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It would have been better - a lot better - if they could have
trotted out a dozen or so Mohinder Singhs, at various stages of
recovery. Because this one Punjabi truck driver did not make for a
track record. He was not a trend. He might just be a fluke.

But William A. Cozzano had taught his daughter to be
scrupulously egalitarian, and so at this point in the argument she
always caught herself short. Because it wasn't fair to adopt that
attitude. The only way to test this thing was by doing it on humans.
Sure it would be nice to see a dozen Mohinder Singhs. It'd be nice for the Cozzanos. But what about the second Singh, and the third?
They'd be taking a big chance with not much to go on. And their
lives were worth just as much as William Cozzano's.

It wasn't fair.
That's what Dad would say. It wasn't fair to have
other people take all the risk, then reap the benefits after it had become a sure thing.

Besides, this way it was more of an adventure. And she just knew
that he'd be thrilled by that idea. Dad was a wild man at heart; he'd
always wanted to go out and do crazy things. But his position as the
head of the Cozzano clan had forced him to behave conservatively
all his life. The stroke had freed him of that oppressive respon
sibility. He had nothing to lose now.

So she signed the papers. Since the stroke, Mary Catherine had
been in charge of her father's body. She sent him into that
operating room with many doubts about the operation - but in the
full confidence that it was what he wanted.

They shaved his head and rolled him into the operating theater at 7:45
a.m.
on the morning of March 25, a little more than two
months after his initial stroke. Mary Catherine gave him a last kiss on his burnished scalp before they scrubbed him for surgery. Then
she pulled on a jacket and went for a long walk along the edge of
the bluff, letting the pure Pacific wind blow through her hair. They
had said that she could watch the operation if she wanted, but if it
turned out to be fatal, she didn't want that to be the last memory
of her father.

She found a high rocky outcropping, climbed to the top, and sat
down. Below her, half a mile out to sea, a huge, beautiful ketch was
tacking upwind. Farther out, she could barely make out the
silhouettes of big freighters cruising up and down the California
coast.

God, I need a vacation, she thought. Then she thought: this is it.
This is my vacation. So she enjoyed her vacation for a few minutes.

Then, hearing a noise behind her, she looked over to see James
approaching, fresh from the airport, a big grin on his face.

So much for the vacation. Dealing with James had developed
into business.

"You're right," Cy Ogle had said to her on the telephone the day
of the Illinois primary. "Your brother's a terrible surfer."

"How'd you find that out?"

"Remember that lunch you and I had?"

"Sure."

"I did the same thing with your brother. Brought him in from

South Bend on a chopper. Bought him lunch at the same place."

"And?"

"The way he handled it was totally different."

"Different how?"

Ogle had chuckled. "You weren't impressed. You weren't
impressed by any old limousine. You weren't impressed by a fancy
lunch or by my reputation, or by people cheering at you because your last name's Cozzano."

"And he was impressed?"

"Oh, yes. Profoundly impressed. You could see it in his face."

"Stop," she had said. "Don't even describe it to me. I know
exactly how he must have looked."

"Well, we had a nice little chat, anyway."

"What did you talk about?"

Ogle had laughed. "Not anything even remotely similar to what
you and I talked about. See, you are interested in relationships.
James is interested in power. So we talked about power for a
while."

This had left Mary Catherine feeling slightly queasy, because she
knew that Ogle was exactly right.

It was a testosterone thing. She knew it was. James had been
suppressed by Dad. James was small, weak, had a low pain thres
hold, couldn't throw or catch a football, didn't like getting dirty.
Dad had been enough of a good father to swallow his dis
appointment. But everyone knew it was present, just under the
surface. James just hadn't developed. And as soon as Dad had been
removed from the picture, all those pent-up hormones had come
flooding out and he had started developing too fast. Developing in
the wrong direction, without any guidance from Dad.

He needed a trellis to grow on. He needed it now, before he
started any more trouble for the family. But Mary Catherine knew there wasn't a damn thing she could do; in James's current state of testerone overdrive, he was incapable of taking direction, or even
advice, from a big sister.

Mel couldn't do it either. Mel and James had never had much to
say to each other, they had never had the simpatico that Mel and
Mary Catherine did. Mel was a street fighter and James was coddled
and naive, despite all of Dad's efforts to toughen him up. The two
of them just didn't connect on any level.

This was a case in point. Dad had gone under the knife an hour
and a half ago. James should have been there to kiss him good-bye.
Mary Catherine knew damn well that people died in surgery and
that you had to be there when they went under, because they might
never open their eyes again. And she had explained all of this to
James. Stated, over and over again, the importance of his being
there before the surgery. And he had missed the boat.

"Hey, sis. How you doing?"

He didn't even realize that he had screwed up. That was the
frightening part. No self-awareness.

"You're late," she said.

He was shocked, shocked to find that she was mad at him. He
shrugged and held his palms up. "My flight was delayed. You know
how O'Hare is."

"So do you," Mary Catherine said, "and a Ph.D. candidate at
Notre Dame should have the brains to allow for it."

"Jesus," he said, now sounding wounded, "this whole thing has
turned you into quite the dragon lady."

"You can say 'bitch' if you want."

"Suit yourself."

She turned away from him and looked out over the ocean again,
watching the big ketch come about. Its booms swung across the
deck, its jibs went limp and fluttered for a moment, then reinflated
and snapped tight again as the boat settled into a new course.

It didn't bother her at all. They were dealing with some heavy-duty shit here. And now, all of a sudden, she understood a lot of things about Dad that she hadn't understood before. Why he was such a tough guy. Why he could be so calculating.

"There's plenty of flights. I thought maybe you would come out
last night," Mary Catherine said, trying not to sound quite so harsh.

"I was busy. I had business to take care of."

These words terrified her. She looked into his face. "What kind
of business?"

"Take it easy," he said reassuringly. "I'm not running around doing stuff behind your back."

"I've never accused you of doing so," she said. "This is the first
time that notion's come up."

He blushed, looked away, got real clumsy for a few seconds. "Well, this thing is my own gig," he said. "Nothing to do with you or the family."

"What thing?"

"I got a job," he said, beaming with pride.

"Well, that's great," she said, "but isn't that going to interfere
with your Ph.D. work?"

"No, that's just the thing," he said. "It's part of my Ph.D. work.
I'm double clipping. I get paid to do this job, and I get my regular
stipend as a grad student, and I'll probably get a book contract out
of it too." James had a devilish look on his face, as if he had just
outmaneuvered Satan himself.

"Well, James, that's wonderful!" she said. "What kind of job is
this?"

"I'm doing a study of the presidential campaign. All of the politicking that's been going on during the primary season. With
emphasis on media strategy. And if I play my cards right, I'm pretty
sure this could turn into a book eventually."

"That's great. How'd you get on to this idea?"

"It just hit me the other day. I was talking to this guy. He's a big-
time campaign media consultant. You might not have heard of him."

"What's his name?"

"Cy. Cyrus Rutherford Ogle."

"Oh. How'd you get hooked up with him?"

"He just invited me out to lunch," James said nonchalantly. "I'm not sure exactly why. But I think that, obviously, because of my
family connections, combined with my poli sci expertise, he thought maybe I'd be a good person to know."

"Yes, I should think so," Mary Catherine said, sounding terribly
impressed.

"We engaged in small talk for a while, nothing specific. Then he
started asking me a lot of questions about my dissertation. He
seemed to be fascinated with the topic."

"I'll bet he was."

"I was asking him about some of the work he does and it
occurred to me that, since he seemed to be so interested in my
work, a mutual back-scratching arrangement might be possible so
we hammered this whole thing out, right there at the lunch table.
He's giving me access to a number of campaigns - he has friends
and proteges working in virtually every important campaign right
now. So I get lots of material I wouldn't otherwise have access to."

"Well," Mary Catherine said, "it sounds like you just made a brilliant career move." It was taking a lot of effort to keep from
smiling at her brother. He had the same proud, beaming look on
his face that he'd had at the age of six, when he caught a big toad in the backyard.

James shrugged. "Yeah. But Jesus, it's a lot of work."

"It is?"

"Oh, yeah. Suddenly I've got all these contacts. Dozens of major
sources. All these people to keep track of. I've spent the last few
days just talking to people on the phone, setting up a database to
keep track of all the information I'll be taking in. I'm going to be
running flat-out until Election Day."

"Uh-huh."

"But if there's one thing that I learned from Dad, it's that when
you see an opportunity you have to go for it in a big way."

"Well," Mary Catherine said, "I hope you're not biting off too
much."

This was manipulation in its purest form. He would have found it patronizing to be congratulated. Better to fret and worry about
what a big, manly job James was undertaking.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he said. He was irked, and
rapidly getting more so, building up a nice crescendo of self-
important rage. "You think I can't handle a big job?"

Mary Catherine shrugged. "I have a lot of respect for you,
James," she said noncommitally.

"No, you don't. You still think I'm a little kid. But I'm not. I'm

an adult. And maybe you don't want to admit that fact, now that
you've become the self-appointed capo of this family and you think
you know what's best for everyone."

"Fine. It's your choice," she said.

"I've done big jobs before. And I'm going to do this one. I'm
going to succeed."

"Good. I wish you the best of luck."

James shut up for a moment, calming himself down. "It's been hard, being the son of the Great Man."

"I know it has been," she said. "I know it's been really rough."

"There've been a lot of times when I felt like the idiot son, you
know. A lot of Dad's old cronies treat me like a little kid."

By this, Mary Catherine knew that he was referring to Mel.

"But Cy is totally different," he continued. "He treated me with
respect. As an equal. He had no doubts whatsoever that I could
handle this job. And I'm grateful to him for that."