Chapter 2
Representative Evans of Maine looked at her appointment list. It was going to be a busy week. And, as she said to the staff, you have to talk to your constituents. The problem was that this constituent was Willie Loomis. Not that she minded Willie. She liked him. She had come all the way from DC to his wedding. But Willie meant Barnabas, and Barnabas meant a whole new aspirin supply.
She wondered again why she had let him handle her first campaign. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time. With his help, she had been elected against Carolyn's efforts. Of course it had been a setback when Carolyn exposed his vampirism to the townspeople, but Carolyn was such a bitch that it all ended well.
But now she wanted to go on to bigger and better things. And what she least wanted to see was an FBI file on her former campaign manager.
If she didn't find a way to get rid of the threat he represented, she'd better pack her bags.
For what little good it did, she had never acknowledged to anybody that she knew that there was anything wrong with him. Should anyone leak it out, she would be extremely surprised and try to luck it out.
It would be better if his car were to go off the cliff. If only she could keep Angelique from finding out that she had arranged it...
Willie had changed since she had last seen him. After losing all his money in that Florida land deal he had taken to drink. But then he had straightened out, though there were traces of his bad time in him.
"You look very well, Willie." she said as he came into the room.
"Thank you, Mag... er... Ms. Evans."
"Just call me Maggie. I am not in the habit of forgetting old friends."
"Thanks. And thank you for helping me start my business after that son-of-bitch cleaned me up."
"It was the law. You were entitled to a small business loan. All I did was get some bureaucrat get off his ass and do the work he's being paid to do."
"Even so, I will always be grateful to you. And to Barnabas, after the way he got me off the bottle. After that, anything he wants of me, he can have."
"Yes, he's a good man." She'd better warn him here and now about what he could say and not say in DC. "I was lucky to have someone of his integrity running my campaign. Any slip, and it would all be over. You do not know what this place is like. Everybody is looking into everybody else's dirty little secrets. They are always fishing for a scandal that can end your career.. And if they can't find dirt on you, they go after your staff. And the campaign manager is a lighting rod for this. Laundered money, dirty tricks, ballot stuffing, embezzlement, a sex scandal. Whatever will do the job. That's why I am glad it was him. he's clean."
She didn't know how much did Willie believe that spiel, but it didn't matter. As long as he got the point that there could be a bug planted there.
"And he's had such a bad time lately..."
"I know. Carolyn still does not speak to him?"
"Of course not. In a way, I can see her point. No, not about you being elected." he added quickly. "About her mother. After all, she wanted to marry Adam, but he just runs off with her mother..."
"I cannot blame Elizabeth either. All these years she buried herself alive because she though she had murdered her husband. After she was free, she wanted to live and make up for those missing years."
"Poor Roger" Willie wondered if he had to go through the whole family before Maggie indicated that she was ready for business. "Between Elizabeth, and David running off to a commune, it undid him. Watergate was the last straw. So now he runs around accusing everyone of framing Nixon. It is sad...
"Poor Roger. And then the way Barnabas and Julia quarreled.."
"She had always been in love with him. And he either didn't notice or played dumb. Eventually she got tired of the runaround. She made a play for Eliot Stokes."
"And Stokes preferred to marry Mrs. Johnson, the housekeeper."
"Mrs. Johnson aided and abetted by Barnabas. Julia did not forgive him that. Also at that time Barnabas was very critical of the AMA, doing his bit for socialized medicine. They had extremely heated discussions about malpractice, unnecessary operations, inflated bills, and other interesting matters."
"Well, now that Julia is away, time may heal the wounds." Maggie sighed, wondering if Willie remembered that it was her who had arranged the Julia study trip, and that he should not ask favors one after the other. "In a way it was my fault it happened. I shared the figures I had with him."
"Not your fault. Barnabas can be as tactless as Quentin."
"I got a letter from Quentin. Or rather a tract. He seems wanting to convert everyone around."
"He's getting to Louella now. Well, it doesn't seem to hurt her, maybe it helps her a bit..."
Maggie bit her tongue before she commented on Quentin's efforts to convert every beautiful woman he could see. There was no point in alarming Willie. It was one thing for Quentin to try to seduce Louella, it was another to succeed.. For that matter, Quentin's conversion could be the real thing. But she doubted it. Quentin's conversion was only the latest in his long string of accidents.
"All in all, it is good to know that some people back home are doing well." She kept stretching the conversation. It was a good way, she had found out. to scale down demands. 'Like Chris and Sabrina."
"Yes." Damn it, did he have to go through the whole town? "And since Megan, Angelique, and Sabrina work together with him, they are calling them "Chris's Angels" Like the TV show.".
"What about you and Louella? Are you planning to give us a little Loomis?"
"We are planning on it."
"Good for you."
"Say, Maggie." It had to be said now. He could take no more of this social chatter. "do you know that Barnabas needs help? He needs a job. And he has no experience whatsoever. Couldn't you find him a place in the Civil Service? Look, you know that there are many things he can do, even if he never got paid for doing them. You know best what he's good at. Certainly there is some place in the Government that could use him."
"He would have to take the Civil Service test first, you know."
"I know. I don't want you to do anything improper. Only that if you figure out there is an opening. let us know."
"That's all I can do."
What had she gotten herself into? Finding a job for a vampire and in the Federal Government yet. Maybe she could put in in the IRS.
"That's what I get for not wanting a crooked campaign manager." she thought "What is so wrong with laundering money, anyway? And why does Willie want him in the Federal Government? Because then he could not wake up people at 3 AM and have them sign petitions? It seemed funny when she had heard about it, but it probably wasn't so funny when it happened to you.
And why had she let him run her campaign? Because she needed him then, of course.
Too bad the Julia Hoffman solution could not work here. Where would she find the money to send him and Angelique on a honeymoon cruise? No, she'd better find him a job before she went broke and Jack Anderson came sniffing a great story there...
How she got into these messes, anyway?
"As I say, Willie, there is not much that I can do. But I will try. Say, those organizations that he did volunteer work for, were they in the kosher list of the FBI?"
"With the kind of stuff they are finding about Edgar Hoover, you think that it'll matter?"
"Did he ever go around with Communists, I mean?"
"Never as far as he knew. Of course, there might be one of them around, but who it might be, he'd have no way of knowing."
"Well, what kind of job would he want?"
"You know what kind of volunteer work he did. Something along the same lines. Will you look for it?"
"Willie, if there is a job in the Civil Service that he can do, he'll get it."
She wondered how much of a leeway that promise gave her. Not much, since she couldn't afford to have him go broke. And he certainly could not go into business by himself. After all, Willie, for all his devotion, had not thought of making him a partner...So it came to her, in DC and her bag of tricks from where projects, Federal money and Federal jobs came from. And in the meantime she was supposed to pass laws and shape national policy. But when? Not when most of the time she was busy on stuff like finding a job for a vampire.
