One of Jim Brennan’s girlfriends. By the time Devlin heard the story, he knew that what Maryellen had told him about her father seducing and raping her girlfriends had been a bit more than attention-getting or neurosis. The model had met him at a cocktail party, and that night, at her apartment, he made it clear that it would be easier for her to yield to him than struggle. Whatever the truth, she was left ready for more, and when he called again, repeatedly, at all hours, she acquiesced, drawn in as much by her curiosity about him as her appetite for the excitement of having sex in the front seat of a car or the backseat of a taxi, against a wall or out on the terrace of a penthouse. He wasn’t generous or even especially kind, but she was young and a certain amount of roughhouse spiced the experience. But she was a model; dark circles, the unfashionable kind, began to appear under her eyes, and she broke it off.…

Until two years later, the height of the war. By then she belonged to a senator, and when she saw Brennan in a crowded, noisy Washington restaurant, she tried to avoid him. A few minutes later she looked up to see him standing in front of her. He said hello to her senator, calling him by his first name, and then said hello to her. The senator lapsed into silence, and the model had no trouble at all identifying who was the more important of the two men. A busboy told the senator that he had a telephone call, and the senator quickly excused himself. Brennan sat down beside her and, according to the story, immediately put his hand up her skirt. No panty hose in those days, and as a model she was too slim for a girdle. His fingers worked inside her.

“You’re spending the night with me,” he was supposed to have said.

All she could do was stare at him. Two tables away sat a Supreme Court justice and a member of Roosevelt’s cabinet, who smiled and waved when he saw Brennan, who smiled, but did not wave back. In another few minutes the busboy returned with a note for her that expressed the senator’s regrets; he had been called to an emergency subcommittee meeting.