“So?” Cass asked Randy. They were in his Senate office building, following a long day of commission hearings. Gideon Payne hadn’t shown up; probably still licking his wounds.

Randy had been evasive all day. Every time she brought it up, he said he didn’t want to discuss the matter in or even near the commission hearing room. Senators, who spend most of their waking hours within a few feet of a microphone, sooner or later become convinced that the entire landscape is listening, even if they really have nothing worth listening to.

“Did you call the FBI?”

“Honestly?”

Cass said, “Randy, you’ve got to stop saying that. It sends a signal: Normally, I lie through my teeth. Trust me. I teach corporate executives how to lie. But the answer is, yeah, I’d like to know. Honestly.”

“I got my guy Speck working on it. If anyone can find out what’s going on with the FBI and your computers, he can. I still can’t believe you put all that stuff in your diary. I’m not even certain I ever called my mother a cunt to you.”

“Why can’t you just call the FBI directly? You’re a U.S. senator. You’re supposed to throw your weight around.”

“Because it will leak that I’m trying to protect my girlfriend.”

“So? It’ll get you the girlfriend vote.”

“I promise you that I am every bit as anxious as you are to get your bloody computer back. My God. Mother was a pillar of Massachusetts society. And you calling her a cunt.”

“No, you called her a cunt, darling. I just wrote it down.”

“The entire board of the Society of the Cincinnati attended her funeral! The governor came.”

“Well,” Cass said, “let’s hope your guy Speck is as good as you say he is. I wonder why Gideon didn’t show today.”

“He’s probably under his bed in the fetal position,” Randy said. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back. You can continue tormenting him. By the way, you given any more thought to my proposal?”

“‘By the way’”

“Problem?”

Cass sighed. “You’re asking me to marry you, and you preface it with ‘by the way’? You sure know how to make a girl feel like item number eighteen on your to-do list for today. ‘Haircut.’ ‘Ask Cass if she’ll marry me.’ ‘Fix garage door.’ ‘Vote against emergency spending bill.’ Are WASPs genetically incapable of being romantic?”

“You want me to get down on my one good knee?”

“Forget it. I’ll get back to you.”

Gideon Payne was not under a bed sucking his thumb, in the fetal position. He was upright, though barely, in the parlor of Monsignor Montefeltro’s Georgetown house, taking tiny sips of black coffee and nursing a head that felt like a blacksmith’s anvil. Demons, large ones, perhaps even Beelzebub himself, were pounding on the anvil with sledgehammers, making the most terrible noise.

“Do you want more Alka-Seltzer, Geedeon?”

“Oh…,” Gideon whimpered, waving him off with a feeble motion. He put down the coffee, picked up the Ziploc bag full of crushed ice, and put it to his forehead. It felt corpse-cold and waxy. A large bruise empurpled several square inches above his left eye; a small gash in its center crusted over with blood.

Monsignor Montefeltro, fearing anew for his $15,000 antique Tabriz rug, which reeked unpleasantly of Mr. Clean bathroom cleanser and other things, nudged a wastebasket closer to Gideon.

The monsignor himself did not feel 100 percent. Out of sympathy for Gideon, who was clearly going through some kind of breakdown, he’d kept him company in drink, at least up to a point. Gideon had consumed four bottles of white wine. (Total cost: $460.) Montefeltro himself had consumed perhaps the better part of two bottles, rather more than his normal intake, even when working on a recalcitrant widow. His tongue felt furry and sticky, the inside of his head felt like the entrance to hell. He had already taken four Advils.

He relived the horror of the previous night. At some point while drinking his fourth bottle, Gideon had staggered to his feet and shouted, “Let’s go get us some pussy!” Whereupon he had pitched forward into an eighteenth-century Venetian rosewood ebony-and-ivory-inlaid table (cost: $8,000), reducing it to splinters and opening up a gash in his forehead.

Montefeltro managed to revive Gideon, offering a sincere thanks to the Virgin Mary that the inebriated Protestant had not bled to death in his living room. The parlor now resembled an abattoir. Upon reviving, Gideon copiously voided the contents of his stomach onto the Tabriz and onto Monsignor Montefeltro.

Since the monsignor preferred not to have to explain to his housekeeper why the parlor was a lake of vomit and blood, he rummaged through the basement for something that looked as if it had to do with cleaning, eventually finding a bottle of yellow liquid with a label displaying a bald smiling eunuch with an earring. Why this should symbolize cleanliness to Americans was a question the monsignor did not pause to resolve. He got down on his hands and knees and cleaned the horrific mess himself, a very different office from symbolically washing the congregation’s feet on Good Friday. By the time he finished, Gideon revived and, now feeling greatly improved, demanded more wine. At which point the nightmare began in earnest.

The monsignor had gone off to make a pot of coffee in the kitchen. He was no more used to making coffee for himself than scrubbing the floors. Finding all the ingredients took time. When he came back to the room with the coffee, he found Gideon on the phone-Montefeltro’s own house phone-having what sounded suspiciously like a conversation with the dispatcher of an escort service. The true horror came when he heard Gideon giving out the monsignor’s address.

Gideon hung up, smiled, belched.

“Geedeon, what have you done?”

“Lysol,” Gideon said, looking at the rug. “Lysol’s the thing. Make all the nasty germs go ’way.…”

“No-who were you talking to just now? On my telephone?”

Gideon contemplated the unpleasantness of his barfed-upon pants legs and shoes. “You got any extra duds? Can’t entertain our lady friends looking like this. Hic.”

“Duds? What are you talking about? Geedeon, who were you-”

“Always liked the way you looked. Cassock. Hic. With the little scarlet-hic-buttons. You must have another one up there. Can’t wear the same cassock day in-hic-day out. Hic. Might have to let it out a bit in the belly. Hic. I’ll take one of them crimson skullcaps. Just love the crimson skullcaps.”

“Geedeon. Listen to me. Please. Please. Who were you talking with on the telephone?”

Gideon smiled a big beaming smile, broad as the Potomac River. “Donnnnnn’t you worry about a thing. I ordered us up a couple of-hic-hotties. Hic. Russians. You know what they say about Russian girls? Hic. Yours is named…Tolstoy. Hic. Mine’s-hic-Dostoevsky.” Gideon began humming “The Song of the Volga Boatmen.”

Montefeltro relived the agony of what followed: the ringing of his doorbell; having to physically restrain Gideon from getting up to answer it; more ringing; insistent ringing; angry ringing, accompanied by loud banging on the door. Then the ultimate horror: His phone rang. Cautiously he answered and heard an angry voice, Russian accented, saying, “Mr. Montefeltro. Your dates are outside. Please to let in.”

Porca miseria! The awful-sounding woman knew his name. His phone number.

“Excuse me,” he said, “there must be a mistake. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The Russian voice said, “No mistake. We have caller ID. Are you going to let them in, or you want I’m sending men?”

“No, no men!”

“You want girls, then?”

“No! Look, it’s…I am sorry, it’s all a bad mistake. Good night. Thank you. Good night. God bless you.” The monsignor hung up the phone.