MICKEY AND HIS FATHER WERE IN JOSEPH'S ROOM watching a news report about the return of Paul's mutilated body to McCarran Field in Las Vegas. The UBC anchor, Brenton Spencer, told America that Bahamian police surmised that the senator and his media consultant Warren Sacks had gone swimming late at night and been savagely attacked by sharks.

Paul's wife, Avon, met the plane, dressed in a dark suit. She was crying as Paul's casket was unloaded from a military cargo plane, and Brenton Spencer droned on about the late senator's political accomplishments.

Mickey watched, without feeling. He had not told his father about the inflammatory Polaroid pictures he'd found in the Flamingo Suite because it served no purpose now. The pictures showed Paul and Warren and a pretty sixteenyear-old Bahamian girl, locked in a bisexual daisy chain of anal bliss. Mickey had cut them up and flushed them down the toilet. They were of no use to him now and only defined the depth of his father's mistake in judgment about Paul. As the funeral procession left the airfield, Mickey switched off the TV and moved back to his father.

"I think you're right," Joseph wheezed. "This Rhode Island governor Haze Richards looks good, but this whole thing happens now or not at all. We got no time."

"Okay, but it's not like with Paul," Mickey said. "We knew Paul since he was governor. Haze Richards is a stranger. We need somebody who's got the candidate's ear and can control him. Somebody who can godfather this whole thing. I've been checking it out, and I found a guy who could help. He's real tight with Governor Richards-all the way back to grade school-helped him win the Rhode Island Governor's mansion. If we pick Haze Richards to be our candidate, this guy could rope him for us."