“Eating out of Dumpsters? Not according to your latest American Express card statement.”

“Whatever. I did take the bus. Point is, you seem to be enjoying my life on the lam.”

“Darling, it’s for the cause.”

“The me cause or the you cause?”

“The us cause. You’re a symbol. Did you see New York magazine? They called you ‘the New Patty Hearst.’ How about a new photograph of you for the website. Holding a gun.…”

“A gun? Why don’t I just go down in a hail of bullets. A photograph? Are you totally crazy? Let’s make it really easy for them to find me.”

“Look, darling, I know you’re going through a lot. And I’m proud of you. Oops, I’ve got to dash. Speaking to the League of Transgendered Voters. Hey-we’re up two points in the latest tracking poll. We’ve got the big mo! Call me soon. Love you. Don’t get caught.”

He sounded as though he were reminding her to bring an umbrella.

Cass looked out the window of her hotel on Bourbon Street and wished she could call Terry. But they were listening in on his phones, so she would have to wait for his scheduled call at the pay phone on Poydras.

“Hey, girlie! You wanna party?”

“Get lost.”

Cass’s new outfit was a bit on the come-hither side: wig, short skirt, boots. She wondered if she’d overdone it. She was just trying to blend. How ironic it would be-for the cause-if she ended up in the New Orleans jail in a hooker sweep. She was waiting for the pay phone to ring. Pay phones. What a concept. Who thought them up? Finally, it rang.

“Sorry,” Terry said. “I’m late. But let me tell you why.…”

Someone had called Tucker Strategic Communications, got through to Terry. The person said he had “very interesting information that would be of great value to Cass Devine.” Terry tried to blow him off, but the man persisted. He got Terry’s attention when he told him that he worked for Elderheaven Corporation. He said his information involved a “business deal” between Gideon Payne and-Frank Cohane.

“He said he had it all on paper,” Terry said. “And computer files. Real hush-hush sort of stuff.”

Cass thought. “Did he say why he was contacting you?”

“He didn’t know how to reach you. He wants to give it to you personally. Says he’s your biggest fan. But you know, who isn’t?”

“Do you think it’s for real?”

Terry sighed. “Well, your other biggest fan at Elderheaven, Death Angel Clumm, lethally injected thirty-six Wrinklies. Bearing that in mind, I guess I would approach with caution. I don’t know. He sounded real enough. I could have Randy’s guy Speck check him out.”

“No. That might scare him off,” Cass said. “Speck scares me. You do realize that if the FBI is listening in on your office phone, they now know about this guy.”

“He’d figured all that out. Said he was calling from a pay phone. He said he’d get me-tomorrow-a safe phone number. He didn’t say how. I’m to give that number to you. Then you call him at three o’clock, the day after tomorrow. He’ll be at the number. I’ll call you tomorrow at the usual time with the number.”

Terry called her the next day with the phone number. The guy had sent it to him via FedEx, addressed to an employee of Tucker. The envelope inside was marked “Please give to Mr. Tucker URGENT.”

The next day, at three o’clock, from a pay phone on Napoleon Street, near Pascale’s Manale restaurant in the Garden District, Cass called the number. Jerome picked up on the first ring.

“Oh, Miss Devine,” he began, “I am such a fan.…”

Chapter 39

“Reverend,” Gideon’s secretary said, “Monsignor Montefeltro.”

Gideon hadn’t spoken with Massimo in several months. He wanted to distance himself from him in just about every way-not only because of the deplorable (but ultimately felicitous) Russian business, but mainly because Montefeltro’s papal bull was backfiring spectacularly with the voters. Gideon wanted to make his own case against legal suicide without the heavy breathing of Rome over his shoulder.

“Call back,” he said.

“He says it’s very important, Reverend.”

Gideon hesitated, then picked up. “Massimo, my dear friend, pax vobiscum. How are you?”

Massimo did not sound well. He spoke in a harried sort of whisper. “Geedeon, I must speak to you.”

“I’m right here, Massimo.”

“The Russians. They are impossible!”

Oh dear, Gideon thought. Massimo knew nothing, as far as Gideon knew, of the relationship with Olga. And he preferred to keep it that way. “How do you mean, Massimo?”

“Ivan, that enforcer, or pimp, whatever he is-he keeps demanding money from me. I had to give him our Mercedes. Then he wants another Mercedes. It never finishes. We don’t have any cars left at the nunciature! The nuncio is riding in taxis!”

“Well, don’t give him any Mercedeses.”

“Every time I tell him. And still he demands money. I cannot give him from the Vatican funds. And I have already given him all of my personal funds. It’s a misery, Geedeon. A dee-saster.”

“Well, I’m sorry for your trouble, Massimo. But I don’t really see what you want me to do.”

“But, Geedeon, you started all of this!”

“I told you how remorseful I was. We are all sinners before the Lord.”

“Never mind! Now I am left to deal with the gorilla! While you run for president!”

“In a very good cause, may I remind you. And by the way, I do wish His Holiness had taken my advice. This absurd bull of yours is doing nobody any good at all. Well, Massimo, our dear Lord faced terrible obstacles in his journey. So we must all cope in our way and offer it up.”

There was a groan on the other end. “Geedeon. Ivan told me you are now the boyfriend of one of the girls. Is this true?”

“Well now, I think ‘boyfriend’ would be putting it rather…I have undertaken to minister to her. Poor little soul. She is young and very far from home.”

“Geedeon. Are you fucking this putana?”

“What a thing to say, Massimo! And you an intimate of His Holiness! Shame on you, sir, shame! This conversation is over. Good day to you, sir!”

Gideon hung up and wiped his brow and patted his vest pocket, which once again bulged reassuringly with his gold watch, returned to him by his darling.

He considered. He must tell Olga not to discuss their relationship with others. He was planning to make “this putana”-as Massimo had so coarsely put it-Mrs. Gideon Payne. But he preferred that announcement come in the newspaper, in the wedding pages-or news pages-and not bruited about from the lips of that truncheon-wielding Cossack Ivan or whatever his actual name was. Dear, dear…and now he must depart. He was speaking this very noon to the Greater Lower Mississippi Anti-Stem Cell Research Association. Then there was the creationist dinner in Pascagoula and after that the ribbon cutting of the new casino in Biloxi. My, my, my. What a busy whirl these presidential campaigns were. They left no time at all for prayer and reflection.

The man on the other end of the line identified himself simply as “Jerome.”

He sounded genuinely nervous. He also sounded genuinely smitten with Cass, and that made her nervous. He wanted to meet with her personally, and that made her especially nervous.

“I just want to shake your hand,” he said. “And give you these documents personally. I know that you’re in danger, Miss Devine. Believe me. But it would be such an honor. I don’t lead a very interesting life, you know. Do you know what I did yesterday? I tabulated how much we have spent this quarter over last quarter on incontinence pads. I wouldn’t mind just a little excitement in my life.”

“I…” Cass hesitated. He sounded real, anyway. Who could have made that up?

“Please?” Jerome begged.

Cass said, “I’ll call you back at this number in three hours.”