So Hook sat back and drank, and let himself look troubled and full of doubt, and even admitted that he might have let himself get carried away by his grief. All he had wanted, he said, was to find out the truth. It certainly had not been his intention to destroy anybody’s political career, especially that of a liberal, because he himself had always been a liberal and believed that the more of them there were in Congress, the better. And he said that he had to admit Douglas did not seem like the kind of man who would harm anybody, that when Hook had met him out at the beach house yesterday the man had been straightforward and open with him, had not acted like a man with anything to hide.

“Of course not!” Parnelli boomed, happy now, smiling. “Because he didn’t have anything to hide.”

“I guess I must have figured I owed it to my son,” Hook said. “I had to look at every angle.” The past tense was not unintentional, and Parnelli went after it like a week-old calf for mother’s milk.

“Christ, nobody blames you, Mr. Hook—and hey, what is your first name anyway? I can’t keep calling you mister.”

“Dave.”

“Dave! Good name. Well listen, nobody blames you, Dave. We’d probably done the same goddamn thing in your shoes, right, Richie?”

Ferguson nodded, but Hook could see that the young man was not a believer yet by any means, that he was coolly studying Hook’s every glance and word and inflection for the slightest note of falsity. And Hook did not underestimate him. The dying Oliver had said that Ferguson did indeed have a master’s degree in political science from Stanford. He was about thirty, the reporter estimated, a bachelor for whom politics was sex and religion and art all rolled into one. After college he had worked for HEW in Washington, D.C., then in Sacramento, where he had met Douglas, had recognized him as a possible comer, and promptly signed on board. And he would just as promptly jump ship, Oliver figured, once he was convinced Douglas was not going anywhere. He would move on to another candidate and work just as diligently for him, for his real career was himself, his future as a power behind the scenes, and the bigger the scene and the greater the power the better he would like it. He was shrewd, tireless, well-informed, and supplied Douglas not only with words and political expertise but with substance as well, that amazingly flexible socioeconomic political philosophy the new young politicians all favored, because their campaigns and positions and votes had to be able to respond efficiently to the changing sands of sophisticated computerized voter profiles, and thus could not be based on anything so unwieldy as a belief or conviction. Ferguson was, Oliver said, a tiny political Edgar Bergen with a large Charlie McCarthy sitting on his lap. So Hook knew that he had to play to him as much as to Parnelli now. What the big man would swallow whole, the little one might reject altogether.