Tail Spin

him already, he would soon enough. He’d know everything about all of them. It wasn’t fair, just wasn’t.
    He looked around at the sea of powerful people, spouses hanging onto senators’ arms, staking claim to power. So much power concentrated in this one room—it was a terrorist’s wet dream. He easily spotted Secret Service agents from long practice. They were everywhere. There had to be FBI there, as well; they were better at fading into the woodwork.
    He realized he no longer cared if Rachael spoke out or not. He was a lawyer, he knew how things worked. He’d roll over on Senator Abbott, no problem with that, since he was dead. Then he’d take the bar exam, and set up his practice in Boise.
    He didn’t need this aggravation that was going to escalate into a shit storm. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to get out of Dodge.
    He saw Laurel Kostas speaking to the ancient senator from Kansas, and at her elbow, nodding occasionally at something his sister said, stood Quincy, that good-for-nothing whiner the senator had tolerated only because he’d felt sorry for him.
    His stomach was roiling, but the cramps had lessened a bit. He nabbed a glass of carbonated water from a waiter’s tray and sipped it. Maybe it would help settle his stomach, that’s what his mother had always preached. He saw his boss, Senator Jankel, all earnest, bending to eye another congressman’s wife, the old fool.
    Dammit, he couldn’t think, his belly was on fire.

FIFTY-THREE
    Savich saw a man out of the corner of his eye, a small man, dressed in a waiter’s uniform, duck behind a grouping of black-gowned women and tuxedoed men.
    Savich moved quickly and, he hoped, discreetly. But he wasn’t as fast as Jack, who already had the man’s arm and was pulling him toward the kitchen.
    Good. Jack would get it sorted out.
    The evening rolled on. A distinguished man Savich recognized but couldn’t place, wearing a black bespoke tux that disguised his paunch, stepped onto the dais to stand behind the podium. He adjusted the microphone and greeted the guests, and announced dinner. Everyone migrated to their tables, and for three minutes Savich couldn’t see anyone clearly in the crowd. Ah, there was Director Mueller. He had Rachael’s arm and was leading her to a table at the front of the room where he sat on her right. Jack was to be seated on her left, only he wasn’t there.
    What was happening in the kitchen?
    Savich was at the point of heading back there when Jack came through the swinging dark paneled doors, straightening his tux as he made his way to his table. He spoke briefly to Director Mueller and eased in beside Rachael.
    Savich and Sherlock stood for a moment by the doors to the large, dark-paneled nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, which turned coed in the late fifties. Interesting how it still retained the original smell of countless cigars puffed inside its walls over the decades, sort of sweet and old, like lace in an antique trunk.
    Savich sat at one of the front tables with Laurel, Quincy, and Stefanos, four couples separating them, Sherlock at one of the back tables with Greg Nichols. Jimmy Maitland, to cover all the bases, sat with Brady Cullifer.
    Savich listened to the rock-hard political conversations going on around him and wondered when the rubber chicken would make its appearance. He wondered how they would rubberize his vegetarian dish.
    To his surprise, he was served spinach lasagna, a tossed salad, and green beans dotted with pearl onions, all delicious. For the predators, they brought out what looked like a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.
    A gentleman at the microphone announced that Thanksgiving was Senator Abbott’s favorite meal of the year. There was appreciative laughter. And more laughter when he announced there would be gelato for dessert, because pear tartlets prepared for more than two hundred people never made it to the table tasting quite like fruit.
    Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about