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“Gretchen dear,” said Aurilla, stepping over them, “this is Miss Frost.”

Motionless as a doll, arms resting on the chair as if it were her throne, a girl of maybe eight watched my approach. One was
tempted to ruffle the flyaway black hair, pat her adorable cheeks, until one saw the eyes. I understood why Aurilla had thanked
me for arriving on time. “Hello,” I said.

The girl spat. We both watched a gob of potato cling to my thigh before dropping to the carpet.

“Gretchen!” Aurilla snapped. “Miss Frost is a famous musician! Shake her hand!”

Sliding off the chair, the girl extended her hand. I was about to shake it when she tried to kick me. Bad move, even for an
eight-year-old. I caught her foot and flipped her to the floor. Luckily, the French fries cushioned her fall. “Nice to meet
you,” I said.

Neither of them moved so I tuned the violin lying on top of the sofa and ran a few scales up and down. Aurilla had bought
her daughter an expensive instrument. “Get up and play something,” I said after a while, handing it to her.

“I don’t want to.”

Wouldn’t a mother have rushed to her humiliated flesh and blood, screamed for the security guard, had me thrown out? Conversely,
wouldn’t she have reprimanded the girl again? Aurilla merely stood in place with that ghoulish, plastic smile.

“Don’t play, then,” I shrugged. Tucked the violin under my chin and, strolling about, began a Paganini caprice. Nothing in
this room told me anything about Senator Perle except that she had money and a ruined daughter. Eventually I cut short the
fireworks. “How long have you been studying?” I asked the girl, yanking loose hairs out of the bow.

“Four years.”

“Like it?”

“No.”

I resumed playing, waiting for Aurilla to make her move. Why did people in this town always have to involve a third wheel
in their petty machinations? I wandered to the window. In the driveway, three black cars had come to a halt. Two men alit
from the first and last vehicles. The four of them fanned out, adroitly taking positions along the perimeter of Aurilla’s
property. The rear door of the middle car opened. Four men in suits clustered a fifth, hustling him to Aurilla’s front door.
As the bell rang, I smiled at my own stupidity: textbook Secret Service. Aurilla had been waiting all along for Bobby Marvel.
Maybe he had come to give her some acting tips for Jojo’s funeral.
Fat chance, Smith.
He had come to see me.

“You could get a hundred grand for this,” I told Aurilla, setting down the violin. “Why don’t you cash in and send Gretchen
to the Citadel.”

After a soft knock, the door opened. Aurilla’s assistant peered in. “Excuse me. The president is here.”

“Thank you, Wallace.” Aurilla’s android smile rose a notch. “Gretchen, play something for Miss Frost. Right now.” She left.

I sat on the girl’s chair. “Got a checkerboard?”

She finally got up from the cushion of French fries. “I want to play my violin.”

I handed it over. “Not too loud, please. I can’t stand squeaks.”

She didn’t make many. As I had suspected, the girl was very gifted: not many chromosomes separated psychopath from prodigy.
“Nice,” I said when the Mendelssohn had ended. “Who’s your teacher?”

“Uncle Bendix.” While my mouth was hanging open, Gretchen added, “But he hasn’t given me a lesson in a long time.”

I sighed. “Play something else.”

Mozart. Gretchen’s face became wise beyond her years; I recognized the look and pitied those who would someday become her
lovers. After she finished, I showed her a few bowings. We were deep in horsehair when a voice interrupted.

“Wonderful.” Bobby Marvel, three feet away.

Gretchen immediately reverted to form. “Who asked you?” she snapped, cracking her boot against the president’s shin.

Marvel managed a smile as he rubbed his bruise. “Evenin’, ma’am.”

Aurilla appeared. “What’s going on here?”

As Bobby straightened up, a few fries fell into his cuff. “Just tying my shoelace.”

“You were not,” Gretchen cried. “Buzz off!”

“Gretchen Perle! Mind your manners!”

Ah, if Maxine could see me now. I put down the violin and patted the girl’s head. “Keep up the good work, dear.” Now for the
tricky part. “Good night, sir.”

He wouldn’t let go of my hand. Worse, his thumb was wandering. “That was such a fantastic concert the other night. I could
listen to the whole thing all over again.”

When I didn’t offer to play the whole thing all over again, Aurilla stepped into the breach. “President Marvel’s quite a musician,
you know.”

Spoons? Washboard? “I brought my cornet with me to the White House,” he boasted. “Still play it sometimes with the Marine
Band.”

They must just love that. My hand was beginning to sweat but Bobby held on through a long-winded paean to his cornet teacher.
“One in a million,” the president blubbered, eyes bright with tears. “I still think of him every day.”

I finally got my hand back. Nearly ran to the Corvette but my getaway was not quite fast enough. As I was buckling my seat
belt, a Secret Service agent caught up with me. “The president would like a word with you, ma’am. Just wait a moment.”

My usual reply would have been a fifty-foot swath of rubber. However, I was a member of the armed forces, he was my commander
in chief, so I walked dutifully to the car waiting in the shadows. No voters here, so Marvel didn’t need to act presidential;
in fact, he sat in the backseat with his legs curled, the better to massage the welt on his shin. I sat in the corner and
tried to appear awed. After Barnard’s video, it just wasn’t possible. “Hurt?” I asked finally.

“Goddamn brat. Did you like Mr. Schnizzler?”

Took a moment to figure out whom he meant. “Not really. It was a bad translation. Badly acted.” Bobby watched as I crossed
my legs. “Lousy night.”

The president suddenly leaned forward, chin jutting like a pit bull. At last he looked like the guy on fifty-cent postcards.
“Someone else was expected in that seat.”

As my heart thumped against my halter, warm French perfume blossomed in the dark.
Go! Now!
I leapt over the cliff. “Polly gave me her ticket.”

He gasped. “You know Polly?”

“We’re old friends.” A drop of sweat inched down my side. I smelled like a bitch in heat, and Bobby noticed. “She tells me
everything.”

“Is that a fact. What does she call me?”

I viciously raked my brain, exhuming only that message on Barnard’s answering machine. “Something to do with ice cream, I
think.” Bobby grunted unpleasantly.
Roll the dice!
“If I were you,” I said, slowly recrossing my legs, “I’d forget about her. She has a short attention span.”

The buttons on his shirt rose and fell as he teetered on my advice. “I don’t think you understand,” Bobby seethed at last.
“I’m the president.”

“What can I tell you? She prefers princes.” I reached for the door handle.

He grabbed my sore wrist. I winced: years on the campaign trail had given him a bionic grip. “You tell your friend,” Bobby
whispered, “I am not amused.”

I brushed away his hand. “Tell her yourself.”

He couldn’t even choke out a good-night. I aimed the Corvette for the Beltway and started to weave in and out of traffic,
not that I was in a rush to get anywhere, rather the Corvette wasn’t made for going only seventy in a straight line. An exodus
of commuters, grandmothers puritanically obeying the speed limits, and yuppies in their budget BMWs made this road more dangerous
than the Autobahn. Good: kept my mind off that clod Marvel. When the sun sliced into the horizon, I finally saw that a gray
Chevy had drifted across the dotted lines behind me once too often. The driver, still in the baseball cap, never allowed me
more than three cars leeway: maybe that was a compliment. I veered right, poked along the shoulder. Chevy copied. I tapped
the gas, notched left: soon we were back in the fast lane. Fear riddled my gut as a million phantoms began to thaw and writhe.
Where had I made the fatal error that six of Maxine’s seven agents had made before me? For miles I purred in the wake of a
rusty Caddy, awaiting a slim coincidence of exit ramp and fender gap. I got it at the Merrifield turnoff. Ripped the ’Vette
right, screeching across three lanes, barreling around the cloverleaf. Chevy never had a chance.

I drove in a few loops before ditching the car at a twelve-screen cinema in Fairfax. Sat through a loud, bloody movie as my
watch crawled forward. When the hero destroyed his nth opponent, I left. Bad place, movies: shallow sex, shallower death,
all so sickeningly easy. I cabbed back to Washington. Night had not relieved the heat, but it had decimated the tourists around
the Reflecting Pool. I took the Metro to the Zoo. Connecticut Avenue still pulsed with people who either hated air conditioners
or didn’t own one. Cut into Rock Creek Park and followed the black, burbling water to the bear house. There I slipped into
my pocket in the rocks, grateful as the door sealed me in with my machines.

JUSTINE CORTOT,
I typed. Her face came up in a second. Native of Kentucky, where mothers groomed daughters to become Miss America or marry
tobacco. Same alma mater as Bobby Marvel. Rhodes Scholarship, English major. History would have been more relevant, but Justine
wasn’t interested in events larger than herself. Twice divorced from minor dignitaries, zero kids. Once she and Bobby put
that little shooting incident behind them, Justine had joined his carnival winding from state senator to governor to president.
Had she known about Barnard? Hell, Justine had probably procured her! The press secretary saw a hundred supplicants a day,
made or destroyed dozens of careers a week … yet she had found the time to lunch with Duncan Zadinsky three days running.
Unbelievable.

Next,
BENDIX KAAR.
The computer finally located him under Political Contributors, a subset of white-color criminals. After serving with distinction
in Vietnam, Bendix had made his fortune in exotic hardwood. Ten years ago he’d sold his business to play environmental consultant
to any PAC that could afford him. He had given Bobby Marvel enough money to be invited regularly to the White House and had
been Aurilla’s Svengali since her first day in the Senate. Age fifty-three, two grown children, no known wife. Fausto had
said they were old college friends: which college? I cruised through the Harvard file: nothing. The Royal College of Music
wasn’t even in Maxine’s database so I switched to e-mail, asking if Bendix Kaar had ever graced their hallowed halls. That
answer might take weeks, so I moved on to superwidow
AURILLA PERLE.

Born in Chicago, full scholarship to Princeton. She had tied the knot with a family of meat packers who supplied the entire
Northeast with pastrami. Hubby appeared fairly masculine in the early photos; then, as Aurilla’s smile inflated from shy to
imperial, he began to age drastically, as if she were sucking his blood. His death in a plane crash had had no effect on her
mouth. Gretchen, three days old, appeared in only one photo; even at that tender age, the child had impressive fists and a
face ready to explode. Aurilla’s political record, like her smile, was mathematically perfect.

I snuggled the cassette from Barnard’s answering machine into the tape recorder. My breathing paused as her sultry voice,
now forever silent, filled the headphones. “Sorry, darling. Let me know you called.”

“Darling,” Fausto mimicked acidly. “We missed you last night. Naughty naughty.”

I played the next message several times just to kill my doubts. “The ice-cream man will see you at midnight. Don’t be late”:
Justine Cortot speaking. Should have recognized those overworked
t
’s the moment I heard her voice at Ford’s Theatre.

I phoned Berlin. “Good morning.”

The Queen would have gone to bed only two hours ago. “What’s up.”

“Barnard and Marvel were for real.” I told her about my little palaver in the president’s limousine. “He’s most upset at losing
her.”

Maxine laughed huskily: join the crowd. “How’d you learn that?”

“Aurilla Perle invited me to her house to hear her daughter play the violin. Marvel happened to drop by.”

“Her idea or his?”

“Couldn’t tell you. Aurilla had already bugged me about her daughter the night I played at the White House. Bobby’s been eyeballing
me since Ford’s Theatre. And it could have been an accident. None of this would have happened if Aurilla hadn’t caught me
at Fausto’s.”

“You don’t run into the president of the United States by accident,” Maxine yawned. “Sorry.”

“There were two messages on Barnard’s answering machine,” I continued. “One was from Fausto telling Barnard she had misbehaved.”

“Eh? How did Barnard know Fausto?”

“Didn’t she tell you anything?” I snapped. Of course not. Damn. “The last message was from Justine Cortot, arranging a tryst
with Marvel.”

“Cortot’s in on the act? Have we got two pimps here?”

“Maybe she handles scheduling after the first date.” I sighed. “Bendix Kaar happened to be playing Scrabble with Fausto as
I rehearsed there this afternoon.”

“People do lots of things in the afternoon. How was breakfast, by the way?”

Insulting. “Fausto wants me to practice at his place. He loaned me his Corvette. I’d take it out more but I’m being followed.”

“Surprised? You’re screwing around with every heavy in town.”

Beautiful. “I hope Marvel’s discreet. I don’t need his wife coming after me with a two-by-four.”

“Wouldn’t worry about it. Nothing upsets Paula but a dip in her husband’s approval rating. Listen, I got a lab report on Barnard’s
blood. The only compounds we could identify were zonirene and gamma-gafrinol.”

“Okay, I give up.”

“Phytochemicals found only in the rain forest. Not synthesized, not really known outside of the military.”

“Application?”

“Paralytics. Once Barnard took it in the neck, she could only watch that tampon go down her throat.” A moment of black static.
“Bastards.”

“I’ve got one last concert Saturday night,” I said. No big deal. Just Carnegie Hall. “Then I’ll go to Belize.”