Today he could no longer restrain himself. His hand darted down into her blouse, quick as a striking cobra, and caught her nipple. Not hard enough to hurt. But hard enough to keep her where she was.

"Mr. Freel," said one of his minders. One of the hated men in suits who surrounded him at all times.

"Shut up, asswipe!" Freel said.

Louella was staring straight into Freel's eyes. She wasn't angry at all. She was almost amused. She was interested. She licked her lips and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Freel, but fresh fruit isn't on today's menu." Her face was about four inches from Freel's. She was wearing a lot of perfume and Freel could smell it wafting up from the middle of her hot cleavage.

"Then what do I have here?" Freel said, squeezing her nipple.

"You don't have a damn thing," Louella said, "unless you can get us a little bit of privacy." She looked around accusingly at all of the men in suits: four of them in this room alone.

"Get the fuck out!" Freel shouted.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Freel, you know we can't allow that!" said the head honcho, a guy who would only identify himself as Al. Al was clearly getting a little nervous. "Ma'am," he said to Louella, "I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

"But I can't," Louella said, "until Mr. Freel lets go of me. And I can tell you he's not the kind of man who lets go until he gets what he wants."

"Get the fuck out," Freel said, "or this whole campaign goes up in flames. Can't you see I need to get laid?"

This appeal to simple, basic human needs got through to Al. He broke eye contact and thought about it for a second. "Well, okay," he finally said. "Come on guys, let's leave them alone."

All of Freel's minders got up and backed out of the room staring fixedly at Louella's backside. Louella turned around and yelled at them on their way out. "And I don't want you standing outside the door listening, either. You get back to your own rooms and watch TV of something."

Al, and the rest of the minders, left the room and closed the door.

They were still standing there, nervously, a minute later, when Louella stuck her head out the door. "I knew it!" she said. "You guys are all perverts. Get back to your rooms!"

Al posted one of his men by the elevators, just down the hall, and then the rest of the men retreated to their rooms, leaving the doors open.

A minute later, the guard by the elevators heard the little bell chime. The down arrow lit up. The elevator door opened to reveal a pair of brawny men, both wearing gas masks and ear protectors, who were just in the perfectly timed act of bursting out the doors; one of them grabbed the guard by the collar and jammed a thick wad of cloth over his mouth as the other reached out with a small but dense blunt object and took it upside of his head.

Louella emerged from Freel's room, stark naked, pursued closely by Freel himself. She was laughing and screaming; he was shouting, "You dirty bitch! Get back here!"

Louella made for the elevator. She reached it, and hit the lobby button, just as Al and the rest of Freel's guards were emerging into the corridor. They saw nothing but Jeremiah Freel diving into the elevator, and two large, unfamiliar men strewing stun grenades up and down the length of the hallway.

Twenty seconds later, staff and guests in the lobby were treated to the sight of Louella, a former Miss April, sprinting out of the elevator doors stark naked, still laughing and giggling, and running toward the front entrance, pursued the entire way by an old man with his erect penis sticking out of his fly.

A doorman, reflexes honed by years of practice, cleared the way. Louella ran through the open door, into the horseshoe drive, and jumped into the back of a windowless van. The door slammed shut, the van burned rubber and shot forward out of the drive, revealing something that had been hiding on the other side of it: Cyrus Rutherford Ogle, flanked by two dozen TV cameramen and still photographers, all of whom were busily recording the quickly changing facial expressions of Jeremiah Freel, and his vanishing penis.

"Come back to lose another election, Jeremiah?" Ogle said.

Freel's mouth dropped open and his nose wrinkled into a snarl. His eyes jumped back and forth between Ogle and the cameraman.

Then he charged.

Cy Ogle stood his ground, hands in the pockets of his trench coat.

Freel dove the last six feet, wrapped his arms around Ogle's thighs, and bent his head back, mouth open to bite into Ogle's genitals.

Ogle took his hand from his pocket, holding a small cylindrical object. His index finger twitched and fired a long stream of Mace directly into Freel's open mouth. Freel went into violent convul­sions and fell to the horseshoe drive, thrashing, foaming, and howling like a wounded animal.

"Welcome to public relations hell," Ogle said, and then climbed into a waiting car. As it drove away, he was able to look back and watch Freel convulsing on the drive in front of the hotel, surrounded now by photographers and cameramen who were all aiming their lenses downward.

56

The final, and by far the most important, debate of the presidential campaign was held on the evening of Friday, November 1, four days before Election Day, in a lecture hall at Columbia University. The participants were the President of the United States, William Anthony Cozzano and Nimrod T. ("Tip") McLane. The moderator was the president of the hosting univer­sity. He fielded questions among the three presidential candidates and a panel of four journalists, who were all of the first rank.

All three of the candidates had spent the last couple of days mostly in seclusion, honing their skills in mock debates. McLane and the President had both brought in mimics to simulate the other two candidates, and spent hours in exhausting practice sessions, during which simulated journalists would throw out the most difficult, vicious, twisted questions imaginable.

The advance people had been at the auditorium for a solid day. Lecterns had to be arranged on the stage. Lights had to be focused and adjusted. Camera placement had to be worked out. All of these were subject to intensive negotiation. A wrongly placed spotlight in '84 had emphasized the bags under Mondale's eyes and made him look older than Reagan. The height of each lectern had to be adjusted relative to the height of the candidate. The color of the set and the color of the lights affected what kind of suits would look best; standins had to be brought onstage, wearing different suits, in order to decide which looked best. Makeup had to be tried out; makeup artists had to have rooms in which to work, and no one candidate's could be bigger, better equipped, or closer to the stage than any other's.

Though an audience was going to be present in the hall, its only real function was to provide a bit of ambient noise: applause (to be kept under control as much as possible) and possibly the occasional outburst of laughter, though using humor in these circumstances was probably too risky to be considered. In the current political climate, humor was a zero-sum game. The impression that the candidates made on the live audience was unimportant. A huge video screen was erected above the stage so that the people and the journalists in the hall could see the TV feed, which was the only thing that mattered.

The same feed was piped into a large, low-ceilinged room beneath the auditorium and displayed on a couple of dozen monitors. This room was filled with long tables where journalists could set up their laptop computers, plug into telephone lines, and file their stories. This was the room where the spin doctors from the three campaigns would circulate before, during, and after the debate, explaining to the reporters what was happening.