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Friday, February 21, 2014

Dev Patel had never worked on a political campaign before. Though it was a natural place for a young man of his interests and ambitions to be, he'd never before found it an avenue appealing enough to pursue. Technically, he supposed, he wasn't pursuing it now. After all, it wasn't Dev Patel who was working for David Reilly's DA campaign-he was on leave from Lowe, Gelvin & Lowe for a few weeks to attend to the business of his late father in California. It was Shandar Singh who spent every day at Reilly's headquarters, doing every menial task he could imagine.

This is beneath me, he'd thought. He was nothing more than a lackey, and the worst part was, he was lackeying for the campaign's PR guy, not even for Reilly himself. He owed this latest indignity to none other than Madeline Taylor, and he had let her know all about it during one of their sporadic phone calls.

This is stupid, he'd protested. I never even see the guy. I don't know how you expect me to find anything out about him this way.

Deval, don't be so shortsighted. You don't need to see someone to learn more about him, do you? she chided.

There has to be a better way. I spend my days making photocopies and taking messages. The most exciting thing I've done is to copyedit a press release, and that was only because no-one else was in the office to do it.

I called in a few favors to make this happen, and I assure you it is the best way, she said. The kind of information we need won't be found in a press release or a stump speech, my dear. It will be found in a file folder, or a letter, or an e-mail, or on a hastily scrawled Post-It note. It will be something you overhear when everyone around you believes you're so insignificant that they carry on a conversation as if you weren't even there. You are exactly where you need to be.

He felt sure she was barking up the wrong tree. I've read hundreds of emails, combed through every document I can find...this guy is as pure as the driven snow.

Everyone has secrets, dear boy. Everyone, without exception, is hiding something. Some of those secrets are worse than others. Lives could be ruined.

I'm telling you, there's nothing here to find.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

If there's nothing to be found, Deval, then something will have to be made, won't it? The election is in less than five weeks. Don't disappoint me.

Her words were intended as a warning, a barely concealed threat. That was how Madeline operated. Little was said, and much was implied.

Implied isn't very far from implicated, he thought. And you had better not leave even a single loose end, my friend, or she will most certainly implicate you.

She had gone to a lot of trouble to turn Dev Patel into Shand Singh, and to manufacture the right sort of resume and pull the right sort of strings to find a campaign job for him. The youngest son of a boarding-school classmate. That was the story, and Dev had to make it work. It was never far from his mind that he could run into someone he knew, and that idea was both frightening and exhilarating. He almost wanted a chance to see if he'd be recognized. Shandar was younger than Dev's true age, so he'd shaved his beard, skipped his regular haircut, hung up his conservative suits for more casual clothes with trimmer tailoring. Even his speech patterns were changed. He was sure that no one on the campaign thought he was a day over 25.

It was only 7 years, but it made a world of difference in how people treated him, he'd discovered. They talked above and around him, as if he couldn't possibly understand. They ignored his presence most of the time, and only noted his absence when it coincided with some petty errand or task they needed him for.

He played dumb. That was the hardest part, but also the most important. He knew he wouldn't be fired-he was there as a favor to a friend of a friend of a friend, after all. But playing dumb meant they gave him half as much to do and twice as long to do it, and those extra hours were coming in very handy. He'd told Madeline the truth the week before-this guy was squeaky clean. He knew just from rumors that he'd have had an easier time finding dirt on Lazzarro. But Madeline insisted it had to be Reilly, and his opinion wasn't welcome.

So, the guileless Shandar Singh spent his days planting seeds, watering the plants that sprouted, and planning for a harvest. Time was short. He appeared to everyone else in the campaign office to be an entitled dolt who moved at a glacial pace. It was hard for a man as smart as Dev Patel to act so stupid, and to seem so slow, when in reality he wasn't wasting a single second.

David Reilly was polling neck-and-neck with Cabot. He was an ideal candidate: a handsome, self-made man who grew up in Bed-Stuy and got his JD at NYU Law. His work ethic had impressed a number of the city's power brokers, and his beautiful wife and young daughters smiled happily by his side at every opportunity. In most parts of the country, an openly gay, ball-busting feminist career woman like Cabot wouldn't stand a chance against him, but in New York she appealed to a huge swath of the electorate.

She had to win. That's what Madeline had told him. Not a close second, Deval. Not a hard-fought loss or any of that nonsense. Alexandra must be the next District Attorney for New York County. Do you understand?

He did understand. The specifics still weren't readily apparent to him, but it was obvious that Madeline needed to have Cabot in office, that it would make her somehow more vulnerable to whatever information Madeline had or plans she was concocting. And if Patel were being honest with himself, his own motivations were twofold. He was in league with Taylor now, and he had no doubt that she would ruin him if it would help her in any way. But he hated Alex Cabot, too. He still wanted to see her get her comeuppance. Helping to ruin her career would satisfy his desires. Her complete public humiliation would be a dream come true. He didn't know how ensuring that she achieved her goals would result in her undoing, but he had to trust Madeline. He had no choice, really.

Exposing the skeletons in a man's closet in time to force him out of such a short race would be difficult and of itself. Putting skeletons where they didn't exist was an altogether different challenge. He was up to the task. The election was just three weeks away, but he had his a plan, and the wheels were in motion. Madeline knew little enough to maintain plausible deniability, Shandar Singh would appear blameless, and David Reilly wouldn't know what hit him.

As for Dev himself? Well, he didn't even exist as far as Reilly's campaign was concerned. He was still the invisible man, and maybe that would turn out to be ok, for a while longer anyway.