tents constructed over subway grates. Bureaucrats went about business as usual.
Louisa worked in the Hart Building, just north of the Supreme Court and northeast of the Capitol itself. She stretched at her desk and looked beyond the heavy teal-and-gold drapes framing windows that opened to an inner courtyard. It was six-thirty and the courtyard was dark. She was the last one left in the office, and the exodus of workers had slowed in the outside corridor. All things considered, it hadn’t been a bad day.
She’d managed to keep her boss on schedule and lint-free through two luncheon meetings, an interview with a Post reporter, a question-and-answer session with forty fifth graders, and an afternoon tea at the Australian Embassy. She’d coerced their two interns into stuffing and stamping the monthly newsletter to constituents. She’d badgered the caterer into an affordable buffet for the spring fund-raiser. And she’d secured a slot for her senator on Good Morning America.
She retrieved her purse from the bottom drawer and pushed away from the desk. She buttoned her long wool greatcoat high to her neck, switched the lights off, and closed the office door behind her. She exited the building at C and 1st Street, and her attention was immediately drawn to two men arguing half a block away. One of the men was her boss, and she recognized the other as Senator Stuart Maislin.
Maislin gave Nolan Bishop a jab to the chest with his finger, and Nolan went rigid, then stiffly nodded his head. Maislin stood with hands clenched for a moment, then wheeled around and climbed into the limo idling at curbside. The car pulled out into traffic. Bishop turned and quickly walked east on C Street.
Louisa was only mildly surprised. Maislin had a reputation for strong-arm tactics. He was a powerful man in the Senate, and some said he had Oval Office aspirations. It was also whispered about that he had bad friends. Louisa turned her collar up against the wind and marched across the street, pushing the incident from her mind. Sometimes a blind eye was called for on Capitol Hill.
It was past seven when she emerged from the Metro station at Connecticut and Woodley. She turned left at Woodley and walked one block to 27th Street through one of the many residential pockets in urban Washington. The sidewalks were tipped from tree roots and worn smooth from generations of baby buggy wheels, roller skates, and leather-soled shoes. Four-story-high trees grew in the dirt median between sidewalk and street. The street was narrow from curb-parked cars and bumpy with patch jobs done by the D.C. Department of Transportation. It was a neighborhood pulling itself out of midlife crises, struggling with genteel neglect. It was a neighborhood of double-income families who required close-by gourmet takeouts and same-day shirt service.
She had her head down, searching in her purse for her key, when she approached her house. She gasped when she realized there was a large dark form on her porch steps. She pressed her lips tight together when she saw it was Streeter in an unbuttoned shearling jacket with the collar turned up.
He stood and held her paper out to her. “I thought I should give this to you personally.”
“Why?”
He followed her up the stairs and slouched against her door, hands in pockets, feet crossed at the ankle. “You seemed unusually bent out of shape this morning. I thought maybe there was some special significance to this particular paper. Like, maybe you’re a spy and there was a microdot in the Style section.”
She stuffed the paper under her arm and continued fishing in her handbag. “I’m not a spy. I’m press secretary to Senator Nolan Bishop. I was unusually bent out of shape because I was tired, and because I hate you.”
“How could you hate me? You don’t even know me.”
She paused in her search for the key and looked up at him. “I know you well enough to thoroughly dislike you. I’d give you specific reasons, but it’d take all night, and I don’t want to spend that much time in your presence.”
“This is about the phone calls to your mother, isn’t it? You’re embarrassed because I know you aren’t sleeping with the guy you’ve been dating for the past four months.”
“Get a life.”
Streeter’s grin flashed white in the darkness. “Why aren’t you sleeping with him?”
“He doesn’t appeal to me. We’re just friends.”
“So, who are you sleeping with?”
“I’m not sleeping with—” She clamped her mouth shut and shoved her key into the