The light in the front hallway was dim. The bulb shined through a discolored glass covering. The paint on the walls was peeling off in sheets. They took the stairs to the fourth floor. Lopez stopped before a door that had a three-foot-high paper cross taped to it.

“His idea,” Lopez said.

He knocked on the door. There was no answer. They could hear the sound of talking coming from within the apartment. He knocked again.

“It’s me,” Lopez said.

No one responded. Lopez unlocked the door and opened it slowly. He placed a hand on Dunne’s shoulder, indicating he wanted him to stay in the hallway. He then stepped into the apartment.

“So you’re saying that if we reinstituted school prayer, teenage pregnancy rates would drop—”

Sounds like a radio, Dunne thought.

A piece of the wooden doorjamb exploded; Dunne ducked.

“You little fuck!” he heard Lopez yell.

Dunne peered into the room. Lopez was striding toward a man sitting in an easy chair facing the door. Lopez raised his right arm and grabbed a pistol from the man in the chair. There was a silencer on the gun.

“You dumb bastard!” Lopez screamed at him. “You fucking dumb bastard!”

Dunne walked into the studio apartment. It smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. The bed was unmade. Empty bottles were scattered. A loud-playing radio was on the floor next to the bed and tuned to a talk show. Lopez clicked it off.

Dunne took an inventory of the man in the chair. Pushing forty. Receding hair. Scar on the right ear. The left eye was the odd one. A pug nose. His mouth tilted to the left. Patchy stubble covered his face. Stocky. He wore military-style boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt with the name of what Dunne assumed was a heavy metal band.

“Man, what’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry, Big. Thought you were somebody else.” He spoke in a slow drawl.

“It’s fucking hard to mistake me for anyone else, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

The man’s arms hung limply over the sides. Boozed up, Dunne thought. Lopez sat on the bed. He signaled for Dunne to pull over a wooden chair.

“This man here wants to talk to you,” Lopez said. “He used to be at the White House. You don’t have to tell him anything you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Sure,” the man mumbled.

Dunne noticed that Lopez had not used the man’s name.

“My name is Clarence Dunne,” he said.

“I seen you on the television,” the man said.

“Could well be.”

“They said you fucked up or something.”

“Yeah.”

“I fucked up, too.”

“How’s that?” Dunne asked.

The man picked up a bottle of rum lying on the floor. He held the bottle in front of his face. There was a puddle at the bottom. He put the bottle to his lips and sucked out the contents.

“I was born,” he said.