Interface. Part 32

Her progress from nameless refugee to media star could be tracked by checking the headlines on a local newspaper, which had been sliding in the direction of out-and-out tabloid journalism for a number of years, and which had been driven completely beyond the pale by the Bianca Ramirez story.

"TRUCK OF DEATH".

had been the first headline concerning the Ramirez family. Slightly less hysterical coverage of the tragedy had actually made it on to a couple of national network newscasts, which was unusual to say the least; plenty of Chicano kids had suffocated in the backs of trucks without even being mentioned in the local newspapers. But this time around, several national Hispanic organisations got into the act and managed to stir up some interest on a national level. The case of the Ramirez family was a good one for TV. The truck of death per se was sitting in a driveway in Denver and anyone could go and videotape it. There had been one survivor, who happened to be an adorable little girl, and although this didn't get reported right away, there was, as the saying goes, more to the story: a failure of responsibility by a major, rich, private hospital, and hints of potential scandal involving one Sam Wyatt, wealthy cattleman, golf partner of senators and CEOs.

"LET HER DIE!".

was the headline on Day 2. The story about Highlands' refusal to treat Bianca had been leaked to the press by Ray del Valle. Leaked was a deceptive term. A leak was a tiny seeping crevice. In this case, blowout might have been more accurate. Ray made sure everyone with a minicam, laptop, pen, or pencil knew about the story. More sober journalists just viewed it as another example of "dumping," the refusal of some hospitals to treat indigent patients. If they knew their business at all, it was an issue that they had already covered. Much more melodramatic examples of it happened in other cities.

"HANG ON BIANCA!".

was the headline for Day 3. This was somewhat meaningless. Day 3 was a Sunday and not much was going on. And Bianca's ability to hang on had never really been in question. The fact that she was still breathing when she was pulled from the Truck of Death, and when the ambulance crew had taken her to Highlands, where they had been told Let Her Die, meant that the parts of her brain that controlled breathing and heartbeat still worked. She was, in other words, stable, albeit in a coma. There was nothing to hang on to.

But it made for a great headline, and it gave the tabloid (and the television journalists who functioned at the same journalistic level) a bit of breathing room. For a couple of days they had been acc.u.mulating a great ma.s.s of basically irrelevant human-interest material: pictures of the big-eyed Bianca, testimonials from family and playmates, descriptions of her favourite foods and toys. Sunday gave them a chance to unload all of that stuff on the public. If nothing else, Sunday was the day that Bianca became an official public figure, someone who could be referred to by her first name in a tabloid or on a TV broadcast, like Madonna or Di. As such, she represented a money factory for the tabloid; for at least the next couple of weeks, whenever they needed to goose their circulation figures they just printed any headline containing the name Bianca.

But Sunday was not a day of rest for everyone. A bleary-eyed Ray del Valle led a caravan of half a dozen journalist-laden vehicles on a drive across the prairie, headed for the patch of Forest Service grazing land where the Ramirez children had played their last game of soccer. The reason that Ray was bleary-eyed, even though the caravan departed at the civilized hour often A.M., was that he had spent the entire night driving from Denver to the site and back. On his drive out to the site, his car had been full of used toys and house-wares, which he had purchased for a few dollars at Goodwill. On his drive back to Denver, the car had been empty.

When the caravan of journalists arrived at the site in mid-afternoon they were treated to the blindingly photogenic sight of cattle grazing over the remains of a hastily evacuated migrant settlement. Remains of human tragedy were strewn everywhere: Raggedy Andy dolls, overturned cooking pots, baby clothes, a battered, well-loved Malibu Barbie or two.

None of it had been there the day before; the migrant workers had had plenty of time to pick up their things before they'd evacuated the site, and were not so wasteful as to leave perfectly good pots and toys strewn around.

But it looked great, especially when the handsome, pony-tailed Ray del Valle squatted down in the gra.s.s to ponder an abandoned soccer ball as fat cattle emblazoned with the Lazy Z brand grazed contentedly nearby.

So it was no big surprise when a photograph along those lines took up most of the front page of the next morning's tabloid, accompanied by the headline: "WYATT: 'THROW 'EM OUT!'".

It would be an understatement to say that Sam Wyatt, his very close friends in Senator Marshall's offices, and most of the Denver medical establishment were, so far, not amused by the way the Ramirez situation had been covered in the media. And although Ray del Valle had begun the new week with a crus.h.i.+ng sucker punch, afterward it became the Week of the Backlash. The "THROW 'EM OUT!" headline had been on the newsstands for less than six hours when two cars full of INS agents pulled up in front of the home of Pilar de la Cruz, nee Ramirez, and came to the door with the intention of arresting Carlos and Anna Ramirez, who both happened to be illegal aliens. If these agents had been reading their tabloids, they would not even have stopped; they would have known that Carlos and Anna were not there by the fact that the TRUCK OF DEATH was not parked in the driveway. But they made the mistake of going to the door anyway. Pilar, alerted to the fact that Immigration was after her sister and brother-in-law, telephoned Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre, where they were visiting Bianca, and warned them. They cut their visit short, jumped into the Truck of Death, and vanished from the face of the earth.

"MOMMY HAS TO GO, BIANCA!".

graced the newsstands the next morning, accompanied by a photo of the tearful Anna bidding farewell to her daughter, who was bottled up inside the giant pressurized chamber where she had been receiving her treatment. A photographer had been present in the room when Anna and Carlos received the warning from Pilar and had snapped pictures of them bidding a hasty farewell.

None of which made the Powers That Be look especially good to the public. Which is why social workers from Health and Human services started paying very close attention to Bianca at the same time, and a motion was filed in court for the state of Colorado to become Bianca's legal guardian. The gist of this legal doc.u.ment was that Carlos and Anna Ramirez, by driving their kids around in a truck full of lethal gases and killing three of them, had clearly demonstrated their unfitness as parents and should not be allowed to take care of Bianca anymore. The district attorney let it be known that his staff was actually investigating the possibility of filing charges against the Ramirezes and that, with every fibre of his being, he was refraining himself from issuing an arrest warrant for Carlos and Anna. It was all well and good to put public service announcements on TV begging people not to drive their kids around in the back of pickup trucks, but what would really put a stop to this sort of thing was punitive legal action against parents who did it. So the headline for Wednesday morning was "STATE: BIANCA IS OURS!".

But all of this legal squalor was obscuring an interesting medical story. When Bianca arrived in the hyperbaric chamber she had been in a deep coma and totally unresponsive. But in the photo accompanying the "BIANCA IS OURS" story, a state social worker stood outside the hyperbaric chamber, smiling and waving through its thick pressure-proof window at the unseen Bianca inside. And there wasn't much point smiling and waving to a vegetable. It seemed that Bianca had staged a miraculous recovery. She was far from being back to normal, but she was awake, alert, responsive to verbal communication, and mumbling a few words.

This gave Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre's new PR Director the ammunition he needed to thunder into the media fray. His predecessor and former boss had been sacked with astonis.h.i.+ng dispatch as soon as "LET HER DIE!" had hit the streets. The new man had spent the first few days just trying to get on his feet. By the time Wednesday rolled around, he was ready. He brought in a select troop of journalists to videotape and photograph Bianca through the window of the chamber; she obliged by smiling and waving to them. Since she had all but been written off as a vegetable a few days earlier, this was certainly going to have an electrifying effect on the public.

There followed a news conference in a hospital meeting room, where all of Bianca's doctors, nurses,therapists, and court-appointed guardians stepped up to the microphone to deliver a few bright, upbeat sound bites praising Bianca's plucky nature and emphasising the incredible nature of her recovery. A few cynical journalists tried to spoil the day by asking difficult questions, e.g.: "Does Bianca know that the INS is trying to deport her parents?" But the new PR Director was standing by the mike at all times, trying to antic.i.p.ate any line of questioning that might lead to another headline along the lines of "LET HER DIE!," and whenever these issues came up he would do something about protecting the patient's privacy and then point to some other journalist with a less acute critical facility. In general, the PR Director was finding that bald, middle-aged print journalists with nicotine stains on their fingers were troublesome, and beautiful twenty-five-year-old TV journalists who had arrived at the hospital carrying stuffed bunnies for Bianca were good people to call on. So the headline for Thursday morning was: "BIANCA: MIRACLE GIRL!".

accompanied by a picture of her smiling her gap-toothed kid's grin through the window of the chamber, cuddling a bunny to her chest.

Anyone who bothered to read the complete news story about Bianca, all the way to the end, could find out that her treatment in the chamber was essentially complete, and that Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre was going to release her the following day, on Friday.

Which meant that by the time the "MIRACLE GIRL" headline began to circulate on Thursday morning, all of the partic.i.p.ants of the Ramirez affair, from Denver to the Lazy Z Ranch to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., were gearing up for the end-game.

Most of Friday would be taken up with logistics: getting all the players to the hospital on time and keeping in touch with everyone on the phone. So Thursday was the last day for actually making moves. Ray del Valle kicked off the final round by arranging a press conference, in a "safe house" somewhere in greater Denver, in which Carlos and Anna Ramirez stepped before the court of Public Opinion to defend themselves from charges that they were illegal aliens and bad parents.

The illegal alien part was difficult, because they were, in fact, illegal aliens. But in America, no issue was so clear-cut that it could not be obfuscated beyond recognition by a talented lawyer. The Ramirezes now had one: a nationally famous h.e.l.l-raising San Francisco lawyer who liked to do pro-bono work if lots of TV cameras were present; he insisted that he was going to get these people green cards real soon.

The part about being bad parents was different. The Ramirezes were actually known in their community as very good parents. Carlos was a teetotaler who spent every minute of his free time with his children, and Anna was a domestic saint. Ray had arranged for character witnesses to show up at the safe house and say as much.

Eleanor Richmond's part in the endgame was a different matter. She snuck into, and ransacked, the office of her young colleague Shad Harper. This was easily enough to get her fired and possibly even enough to get her thrown into jail. She understood this clearly and had already typed up a letter of resignation for Senator Marshall. She had been working at this job for exactly one month and had received exactly one pay check.

It was completely insane for her to be doing this. If she had been looking for snippets of information that she could have kept to herself and used discreetly, that would have been one thing. But her entire goal was to dig up some dirt that she could turn around and release to the media. Eleanor Richmond had gone native.

She was out of control.

She had lost it sometime over the weekend. The realisation that Sam Wyatt, her boss' main man, had triggered this whole chain of events was bad enough by itself. For a day or two she had wavered, mostly because she was turned off by Ray's tactic of planting toys in the gra.s.s for photographers. When the INS had come around looking for Carlos and Anna, she had been annoyed. But when the state had tried to take Bianca away from her parents, Eleanor Richmond had gone nuts. That was no fair. She'd rather be a bag lady than a conspirator in an affair that involved breaking apart a family.

So on Thursday, whenever Shad Harper left his office for more than ten minutes, Eleanor went in and made herself at home. It would be worth destroying her own career if she could find anything to bring Shad down along with her. It would have been nice to find something on Sam Wyatt, or on the aide in D.C. who had made the fateful phone call to the Forest Service, or even on Senator Marshall himself. Butshe was willing to settle for Shad Harper's head on a platter.

Somewhat to her own astonishment, she didn't get caught. Once or twice, someone poked their head into Shad's office while she was there, and she explained that she was looking for a stapler that Shad had borrowed. This explanation worked because Shad was always borrowing stuff, including money, and not returning it.

Shad himself spent most of his day out of the office, deeply enmeshed in some kind of plot involving the Ramirez family.

By the time the sun rose on Friday morning, illuminating the new headline: "BIANCA: I WANT MY MAMA!".

nothing had really changed. Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre was going to release Bianca at 6:05 P.M. By an astonis.h.i.+ng coincidence, this put her release just a few minutes into the local evening news programs, making it an ideal candidate for live TV coverage. Their new PR Director, who had been on the job for five days and had already received a raise and a bonus, insisted that this was just a coincidence and that the time of the release had been set for purely medical reasons.

He deserved his raise. From a media/PR standpoint, Highlands had started out the week gut-shot and had made a miracle recovery of their own until they now looked like archangels in white coats, their arms br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with fuzzy stuffed animals. At 6:05, they would roll Bianca Ramirez out into the horseshoe drive where their uniformed valet parking attendants stood guard twenty-four hours a day, and release her into the world. This would be good for two reasons: it would cement their reputation as medical geniuses and it would clear out the hyperbaric chamber so that heavily insured middle-aged diabetics could get into it again.

The question was: who was going to take charge of Bianca when her wheelchair reached the curb? The fact that no-one knew the answer to this question turned the entire scenario into a certified Real-Life Drama and insured vast saturating media coverage.

Colorado was still trying to get a court order making Bianca a ward of the state, but the Ramirezes' high- profile lawyer and his team of young legal ninjas had thrown this action into a procedural snafu that would take weeks to un-tangle. Barring any last-minute action by the judicial branch, Carlos and Anna would still be Bianca's legal guardians as of 6:05.

But Carlos and Anna were illegal aliens and the INS was still looking for them. As a matter of fact, the INS was right there at the hospital, and had been for three days, waiting for them to show up.

So if Bianca's parents actually showed up at 6:05 to take custody of their daughter, they would immediately be taken off to the slammer and someone else would have to step in to take care of Bianca. This would probably end up being Anna's sister Pilar, but there had been rumours that the state might use the arrest of Carlos and Anna as a pretext to seize Bianca, in which case the media could look forward to a tearful three-way Solomonic showdown right there in the horseshoe drive.

All the networks showed up, and as early as six o'clock on Friday morning, twelve hours before the Big Event, Highland's new PR man was already out in the horseshoe drive with a thick piece of blue chalk, marking out camera position: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CHAN 4, CHAN 5, CHAN 7, and more.

As one journalist could be heard remarking to another journalist while they waited in the car-rental line at Stapleton Airport: "It's got a coma baby. It's got a miracle recovery. Weepy parents. A crooked senator. And it's even got a f.u.c.king cowboy!"

By itself, the story was plenty, but things got even better, if that was possible, in the middle of the day, when rumours began to circulate that one of Senator Marshall's staff members had doc.u.ments incriminating another staff member in the Lazy Z Ranch grazing scandal that had triggered this whole mess, and that she was going to be there this evening to lay the whole thing out before the ma.s.sed forces of the national press. And when this rumour was embellished a little, to the effect that the woman in question was the famous bag lady who had recently cut Earl Strong's nuts off in public, journalists all over Denver had to put down their drinks and breathe into paper sacks for a while.

Eleanor Richmond strode like a gunslinger into the horseshoe drive at 5:55 P.M. cradling a three-inch-thickstack of xeroxed handouts. Before she said a word, she held out one of the handouts up next to her face and stood motionless for a few seconds. She had learned this from watching pros in action. It gave the video people a chance to adjust the white balance on their cameras so that she, and everyone who followed her into the centre of the maelstrom, would not look pink or green on television. At the same time, it was a great pose for the still photographers. Dozens of motor drives whined, clearly audible in the astonis.h.i.+ng silence that had suddenly fallen over this makes.h.i.+ft technological amphitheatre.

If the Four Hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse had chosen this moment to gallop through the horseshoe drive on their fiery mounts, the journalists would have chased them out of the shot with verbal abuse, and possibly interviewed them later, after the main event. The only figure who dared break into the frame was a helpful reporter from the Was.h.i.+ngton Post who scurried up to Eleanor, relieved her of the stack of handouts, and frisbeed them wildly into the crowd.

"My name is Eleanor Richmond. I am the Denver health and human services liaison for Senator Caleb Roosevelt Marshall. I have held that position for one month.

"When I began working for the senator I was convinced, based on his past records and statements, that he was a racist. I am now convinced that he does not have a racist bone in his body. I have never met a man more willing to judge people on their individual merits, or lack thereof.

"However even the most perceptive judge of human nature can occasionally be fooled by ambitious persons who practice to deceive. It is my unpleasant duty to report to you that several such people have risen to positions of influence on the Senators' staff and, unbeknownst to Senator Marshall, have abused the power of his office for private gain.

"Going direct to the media is not the best way to handle this situation. I should have met with the Senator first.

I have made repeated efforts to try and reach him but he has been unavailable. Unfortunately I cannot wait any longer to release this information, because it has a bearing on the matter of Bianca Ramirez, and if, by inaction, I were to cause damage to her family, I could never forgive myself. So I am releasing the information now and I am also offering my resignation to Senator Marshall at the same time."

"Eleanor!" shouted all of the journalists at once, raising their hands.

"Excuse me, excuse me, but I think that I should be given an opportunity to speak," someone said, coming up behind Eleanor.

She turned around and looked directly into the face of Shad Harper.

And then she hesitated. She had her back to the lights and cameras now; he was facing them, every pore in his face exposed to their pitiless illumination. She felt like an interrogator as she stood there staring into his face, weighing the situation, trying to make up her mind.

He didn't look good. Shad was just a boy, after all, not very well seasoned, and although he had a few on- camera skills, he was hardly a master of the game. And right now, he was really, really upset.

She knew that if she let Shad talk, he'd cut his own throat. He'd do it because he was a man and he had been conditioned. All his life, to deny his fear, to act before thinking, to get in over his head. A women, or an older man, would have backed off, thought it over, chosen the right time. Not Shad; Shad had to confront her right now, he couldn't let her win even a single skirmish.

"Be my guest," she said, and stepped away from the microphone.

"I'm Shad Harper," he said, his voice cracking. "BLM liaison for Senator Marshall. And since I'm still on his staff, unlike Eleanor here, who has apparently resigned - and if she hasn't resigned -which I can't say for sure either way, since I have not seen and do not have any independent knowledge of any letter by which she might have resigned - if she hasn't resigned then she will probably be fired, and in any case no longer speaks for Senator Marshall, if indeed she ever did - I do speak for Senator Marshall and so, since it appears that very d.a.m.nable allegations are being made about him that I should step up and say something."

"She's not making allegations about the Senator," one of the journalists shouted, glancing through the handout. "She's making allegations about you personally, Mr Harper."

Harper's mouth fell open. "Well, I haven't seen these alleged allegations yet, but-"

"Is this your handwriting?" said another journalist, a woman from the L.A. Times, holding up one page of the handout.It was a photocopy of a sheet of stationary printed, at the top, with the words FROM THE DESK OF SHAD HARPER. It was covered with handwritten notes.

"I'd have to take a better look- "Let me just read you some of this and maybe you can explain why you were writing some of these things down," the woman said. "'State of Was.h.i.+ngton versus Garcia 1990.' That sounds like a court case."

"I don't remember," Shad said.

"I looked it up," Eleanor said. "It was a case in which some children died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the back of a pickup truck and the state of Was.h.i.+ngton successfully took custody of the surviving children on the grounds that their parents had neglected them."

"Why were you looking up that case, Shad?" the woman from the L.A. Times said. "How does that relate to your job as BLM liaison for the Senator?"

"First and foremost, I am a servant of the people," Shad said. The protestors gathered off to one side hooted derisively. The sound threw Shad off balance and he stumbled for a moment. "Uh, I'm ent.i.tled to look up court cases in the privacy of my own office."

"You were trying to a.s.semble material with which to blackmail Anna and Carlos Ramirez," Eleanor said.

"By threatening them with the loss of their only remaining child, you could coerce them into silence, and reduce the intensity of the spotlight on the cozy arrangement between you and Sam Wyatt - which never drew any attention in public until a freak accident exposed it to public view."

"This is just, just - a terrible thing you are saying."

"What is terrible is to live in a time when saying things is considered worse than doing them," Eleanor said.

"You seem to be forgetting here that people in this state, and in this country are d.a.m.n tired of these unemployed welfare mother illegal aliens coming into this country and stirring things up!"

"Why don't you call them spies and wetbacks, the way you do when you're speaking on the telephone to Sam Wyatt?"

"That is a totally unprovable allegation!" Shad yelped. He looked shocked, horrified, to hear these words spoken in public, as if he and Sam Wyatt had invented the words for their personal use. "Listen. I am not a person with any kind of ethnic bias or bigotry. I limit my concern to those people, of whatever ethnic group, who take advantage of the system. Who are like parasites on the prosperous economic system that has been built up over the years by the hard work of productive citizens the likes of Sam Wyatt."

"Sam Wyatt," Eleanor said. "Sam Wyatt, who grazes his cattle on Government-owned land. Land that was occupied by Native Americans until the Government paid soldiers to come out here and kill them.

Sam Wyatt, who irrigates his ranch with water from a Government-built dam. And you think that Anna Ramirez is a welfare queen? I've got news for you, cowboy. Everyone in the state of Colorado is a welfare queen. We all live and feed off the largesse of taxpayers in other parts of the country. It's just that some of us, like Sam Wyatt, have been here longer than others, and have had time to pile up more government welfare checks in their bank accounts and funnel more of that money into big campaign contributions. So don't stand here in Denver, a metropolis built on a creek, the capital of Colorado, a state that would dry up and turn back into a prairie without the continuing help of the government, and bray about the bad moral qualities of welfare queens. Because these people who come north across the border may not have gel in their hair and may not have ostrich-hide cowboy boots, but unlike you, they have something a lot more important.

They have values."

The hospital doors slid open and Bianca Ramirez rolled out in a wheelchair, pushed along by a smiling nurse, escorted by her entire medical team.

A disturbance moved through protesters and suddenly Carlos and Anna Ramirez emerged from the crowd, smiles on their faces, tears streaming down their cheeks. They moved across the horseshoe drive, unhindered by journalists or INS agents or Shad Harper or anyone else, and engulfed their daughter in their arms. And they were engulfed, in turn, by hundreds of their supporters.

The whole thing was a lot warmer and calmer than anyone had expected. The only real disturbance was off to the side, where an INS van, a paddywagon with steel grilles over all the windows, had begun rockingfrom side to side. The driver jumped out, leaving the van empty, and a broad open s.p.a.ce suddenly appeared in the crowd. Then a dozen men, their arms and backs burly from stooping in Arkansas Valley truck farms, rolled it all the way over on to its roof and left it there like a turtle upended on a highway.

31.

ELEANOR WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF CLEANING OUT HER OFFICE. THIS wasn't much of a job since she had barely moved into it and the empty boxes were still stacked conveniently in the corner. Bent over with both hands in a file drawer, she didn't notice Caleb Roosevelt Marshall coming into her office until he got her attention by tossing a keychain on to her vacant desktop.

"I'm taking you on a ride, lady," he said.

She straightened up, startled to see him standing right in front of her, dressed in a blue work s.h.i.+rt and chinos, leaning on a cane. "I have my best conversations when I'm driving flat out into the mountains," he said, nodding at the keychain. Eleanor picked it up; it was a set of keys to a rented Cadillac. "But now I'm getting too old to drive. Can't even see the G.o.dd.a.m.n hood ornament."

"Allow me, then," Eleanor said.

It was a nice Cadillac, a convertible, parked in the Senator's private s.p.a.ce in back of the Alamo. The Senator had apparently dismissed his security detail, so Eleanor offered her arm and helped him out of the building and into the pa.s.senger seat. Then she got in and cranked it up. The car had a nice sound system with a tape player, and although the Senator complained that he wanted to get going, Eleanor decided to rummage around in the hollow center armrest for one of his tapes.

"What are you going to play? Rap music?" he said as she popped a tape out of its case and shoved it into the dashboard.

"Resurrection Symphony," Eleanor said, as the opening bars came from speakers hidden all over the car.

"Good," Marshall said. "I been listening to it a lot. Figure I'd better become expert in the subject. Now let's get going, d.a.m.n it."

The Senator had a particular, highly detailed route he wanted to follow through Denver and up into the mountains. He eschewed the newfangled foolishness of freeways in favor of a devious route that took them down alleys, through parks, along curvy residential streets. For a while, as she followed his barked and seemingly improvised instructions, she was afraid that he had gone completely off his rocker and was getting them hopelessly lost. But they never got stuck at a slow stoplight, never had to make an impossible left turn, and in time the city began to spread out and undulate as the landscape awoke from the thousand-mile slumber of the prairie.

"Thanks for saving my a.s.s," Senator Marshall said, when he wasn't giving directions.

She smiled. "I was wondering whether you'd see it that way."

"Course I do. I'm not senile," he said. "Sooner or later a senator has to rely on someone like you."

"How do you figure?"

"A senator has a big staff. He has to, in order to carry out the basic functions of his office, and to get reelected. Normal people don't take those kinds of jobs. If I could take people off the street, I would. That's how I got you. But normally I gotta hire the kinds of people who angle and maneuver for such work, which means weasels like Shad Harper. And almost the moment they get into the job, they start spinning their own G.o.dd.a.m.n agenda. Some of them know what they're doing and some are just complete a.s.sholes. And when the a.s.sholes get themselves into trouble, like Shad did, then a senator has to have some way to get rid of themwithout bringing down his whole career. And you served that purpose admirably in the affair of Shad Harper."

"Did you get my letter?"

"What letter? The resignation?"

"Yes."