We continued like this for some moments, four men staring at one another, three sitting at the large oak table of a type that I had become well aquainted with, over the years.

Hayworth, of course, broke the ice. "You remember these fellows, don't you, James?" he said, passing his hand in the their direction. They glowered at me, one resembling Dan Hedaya in Mulholland Drive, the other more like Troy Aikman.
I did remember them, and as I nodded, Dan Hedaya said "Don't thank us for the ride or nothin', kid- it was no problem."

It was as I had feared- they were shitheels, had been the whole time. "Mr. Hayworth, who the fuck are these guys?" I said immediately, and Troy Aikman threw his hands up and reared back in his chair, saying "Ho, ho!", and Hayworth came around the table and led me towards the bar, far on the other side of the vast room.

"Jimmy, don't you get freaked out on me," he said. "They act like a couple of thug-punks, I know, but they can and do wield serious leverage, on the Hill and in the Deep South. They are Colson's boys, Jimmy. Colson. And we need him."

I did not feel, not at all, that we needed a cheap pig bastard like Charles Colson III to win any campaign, including a seat among the hundred in the United States Senate. And I told Hayworth that. And he didn't listen.

But that didn't matter, right then. It would more, later- but not now. Right now I was not so much concerned with the moral, physical, and emotional tests that were to be faced in the months ahead but rather on keeping my man, upon whom I had staked so much for such meagre reasons, out of the willful clutches of the true bottom feeders of the United States political system.

I was starting to realize that my experience was not very pertinent to the current situation.