Hopefully, sometime in the future, when the reason for the president's episodes had been diagnosed and properly treated and any of the countless potential disasters had simply failed to materialize, he and Drew and Carol would look back and laugh at the role the tranquilizer Xanax had played in saving the country.

The ringing persisted.

At some point during the hours since he had returned to the room, he had managed to pull the room-darkening drapes. A scant amount of sunlight from between them made it possible to find the bedside lamp, which he turned on, and a half-empty glass of water, which he finished before picking up the receiver.

"H'lo?"

"Dr. Singleton?" a woman's voice asked.

"Yes. Who's calling?"

"Doctor, please hold for Mr. LeMar Stoddard."

Gabe reflected that if he were worth 10 billion or more, he probably wouldn't be making his own calls, either. Hopefully the First Father wasn't calling to take his Buick back.

"Gabe? LeMar Stoddard here."

Gabe pictured the surpassingly handsome man in a penthouse office somewhere, seated at a desk the size of his bed, gazing out across the city.

"It's me, sir."

"Drop the 'sir' stuff, cowboy. We've all grown up now. It's LeMar."

"I'll try."

"Everything okay? The place? The car?"

"Everything's fine. I'm very grateful to you for all this."

"Good. I like having people feel grateful to me. It'll go that much better for me when my damn high blood pressure or bad cholesterol or whatever catches up with me and I have to check into the great office building in the sky."

His laugh was hearty and self-deprecating, but Gabe had little doubt that the remark about having people beholding to him was serious. For a multibillionaire, LeMar had always seemed to Gabe to be reasonably right sized, although Drew, of course, had other thoughts about that. Whatever negotiations had landed Gabe the Watergate suite and the Riviera had been between the First Father and his son. The last time Gabe had met the man face-to-face had been early in the campaign when the Stoddards flew into Salt Lake City on LeMar's jet and Gabe drove down from Tyler. LeMar, a year or two short of seventy then, with dark hair graying at the temples and electric gray-blue eyes, was as fit and dashing as any Hollywood swashbuckler.

"Well," Gabe said, "all that this incredible place and the car have done is dig me deeper and deeper in the gratitude hole."

"Nonsense. You're a good guy, Gabe—a good guy who had a lousy break and has had the character to overcome it. Having you up here taking care of Drew makes us more than even. In fact, not to toot my own horn, but it was me who originally put the bee in his bonnet about bringing you on board."

"Well, thank you for that. I'll be here as long as he needs me."

Gabe stopped himself at the last instant from adding sir.