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Dekker, however, had the endorsement of an incumbent president, who made a swing through the state in pursuit of his own reelection. Rutledge supporters feared that the president's appearance might nullify the gut-busting progress they had made.

Actually, the president was fighting for his life in Texas. The rallies where he shared the podium with Dekker had a subliminal edge of eleventh-hour desperation that was conveyed to the uncommitted voters. Tate benefitted rather than suffered from the president's vigorous campaigning. The groundswell gained even greater momentum when the opposing presidential candidate came to Texas and campaigned alongside him.

After an exhausting but exhilarating trip to seven cities in two days, everyone at Rutledge headquarters was reeling with pre-election giddiness. Even though Dekker still maintained a slight margin over Tate in the official polls, the momentum seemed to have swung the other way. Word on the street was that Tate Rutledge was looking better all the time. Optimism was at its highest peak since Tate had won the primary. Everyone was buoyant.

Except Fancy.

She sauntered through the various rooms of campaign headquarters, slouching in chairs as they became available, scorning the party atmosphere, stalking Eddy's movements with sulky, resentful eyes.

They hadn't been alone together for more than a week. Every time he glanced her way, he looked straight through her. Whenever she swallowed her pride and approached him, he did nothing more than assign her some menial task. She was even put on a telephone and told to call registered voters to urge them to go to the polls and vote on election day. The only reason she consented to do the demoralizing work was because it kept Eddy in her sights. The alternative was staying at the house and not seeing Eddy at all.

He was constantly in motion, barking orders like a drill sergeant and losing his temper when they weren't carried out quickly enough to suit him. He seemed to subsist on coffee, canned sodas, and vending machine food. He was the first to arrive at headquarters in the morning and the last to leave at night, if he left at all.

On the Sunday before the election, the Rutledges moved into the Palacio Del Rio, a twenty-two-story hotel on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. From there they would monitor election returns two days later.

Tate's immediate family took the Imperial Suite on the twenty-first floor. The others were assigned rooms nearby. VCRs were installed on all the television sets so newscasts and commentaries could be recorded for subsequent review and analysis. Additional telephone lines were provided. Security guards were posted at the elevators, more to safeguard the candidate's privacy than the candidate himself.

On the mezzanine level, twenty stories below, workers were draping the wall of the Corte Real Ballroom with red, white, and blue bunting. The back wall was covered with larger-than-life-size pictures of Tate. The dais was being decorated with bunting and flags, and bordered with pots of white chrysanthemums nestling in red and blue cellophane. A huge net, containing thousands of balloons, was suspended from the ceiling, to be released on cue.

Over the racket and confusion generated by obsequious hotel employees, meticulous television servicemen, and scurrying telephone installers, Eddy was attempting to make himself heard in the parlor of Tate's suite that Sunday afternoon.

"From Longview you fly to Texarkana. You spend an hour and a half there, max, then to Wichita Falls, Abilene, and home. You should arrive—"

"Daddy?"

"Tate, for crissake !" Eddy lowered the clipboard he'd been consulting and exhaled his annoyance like noxious fumes.

" Shh, Mandy." Tate held a finger to his lips. She had been sitting on his lap during the briefing session, but her attention span had been exhausted long ago.

"Are you listening, or what?"

"I'm listening, Eddy. Longview, Wichita Falls, Abilene, home."

"You forgot Texarkana."

"My apologies. I'm sure you and the pilot won't. Are there any more bananas in the fruit basket?"

"Jesus," Eddy cried. "You're two days away from an election for a Senate seat and you're thinking about bananas. You're too damn casual!"

Tate calmly accepted a banana from his wife and peeled it for Mandy. "You're too tense. Relax, Eddy. You're making everybody crazy."

"Amen," Fancy intoned glumly from where she was curled in an easy chair watching a movie on TV.

"You win the election, then I'll relax." Eddy consulted the clipboard again. "I don't even remember where I was. Oh, yeah, you arrive here in San Antonio tomorrow evening around seven-thirty. I'll make arrangements for the family to have dinner at a local restaurant. You'll retire."

"Do I get to tee-tee and brush my teeth first? I mean, between dinner and retiring?"

Everyone laughed. Eddy didn't think Tate's wisecrack was funny. "Tuesday morning, we'll travel en masse to your precinct box in Kerrville, vote, then return here to sweat it out."

Tate wrestled the banana peel away from Mandy, who was sliding her index finger down its squishy lining and collecting the gunk beneath her fingernail. "I'm going to win."

"Don't get overconfident. The polls still show you two points behind Dekker."

"Think where we started, though," Tate reminded him, his gray eyes twinkling. "I'm going to win."

On that optimistic note, the meeting concluded. Nelson and Zee went to their room to lie down and rest. Tate had to work on a speech he was delivering at a Spanish-speaking church later in the evening. Dorothy Rae had talked Jack into going with her for a stroll along the Riverwalk .

Fancy waited until everyone dispersed, then followed Eddy to his room, which was a few doors down from the command post, as she called Tate's suite. After her soft knock, he called out, "Who is it?"

"Me."

He opened the door but didn't even hold it for her. He turned his back and headed for the closet, where he took out a fresh shirt. She closed the door and flipped the dead bolt.

"Why don't you just leave your shirt off?" She leaned into him suggestively and teased one of his nipples with the tip of her tongue.

"I don't think it would be too suave to show up at campaign headquarters without a shirt on." He crammed his arms through the starched sleeves and began buttoning up.

"You're going there now?"

"That's right."

"But it's Sunday."

He cocked his eyebrow. "Don't tell me you've started observing the Lord's day."

"I was in church this morning, same as you."

"And for the same reason," he said. "Because I told everybody they had to go. Didn't you see the television cameras recording Tate's piety for their viewing voters?"

"I was praying."

"Oh, sure."

"Praying that your dick would rot and drop off," she said with fierce passion. He merely laughed. When he began stuffing his shirttail into his trousers, Fancy tried to stop him. "Eddy," she whined contritely, "I didn't come here to fight with you. I'm sorry for what I just said. I want to be with you."

"Then come to the headquarters with me. I'm sure there's plenty of work to do." "It wasn't work I had in mind."

"Sorry, that's what's on the agenda from now till election day."

Her pride could only take so much abuse. "You've been brushing me off for weeks now," she said, her fists finding props on her hips. "What gives with you?"

"You have to ask?" He ran a brush through his pale hair. "I'm trying to get your Uncle Tate elected to the U.S. Congress."

"Screw the U.S. Congress!"

"I'm sure you would," he said wryly. "If you had a chance, you'd give every member of the legislature blue balls. Now, Fancy, you'll have to excuse me."

He reached for the door. She blocked his path, pleading again, "Don't go, Eddy. Not just yet, anyway. Stay a while. We could order up some beers, have a few laughs." Wiggling against him, nudging his pelvis with hers, she purred, "Let's make love."

"Love?" he scoffed.

She grabbed his hand and drew it beneath her skirt toward her crotch. "I'm already wet."

He pulled his hand away, bodily lifted her out of his path, and set her down behind him. "You're always wet, Fancy. Peddle it somewhere else. Right now, I've got better things to do."

Fancy gaped at the closed door, then hurled the first available thing her hand landed on, which happened to be a glass ashtray. She threw it with all her might, but it only bounced against the door without breaking and landed dully on the carpeted floor. That enraged her even more.

She'd never been so summarily rejected. Nobody, but nobody, turned down Fancy Rutledge when she was hot. She stormed out of Eddy's room, stayed in hers only long enough to change into a tight sweater and even tighter jeans, then went to the hotel garage and retrieved her Mustang.

She was damned if she was going to stop living for the sake of this confounded Senate race.

"It's me. Anything happening?"

"Hello, Irish." Van rubbed his bloodshot eyes while cradling the telephone receiver against his ear. "I just got in a while ago. Rutledge spoke at a greaser church tonight."

"I know. How'd it go?"

"They loved him better'n hot tamales."

"Was Avery there?"

"Everybody was except the girl, Fancy, all looking as pure as Ivory soap."

"Did Avery get to talk to you?"

"No. There was a throng of jabbering Mex'cans around them."

"What about Gray Hair? Any sign of him?"

Van weighed the advisability of telling Irish the truth and decided in favor of it. "He was there."

Irish muttered a string of curses. "Didn't he stick out like a sore thumb in a Hispanic crowd?"

"He was outside, jockeying for position like the rest of us."

"He posed as media?"

"That's right."

"Did you get close to him?"

"Tall dude. Mean face."

"Mean?"

"Stern. No nonsense." "A hit man's face." "We're only guessing."

"Yeah, but I don't like it, Van. Maybe we ought to call the FBI and not tell Avery."

"She'd never forgive you."

"But she'd be alive."

The two men were quiet for a moment, lost in their private thoughts, considering possible options, and coming up with zip. "Tomorrow, you stick around here. No need to go with Rutledge."

"I figured that," Van said of his assignment when Irish finally broke the silence. "I'll be at the airport tomorrow night when he gets back. The press release said he'd be arriving at seven-thirty."

"Good. Try and make contact with Avery then. She said it's hard to phone from the hotel."

"Right."

"Election morning, come to the TV station first. Then I'm posting you at the Palacio Del Rio. I want you to stick to Avery like glue all day. If you see anything suspicious,anything,to hell with her arguments, you call the cops."

"I'm not stupid, Irish."

"And just because you have a free day tomorrow," Irish said in a threatening tone, "don't go out and get blitzed on something."

"I won't. I got a lot to do around here."

"Yeah, what?"

"I'm still looking at tapes."

"You mentioned that before. What are you looking for?"

"I'll let you know as soon as I find it."

They said their good-byes. Van got up long enough to relieve himself in the bathroom, then returned to the console, where he had spent nearly every free hour for the last several days. The number of tapes left to view was dwindling, but not fast enough. He had hours of them still to look at.

The wild goose he was chasing didn't even have an identity. As he had told Irish, he wouldn't know what it was till he saw it. This was probably a colossal waste of time.

He'd been dumb enough to start this harebrained project; he might just as well be dumb enough to finish it. He took a drag on his joint, chased it with a swallow of booze, and inserted another tape into his machine.

Irish made a face into the bottom of the glass of antacid he had forced himself to drink. He shivered at the wretched aftertaste. He should be used to it by now since he guzzled the stuff by the gallon. Avery didn't know. Nobody did. He didn't want anyone to know about his chronic heartburn because he didn't want to be replaced by a younger man before he could retire on a full salary.

He'd been in the business long enough to know that management-level guys were bastards. Heartlessness was a requirement for the job. They wore expensive shoes, three-piece suits, and invisible armor against humanism. They didn't give a damn about an old news horse's valuable contacts at city hall or his years of experience beating the bushes for a story or anything else except the bottom line.

They expected dramatic video at six and ten so they could sell commercial time to sponsors, but they'd never stood by and watched a house burn with people screaming inside, or sat through a stakeout while some nut wielding a .357 Magnum held people hostage in a 7-Eleven, or witnessed the unspeakable atrocities that one human being could inflict on another.

They operated in the sterile side of the business. Irish's side was the down-and-dirty one. That was fine. He wouldn'thave it any other way. He just wanted to be respected for what he did.

As long as the news ratings kept KTEX number one in the market, he'd be fine. But if the ratings slipped, those bastards in the worsted wool would start sifting out the undesirables. An old man with a sour stomach and a disposition to match might be considered deadwood and be the first thing lopped off.

So he covered his belches and hid his bottles of antacid.

He switched out the light in his bathroom and shuffled into the bedroom. He sat on the edge of his double bed and set his alarm clock. That was routine. So was reaching into the nightstand drawer and taking out his rosary.

The threat of physical torture couldn't make him admit to anyone that this was a nightly ritual. He never went to confession or mass. Churches were buildings where funerals, weddings, or baptisms were solemnized.

But Irish prayed ritualistically. Tonight he prayed fervently for Tate Rutledge and his young daughter. He prayed for Avery's protection, begging God to spare her life, whatever calamity befell anyone else.