“Shut up, Welp,” Colles said. “How’d they do it?”
“I wrote a full report yesterday, after I got back to D.C. I’ve attached the relevant documents and a couple of photographs of the happy couple at Harrah’s Gulf Coast casino on Friday night. It’s here.” She took a file out of her backpack and passed it to Colles.
Welp: “Even if it proves to be true, you’ve far transgressed...”
“Doesn’t matter what you believe,” Letty Davenport interrupted. “I quit. You guys bore the crap outta me.”
TWO
Letty worked in what its denizens called the bullpen, an open room of low-ranking senatorial assistants and researchers, each with his or her own desk and filing cabinet, surrounded by a hip-high fabric cubicle wall. Most of the staffers were either recent Ivy League graduates or smart state school grads, getting close to power.
As a graduate of a heavyweight West Coast university, with a master’s degree in something useful, combined with her cool reserve and the way she dressed, Letty was different. She was smart, hard-nosed and hard-bodied, lean, muscled like a dancer, and occasionally displayed a sharp, dry wit.
The young women in the bullpen noticed that her clothes carried fashionable labels, while tending toward the dark and functional, if not quite military. Her jewelry was sparse but notable, and always gold. One of the Ivy Leaguers excessively admired a chainbracelet set with a single, unfaceted green stone, and asked if she could try it on.
Letty was amenable. After the other woman had tried and returned the bracelet, and Letty had gone, a friend asked the Ivy Leaguer, “Well, what did you find out?”
“Harry Winston.”
“Really.”
“Honest to God,” the Ivy Leaguer said. “That stone is a raw fucking uncut emerald, like Belperron used. We could mug her, sell the bracelet, and buy a Benz. Maybe two Benzes.”
“Youcould mug her. I’ve seen her working out, so I’ll pass on that.”
When Letty finishedbriefing Colles and Welp on the Tallahassee situation, she left them studying the purloined spreadsheets, dropped her letter of resignation on Welp’s desk—two weeks’ notice—and walked down to the bullpen. An hour later, Welp called and said, “Get up here. Senator Colles wants to speak with you.”
When she walked back into the senator’s reception area, Colles, Welp, and a legislative assistant named Leslie Born were huddled in a nook under a portrait of Colles shaking hands with the elder George Bush. They were arguing about something in low but angry tones; maybe the missing money. Colles saw Letty and snapped, “Get in my office. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Letty went into Colles’s private office and sprawled sideways in one of the comfortable leather club chairs, her legs draped over a well-padded arm. And why not? What was he going to do, fire her?
Colles came in five minutes later, slammed his door. “I apologize for snapping at you out there,” he said.
“You should. You were pretty goddamn impolite,” Letty said, dropping her feet to the floor.
“You’re right, I was. Because you’re not the problem. Let me tellyou, sweet pea: don’t ever get yourself elected to the Senate,” Colles said, as he settled behind his desk. He was a tall man, big whitened teeth, ruddy face, carefully groomed gray hair. “There are more numb-nuts around here than in the Florida state legislature, which, believe me, was a whole passel of numb-nuts.”
“What do you want?” Letty asked.
Colles smiled at the abruptness. “We bore you. Okay. We boreme, most of the time. I used to be this really, really rich real estate developer down in Palm Beach County. Pretty young women wouldinsistthat I pat them on the ass and I was happy to do it. If I patted anyone on the ass in this place, my face would be on CNN at eight, nine, and ten o’clock, looking like a troll who lives under a bridge and eats children.”
“You could probably get away with patting Welp on the ass,” Letty suggested.
Colles faked a shudder. “Anyway, I got your letter of resignation. I put it in the shredder.”
“I still quit,” Letty said, sitting forward. “I don’t hold it against you, Senator Colles. You’re not a bad guy, for a Republican. I’m in the wrong spot. I realized that a month ago and decided to give it another month before I resigned. The month is up.”
“What? Tallahassee scared you?”
“Tallahassee was the best assignment I’ve had since I’ve been here,” she said. “If it was all Tallahassees, I might have decided to stick around.”
“Now we’re getting someplace,” Colles said. He did a 360-degree twirl in his office chair, and when he came back around, he said, “The Tallahassee thing was... impressive. If you’d been caught by the Tallahassee cops, I might have had to fire you. But you weren’t. I can use somebody with your talents.”
“Doing what? Burglaries?”
“As chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I’ve made it my business to oversee DHS operations. There are a couple dozen of what I think of as mission-critical problems that they have to deal with, at any given time. I’m very often unhappy with the results.”
“I...”
