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impressive victory considering the caliber of the opposition, but heady nonetheless. In college, at the University of Wisconsin, he majored in political science and became active in a small but growing student Young Republicans’ Club, practicing the art of shaping the message and getting it out, proselytizing the party line, and basking in the satisfaction the wielding of power inevitably delivers. He returned home to Orange County, California, where he’d been born and raised, and worked on the campaigns of a variety of county and statewide Republican candidates, learning as he went and establishing a name for himself as a tireless, committed campaign worker with bedrock Republican beliefs. There was a time early in his life when he aspired to elected office for himself. Pragmatically, however, he soon realized that his political future lay not with running for office, but with pulling the strings behind those better suited to the more public act of asking for votes—and for money. Surprisingly—and it surprised even him—he developed a scorn for politicians and their need to straddle fences, abandon core values in order to win, and promise but only sometimes deliver on those promises. Public service? Self-service was more like it. But such occasional contradictory thoughts never dampened his fervor for the political process. It was all about power, and power was Geoff Lowe’s aphrodisiac. Ask his former wife, whom he married a few days after graduating college. That marriage lasted four months; her parents managed to have it annulled.

His first job in Washington was as an aide to a right-wing California congressman. When that pol lost his reelection bid, Lowe accepted an invitation to join the staff of Alaska Senator Karl Widmer. Lowe’s seeming tirelessness and commitment to the senator’s agenda impressed the aging Widmer, and promotions came quickly. Lately, he wondered whether Widmer was becoming senile, so intent was he on his crusade to deny Parmele a second term to the exclusion of myriad other legislative concerns. That was all that seemed to matter these days to the silver-haired Alaskan—destroying Adam Parmele, which was okay as far as Lowe was concerned. He didn’t carry a brief one way or the other about the president. What was important was that if Widmer, and by extension Geoff Lowe, succeeded in the effort, he, Lowe, would see his stock rise within Republican circles, leading to bigger things.

If there was one political operative Lowe admired, it was Parmele’s political guru, Chet Fletcher, and he enjoyed projecting himself into Fletcher’s role with a Republican president, the power behind the throne, the consummate insider, the one the president of the United States turned to in his darkest hours.

That was power!

He heard the shower go on and pictured a naked Ellen Kelly soaping herself. No doubt about it, she was a great-looking fox. But she was wearing thin, like Widmer and his tantrums. It would be time for a new job and a new fox, somebody with more sophistication. He smacked a fist into the palm of his other hand, stood, and nodded in self-affirmation.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Winard Jackson lived in a basement apartment on upper 16th Street, on the edge of Washington’s so-called black Gold Coast, home to many of the city’s successful African-American men and women. He’d found the apartment shortly after moving to D.C. from Boston with a degree in jazz performance from the Berklee College of Music. While most of his fellow students at the prestigious jazz school had headed upon graduation for jazz hot spots like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, Jackson had opted for D.C. because it was home to legendary tenor saxophonist Buck Hill.

Hill had visited Berklee as a guest lecturer and was impressed with the young Jackson’s improvisational talents. He invited him to look him up after graduation and agreed to accept him as a private student. Jackson didn’t hesitate to accept the offer, and Hill not only became his musical mentor but helped the young black man acclimate to the city, introduced him to a