There's a nap for that!

"There's a nap for that!" began Giuliana Sunstream in today's NoMa lifestyle blog entry.  "Not everybody around here can have security-clearance-level Starbucks baristas serving up caffeine jolts 24 hours/day," she wrote, alluding to today's Washington Post article on the CIA Starbucks, "but everybody can learn how to take a power nap!"  She paused to smile at Vegas, her toy Maltese curled up for a nap in his re-purposed cowboy hat (blog entry from November 2013).  "First step:  know when your conscious brain can do no more good and it's time to reach for the unconscious...."


Ann Bishis felt a little silly entering the Rayburn House Office Building in a disguise, but she had finally acceded to her coroner boyfriend's request that they do a thorough examination of Congressional offices for signs of zombie or demonic activity.  She hauled John Constantine through security stuffed into an Ikea shelving box on top of a dolly, and did not cut open the box until they were inside her Chief of Staff office in Congressman Herrmark's suite.  (She hadn't felt this reckless since she was a lesser staff member supplementing her paltry income by letting tourists pay to have sex on his desk.)

"Ugh!" Constantine exclaimed upon his emergence from the box, but his face was flushed with exhilaration.  He cracked his back, shook out his arms, then turned to the task of gathering up their surveillance equipment.

"Are you sure we can pick locks without setting off alarms?" she asked.  (They had chosen this time because of the large number of Congressional employees off on the reelection campaign trail.)

"Of course!" he said.  "I lifted this device from a deceased State Department employee."

"State Department?" asked Bishis.

"He was CIA," answered Constantine.

"I'm still not sure exactly what we're looking for," said Bishis, who had tried hard to repress her past association with a zombie chief of staff--particularly the gruesome decapitation at the end.

"Neither am I, but I'll know it when I see it," said Constantine, a third-generation coroner.  "There are natural ways to die, and unnatural ways to die.  And now we know there are also unnatural ways to live."


"Second step:  find a quiet place...."


Prince and Prowling's managing partner checked the SOTA-BUNK (state-of-the-art review bunker) closed circuit television monitor to make sure the full team was still in place.  He shook his head at the sight of people sleeping at their desks, playing cards, reading books, and watching an old TV/VCR combo in the corner, but this is what the client wanted--to keep paying 50 contract attorneys on stand-by just in case they needed them again shortly.  Must be nice to have that kind of spare cash, thought the managing partner--who could not believe the audacity of those lazy temps to ask for Internet access and use of personal devices during this down time.  He had personally screened every non-electronic form of entertainment allowed into SOTA-BUNK, and had only agreed to the TV and old VCR tapes after three different technology experts had signed off on them.  Must be nice to get a one-week paid vacation! he grunted, as if his own six weeks a year had nothing to do with anything.

Staff attorney Laura Moreno had still not received a paid vacation day yet, so she was also a little resentful to see what was happening--she had never been so lucky in her temp days!  She entered SOTA-BUNK with a Prince and Prowling technician on hand to make software upgrades while the network was down and the computers idle, but they were astonished to find that the contract attorneys were all at their computers working.

"What are you doing?" asked Moreno to the first temp in the first row.

"The new case that Chloe Cleavage briefed us on last Wednesday."

"What case?"  Moreno listened to the details while examining the database the temp was in.

"I don't understand," said the technician.

At that moment, Chloe walked in, and her face went white.  "What are you guys doing here?" she asked.  She reflexively smiled coquettishly at the technician, but he was gay and immune to her implants.

"What are you doing here?" asked Moreno, accusingly.

Chloe Cleavage was, in fact, using the idle temps to do a completely different project for a secret client, and pocketing all the income from it herself.  It was a short project she had thought she could push through without detection, re-running security tapes over and over again though the supposed live feed from SOTA-BUNK.

"What do you mean?" asked Cleavage, disingenuously.  She had enough blackmail on Prince and Prowling partners to have escaped being fired many times before, but she had never pulled a stunt like this before.

"Stop what you're doing," Moreno said loudly, addressing the room, "and turn off your computers."  I've got you now, Chloe!


"Third step:  get comfortable...."


Across the street at the White House, Bridge was exhausted from harvesting the bumper crop growing in the First Lady's garden.  "Another week of damned kale salad every day!" he joked with the kitchen sous-chef upon making the vegetable delivery, then he headed to his tiny groundskeeper office to take a nap before heading back out to water the mums.  He put in his Brahms lullaby CD, put his shoeless feet up on the desk, leaned back in his office chair, loosely folded his hands across his chest, and shut his eyes.  He knew he was getting too old for this job, and had to sleep through every lunch hour to get through the day, but how could he quit?  Who else could deal with all this?  He took a deep breath, drifting off to escape for a little while the murmur of ghosts flitting through the East Wing.


"Fourth step:  go to the quiet place in your mind...."


A few miles to the west, Angela de la Paz was also settling in for a nap of sorts, but her purpose was the opposite:  to learn more about the violent ghosts that resisted her overtures in the conscious world.  She stretched out on the roof of the upper Georgetown row house, and relaxed deeply into the warm sunshine.  Her body became very still, and she departed the world for the Dreamtime.  She found abuela first, as she usually did, then her mother, then Roddy.  She paused for a few moments to cuddle with their son, Lucas, who had not passed over but could live in more than one world (like his mother).  Then she searched for the ghosts of the people who had died in the house now occupied by Golden Fawn's family.  I need to know how it all began, she said simply, but she would find there was no simple answer even to that question--it was like the house had been cursed from the very start.


"Fifth step:  return gently...."


Wince had fallen asleep at his desk, exhausted from preparing Justice Prissy Face for the imminent Supreme Court term.  It had been difficult to keep his engagement to Bridezilla secret, but he feared he would lose his job if his boss found out.  And what was difficult for Wince was excruciatingly hard for Bridezilla--as she constantly reminded him.  She had suggested several new jobs and career paths, but how could he ever do anything exciting as this?  He wrote most of his office's opinions himself!  (Bridezilla liked to call him the Secret Beatle.)  But the strain was getting to him now that the first October oral argument was nigh, and he could not sleep without constant nightmares about Clarence Thomas lecturing him.  The Justice who never spoke publicly had a whole lot to say to Wince in his dreams!  Hey, pretty boy, why you hiding that beautiful bride of yours?  Why don't you be a real man and get a real job?  You'll never be one of us!  The nightmares always ended the same way:  maggots would start crawling out of the Justice's ears, his eyes would turn red, and then zombie Thomas would lunge towards Wince and take a bite out of his arm.

"No!" screamed Wince, jumping up from his chair.  Then he sank back into it.  Anybody in his right mind would give this up to marry Bridezilla, wouldn't they?  But what if I've been chosen to--?  No, that's crazy!  I need to stop obsessing about Clarence Thomas!  There are bigger threats to democracy!

**************************************
COMING UP:  The story of Delia's mother.

Nation to Nation

"What do you think would have happened to the U.K. if Scotland had voted to secede?" asked Camisole Silk, adjusting the sail again on the boat Charles Wu had rented them for this sunset cruise caper.

"Never would have happened!" declared British special agent Nigel "Prickly" Blackthorne, smiling at the Chinese beauty he was fairly certain was a spy (but he didn't mind).

"I don't know!" said Apricot Lily.  "That vote was pretty close!"

"Listen, girls," said British special agent Richard "The Third" Mollington (also on guard, mostly), "even if the vote to secede had gone through, it would have all gotten mucked up later, and they would have changed their minds, right?"

"As soon as their taxes went up when they realized they had to build an entire government bureaucracy, national army, and embassies all over the world," said Prickly.

"Not to mention renegotiate all the damned trade treaties!" said The Third.

"And do you think the Chinese, Brazilians, Mexicans or Saudis even have anybody that can understand that ridiculous Scottish brogue?!  The Scots would have to be dragging around bloody British interpreters with 'em!" laughed Prickly.

"Well, I like Englishmen!" declared Silk.  "Handsomer than Scots!"

"But Prince Harry better find a Scottish princess to marry!" exclaimed Lily.

"Why do girls always think marriage is the solution?" whispered Prickly to The Third.

Meanwhile, Charles Wu was having dinner with "C. Coe Phant" at District of Pi, pumping his State Department mole for more information on Islamic State counter-measures.

"The A.D.A.f.H. is in over his head," said Phant.  (Wu's puzzled expression indicated that he had forgotten the acronym.)  "The Assistant Deputy Administrator for Hope:  it's impossible for him to keep the peace between John Kerry and Chuck Hagel."

"Some people think Hagel wants to drop the neutron bomb on the Levant," said Wu, fiddling with his beer bottle.

"Hilarious!" deadpanned Phant.  "But you should know better than me! You're the one with the Project R.O.D.H.A.M. agents over there."

Wu shook his head.  "Hagel found out about them and ordered them out--said he wasn't gonna take the risk of even one female agent's being decapitated on YouTube."

"How gallant of him," said Phant.  "Take out the most dangerous female soldiers in the world, and leave the unarmed civilian women defenseless."

"What Arab nations are actually going to send in ground troops?" asked Wu.  "What is the coalition?"

Phant shrugged.  "Well, you know the Saudis ain't gonna get their hands dirty--but they'll find some poor yokels to send in.  Probably hire them from Asia, just like everybody else they bring in to do all the dirty jobs they don't wanna do."

"Indonesians?  Afghans?"

"All of the above," said Phant.  "The actual commitments are not really commitments at all, except for some cash--but probably not enough cash to counter what their damned private citizens are sending to ISIS."

Wu smiled in relief at the arrival of the deep-dish pizzas.  He really knows nothing!  I hope Silk and Lily are having a more productive evening.

Over at the National Museum of the American Indian, Golden Fawn was back in her office, tired but happy after the grand opening of their special exhibit, Nation to Nation:  Treaties between the United States and American Indian Nations.  The turnout had been large, the crowds subdued but enthusiastic, and the social media coverage encouraging.  She had lobbied hard for a much harsher exhibit title, but too many others were adamant about not putting "broken treaties" or "broken promises" anywhere in the title exhibit.  She wrote down a few notes to herself about changes she wanted to make in the morning, then headed out to meet Marcos and Joey for the sponsors' dinner they were attending that night.  "Are you going to wear real clothes," Joey had asked her this morning, "or one of those black cocktail dresses like on TV?"  "Real clothes," Marcos had answered for his wife, smiling.  "The same ones she'll be wearing all day."  She stopped in the ladies' room to smooth her braids and adjust her beads, which told complicated stories interwoven from the Cheyenne, Cree, and Delaware ... including the legend of Ardua of the Potomac.  Sometimes she thought about putting those beads out on display to see if anybody would come along, read them, and understand...but she still barely understood it, herself.

A few blocks away, Glenn Michael Beckmann was returning from that very exhibit to blog about what a huge hoax and conspiracy the whole thing was--how there were actually no human beings at Plymouth Rock at all when Christopher Columbus landed there, only Yeti (which, of course, were eventually driven to near extinction, though a few bands are still hiding out in the Rocky Mountains).  All the people pretending to be Indians now are just Jews who don't want to live in Israel!  Except for the Japanese ones pretending to be Indians in Alaska.  He turned the key, entered his Southwest Plaza apartment, and was stunned to find his Russian/Ukrainian mail-order bride cooking soup for him in the kitchen.

"Who are you?" he asked, reaching half-heartedly for the block of butcher knives.

"Ms. Samuelson brought me here just for you!" said the young woman in heavily accented English.

"You sound like some kind of Commie!" exclaimed Beckmann, inching a little closer to the block of butcher knives.

"No, me nice Ukranian girl!  I hate those damned Russians!"

"Oh, great!" said, Beckmann, relaxing.  "That smells really good!"

Back at the Waterfront, the ghost of Condoleezza Rice's recently deceased cat, Pippin, had watched in anger as Camisole Silk distracted Prickly and The Third while Apricot Lily placed a 12th-generation Chinese listening device in the British agents' car.  It looked a lot like the listening device Charles Wu had inserted in Pippin's body years before, and, two hours later, Ghost Pippin was still going ballistic trying to tear the listening device out of the car.

"Come on!  Get out of there!" yelled Sebastian L'Arche at Ghost Pippin, but Ghost Pippin just hissed at him.  L'Arche rarely had trouble communicating with any animals at all, but he wasn't used to ghost pets.

"Here, kitty, kitty!" whispered his partner, Becky Hartley, who could not see Ghost Pippin herself, but knew he must be there if the Dog Whisperer said so.  Ghost Pippin lifted her leg in a ridiculous attempt to urinate on the girl.

"Oh, forget it!" said L'Arche, pulling all his leashes around.  "Cats are stupid!"

"Seb!" exclaimed Hartley.  "If you can't help him, nobody can!"

"Maybe he doesn't need help?  I mean, there gotta be more important things to do than help that bratty shit-for-brains!"

Hartley said nothing, but she didn't like the effect Pippin was having on L'Arche one bit.

Back on the Potomac, Camisole Silk and Apricot Lily tacked the sails to head back to port, their drunken dates' having spilled nothing at all.  Whatever Wu was hoping to find, Prickly and The Third needed to spill later to that listening device.  

Ardua watched as their sailboat receded in the distance, then the demon glided back to the Tidal Basin to haunt the last few couples smooching on the Jefferson Memorial steps.  Late September was a transition time for Ardua--who needed to shift her priorities away from President Obama, the CIA, and tourist season, back to the Supreme Court, Prince and Prowling, the Pentagon, and the State Department.  There was no rest for the wicked, and sometimes she really wished she had a deputy..or even that child Eeteebsse, she had spawned all those years ago.  She sighed, not in a sentimental way, just in the demonic way--which was enough to prompt dozens of infected ducks to take flight out of the Tidal Basin and into the city.

***********************************
COMING UP:   There’s a nap for that!

Clarity

Henrietta "Button" Samuelson was struggling to fit one more client viewing into her schedule, but the Adams Morgan Day festival was not cooperating.  "Come on, come on!" she pleaded to the line of parked cars on the sixth street she turned down.

"Maybe we can come back later this week," said the realtor's client.

"No!" Samuelson exclaimed.  "That house will be sold!"  Mortgage rates were extremely low, and she was frustrated she was not closing more client deals.  "Let me try this street."  The Heurich Society was taking up too much of her time, what with all the backlash after Glenn Michael Beckmann had snuck into their meeting.  She knew most of them wanted her to resign, didn't think she could handle it, and did not respect her.  The more they opposed her, the more she wanted to crush the opposition--the truth was, she was becoming more like her late father every day.

"It's getting late," said her client.  "I'd like to go home now--I have things I need to do."

"More important than buying your dream house at the right time in the market?!" Samuelson practically sneered.  "Fine!"  She clicked the button to unlock the passenger-side door.  "Get out!"

"Excuse me?"

"GET OUT!" exclaimed Samuelson, and her startled client told her to f-off, then got out of the car.

"Wow, that felt good!" said Samuelson out loud, and she started to laugh because a parking spot was now opening up.  "I'm quitting this job!"

Meanwhile, over in Chinatown, Beckmann was investigating Lynnette Wong's herbal shop--partially because he had heard some conspiracy theories about it, but mostly because he was having trouble coping with the pain of recovery after shattering both his knee caps during that time he had snuck into the Heurich Society meeting.  "You do acupuncture?" he asked.

Wong stayed behind the counter, not at all liking the feeling of his chi.  "Sorry, sir--only herbs.  What is bothering you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?!" he asked, momentarily suspicious again.

"Here is a pamphlet about--"

Beckmann snatched it out of her hands to read it.  "Okay," he said after a few moments.  "Why not?  I used to do this stuff in 'Nam anyway."  (Beckmann had never been to Vietnam--was not even old enough to have fought in that war--but he had some false memories about it.)

"Um, okay," Wong said.

"Now it's all about the drones," Beckmann said.  "Whoops!  I wasn't supposed to tell you that!"  He got a strange glint in his eye, then remembered that drones were not a secret--only shooting down Charles Wu's drone.   "What have you got for shattered knee caps?"

Wong leaned over the counter to look at his knees, both enveloped in serious structural hardware.  "I'll give you something to speed up the healing."

"I meant for the pain!" groaned Beckmann.

"Also for the pain," Wong lied.  She turned to start reaching for bottles and jars behind the counter.

"Where you from, anyway?"

"My parents were from Taiwan, but I was born here," said Wong.

"You're lucky," said Beckmann.  "They've even got the damned Islamist terrorists in China now!"

Wong reached for another jar--the herb for mental clarity--though she was fairly certain it was a hopeless case.

Over in Dupont Circle, several Heurich Society members had arrived early at the Brewmaster's Castle to discuss recent disappointments.  Han Li was still polishing the windows in the upper floor meeting room (Condoleezza Rice said a whiff of ammonia in the air was excellent for mental clarity) when they trudged in and asked where the coffee and snacks were.  Han Li abandoned his window in mid-streak, and headed out silently back to the kitchen, leaving them to scowl at the filthy view out onto the street.

"I think it's time to make a motion-of-no-confidence," said the former CIA agent.  "This experiment with girl power is not working."

"She still has all that information on us!" exclaimed the investment banker.

"How can she blackmail us now?" asked the international arms dealer.  "Her protection is long-gone."

"The last thing I heard before the former chair skipped town was to never, ever, ever go up against Button!" said the investment banker.  "He was scared out of his mind!"

"Fine, I'll go up against her myself," said the arms dealer.  "She's no fun!  She's trimmed two-thirds of my Middle Eastern client list already!"

"What about the Bloodsucker?" asked the former CIA agent.  "If we boot the only other female, Rice might not like it."

"Rice might not like what?" asked Samuelson, gliding into the room even before Han Li had returned with refreshments.

"Um, we were just talking about Turkey and the--"

"Yeah, sure," said Samuelson, tossing down her bag and sitting down to write some notes on a scratch pad.  Han Li returned with refreshments as more members trickled in--mostly chatting about sports.

Finally, Samuelson declared the meeting open.  "I need a salary," she began.

"What?!" asked the Treasurer.  "Nobody has ever gotten a salary!  We share dividends from our profits--that's how it's always been!"

"I'm going to work full-time for the Heurich Society now," said Samuelson.

"What?!" the voice of Condoleezza Rice exclaimed over the speaker phone.

"I quit my realtor job.  There's too much work to be done to whip this Society into shape.  The first thing we need to do is neutralize Glenn Michael Beckmann.  I've ordered a Russian mail-order bride for him, and we will pay her to pretend she's a Russian/Ukrainian double agent."

"What?!" asked a chorus of voices.

"Then when he's thoroughly brainwashed, we'll strike."

"Strike what?" asked the arms dealer.

"Do I have to spell out everything?" asked Samuelson.

"No, no, I get it," lied the former CIA agent, who had no idea what she was talking about, but found her new attitude a real turn-on.

"What about the Middle East?" asked the arms dealer.

"Definitely time for the neutron bomb," said Samuelson.  (Over the speaker phone, they could hear Rice choking on her bourbon.)  "Kidding!  Just kidding."  A few members started laughing, while the others looked at each other uncertainly.  "But seriously, don't you think it's time?"  (Dead silence.)  "Our goal is to maximize wealth, power, and freedom, people!  Stand up and recite that with me!"  The Heurich Society members got up to recite their motto, and Samuelson looked around the room, very pleased.  Oh, yeah.

A mile away, "Didymus" (the ghost of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara) burst into Dr. Ermann Esse's office in the middle of his session with Italian economist Luciano Talaverdi.  "No, no, no!" exclaimed Didymus.  "Military advisers--that's how it began in Vietnam!  Obama is just falling into it all over again!"

"Alright, but we'll have to talk about it when I finish with my current patient," said the psychiatrist, getting up to escort the frantic Didymus out to the waiting room.  "Now where were we?" he asked Talaverdi, as he sat down again.

"Um," began Talaverdi, uncertain whether his shrink had hallucinated another patient, or Talaverdi had hallucinated the shrink talking to an invisible person.
"I think we were talking about the sock drawer issues."

Good heavens, thought Dr. Esse.  This man is a little too nutty to ask his girlfriend to move in.

Over at the White House, Ghost Dennis was frantically whispering into Obama's ear as the President stared uncertainly at the contents of his sock drawer.  "This is the best option," Obama kept whispering to himself, even as Ghost Dennis kept telling him, "no, it's not...."

******************************************
COMING UP:  Nation to Nation.

The Congressional Record

"It's just all starting up again, Doc," said Congressman John Boehner to his psychiatrist, Ermann Esse.  "It's relentless!"

"Yes, but you thrive on the importance of your work and the enormity of your responsibilities," replied Dr. Esse.  "You must balance out the drawbacks of your position with the benefits you feel."

"Drawbacks!  Well, that's one word for it," said the Speaker of the House.

"Give me another word."

"Blackmail!" exclaimed Boehner.

"Oh, has that started up again?" asked Dr. Esse.

"Like clockwork!  This damned 'Tarantula' dropped me another menacing note warning me about the legislative agenda."

"I thought there was no legislative agenda?" asked Dr. Esse (who could never convince his patient to go to the FBI).

"I've got legislative bills coming up the wazoo!  Even from the normally lazy people, like Jacques Javert!  'Louisiana lumpkin!'  That's what we called him!"

"Charming," said Dr. Esse.

"He was charming!  But no more!  Now he acts like he's Mr. Untouchable, and he can do whatever the Hell he wants, and he's got all these demands.  People say he's flashing around this Rolex like a swamp pimp, but he's always scratching under it, like he's allergic to real gold or something.  He's taking money from Big Oil and then laughing in their faces--maybe he'll help them out, maybe he won't."  The Speaker lifted his head off the couch cushion to look directly into Dr. Esse's eyes.  "Some people think he's cruisin' for a bruisin', if you know what I mean."

"I'm afraid I don't," said the psychiatrist.

"He took money from BP, and now he's crowing about their gross negligence finding at trial!  The man's running out of friends and making a lot of enemies."

"I see.  Let's get back to you."

"I've gotta deal with Congressman Herrmark, who secretly put together a bipartisan coalition of ninnies to complain about hydrofracking on public lands.  I've got pro-police and anti-police factions up in arms (no pun intended) about this Ferguson police fiasco.  I've got a bill requesting President Obama to pardon Governor McDonnell and his wife.  I've got requests for a National Robin Williams Day, National Joan Rivers Day, National Gluten-Free Week, National Fossil Fuel Appreciation Month, and renaming five different post offices 'Seal Team Six' in honor of capturing Osama Bin Laden.  And the Tea Party's gotten stupider than ever!  They actually told me they want to censure Obama for not declaring war against Russia and not declaring war against ISIS!"  (Dr. Esse nodded sympathetically.)  "Well, he can't!  Congress is supposed to declare war--not the President!  These dimwits don't even know the basics about our government!"

"This is an excellent opportunity for you, Mr. Speaker!  This is the type of challenge from which you could derive real job satisfaction if you viewed it as an opportunity to exercise your leadership abilities, demonstrate your knowledge about the separation of powers, and instruct your junior colleagues on a more effective means of attacking this goal."

"Ha!"

"Well, it won't be easy--"

"Ha!"

"--but if it were an easy job, then anybody at all could do it.  You have been entrusted with this job because you have unique talents for it."

"I need help, for God's sake!  Nobody's helping me!  What are ya gonna do for me?"

Many important federal officials came to Dr. Ermann Esse because he was able to treat them without giving them drugs that would ruin their security clearances.  But sometimes, they just didn't want to do the hard work necessary for effective psychotherapy.  "Unbutton your shirt--I'm going to suck the toxins out of your pancreas, and this will help you relax and focus."  Dr. Esse took out a drinking glass from his kit, removed the hotel-style sanitary wrapper, and drove it gently but forcibly into Boehner's abdomen, just as he had seen in the You Tube video.  "This is something you should do twice a day, at approximately 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.  I will draw the circle around the cup with this permanent marker so you know the spot.  You need to lie here for three minutes with the cup on, and then three minutes with it off, and with your eyes closed, visualize the cortisol flowing to your skin and evaporating harmlessly into the air.  Your body will naturally replace the cortisol with an amphetamine and dopamine mix which is what you need to make the right decisions."  Dr. Esse smiled encouragingly at his patient.  (The placebo effect of this silly treatment was helping a lot of his patients.)  "And then you will be able to explain why we cannot risk nuclear war with Russia."

"That sounds good," said the Speaker of the House, who dutifully closed his eyes and visualized the chemicals evaporating away from his tummy.

I wonder if the Senate is in this kind of turmoil?, thought the psychiatrist.

Several miles to the north, spy Charles Wu hung up the phone with the Tarantula, then headed to the dining room for another hearty meal to replenish his body after his earlier 23rd place finish in today's National Triathlon.  Tomorrow, the Senate, he thought.  (These were tasks he was doing for former Senator Evermore Breadman, over at Prince and Prowling, and, truth be told, they were a welcome respite from Beijing's incessant requests for more information about what the U.S. was going to do against Russia.)  Truth be told, after McCutcheon vs. FEC, he wasn't even sure the blackmail was strictly necessary--but it was still a lot cheaper and more efficient than buying off scores and scores of elected officials.

Over on Capitol Hill, coroner John Constantine had his own Congressional agenda.  "Before we eat dinner," he said to his girlfriend, "I need to show you something."  Ann Bishis (Congressman Herrmark's Chief of Staff) had spent the last two hours painstakingly recreating her grandmother's baklava recipe, and was suspicious about the look on his face.  "I know it's a lot to ask, but I want you to look at this autopsy photo."

"What?!"

"Please, just do it.  It's really important.  You might lose your appetite for awhile, but I figure that's better than vomiting later."

"Thanks?" Bishis said, nervously.

"Will you look at it?  It's a Congressional staffer that died over the weekend.  He worked for Jacques Javert."

"OK," she said, but managed no more than a one-second look.  "Oh!"  She turned away and covered her eyes with her hands.

"There's no scientific explanation for this death."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, we have to take these rumors seriously.  There are things in this town that are not right.  Some would call it demonic.  I was raised not to believe in such superstitious nonsense, but I don't think my father or grandfather ever did an autopsy on a corpse like that."

"I've seen something, too," said Bishis hoarsely.  "Our former Chief of Staff...."

"What about her?"

"She didn't disappear.  We took her out on a sailboat to test her, to see if she was a zombie.  Then this maniac showed up in a kayak and chopped her head off.  Then maggots came out of her neck."

Constantine the coroner sat in stunned silence for several moments.  "Why didn't you ever tell me that before?"

"It didn't come up!"

Over in Alexandria, a rejuvenated Congressman Boehner was meeting with realtor Henrietta "Button" Samuelson.  "This is perfect!" he exclaimed.  "It's going to have to be handled by the GSA, though."

"What?"

"The General Services Administration."

"For your new bar?"

"It's a long story," said Boehner, who could not tell her that he had only used her to scout a location for the New Dominion Boat Club, future secret drone base.  "Thank you for your trouble!"  He pulled out a $25,000 blank check from an Ohio corporation and handed it to her, kissed her on the cheek, then sauntered off into the night.  "I'm a natural leader!  Intelligent, knowledgeable, forceful, effective!"

Well, thought Ardua of the Potomac, who had been watching this from the demon's watery home, let's see how long that lasts.

************************************************************
COMING UP:  
The Heurich Society gives Glenn Michael Beckmann one more chance.