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separate. He guarded his opinions, observed the boundary of consensus, cultivated political friendships, learned golf over Lily’s objections (“the first downward step on the road to Republicanism,” she called it), and kept a strict account of favors disbursed and received. He and Lily bought their first house, a modest Colonial just slightly beyond their means in the middle- class township of Martindale.
    When the Democratic borough leader of Eastborough and two of his aides were forced to resign after indictment on corruption charges, the party cast about for a new broom. Jonathan, the outsider with a national reputation as a reformer, was tapped for the job. He was meant to be a stopgap, to hold the spot until the dust settled enough for one of their own to take over. Young, attractive, and very clean, Fleishman was the perfect dark horse. Barnaby once wrote of him that he’d built his career of being a dark horse; by the time people figured out what Jonathan wanted, he generally had it.
    They’d made their intentions clear enough ahead of time, and Jonathan had seemed amenable. Before the ink was dry on his appointment, however, he had grasped the reins of power, and within two weeks he’d won over some of his predecessor’s people, fired the rest, and replaced them with his own. The party leaders sat on their hands. They knew what was going on; they saw how Jonathan had finessed them. If you can’t stop it, they figured, lie back and enjoy it. By the time party elections came around, his power was consolidated.
    Slowly but steadily, in a motion parallel to but always a little behind Jonathan’s, Michael Kavin too was rising in the ranks. With a little help from his friends, he was appointed associate counsel to the Board of Estimates. Later he became chairman of his home-district planning commission, with power over neighborhood zoning.
    Thirty years of friendship. Outside of his family, no one meant more to Jonathan than Michael and Lucas; and this was due less, perhaps, to his affection for them (which nevertheless was very real) than to his need for an occasional glimpse of that self found only in the smoky mirror of long acquaintance. Michael in particular was a witness to the continuity of Jonathan’s life, an antidote to Gracie’s critical eyes, a reminder of where he had started and how far he had come. Because Michael knew him to his core, in his company Jonathan felt more himself than at any other time. With Michael by his side, he felt both younger and lighter, disencumbered of the weighty knowledge of how things work.
    Now his friend stood leaning on his club, huffing and puffing and sweating profusely.
    “Are you okay?” Jonathan said. “Want to chuck the game and grab a beer?”
    “We need to talk, and this is the only place I feel safe. Even here...” Michael looked around warily. “They’ve got these long-range directional mikes.”
    “Christ, you’re paranoid.”
    “The hell I am. You haven’t got a fucking clue. I haven’t taken a shit in the past two years that hasn’t been recorded.”
    Jonathan had a vision, a mental snapshot of three stooges standing amidst the urinals in a dingy john, fumbling an envelope from hand to hand. He sighted along a club. “What are they looking at, specifically?”
    “Everything. Think about the last two years. That’s how long they’ve been on my tail.”
    “And by ‘they’ we mean specifically...   ?”
    Michael stared at him. “Come on.”
    Jonathan smashed his club onto the ground. “I heard it. I just didn’t believe it. You’re not even in his goddamn jurisdiction. What, is he going out of his way to fuck a friend?”
    The other said quietly, “It’s not me they’re after.”
    A long look passed between the two men. Michael said in a conciliatory voice, “It’s not actually Lucas. It’s that bitch who runs the anticorruption unit, Jane Buscaglio.”
    “She wouldn’t take a piss without his blessing. I still can’t