“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“I’ll bring a bottle of vodka.” He had learned that vodka was her favorite booze.

“I share the place with another girl.”

“Shall I bring two bottles?”

She laughed. “Easy, tiger. Laura will be happy to go out for the evening. I’ve done it often enough for her.”

“Does that mean you’ll make dinner?”

“I’m not much of a cook.”

“How about if you fry a couple of steaks and I make a salad?”

“You have sophisticated taste.”

“That’s why I like you.”

“Smooth talker.”

He flew there the next day. He was hoping to spend the night with her, but he did not want her to feel taken for granted, so he checked into a hotel, then got a taxi to her place.

He had more than seduction on his mind. Last time he had brought a message from Bobby to King, he had felt ambivalent about it. This time Bobby was right and King was wrong, and George was determined to change King’s mind. So first he would try to change Verena’s.

Atlanta in June was hot, and she greeted him wearing a sleeveless tennis dress that showed her long light-tan arms. Her feet were bare, and that made him wonder whether she had anything on under the dress. She kissed him on the lips, but briefly, so that he was not sure what it meant.

She had a classy modern apartment with contemporary furniture. She could not afford it on the salary Martin Luther King was giving her, George guessed. Percy Marquand’s record royalties must have been paying the rent.

He put the vodka down on the kitchen counter and she handed him a bottle of vermouth and a cocktail shaker. Before making the drinks he said: “I want to be sure you understand something. President Kennedy is in the greatest trouble of his political career. This is much worse than the Bay of Pigs.”

She was shocked, as he had intended. “Tell me why,” she said.

“Because of his civil rights bill. The morning after his television broadcast—the morning after you called to tell me that Medgar had been murdered—the House majority leader telephoned the president. He said it was going to be impossible to pass the farm bill, mass-transit funding, foreign aid, and the space budget. Kennedy’s program of legislation has been completely derailed. Just as we feared, those Southern Democrats are taking their revenge. And the president’s rating in the opinion polls dropped ten points overnight.”

“It’s done him good internationally, though,” she pointed out. “You may just have to tough it out at home.”

“Believe me, we are,” George said. “Lyndon Johnson has come into his own.”

“Johnson? Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not.” George was friendly with one of the vice president’s aides, Skip Dickerson. “Did you know that the city of Houston shut off dockside electricity to protest the navy’s new policy on shore leave integration?”

“Yes, the bastards.”

“Lyndon solved that problem.”

“How?”

“NASA is planning to build a tracking station worth millions of dollars in Houston. Lyndon just threatened to cancel it. The city turned the power back on seconds later. Never underestimate Lyndon Johnson.”