Silken Prey

care of his own retirement funding, these days. Not that another felony would be a problem, if he got caught. He was already in it, up to his ears.
    He reached out and rang Taryn Grant’s doorbell. He knew she was home, because he knew her schedule.
    The door popped open, and,
    Surprise!
    “Ah, shit,” said the man inside.
    “Hello, mystery man,” Tubbs said.
    •   •   •
    T ARYN G RANT WAS THERE with her two security men, in a robe, her hair still damp from the swim.
    Tubbs said, “Look, I’ll tell you right up front. You saw what happened this morning. And I realized, my political life could be over. They could figure this out. I’m willing to go down for it and to keep my mouth shut, but I need a little more cash. I need to fund my retirement.”
    Taryn asked, through gritted teeth, “How much?”
    “You’ve got more money than Jesus Christ,” Tubbs said. “I’d like . . . a million. That’s what I want. I swear to you, if there’s a fall coming, I’ll take it. And I’ll never come back for another nickel.”
    “Fuck you,” Taryn said. The snap in her voice caught the attention of the dogs, whose ears came forward, their noses pointed at Tubbs.
    “Miz Grant—” Tubbs began.
    Dannon cut him off, and said to Taryn, “Let’s take this out to the pool.”
    “What are we talking about here?” Tubbs asked, looking from one of them to the other.
    “We’re talking cameras,” Dannon said to him. “There aren’t any cameras around the pool.”
    Tubbs nodded, and they trooped through the house, into the pool enclosure, Hansel leading, Gretel following. The pool had a wide deck with grow lights around the edges, shining sixteen hours a day on orchids, bromeliads, and palms; a tropical jungle in Minnesota. Tubbs looked around and said, “Nice.”
    Taryn didn’t want to hear
nice
. She said, “You motherfucker. You’ve been well paid.”
    Tubbs said, “Not well paid for what’s happening. There’ll be cops all over the place. I’ve got another person I’ve got to pay off, and this is like . . . this is a political Armageddon.”
    Taryn had left an unfinished drink next to the pool, a screwdriver, half vodka and half orange juice, and she picked it up and threw back the rest of it, then said, “You don’t know what you’re messing with. You don’t do this: you get bought and you stay bought.”
    “I just put you in the U.S. Senate, and I know you’re already thinking about moving up from that,
and I did it
,”
Tubbs said, his voice climbing into the alto range. “You’re losing. You’d be a loser if it weren’t for me. You’d just be—”
    “Shut up,” Taryn shouted.
    Dannon realized that she was drunker than he thought. He wrapped an arm around her and said, “Come talk to me for a minute.”
    She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay in Tubbs’s face. But Dannon pulled her along, and halfway down the pool said to her quietly, “If you give it to him, he’ll be back for more.”
    “So . . . what?”
    “So, slow him down,” Dannon said, leaning close to her, close enough to smell the chlorine. “Tell him you’ll work something out. We need to get him out of the house so we can talk, come up with an action plan.”
    “He’s not going away, he’s never going away,” she said. “Goddamnit, how’d he track us down?”
    “Well, there was really only one place that money could have come from, ultimately. Maybe he saw me in the background on one of the TV shots, or at a rally,” Dannon said, glancing back at Tubbs. “Doesn’t make any difference: he knows.”
    “I’m going to tell him to fuck himself,” Taryn said.
    Dannon hooked her arm as she started away. “Don’t do that. Just delay, buy some time. Buy some time . . .”
    Taryn pulled free, strode back down the pool, reaching for control.
    As she came up, Tubbs said, “Don’t try to screw me over. Don’t try. Just give me the money, and it’s done with. Don’t drag your feet. You guys scare me a little, so I’m going to hide out somewhere, until the election’s over. My offer here has a time limit: I want a million in a week, or I’m going to have to make an offer to the Smalls campaign.”
    “I need more than a week, it takes a while to round up that much cash,” Taryn said, and despised herself for the begging tone in her voice.
    “But that’s what you’ve got,” Tubbs said. “A week. I don’t care how you get it. I’m sure you could fix something up in Vegas,