Silken Prey

with a large handwritten sign that said, “Yay for the New Senator.” As Lucas continued down the street, he saw, in his rearview mirror, a TV truck turning the corner.
    She won
, he thought. The TV people would be looking at exit polls, and would know which way the wind was blowing, even if they wouldn’t say so until the polls closed. He continued around a curve, turned into an intersecting street, followed it down its twisting length to a slightly larger street, took a right, and followed the new street out to an even larger, straight street. Just around the corner, he pulled up behind Del, got out, and walked to the passenger side.
    Del popped the door and Lucas got in. Del was eating a cheese and bratwurst sandwich, with onions, and Lucas said, “Maybe we oughta talk outside.”
    “Gotta man up,” Del said. “Besides, only two more bites, and it’s cold out there.”
    “Nothing’s happening,” Lucas said.
    “Well, they’re in there together. I wonder if Carver said anything?”
    “I gotta believe he did, ’cause if he didn’t, this is a huge waste of time,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, and it’s your fault,” Del said. He finished the sandwich, dug a napkin out of a brown paper bag, burped, wiped his fingers and chin. “Goddamn, that was good.”
    “I thought Cheryl had you off that crap. Had to be ninety percent cholesterol.”
    “Ah, we compromised. I can have one a week. Gotta make it count.”
    Shrake called on the handset: “You hear the one about the guy walking around with his dog at night, and runs into his old pal with
his
dog?”
    “Big waste of time,” Lucas said. “But, no, I haven’t.”
    “I’ll tell it to you sometime,” Shrake said. “Right now, I should probably mention that I went by Grant’s place, and Carver was walking out to his truck. He was talking to Dannon. I think he’s moving.”
    Lucas said, “I’m on it,” said good-bye to Del, who was monitoring the main vehicle, the one Dannon had been driving, and walked back to his truck. Carver started moving two minutes later, and Lucas and Shrake and Jenkins and Bradley and Stack followed him downtown, and watched him turn into a parking ramp that fed the Radisson Hotel, where the victory party would be held.
    •   •   •
    B RADLEY AND S TACK FOLLOWED him in. They were dressed for the party, Bradley with a big pin that said “Taryn” and Stack with a bunch of credentials around her neck that looked like news credentials. They’d both changed their hair a bit and Bradley had gotten a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Neither looked like the real estate ladies from that morning. The three men waited in the street, and five minutes after Carver drove into the garage, Bradley called on her cell phone and said, “He’s in the ballroom, he’s talking to security. Looks like they’re setting up for tonight.”
    “Has he looked at you?” Lucas asked.
    “No.”
    “Good. Stay out of sight,” Lucas said. “You don’t want him to see you more than a couple of times.”
    Annoyed, she said, “Yeah, I’ve done this before.”
    “I know you have . . . but I worry.”
    •   •   •
    I N WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN an expansive family room, if Taryn had had a family, all the white folks and the necessary number of blacks and browns were cuttin’ a rug, if a lot of really stiff heirs and fund managers and entrepreneurs and politicians could, in fact, cut a rug.
    Taryn had had a few drinks and was dancing with everyone, lit up like a Christmas tree, feeling the rush. Dannon had tried to catch her eye, but she’d resolutely moved on to the next Important Person.
    •   •   •
    K IDD COULD SEE HOW pumped Lauren was, so he didn’t bother to argue any further, though he drove slowly. Eventually, however, they’d arrived at Grant’s house, and there was no way to put it off. He hit the switch that killed the taillights, let the car roll to a stop, said, “Luck,” and Lauren slipped out the door and into the night.
    Lauren had always had a taste for cocaine, given up only when pregnancy was a prospect, and not touched since then; but now, as she slipped out of the car, over the curb and into the trees that marked the edge of the neighbor’s lot, she felt as high as she ever had on coke, with the same preternatural awareness, her senses reaching out through the trees to the political party three hundred yards away.
    Lauren was in her black suit, with a black nylon backpack. She’d opened a pair