Every few seconds, all the way through this, she remembered, with a shock, that her husband was dead.

She carried the doorjamb out and fed it in through the open window of Doreen's car. It still stuck out a little bit but it would be okay for the drive home. Living in Commerce City, watching Mexicans, she had learned that you could get away with letting just about anything hang out the windows of your car. She backed out of the driveway and turned around in the big circle and left White House beyond, driving aimlessly into the heart of her old neighborhood, looking for another house with lights in it, a house where they might have a working telephone.

PART 2. The Ride

5

Marsha Wyzniewczki's relationship with her boss had never been ceremonious. When he didn't answer for the third time, she got up from her desk, worked up a good head of steam accelerating across ten feet of office floor, and threw her full hundred and ten pounds against one of the two tall, narrow, Lincolnesque doors that separated her office from the Governor's.

A small old gray man was hunched over in the Governor's chair, in a pool of light in the dark office. Marsha had to look at him for several seconds before she was completely sure that this man was William Anthony Cozzano, the tall sturdy hero who had entered the office a few hours ago, ruddy from his afternoon jog up around Lincoln's Tomb. He had somehow been transformed into this. A wraith from the VA Hospital.

A mother's reflex took over; she groped for the wall switch, lighting up the office. "Willy?" she said, addressing him this way for the first time ever. "Willy, are you all right?"

"Call," he said.

"Call whom?"

"Goddamn it," he said, unable to remember a name. This was the first time she had ever heard him utter profanity when he knew that she was listening. "Call her."

"Call whom?"

"The three-alarm lamp scooter," he said.

Cozzano flapped his right arm, causing his whole body to bend perilously to that side, and pointed across the office at his wall of pictures. "Three-alarm lamp scooter."

Marsha couldn't tell which picture he was pointing at. Christina? The little Vietnamese girl? One of the bridesmaids? Or his daughter, Mary Catherine?

Mary Catherine was a doctor, three years out of medical school. She was a neurology resident at a big hospital in Chicago. The last time the Governor had gone to the city, he had visited her apartment and come back chuckling about one detail of her life: She spent so much time on call and slept so little that she had to have three alarm clocks by her bed.

"Mary Catherine?"

"Yes, goddamn it!"

Marsha went back to her little cockpit, where she sat all day, irradiated on three sides by video screens. Sliding a computer mouse around on the desktop, she located Mary Catherine Cozzano's name and slapped a button. She heard the computer dialing the number, a quick tuneless series of notes, like the song of an exotic bird.

"South Shore Hospital switchboard, may I help you?"

Cozzano's voice broke in before Marsha could say anything; he had picked up his extension. "The budlecker! Make the budlecker go!" Then, infuriated at himself: "No, goddamn it!"

"Excuse me?" the operator said.

"Mary Catherine Cozzano. Pager 806," Marsha said.

"Dr. Cozzano is not on call at this time. Would you like to speak to the doctor who is?"

Marsha did not understand the following words were true until she spoke them: "This is a family emergency. A medical emergency."

Then she dialed 911 on another line.

Then she went back into the Governor's office to make sure that he was comfortable in his chair. He had slumped over to one side. His right arm kept lashing out like a gaff, trying to hook on to something sturdy enough to pull his full weight, but the surface of his desk offered no purchase.

Marsha grabbed the Governor's upper left arm in both of her hands and tried to move him. But Cozzano reached across his body with his right hand and gently, firmly, pulled her hands loose. She

watched his hand for a moment, confused, then noticed that he was staring directly into her eyes.

He glanced significantly at the telephone on his desk. "Fuck me," he said. "Get the maculator!" Then he closed his eyes tight in frustration and shook his head. "No, goddamn it!"

"The maculator?"

"The old Egyptian. Glossy head. He'll fix this muggle. Get the boy of my father's acehole! Ace in the hole."

"Mel Meyer," she said.

"Yeah."

That was an easy one; Mel was the second preset on the Governor's phone, a one-button job. Marsha picked up the phone and pushed that button, with a sense of relief that made her decisive. Mel was the guy to call. She should have called him first, before calling the ambulance.

She ended up having to try a couple of numbers before she reached him on his car phone, somewhere on the streets of Chicago.

"What is it!" Mel snapped, getting things off to a typically brisk start,

"It's Marsha. The Governor has had a stroke or something."

"Oh, no!" William A. Cozzano said. "You're right. I had a stroke. That's terrible."

"When?" Mel said.

"Just now."

"Is he dead?"

"No."

"Is he in distress?"

"No."

"Who is aware of this?"

"You, me, an ambulance crew."

"Is the ambulance there?"

"Not yet."

"Listen carefully." In the background, Marsha heard honking, the squealing of tires, the dim filtered sound of other motorists shouting at Mel, their voices Dopplering wierdly as they veered and accelerated around him. He must have pulled on to the shoulder, sidewalk, or wherever else he saw clear space. Mel kept talking smoothly and without interruption. "You don't want an ambulance there. Even at night the Capitol is crawling with media jackals. Damn that glass wall!"

"But-"

"Shut up. I know you have to get him medical attention. Who's on security detail? Mack Crane?"

"Yes."

"I'll call and tell him to get Willy into the dumbwaiter. You take the stairs down to the basement - don't wait for the damn elevator, don't talk to any press - and find Rufus Bell, who's down in the boiler room, smoking Camels and waiting for the lottery numbers to come up on TV. Tell him that the Governor needs his help. Tell him to clear a path to the civil defense tunnel."

Then Mel hung up. Marsha was saying, "Civil defense?"

The Governor was smiling at Marsha with one side of his face. The other side was expressionless. "He is a smart back," he said. "No! You know what I mean. Do what he said."

The Governor's offices were separated from the rest of the capitol by a huge glass wall that completely sealed off the east wing. Just inside the glass wall was a generously sized reception area, furnished with leather chairs and davenports, where visitors waited to see the Governor or his staff. Right up against the glass was a security desk where Mack Crane or another member of the Governor's security detail was always stationed, twenty-four hours a day, keeping a sharp eye on anyone who approached from the direction of the rotunda. Mack was a plainclothes Illinois cop, bald head fringed with straight, steely hair, wearing an unfashionably wide tie over a short-sleeved shirt. By the time Marsha had made it out of the Governor's office; through her own office, and out into the reception area, Mack's phone was already ringing, and as she punched her way out through the glass doors, heading for the Rotunda, she could hear him saying, "Hi, Mel."

Rufus Bell was downstairs in his little asbestos empire, smoking unfiltered Camels and watching television on a little black-and-white set he had poised on an upended bucket, when Marsha drove her shoulder into the steel door of the boiler room. Something in her manner caused him to rise to his feet.