"No."

"So where do we go, Spenser?"

"Maybe I can try tea, or some of that decaffeinated stuff."

"Stop," Vinnie said. "That stuff's slop. Coffee or nothing is the way I go."

I nodded.

Vinnie said, "Besides your problems with caffeine, you got any thoughts on our situation?"

"You got something on Mrs. Alexander and I want it and you don't want me to have it," I said.

"And we don't want you trying to get it," Vinnie said.

"But I'm going to get it anyway."

Vinnie nodded. "We could go public with the films if you get annoying."

"And then you've shot your hold on Alexander," I said. " 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.'"

"Yeah, but his chances of election are zilch."

"Maybe not," I said. "Maybe he rises above it. Maybe it backfires and people suspect Browne of the whole thing and give Alexander the sympathy vote."

It was warm in my office. Vinnie got up and took off his overcoat and folded it carefully over the back of my other office chair.

"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 goddamned nigger could be bothersome."

"Especially when I mention that you called him a goddamned nigger."

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 ass 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 endorsement," 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 pussyfoot around with this. He'd spread the picture around and expect Alexander to go down the tube. And he'd be right. Alexander's constituency would not swallow having their hero married to the Whore 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 reassuring 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-spaced. 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.

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 button."

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 button 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 embarrassment. She danced past a table and picked up a glass, the shallow kind that people serve champagne in and shouldn't. She drank off the contents and threw the glass against the wall. Still dancing, she unbuttoned 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 unbuttoned 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 glasses of champagne and tossed the glasses away. Tempestuous. Finally she slid out of her last garment and was naked. I thought of Alexander watching this and my throat felt tight.