,"
Boyd said.

Malone shook his head, thinking sadly of his father and the cigar.
"Not exactly," he said. "Not ex--" And then it came to him. It wasn't
that he was ashamed of smoking cigars like his father, exactly--but
cigars just weren't right for a fearless, dedicated FBI agent. And he
had just thought of a way to keep Boyd from knowing what he'd been
doing. "That's a hell of a cigarette you're smoking, by the way," he
said.

Boyd looked at it. "It is?" he said.

"Sure is," Malone said, hoping he sounded sufficiently innocent.
"Smells like a cigar or something."

Boyd sniffed the air for a second, his face wrinkled. Then he looked
down at his cigarette again. "You're right, Ken. It _does_ smell like
a cigar." He came over to Malone's desk, looked around for an ashtray
and didn't find one, and finally went to the window and tossed the
cigarette out into the Washington breeze. "How are things, anyhow,
Ken?" he said.

"Things are confused," Malone said. "Aren't they always?"

Boyd came back to the desk and sat down in a chair at one side of it.
He put his elbow on the desk. "Sure they are," he said. "I'm confused
myself, as a matter of fact. Only I think I know where I can get some
help."

"Really?" Malone said.

Boyd nodded. "Burris told me I might be able to get some information
from a certain famous and highly respected person," he said.

"Well, well," Malone said. "Who?"

"You," Boyd said.

"Oh," Malone said, trying to look disappointed, flattered and modest
all at the same time. "Well," he went on after a second, "anything I
can do--"

"Burris thought you might have some answers," Boyd said.

"Burris is getting optimistic in his old age," Malone said. "I don't
even have many questions."

Boyd nodded. "Well," he said, "you know this California thing?"

"Sure I do," Malone said. "You're looking into the resignation out
there, aren't you?"

"Senator Burley," Boyd said. "That's right. But Senator Burley's
resignation isn't all of it, by any means."

"It isn't?" Malone said, trying to sound interested.

"Not at all," Boyd said. "It goes a lot deeper than it looks on the
surface. In the past year, Ken, five senators have announced their
resignations from the Senate of the United States. It isn't exactly a
record--"

"It sounds like a record," Malone said.

"Well," Boyd said, "there was 1860 and the Civil War, when a whole lot
of senators and representatives resigned all at once."

"Oh," Mal