The food came and they began eating and resumed talking, the subject having been changed by unspoken agreement to fields less fraught with passion and consequence.

Karp walked back down the Hill to the office on Fourth Street. When he entered, Bea Sondergard was sitting on the floor amid a chaos of file boxes, moving papers among file folders of various colors. She looked up at him over the rims of her spectacles.

"How was lunch? I heard you dined with Congress."

"I had the chicken," said Karp.

"That's the first step. Chicken, then sirloin, then bribes and fancy girls. He's in his office. Oh, and I had some furniture moved into your place. I took the liberty of deciding on a color scheme."

"Gosh, I had my heart set on something in rusting gray metal."

She flashed teeth. "Then you'll be pleased."

Bert Crane was on the phone when Karp walked in. The office had been tidied some and Crane now sat in a high leather chair behind a handsome new mahogany desk. And the phones obviously worked. Karp sat down on a new-smelling black leather couch, and waited.

When Crane got off the phone and turned to him, Karp observed, "You guys work fast."

"Yeah, it's great, if we stay out of jail. Bea sometimes cuts the corners in procurement. I think she paid for all this stuff with an account that's not quite authorized yet. How was your lunch?"

"I had the chicken. How was yours?"

"As I said, I ate with the press. We just went out on the veldt and they found a dead zebra. But, really-how did you make out with Dobbs?"