Balance of Power

    The SSA's choice of Kelsey Landon as its consultant spoke to this as well. A small, well-knit man with silver hair and a perpetual expression of shrewd but pleasant alertness, the former senator from Colorado's fund-raising prowess had secured him a unique influence among Senate Republicans, cementing his closeness to Frank Fasano: when Fasano had set out to succeed Macdonald Gage, Landon had quietly passed the word that major Republican donors and power brokers favored his aspirations. Now, deferring to Fasano, Landon merely responded to Dane's comment with a wry smile of acknowledgment—a cue, Fasano sensed, that he should remind Dane of how much the SSA needed them both.

    "It's the worst I've seen," Fasano said bluntly. "Especially in the Senate. My moderates are worried—they've seen the numbers for Kilcannon and the First Lady. And Lexington's not warm and fuzzy."

    Seated in an elegant wing chair, Dane wore a pin-striped Savile Row suit which accented his air of power and ease. "In the end," he told Fasano, "Americans will respect individual responsibility. Bowden pulled the trigger, not George Callister."

    "That's not good enough," Fasano said. "At least right now." Pausing, he added softly, "Some would say that Martin Bresler had the right idea on trigger locks and gun shows. And that it's too bad someone crushed him."

    From behind his desk, Fasano noticed, Landon followed the exchange with the air of a connoisseur of tennis watching two veteran players testing each other's game. "Bresler crushed himself," Dane admonished. "Sometimes you'd be better off, Frank, envisioning gun owners not as a 'special interest,' but as members of one of the great religions of the world. The core of our membership would give us everything they owned before they give Kilcannon an inch on guns."

    "Sounds like religion," Fasano answered. "I know it isn't politics. The Kilcannons have hung Lexington with an image problem that'll be hard to overcome."

    "That's the real problem," Landon told Fasano. "It's not just Kilcannon's gun bill—it's our old friend Robert Lenihan. He can't help bragging—seems like he's signed up Lara Kilcannon's sister for a wrongful death suit against Lexington. If Lenihan's doing this, Kilcannon's pulling his strings . . ."

    "It's been like synchronized swimming," Dane interjected in sardonic tones. "First the tape of Bowden killing them, then Kilcannon's speech, then Callister turns him down, and then Mrs. Kilcannon gives her interview. At this rate Lexington will have to look for neutral jurors in caves."

    "The gun manufacturers," Landon added smoothly, "are petrified. Lenihan can finance this with millions in tobacco money. If he delivers George Callister's head on a platter, the trial lawyers can write their own ticket in the Democratic Party. And the gun industry may well cave in to whatever Kilcannon wants."

    So far, Fasano reflected, the meeting had gone as he had expected. The SSA, he suspected, had compelled the manufacturers to take a hard line, and now had to show that it had the power to protect them. And Dane needed results for special reasons of his own: he was both intimidator and beseecher, whose tenure as SSA president depended on pleasing a board of governors whose intransigence on gun rights was equalled only by its hatred of Kerry Kilcannon. Evenly, Fasano inquired, "What is it that you want, Charles?"

    Dane folded his arms. "A bar on lawsuits by people like Mary Costello."

    "Just 'people like Mary Costello'? Or do you want us to kill

her lawsuit?"

    "What we want," Dane said succinctly, "is a law barring all lawsuits against the manufacturers of guns for deaths and injuries caused by someone else's criminal misuse. That means suits by anyone."

    Fasano found himself studying Landon's bust of an Indian warrior, the gift from a grateful tribe for whom he had secured exclusive gaming rights. "If you're right about Lenihan," he told Dane, "Mary Costello will file any day now. We'd have to cut her off in mid-lawsuit."

    Dane frowned. "No choice, Frank. We've passed laws like this in other states, but we lack the wherewithal in California. So you're the only game in town."

    Though Fasano was prepared for this, the pressure building in the room had begun to feel like a vise, tangible and sobering. "You don't want much," he told Dane. "Only that the United States Senate stomp all over Lara Kilcannon's sole surviving relative, with the bodies of the others barely cold."

    "Not just the Senate," Dane responded coolly. "The House of Representatives. Speaker Jencks is ready to go."

    "Well, good for Tom," Fasano said dismissively. "Even if both of us can pass this bill of yours, Kilcannon will veto it. To override a veto, you may recall, we need a two-thirds vote of the Senate.