"Hey, sis. How you doing?"

He didn't even realize that he had screwed up. That was the frightening part. No self-awareness.

"You're late," she said.

He was shocked, shocked to find that she was mad at him. He shrugged and held his palms up. "My flight was delayed. You know how O'Hare is."

"So do you," Mary Catherine said, "and a Ph.D. candidate at Notre Dame should have the brains to allow for it."

"Jesus," he said, now sounding wounded, "this whole thing has turned you into quite the dragon lady."

"You can say 'bitch' if you want."

"Suit yourself."

She turned away from him and looked out over the ocean again, watching the big ketch come about. Its booms swung across the deck, its jibs went limp and fluttered for a moment, then reinflated and snapped tight again as the boat settled into a new course.

It didn't bother her at all. They were dealing with some heavy-duty shit here. And now, all of a sudden, she understood a lot of things about Dad that she hadn't understood before. Why he was such a tough guy. Why he could be so calculating.

"There's plenty of flights. I thought maybe you would come out last night," Mary Catherine said, trying not to sound quite so harsh.

"I was busy. I had business to take care of."

These words terrified her. She looked into his face. "What kind of business?"

"Take it easy," he said reassuringly. "I'm not running around doing stuff behind your back."

"I've never accused you of doing so," she said. "This is the first time that notion's come up."

He blushed, looked away, got real clumsy for a few seconds. "Well, this thing is my own gig," he said. "Nothing to do with you or the family."

"What thing?"

"I got a job," he said, beaming with pride.

"Well, that's great," she said, "but isn't that going to interfere with your Ph.D. work?"

"No, that's just the thing," he said. "It's part of my Ph.D. work. I'm double clipping. I get paid to do this job, and I get my regular stipend as a grad student, and I'll probably get a book contract out of it too." James had a devilish look on his face, as if he had just outmaneuvered Satan himself.

"Well, James, that's wonderful!" she said. "What kind of job is this?"

"I'm doing a study of the presidential campaign. All of the politicking that's been going on during the primary season. With emphasis on media strategy. And if I play my cards right, I'm pretty sure this could turn into a book eventually."

"That's great. How'd you get on to this idea?"

"It just hit me the other day. I was talking to this guy. He's a big-time campaign media consultant. You might not have heard of him."

"What's his name?"

"Cy. Cyrus Rutherford Ogle."

"Oh. How'd you get hooked up with him?"

"He just invited me out to lunch," James said nonchalantly. "I'm not sure exactly why. But I think that, obviously, because of my family connections, combined with my poli sci expertise, he thought maybe I'd be a good person to know."

"Yes, I should think so," Mary Catherine said, sounding terribly impressed.

"We engaged in small talk for a while, nothing specific. Then he started asking me a lot of questions about my dissertation. He seemed to be fascinated with the topic."

"I'll bet he was."

"I was asking him about some of the work he does and it occurred to me that, since he seemed to be so interested in my work, a mutual back-scratching arrangement might be possible so we hammered this whole thing out, right there at the lunch table. He's giving me access to a number of campaigns - he has friends and proteges working in virtually every important campaign right now. So I get lots of material I wouldn't otherwise have access to."

"Well," Mary Catherine said, "it sounds like you just made a brilliant career move." It was taking a lot of effort to keep from smiling at her brother. He had the same proud, beaming look on his face that he'd had at the age of six, when he caught a big toad in the backyard.

James shrugged. "Yeah. But Jesus, it's a lot of work."

"It is?"

"Oh, yeah. Suddenly I've got all these contacts. Dozens of major sources. All these people to keep track of. I've spent the last few days just talking to people on the phone, setting up a database to keep track of all the information I'll be taking in. I'm going to be running flat-out until Election Day."

"Uh-huh."

"But if there's one thing that I learned from Dad, it's that when you see an opportunity you have to go for it in a big way."

"Well," Mary Catherine said, "I hope you're not biting off too much."

This was manipulation in its purest form. He would have found it patronizing to be congratulated. Better to fret and worry about what a big, manly job James was undertaking.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said. He was irked, and rapidly getting more so, building up a nice crescendo of self-important rage. "You think I can't handle a big job?"

Mary Catherine shrugged. "I have a lot of respect for you, James," she said noncommitally.

"No, you don't. You still think I'm a little kid. But I'm not. I'm

an adult. And maybe you don't want to admit that fact, now that you've become the self-appointed capo of this family and you think you know what's best for everyone."

"Fine. It's your choice," she said.

"I've done big jobs before. And I'm going to do this one. I'm going to succeed."

"Good. I wish you the best of luck."

James shut up for a moment, calming himself down. "It's been hard, being the son of the Great Man."

"I know it has been," she said. "I know it's been really rough."

"There've been a lot of times when I felt like the idiot son, you know. A lot of Dad's old cronies treat me like a little kid."

By this, Mary Catherine knew that he was referring to Mel.

"But Cy is totally different," he continued. "He treated me with respect. As an equal. He had no doubts whatsoever that I could handle this job. And I'm grateful to him for that."

So am I, Mary Catherine thought.

"You should meet this guy sometime," James said.

"Maybe I should."

An interesting thought had occurred to Mary Catherine. Maybe Cy Ogle had manipulated her just as brilliantly as he had James.

Or maybe not. She had handed him something close to a quid pro quo: help me out with James, this loose cannon on the deck of the good ship Cozzano, and then we'll talk some more. And he had delivered. He had done it in less than a week. He had solved a big problem for them.

Cy Ogle might be a person that they could use.

23

Eleanor's first hint that anything funny was going on was when she heard Doreen, in the next trailer over, going, "Whoo-ee! Look at this, baby!" in the singsong falsetto that she used to attract the attention of her children. Meanwhile, Eleanor could hear the sound of tires grinding and popping on gravel, right outside of her trailer.

Eleanor looked out the window. Mobile homes, like jet airplanes, offered great views off to the sides but you couldn't see what was directly in front or behind. All she could see was the side of Doreen's trailer, and Doreen's big hairdo in one of the windows, flanked by the faces of her three kids, their eyes and mouths wide open to accept new input. They were all looking at something that was going on in front of Eleanor's trailer.

It must be the Nazis. They were coming to get her. Eleanor ran up to the front of the trailer, slapping the chain on to her door as she went by it. She got up to the front where two tiny little windows looked forward, and she peeled the windowshade back just a little.

It was a big old Lincoln Town Car, navy blue, freshly polished, the cleanest and prettiest car within several miles of this trailer park. You could back it into an empty slot here and make it pass for a mobile home.