Birnbaum made a note to remember it but forgot because he was busy with his show, the Rally and everything that would follow after it. It came back to him briefly on the day of the Rally, when, after stirring fifteen-minute speeches from the House minority leader and the Senate majority leader, Birnbaum ascended the podium and stood at the lectern on the stage of the Rally, looking out at a sea of seventy thousand faces (fewer than the one hundred thousand faces they had been hoping for, but more than enough, and anyway they’d round up because it was all estimates in any event). The faces, mostly male, mostly middle-aged, looked up at him with admiration and fervor and the knowledge that they were part of something bigger, something that he, Albert Birnbaum, had started.

Remember thou art mortal, Birnbaum heard Louisa Smart say in his head. He smiled at it; Louisa wasn’t at the Rally because of a wedding. He’d rib her about it later. Birnbaum brought up his notes on the lectern monitor and opened his mouth to speak and then was deeply confused when he was facedown on the podium, gasping like a fish and feeling sticky from the blood spurting out of what remained of his shoulder. His ears registered a crack, as if distant thunder were finally catching up with lightning, then he heard screams and the sound of seventy thousand panicked people trying to run, and then blacked out.

*   *   *

Birnbaum looked up and saw Michael Washington looking down at him.

“How did you get in here?” Birnbaum asked, after he had taken a couple of minutes to remember who he was (Albert Birnbaum), where he was (Washington Sacred Heart Catholic Hospital), what time it was (2:47 a.m.) and why he was there (he’d been shot).

Washington pointed with a gloved hand to the badge on his chest, and Birnbaum realized Washington was in a police uniform. “That’s not real,” Birnbaum protested.

“Actually it is,” Washington said. “I usually work plain clothes, but this was useful for the moment.”

“I thought you were some sort of facilitator,” Birnbaum said. “You have clients.”

“I am and I do,” Washington said. “Some cops tend bar on the side. This is what I do.”

“You’re joking,” Birnbaum said.

“That’s entirely possible,” Washington said.

“Why are you here now?” Birnbaum asked.

“Because we have unfinished business,” Washington said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Birnbaum said. “You asked me to pimp a pro–Colonial Union story. I did that.”

“And you did a fine job with it,” Washington said. “Although at the end things were beginning to flag. You had fewer people at your rally than you had anticipated.”

“We had a hundred thousand,” Birnbaum said, weakly.

“No,” Washington said. “But I appreciate you making the effort there.”