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on.”
    â€œThe Court nominee?”
    â€œThey’re taking the vote. He’ll be back, I guess, if the Dixierats don’t start a filibuster.”
    â€œI’ll wait.” Spode parked his briefcase and shrugged out of his coat. His brown suit needed pressing. He unbuckled the galoshes. “Les, you wouldn’t have another half-sandwich you could spare?”
    â€œHelp ‘self.” Suffield proffered a waxed-paper wedge. “I’m supposed to be on a diet anyhow.” He was a big florid man, shaggy with a soot-gray pelt, but his eyes were clever like a terrier’s.
    When Spode walked over to him the open buckles of his galoshes chinked like Mexican spurs. He unwrapped the sandwich and held the waxed paper under his wide blunt chin to catch crumbs while he ate. “Where’s Gloria? Lunch hour?”
    â€œGone for good. Buying her trousseau.”
    â€œI forgot.”
    â€œHe still hasn’t hired a replacement.”
    â€œFigures,” Spode said. He always took sergeants for granted, too.
    â€œI think I’ve got a girl lined up,” Suffield said. “Remember Veronica Tebbel?”
    â€œRonnie Tebbel? Sure. Isn’t she still running the home office? What makes you think she’s willing to move back East and take a demotion to common secretary?”
    â€œI asked her, son. That’s the first rule of detective investigation. You spooks could save a lot of sweat if you remembered once in a while that the easiest way to get an answer to a question is to ask it.”
    â€œUs investigators don’t look at it that way,” Spode said. “Us investigators figure the less questions you ask, the less you get lied to.”
    â€œWhich may explain why you never find out anything worth knowing.”
    â€œIt could explain that, come to think of it.”
    Suffield settled a wistful glance on the empty chair behind the secretary’s desk. “Sic transit Gloria,” he said.
    â€œOh Christ.” Spode crumpled the waxed paper in his fist, launched the wad toward the wastebasket, and missed by two feet.
    Suffield said with mild interest, “For a spook with your second-story history, you’re about the most spastic excuse for a human being I ever saw.”
    Spode leered at him. “White man, you want to go five rounds with me, I’ll call the gym and tell the medics to stand by to haul your carcass away.” His look traveled up and down Suffield. “God knows you could use the exercise. Look at the gut on you.”
    â€œSure, Jaime. A nice fair fight. My high-school boxing and your karate.”
    Spode snorted and went over to put the wadded waxed paper in the basket. “Karate. Christ.”
    â€œDidn’t they teach you that stuff in the spooks?”
    â€œYou’ve been looking at television.”
    â€œNo, I’m serious.”
    â€œMaybe we learned a little hand-to-hand. It was a long time ago.”
    â€œDid the Senator get the same kind of training?”
    â€œThe Senator wasn’t in the spooks with me.”
    â€œThe hell he wasn’t. He told me about it once.”
    â€œThat was military counterintelligence. A thousand years ago—Korea. We were kids, it was one of those games they told you to play when they put the uniform on you.”
    â€œBut you stayed in and he didn’t.”
    â€œBecause he’s got brains and money and I’m dumb and poor and anyhow what else could I do? You’re right, you do like to ask questions.”
    â€œLet’s swap jobs, then. You be the Senator’s aide and I’ll be his investigator.”
    â€œForget it, I know when I’m well off.”
    â€œThen you’re not as dumb as you look.” The corners of Suffield’s wide mouth turned down. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m wet-nursing a mental retard. Will Rogers must have had our private Senator in mind when he said every now and then an innocent