“I bet the senator would love to go with you and leave his worries behind. Re-election campaign starts next year. He can’t be happy with this flak.”

“Forget next year. The machine is already grinding.”

“What’s the early forecast?”

“The polls are shaky as a dry drunk.”

“Hard to be a conservative in New York.”

“Walking a knife edge.”

“You’d think a man in his position would be kissing more ass,” I said. “Yours, particularly. Despite you being ‘stand-up’ and whatnot.”

“Redlick doesn’t operate the way regular people do,” he said.

“That’s evident. Dear senator kicked you to the curb after he took the other guy’s concession call. Loyalty is a one-way street with him.”

“The man had his reasons.”

“Such as?”

“His handlers determined that I wouldn’t mix well with the high-toned set.”

“Your record of brutality doesn’t play so well outside of the brotherhood, in other words.”

“In exactly those other words.”

“Half a decade later, Redlick doesn’t call, he doesn’t write. You and the rest of the erstwhile band of merry men may take the rap for his misdeeds. Instead of sticking the knife into his kidney for revenge, which is completely your brand, you play the faithful servant to the end. Strange.”

“There’s one item on my ledger I’d be happy to clear, in case the curtain is really falling.” Adeyemi uncapped the bottle. “Happy to pawn it off on you, to put it bluntly.”

I covered my glass.

“My sister’s kid lived in western New York, in Horseheads.” He poured my share on top of his own dose. “Emphasis on the past tense. Sean Pruitt. He worked on the Jeffers Large Particle Collider Project. Heard of it?”

The Jeffers Project received significant news coverage in its heyday. A complicated undertaking from financial and political perspectives. I recalled controversy swirling around cost overruns, corruption, and safety protocols. My expertise on the subject could fit in a thimble. In broad strokes: supercolliders, colloquially known as atom smashers, are devices that generate electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles at high velocity along underground circuits. Some are pint-size and housed in basement facilities; others, like the Hadron, require miles of specially prepared tunnels to achieve the most dramatic effects. The Jeffers Project had occupied the latter end of the scale. The ultimate goals of such a sprawling and costly undertaking? To create a powerful tool for the furtherance of research of particle physics that would, in turn, spur similar advances in the fields of industrial and biomedical technologies.

“The U.S. version of the Hadron Collider,” I said.

“Brainchild of several East Coast billionaires. Gerry spearheaded the initiative and brought a partnership proposal to the government. He was tight with what seemed like half of Congress before he dove into politics. He and the president went way back too. The Feds funneled in a sizable chunk of dough with a minimum of oversight. Everybody on the ground floor was guaranteed a seat at the table when it came time to divvy resources for scientific and commercial research projects. It didn’t get that far.”