“Don’t you see?” Goldberg said. “Baird is a man of science. He knows goddamn well that the woman is brain-dead. Keeping her hooked up to a feeding tube is just prolonging the inevitable.”

“How does that help us?” Arch asked.

“We just need to force Baird to take a position,” Goldberg said. “He’s screwed either way. The doctors aren’t on the fence. Any rational person can see that the law favors the husband. If he goes with the right-to-life crowd, he gets called out as a liar and a phony. The rubes might love it, but the press will murder him. If he says what he really thinks, he’ll lose the evangelicals. And Baird’s Catholic. He’d be contradicting the motherfucking pope. Every mackerel snapper in the country will call him a traitor.”

Bart Walsh reddened. “I’m Catholic, you foul-mouthed son of a bitch,” he said.

“Sorry, Bart,” Goldberg said. “But I’m right, yes?”

Walsh loosened his tie. “Yes,” he muttered. “But it could backfire. Whatever Baird says, he’ll most likely spin it as dirty politics. A desperation tactic. A distraction. You have a reputation for that, you know.”

“He’ll never know it came from us,” Goldberg said.

“How are you going to pull that off?” Walsh asked.

“What you don’t know, you don’t have to deny, Bart,” Goldberg said. “Leave it to me. Besides, at this point, we’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Don’t make me look like an asshole, Andy,” Arch said.

“That’s what you pay me for,” Goldberg said. “And I’m worth every penny.”

Arch clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Well done, young man,” he said.

Marcus nodded and slipped back out the door with his magazine.

“What do you think, Charlie?” Arch asked.

I thought the whole story was cheap and manipulative—pure exploitation by the cable news piranhas, shallow on the part of the politicians, tawdry and embarrassing for the families. But something had turned in me.

The shine had long since come off Arch. The facade of noble compromise—the notion that you had to do a few nasty things to be in a position to do good things—had given way to naked ambition. I no longer believed that Arch wanted to serve the greater good; he just wanted to win. Still, I couldn’t stand Dan Baird.

Why did I loathe him so? He was what Arch was supposed to be. He loved his wife and appeared to be faithful to her. He had principles. He’d devoted his life to serving others when he could have simply enjoyed his wealth and watched it multiply. He went to church and never once looked like he was doing it to appear holier than the rest of us. He never said a cross word about anyone.