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he was double-timing it to the elevator. What he hadn’t remembered and what I hadn’t wanted to bring up was that the hall was undoubtedly on security cameras. But I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. There’d be no reason for anybody to check the tape. I expected to stay no longer than a few minutes in her room.
    The room was done in contrasting blues. Twin beds, an open closet area packed solid with clothes and at least a dozen pairs of shoes below. Cosmetics and perfumes clouded the air with intoxicating aromas and dresses and blouses were strewn across one of the beds.
    The phone rang once and scared the hell out of me. It was as loud as a shriek in the hotel room.
    I needed thirty seconds to relax and then I went back to work, conscious of needing to get the hell out of there.
    I quickly went through both the desk drawers and the closet and didn’t find anything useful. The small blue carry-on piece of luggage shoved under the same bed as the clothes was another matter.
    I counted fourteen articles from various Internet sources about Senator Robert Logan. Long articles that went into his entire life; one article was an interview with some friends of his from high school. Then there were overviews of his time as a wealthy businessman and finally his decision to enter politics and how this led all the way to the United States Senate. She had taken her masters in the subject of Senator Logan.
    In the manila envelope I found a dozen photos of her and the senator. All but one of them was staged at his rallies. Each of them gave the unmistakable impression that she and the senator were more than what you might call mere acquaintances. She made sure of that by looking as though she was about to go down on him. She knew what she was doing. And he stood there looking smitten like a horny tenth-grader.
    In another drawer I found a white number-ten envelope with photographs of Tracy Cabot at various ages. The photos spanned maybe twenty years from her teens – fourteen or fifteen – to the present. She’d always been a heartbreaker.
    Male voices in the hall. They startled me even more than the phone had. If the cops were going to search the room they’d come up in a team of some kind.
    I stood absolutely still. Listening as they got nearer, louder, until they started laughing and passed on down the hall. Flop sweat in my armpits and on my back. I took a deep, deep breath and went back to work.
    By my watch I’d been in here six minutes. Way too long. When I eventually reached the elevator, my old buddy Earl Leonard appeared from around the corner. ‘How’d it go, man?’
    â€˜Pretty good.’
    â€˜I won’t rat you out, man.’
    â€˜No more money, Earl.’
    â€˜I wasn’t asking for any more.’ He sounded hurt.
    â€˜I know how bad you want to keep your job, Earl, so you won’t rat me out, because if you do I’ll say that this was your idea and then you’ll not only lose your job, you’ll be doing time in the same joint I am.’
    â€˜This is pretty bad shit, huh?’
    â€˜Real bad shit.’ I stepped into the elevator and faced him. ‘And you’re right in the middle of it, Earl. Just like me.’
    The doors closed. I actually liked Earl all right; I just didn’t want him confiding anything to any of his friends after he’d had a few drinks. I had to scare him a little.

SEVEN
    I spent the next half hour in my room with my laptop. Despite the world of Senator Logan collapsing into scandal, I had to check with my various campaign runners to see how their own work was doing. They filed email reports constantly through the days. Every internal poll I saw looked decent; even the ones that had been lagging were now closing slightly. There was still time to win the election.
    Then I went to the websites of all the networks and cable news shows. As expected, the Logan story was getting the kind of play that Jack the