They headed back toward the RAND Corporation headquarters. When Jerry started to peel off to go to his car, Steve set a hand on his arm. “Remember the honest politician,” the older man said earnestly. “I mean it. You have no idea how much out of your weight you’d be fighting. Don’t do anything silly. You won’t regret it later—you won’t have a later.”

“Believe me, man, I get it,” Jerry said. Stephen Dole didn’t know he’d lifted those two photos. But his having them didn’t make Steve wrong. If the CIA could rub him out before he got to use them, or could make sure everybody thought they were hoaxes, the Agency still won and he still lost.

With a sigh and a shrug, Steve went off to the entrance. Jerry walked to the Rambler. There was only one of him, and a hell of a lot of CIA. If he ever did decide not to stay bought, he couldn’t afford any mistakes. Assuming, of course, that deciding not to stay bought wasn’t the first, inevitably fatal, mistake.

On Saturday night, he and Anna saw Blazing Saddles for a second time at the Crenshaw, a movie house that specialized in showing yesterday’s hits tomorrow. He had no idea how the place stayed in business, but it had sat at the corner of Crenshaw and Compton Boulevard for as long as he could remember, and no doubt longer than that.

He still didn’t say anything to her about the two years’ bonus. For one thing, he had yet to come up with a way to make it sound plausible. For another, he didn’t want to touch the money unless he absolutely had to. Having it felt wrong, as if by taking it he remained complicit in whatever the CIA wound up doing. And the less Anna knew about all that stuff, the better—for her.

Then, on Sunday, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Jerry watched and listened with his mouth hanging open while the new president let the old president off the hook. If any flies had been buzzing around inside his apartment, they could have flown right on in. He didn’t believe what he was hearing. No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t want to believe what he was hearing.

After Ford vanished from his small black-and-white screen, commentators came on to explain what the pardon meant. Jerry turned off the TV. He knew too well what the pardon meant. “Fuck a duck!” he said. “The fix is in! Is it ever!”

Not two minutes later, the phone rang. It was his father. “Hell of a country we’ve got here, isn’t it?” Hyman Stieglitz sounded as disgusted as Jerry felt.