Chapter 42

With Susan no longer there to direct me I needed to locate Golden's suite. I walked back toward the rotunda where I remembered seeing a building directory. When I got myself oriented I found that his office was just down the corridor I'd been in. Not the first floor, as Susan had told me, the second. But she'd been right that it was the entrance level.

Giving myself no time to reconsider, I headed briskly along. Without a pause I pushed open the door and went in. The lobby—waiting room? whatever you wanted to call it—was relatively unoccupied notwithstanding Tuesdays were supposedly the Senator's days for "seeing constituents." The word "seeing" here was probably to be construed loosely. In any case it was still before noon, when the Senate convened; I walked over to the reception desk and asked to see him.

"Just a moment, sir," she said brightly. "May I ask what this is in reference to?"

"It's a ... personal matter," I said. "If you'll just give the Senator my name—"

"Sir, I'm afraid Senator Golden has a very busy day today," she said patiently. "But if you'll just tell me the nature of your business I'll be able to set you up with one of his closest aides."

Susan hadn't warned me it'd be this difficult. On the other hand, she'd never visited his office during business hours. I guessed it was understandable that a political bigwig would surround himself with layers of insulation outside of the elections when it became necessary to "press the flesh" of actual voters. But I needed to break through.

"Ma'am, I understand what you're telling me, but I think that if you pass my name through to Senator Golden himself he'll be happy to see me," I said firmly. "It's Larry Costain." I enunciated carefully.

She gave me a very dubious look; gone was the cheeriness of her original greeting. She ostentatiously pulled out a list of names and looked down it, clearly not finding my name there.

"Sir, I—"

"Just pass the name through, please," I interrupted her. When she still hesitated I gave her a grin. "Hey, what can it hurt?" I said in my most winning fashion.

Still doubtful, she picked up her phone and pushed two buttons. "Elaine?" she said into it. "It's Karen, in the front. Look, there's a man here, he says his name is Contain—"

"Costain," I repeated loudly. "Larry Costain."

"Larry Costain," she corrected into the phone. She spelled it, looking at me for confirmation; I nodded. "He's very insistent that the Senator will want to see him. Can you—" Pause. "No, he's not on the list, but he says—" Another brief pause. "I'll tell him."

She hung up and looked up at me. "She'll pass on your name," she told me. "If you'll just take a seat..." She gestured vaguely at the chairs, in which three other people were already waiting for somebody.

I sat, feeling a little uneasy. I hadn't quite thought this through as much as I'd considered I had. I'd been expecting to have to go through a screening process, but not quite this extensive with names being passed up a whole ladder of minions. Weren't politicians supposed to be accessible? Evidently that applied only at lower levels or in campaigns. And would Golden even recognize my name? Or was I just "some guy" to him, some minor obstacle to be eliminated and my identity too obscure for him even to acknowledge? I clutched the hand in my pocket more firmly on the Liberator concealed there.

In only about a couple of minutes, though, another young woman poked her head out a connecting door. "Mr. Costain?" she said into the waiting room. When I waved my free hand at her she gave me a smile. "Right this way, sir," she said, to the consternation of my fellow (and predecessor) waitees. I got up and followed her, still grasping the Liberator in my pocket.

We passed through another office and then into a second, smaller one. The only woman there, sitting at a desk facing the entrance I'd just come through, waved at the door behind her. "Go right on in, Mr. Costain," she said. My escort had dropped away by that point; I followed the other woman's directions.

Talk about posh offices! I was in the sanctum sanctorum, all right. Not only was it huge, it had clearly been decorated by professionals. Only the fanciest furniture, the plushest of couches and chairs, the finest of paneling on the walls, gorgeous oriental rugs overlaying thick wall-to-wall carpeting, ornate bookcases filled with rich-looking books, on and on. The centerpiece of the room was what at least looked to be a real fireplace against the far wall. Only the best for Ariel's Senator Bobby.

And a couple of yards in front of the fireplace and to the side was a monstrous, gorgeously finished wooden desk, behind which stood the man himself, familiar to me from the newscasts and photos, in seeming welcome.

"Why, come in, come in," he said cordially, his voice booming out effortlessly as it always seemed to at the speeches he was recorded giving so frequently. He turned to the man beside him. "Walter, get the door, will you?" he commanded. "Oh, and tell Elaine she can go get lunch now." He turned back to me. "We don't want to be disturbed for a little, now, do we?"

I moved one side as the other man walked by me and spoke to the ... secretary? ... in the anteroom. So this was Walter. The asshole who'd run down Susan, who'd tried his best to stab me to death, then shoot me as well. He matched her description exactly, down to especially the deep-set piercing eyes that surveyed me disinterestedly. And he looked as athletic as she'd said, too, both fit and a lot bigger and stronger than I was. I was glad I hadn't followed through on my initial instinct to tackle him in the hospital parking lot.

But he was distinctly limping as he made his way past me. A product of my heel-slam at his kneecap, I thought with satisfaction; he'd left his impression on me all right, but I'd left one on him, too. I suppressed the grin I wanted to give him.

At the same time I took a tighter grip on the Liberator in my pocket. Lame he might be, paralyzed he wasn't. And he was closer to me than I liked.

He retreated again to Golden's side, though, just as the Senator was saying something to me about welcome to his office. But with the door now firmly closed and his secretary presumably on her way to lunch, the courtesies were quickly finished. "Well, Mr. Costain, I'm sure it's a pleasure to meet you, but I'd be really very interested to know what brought you here today," he asked. "Or may I call you Larry? I feel that in a way we know each other, don't you?"

I looked meaningfully at Quiller. "Larry's fine, sir, but, well, I was sort of hoping to talk to you, well, privately, Senator," I said.