Walter shook his head. If he’d learned one thing in fifty years, it was that each new generation had to learn the old mistakes all over again. Give a kid a master’s degree in public policy from FSU, and he was still a moron. Walter, who was six inches shorter than Brent Reed and a hundred pounds heavier, exhaled a cigar-tinged breath. ‘We’ll talk about this in my room. Not here.’

‘Whatever.’

The elevator doors finally opened. A handful of hotel guests exited into the lobby. Most were delegates from the convention who greeted Walter like a celebrity. He pumped their arms and chatted them up, paying no attention to the impatient political aide with him. Brent held the doors open until the elevator’s alarm buzzed, and then Walter shouldered inside and hit the button for the Hyatt’s sixth floor with his fat thumb.

Just as the doors began to close, a bare arm slid between the narrowing gap, as if waving a magic wand. The doors reversed course, and a girl joined the two of them in the elevator compartment. Walter stuck out a sleeve of his tweed sport coat to keep the doors open until she was safely inside. She was young. Everybody looked young to Walter, but he figured she couldn’t be more than twenty years old. She wasn’t short, but she was anorexic-skinny: all bones, no curves, flat breasts. Her jaw worked; she was chewing gum. The girl wore a pink tank top that didn’t even reach to her belly button, and her cut-off corduroy shorts were cut off so high that Walter could see the slope of both butt cheeks when she turned and faced the door. She pushed the button for the tenth floor.

‘Wow,’ Brent said.

Walter’s idea of ‘wow’ was Kim Novak, but the girl in the elevator was cute, the way his youngest daughter was cute. She had pink-painted toenails poking out of flip-flops. Her hair was long, lush, and black; her face was pale and freckled, with a tiny oval mouth. A silver cross dangled from her right earlobe. He couldn’t see her eyes, which were hidden behind sunglasses with leopard frames. She tugged on the strap of an oversized satchel purse, which was slung over one arm. She wore earbuds, and the music from the iPod squeezed into her skin-tight back pocket thumped so loudly that Walter could hear the screaming lyrics of the song. The girl hummed, and her hips swung rhythmically, and her head bobbed.

‘What the hell is that noise?’ Walter asked Brent. ‘Is that supposed to be music?’

‘Sounds like Rihanna. “Roc Me Out.” Rihanna, that’s a good name for a storm.’

‘This girl is going to be deaf by the time she’s thirty,’ Walter said.

Brent’s eyes were locked on the sway of the girl’s shapely backside. ‘What?’

‘Forget it.’