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know why you’re here.”
    That was a hard question for DeMarco to answer. He didn’t want to tell her that he was there because her name had been found on a napkin in a dead man’s wallet.
    “I just want to know about your experience working for Senator Morelli,” DeMarco said.
    “Why?”
    “I can’t tell you that. It’s a government matter relating to an investigation in progress.”
    For a minute, DeMarco thought that Davenport was going to refuse to say anything but then she said, “I never worked for the senator.I worked for his wife, and I only consulted with her twice.” She hesitated a second, then added, “Things just didn’t work out.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means she didn’t like my design ideas. Now I have to go,” Davenport said and closed the door.

    DeMarco arrived at the Starbucks on Pennsylvania Avenue at exactly 2 p.m. and was relieved when the Speaker’s limo arrived only five minutes later. It wasn’t unusual for Mahoney to keep him waiting forty minutes—or to forget their meetings altogether.
    He had called Mahoney right after meeting with Marcia Davenport and convinced his boss to meet with him before he left town. Mahoney was on his way to San Francisco to give a lecture at some convention, meaning that he’d adlib a twenty-minute speech, pocket ten thousand dollars, then spend the rest of his time in California touring Napa Valley wineries. And it didn’t appear that he would be touring alone. When the Speaker’s driver opened the rear door of the limo, DeMarco caught a brief glimpse of a shapely leg encased in black hose.
    DeMarco had decided it was time to get Mahoney’s advice. The connection between Terry Finley and Paul Morelli made him nervous. Morelli was not only a man in the political stratosphere, he was also a member of Mahoney’s party. DeMarco, therefore, thought it prudent to let Mahoney know what he had learned before proceeding any further.
    Mahoney ambled from the limo to the outside table where DeMarco waited. DeMarco was sitting outside because he knew that Mahoney would want to smoke, and would whine if he couldn’t. He sat down heavily and reached across the table to take one of the two paper cups of coffee that DeMarco had purchased. He took a sip of the coffee, winced at the taste, and then dipped into his pocket for his flask, the small silver one embossed with the Marine Corps seal.The seal on the flask matched a tattoo on his right forearm, and when he spoke to veterans’ groups his sleeves were always rolled up. He smacked his lips in satisfaction at his laced coffee and looked a question at DeMarco.
    “Dick Finley thinks his son may have been killed,” DeMarco said. If you didn’t start out with a headline, you lost Mahoney’s attention rapidly. DeMarco then told Mahoney about the napkin that had been found in Terry Finley’s wallet and all the other suspicions Dick Finley had about his son’s death.
    When he told Mahoney what Neil had learned about the three men on Finley’s list, Mahoney looked at his watch, then over at the limo, and then he said something that surprised DeMarco. “Shit, everybody knows about that stuff. Before Morelli was elected to the Senate, there was an article in the
Times
, or maybe it was in one of them tight-assed New York magazines. Anyway, the article said how Morelli was so fuckin’ lucky that he oughta be buyin’ lotto tickets instead of workin’.”
    “Maybe it wasn’t luck,” DeMarco said.
    Mahoney snorted; not an attractive sound. “A guy gets in a wreck; another guy gets caught dippin’ his wick into a secretary; and a third guy is nabbed for porkin’ teenage boys. There’s an old saying, son: Never attribute to malice something that can be explained by stupidity.”
    “Good point,” DeMarco said, but he was also rather annoyed that Neil hadn’t told him that everything he’d learned had been written up in a magazine.
    “So you think I should drop this?” DeMarco said. “I