She was doing something at the glove compartment. Huh? Inside, the place was as modern-looking and fantastic as the outside. Soaring ceilings, lots of oddly shaped windows, expensive woods and shiny metals in interesting configurations. Textured tiles on the floor interspersed with bursts of colorful rugs. Minimalist furnishings, one-of-a-kind lighting fixtures, some small and intimate, others the size of small satellites, with customized features in wood, metal, and even fabric. The paintings on the walls were more Picasso and Pollock than da Vinci or Degas. Who? This was much later in the afternoon. When he got home from work that night, he found Valentine on the couch, sucking down beer and eating a hot dog instead of pizza. Two months, I said. It was the two months just before the election. Dawkins used his pot full of CIA money and his ties with the Public Workers International and somehow they struck everything — the buses, the railroad, the docks, the firemen, the police, the hospitals, and the whole damned government bureaucracy — even, or so Dawkins told me, the night-soil collectors. And most important of all Dawkins managed to make the blame for the strike land on Chaddi Jugo and stick to him. And that was about the last that anyone ever heard of Chaddi. On the train Devine had his AirPods in and was half listening to a financial news channel on his phone. Money was already being made and lost overseas in Asian markets that would be officially up and running in about an hour. He would rather be listening to Janis Joplin or AC/DC, but he was now a budding financial whiz with a job to do and a career to build. He had no moments to waste onMe and Bobby McGee or “Highway to Hell. And with the latter, he was probably already on it. Ruthll be there? The shock of Sally Rainess death must have hit then because her voice had gone dull and childlike, although it sounded pleased about Ruth. This is the sort of stuff that drives you nuts in this business, Drake said. I have two dozen men on the job. It gets around to the slack time and I start calling them in. Then something like this breaks. Im like a runner with too short a lead off first base with the batter rapping out a short single. Im falling all over myself trying to get started. I had a few errands to do after work. Yes. The woman said,Barry, these people were supposed to meet Jerry for a beer. But no one answered. Now Im getting worried. The Empire Casino was standard stuff. Just inside the four glass doors there was a long list of all the gaming machines (twelve hundred in total) and table and poker games (thirty total). There were, in addition, five hundred seats for bingo. Not what I meant, but thats hard to believe. About seven-thirty in the evening..