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news.”
    “Because?”
    “I haven’t had much time, just since lunch yesterday. Grandfather made a lot of money in tobacco and timber, father still
     takes care of it, lives on a forty-five-acre estate in Connecticut. Gus’s personal holdings are in a blind trust. His judicial
     record and reputation show anti-choice, anti-affirmative action, heavy on judicial restraint,
stare de-cisis,
the usual coloring of your basic rich Ivy League southern white conservative right-wing fundamentalist bigot.”
    “That’s quite a lot since lunch yesterday.”
    “Just the highlights. Film at eleven. You wanna call Bobbie?”
    Bobbie McQuire was national director of the Reproductive Rights Alliance, one of the nation’s largest feminist rights groups.
    “Does she know yet?” Everyone would know. If Warren hadn’t told them, Helen would do it when he left. Sam Waller of the National
     Defense League, Debbie Jennert of the Women’s Assistance Fund, Sheila Riesman of the Social Action Center, the whole array
     of activist groups who lived and died by influencing legislation, appointments, nominations.
    Warren grinned.
    “You told her.”
    “Maybe.”
    What made Warren so secretive? No one knew him. You called, all you got was the machine. Did he have a home? Where’d he take
     the women?

10
    H i, Ernie.”
    John Harrington had never been comfortable calling Ernesto Vicaro “Ernie.” He wasn’t a first-name person, and a man as fat,
     ugly, and evil as Ernesto Vicaro was not someone Harrington could think of as Ernie. It was hard having clients you hated.
     But Harrington was a product, like a right fielder, for sale to anyone with the money. Ernesto had insisted. “Call me Ernie.”
     Sweating and wheezing. So what the hell, at $500 an hour he’d call him Ernie.
    Harrington lowered his chin and looked up through his thick black eyebrows. “What can I do for you?”
    Down to business, get in and get out. Prisons depressedhim. He’d never been in a prison till Vicaro. People in prison rarely had enough money for lobbyists.
    “Wrong question.” Vicaro smiled, tiny baby lips opening a damp red wound in the heavy flesh. “I’m gonna do something for you.”
    “What’s that?”
    Vicaro said, “Gus Parham.”
    Harrington wasn’t surprised to hear the name, though he had no idea what might be on Vicaro’s mind.
    Vicaro waited, looking smug.
    The interview room was like a green-walled toilet, smelling of sweat since Vicaro had oozed into the metal chair.
    Vicaro didn’t speak. Harrington was determined to wait him out, stink or no stink.
    After half a minute, Vicaro opened his mouth and exhaled loudly, his foul breath propelling droplets of foaming spit. “I just
     read about him in the papers.”
    “Did you?”
    Harrington moved his chair back. At $500 an hour he had to listen to Vicaro, but he didn’t have to breathe his spit.
    Harrington said, “He might be nominated for the Supreme Court.” Some
Washington Post
columnist had had it three days earlier, mentioning unnamed sources on the Hill.
    Harrington, a senior partner in Parks & Simes, a Washington law firm that lobbied for a half dozen international corporate
     clients, had had a call last week from Helen Bon-dell letting him know that Parham was a potential nominee. Helen’s Freedom
     Federation was opposing the nomination—”We don’t like his record”—and she obviously suspected that Harrington wouldn’t be
     too happy with it either.She knew that Parham’s strong anti-crime views were not likely to match the goals of one of Harrington’s clients, Ernesto
     Vicaro.
    And of course she was right. Vicaro, serving time in a federal penitentiary from which he continued to direct the multinational
     activities of a South American conglomerate whose interests included cocaine trafficking and arms dealing, wanted changes
     in the American government’s approach to law enforcement. He was after a relaxation of federal sentencing guidelines, a