"Then you're gonna have to," Carver said. "Second of all, even if I knew something, I wouldn't tell you, because you can't even give me immunity. The best I could hope for, if I knew about these killings, would be what? Life with parole? Twenty years? Say I keep my mouth shut, and you're right about the governor and all that, and the army pulls me back ... nothing they do could be worse than what you're talking about. To tell you the truth, given what happened that whole night ... heroes in a firefight ... I don't see any way they convict me of anything."

"So."

"So, you can take your deal and stick it up your ass," Carver said. He leaned back in his chair, as though satisfied with his decision.

"From what the army investigators say about what happened in Afghanistan, I don't suppose the murders of a couple more people would bother you-nothing for me to work with, there," Lucas said.

Carver rolled his eyes up and sideways, as if to say, Please, the way New Yorkers say it. As if to say, Now you're wasting our time.

"That's like asking me if I feel bad when somebody gets killed in a car accident. I mean, I gotta tell you, if I don't know them, I don't feel bad. It's like that with this Tubbs guy. Don't know him, never saw him. If I could snap my fingers and he'd come walking through the door, I'd do it. But feel bad, if he's dead? No. Sorry."

"All right. I got nothing more," Lucas said.

Carver looked at him for a moment, then pushed his chair back and stood up. As he turned, Lucas said, "I might have a deal for Dannon, too. If he takes it, I'll put you away forever. Thirty years, no parole. You'll be an old man when you get out."

"Fuck you."

"Whatever," Lucas said. "You got my phone number. The deal is open until Dannon talks to me. At that point, you're done."

"Double fuck you," Carver said.

"Keep your eye on the TV. You could be a star," Lucas said.

Carver walked away.

CHAPTER 23

Kidd finally boiled it down to a single line: he said, "I think it's moronic."

"I know what I'm doing," Lauren said.

"I'm not sure of that. As far as you know, they'll have a dozen extra guards around the place to keep the starfuckers away," Kidd said.

"They'd be out front. I'll be going in from the dark side, right down the neighbor's tree line," Lauren said. She'd been studying satellite pictures all day, including several taken within the past week, with resolution good enough to see the hubcaps on cars. "I'll have my starlights. The security alarms will be off, the dogs will be locked up, all kinds of people will be walking around the place, and most of them will be either rich or important, so nobody will be inclined to question them."

"Jesus." Kidd dragged his fingertips through his eye sockets.

"One last time," Lauren said. "I swear to God, I do this, and I'm done. I'll go back to being the little housewife."

"You're not a little housewife."

"Yes, I am. I'm not a famous painter. I'm not a famous computer hacker," Lauren said. "People say, 'You're that Kidd's wife? You lucky woman.' You know-get your cookies in the oven and your buns in the bed, while Kidd takes care of the important stuff."

Kidd had to laugh, and she said, "Now you're laughing."

"I'm laughing because it's so fucking stupid. Why can't you be a rock climber or something? A scuba diver? You're smart-go to college, get a degree, become a famous ... whatever."

"Right. Whatever. Even the Famous Kidd can't think exactly what that might be."

They were in the living room, in a couple of easy chairs overlooking the Mississippi. The weather was changing: not only from one day to the next, but from autumn to winter. The sky was gray, overcast, with thick clouds the color of aluminum, not a hint of the sun. Cold. On really bad days, Kidd sat in front of the window and drew the scene, with a pencil or a crayon and a sketchbook, and the scene changed every time. Lauren pushed herself out of her chair and walked to the window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

After a moment, Kidd walked up behind her and draped an arm over her shoulder. "All right. Let's do it."

"Thank you. You can't tell me this doesn't light you up, at least a little bit," Lauren said.

"The biggest problem is Jackson," Kidd said. "We can't both get caught. If they grab you ..."

"You have to run," Lauren said. "But they won't grab me... . I absolutely will not push. I'll go in with my finger on the abort switch. The first second that trouble shows up, I'll go right back down the tree line. You get me, and we roll."

"One last time," Kidd said.

She turned back to him, her face bright. "I'm really stoked, Kidd. I'm high as a kite."

DANNON WAS DRIVING, TARYN was in the backseat. Schiffer, the campaign manager, was in the front passenger seat with two cell phones, three ballpoint pens, one red, one green, and one black, and a blue-cloth three-ring binder. Inside the binder was an inch-thick stack of paper, much of it given over to a listing of every voting precinct in Minnesota, all 4,130 of them, with the results of the last Senate campaign, which had been won by Porter Smalls.

Thirty precincts had been designated as critical signposts. For those precincts, the far right column was kept in red, green, or black ink; red for those precincts where exit polls suggested Smalls would exceed his total in the last campaign, green for those in which he was running behind, and black for those in which there was no discernible change.

Of the thirty, as of three o'clock in the afternoon, he was running behind his previous total in seventeen of the twenty-six where they had been able to gather enough responses to report. In the other nine, there was no discernible change. He was running ahead in none of them. All by itself, that would have been good; but what was happening was actually better than good. People who voted before five o'clock tended to be more conservative than those who voted after five o'clock.

Taryn had been scheduled to make four appearances during the day, set up to capture the noon and early evening news: going in, they'd thought they might need the small extra boost from those television appearances. Porter Smalls had ended his campaign with a breakfast at the St. Paul Hotel in St. Paul, so wouldn't be much of a factor on the news. Besides, the news departments at TV stations in Minneapolis were generally liberal, and would give Taryn a publicity break if they could get away with it.

In the front seat, Schiffer said into one of her phones, "I don't want to know about helium. I want some of the balloons to go down, instead of up. Is that too much to ask? Get it done."

On her second phone she said, "Well?" She listened for a moment, then grunted and wrote a number in the right column in green ink. She said, "Keep it going," and hung up and turned to Taryn.

"Eighteen of twenty-seven, and we're running stronger in our precincts than Sterling did last time."

"You want to make a call?" Taryn asked.

"I never believe it until I see the actual numbers ... but yeah. You got it. You're the new senator from Minnesota."

Taryn said, "Yes!" and Dannon slapped the steering wheel and cried, "Oh, my God, it makes my dick hard!"

Taryn said, "Douglas ..."

"I'm sorry, it's ..."

Schiffer: "Don't worry about it. Makes my dick hard, too."