Young, the alto player-and said Buck had recommended me for a band Charlie’s taking on the road, I almost fell over. We’ve got seven weeks in some good clubs around the country.”

“I know who Charlie Young is,” Marienthal said.

“Right. We caught him together, what, a month, two months ago? He’s a monster. Anyway, we’ve been rehearsing for the past two weeks and leave tomorrow morning for the tour, so the joint is yours, man, for as long as you want. But you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I catch the news on the tube and see that you’re, like, at the center of a big storm.”

“Afraid so,” Marienthal said.

Jackson brewed herbal tea in the tiny kitchen and brought two cups to the living room, along with fresh blueberry scones. He raised his cup to Marienthal and said, “Okay, man, lay it on me.”