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the inaugural ball.
    These women , he thought, recalling what an old friend of his had said: God put women on this earth to make self-realization for man more trouble than it should be. Heaven was a long way away.
    Chauvinist that he was, he smiled at Beverly. "I don't know who dropped her off, but Senator Randell picked her up last night. Big thing over at Compton's. Jet set, and the lot." He grinned ridiculously, looking back toward the bathroom. "I decided not to go to this one for a change."
    "Randell," Rita muttered. "So he got retrieved OK?"
    Collins leafed through a fold of papers, momentarily serious. "Yeah, this time it was Lanier. Francis Lanier from Malibu Canyon, California. He's one of the best, so they chose him." He looked up at the women. "It was expensive all the way around."
    "Why is that?" Rita queried.
    "They had to fly a psychologist into Fort Meyer after Randell came out. He made Randell confess."
    "Confess?" Both Rita and Beverly glowed with interest, almost like Dubuque housewives bent toward the latest neighborhood poop over clotheslines. No one liked Randell and everyone liked Katie.
    I don't believe this , Ken thought to himself. But he did enjoy the attention.
    "Now that would be telling," he said. But he leaned over as one of the maids breezed by with a tray of coffee and small donuts for the President.
    "Smeared with adultery and scandal. Even you-know-who…" Now who's gossiping , he said to himself.
    But the women understood.
    Collins frowned. "But don't let any of this out. It isn't quite settled yet. I'll handle the information flow and the scandal sheet questions. But keep a lid on it."
    Katie bloomed from the bathroom in a healthy cloud of steam, massaging her short hair with a towel. The maid lowered the tray and Katie grabbed a steaming cup of coffee, lighting up another cigarette.
    She caught the expression on Collins' face, and, after looking over to Rita and Beverly, she instinctively knew what the two of them now knew, thanks to Ken Collins.
    At least he's up on the news , she thought. "Well, I see word spreads fast these days."
    "I think, Ms. President," Rita started rather formally with an awkward sense of protocol, "that you'd be best advised to keep a low profile as far as Senator Randell is concerned. He's political dynamite and you know it."
    Katie Babcock just smiled wickedly.
    "What she means, Katie, is," Beverly began, "we don't know what made Randell succumb to the Syndrome. No one seems to. At least, if anyone does know, they aren't talking. But it has to be pretty bad. I'm sure there's more to his going under than the business over his personal finances and his marriage. If what Ken says about that scandal is true …"
    Katie waved her cigarette about. "No one knows what Albertson Randell is up to, mentally, except that Stalker, Lanier. But he's no shrink." She looked at Collins standing with his arms folded behind his back, waving his roster. At parade rest , she thought. A good soldier .
    "Ken, make a note," she said to him. "I want to meet Lanier personally. Find the time. It might be revealing. And try to get a meeting with any of the other known Stalkers. If the Syndrome is spreading as much as they tell me it is, then I want to know how they work. Must be fascinating."
    "Right, Katie," he said firmly, jotting on the sheet.
    "And if you must know," she announced to everyone present in the bedroom, "Albertson says he's cured."
    Katie removed her robe quite unselfconsciously displaying a lithe, tight body in bra and slip. "He's now on an increased dosage of Baktropol, since Baktropol is the only thing that seems to work against this disease." She puffed on her cigarette. "Even if it is only temporarily effective against the Syndrome. As long as he's on it, Lanier says in his report that Randall won't succumb anymore. He may go crazy, but at least he won't disappear like the rest." She paused, thinking for a moment. "And Randell, despite his personal life, is one of the