Are you handling any campaigns this year? she said. The officer looked at Mason sharply, then took a flashlight and entered the house. The other officer stood by the door, watching the place. Can you show possession of the gun? The hell I dont! Stone snorted. Before I met you I rode one to work every day, but it was only a Honda 180. Devine caught the eye of Wanda Simms, a senior member of staff who had been assigned as the admin liaison for his incoming class of Burners, as the group of interns was known— as in burning the candle at both ends. She hurried over to him, looking gray and haggard. Oh, Dino just came in, she said. Are we expecting him? You recognized the cab driver? Thats a safe prediction, Corsing said. I want a complete job on Alder. I want to know everything I can about him. If he has any weak points I want to find out about them. That is, any weak chinks in his armor. Whats all this? the sheriff asked. Hamilton Burger, angry and exasperated, said,Very well, thats all. I have no further questions. Ill call Stephen Ardmore to the stand. In this case, however, Mason said, counsel is cross-examining his own witness. He is taking leading questions. He is threatening the witness. Moreover, the testimony seems to be incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial. Chanson nodded judiciously.But not as difficult as one might think providing you have the resources and enough lead time. Dino started phoning again. By the time they were called to dinner he had a small apartment for her on the East Side, with a spare room for her protectors.And shes got her phone back, he said. He said that he had picked up a very mysterious passenger, a young, attractive woman, dressed almost entirely in white, that is, a white skirt, white shoes and a sort of cream-colored jacket with red trim. He picked her up just a short distance from where the body was found. He was returning empty from the country club. There was something about his fare that impressed him. He noticed her particularly. At twenty minutes after seven a sparse number of yellowish street lights revealed the disrepair of the homes and even of the corner gas station and drugstore. The houses and the businesses were tightly packed and busted up both by time and the kind of battering rendered by the teenagers whod lived here. The music, the clothes and the slang might have changed over the years but the contempt of the young men and women for the debris and rubble of the place had not. They knew it was a shithole; why not make it even more so? But nevertheless, though he legally wasnt aqualified investor under the securities laws, hed bought a thousand bucks worth of stock in the little bird that flitted around flowers sucking up nectar and paying it forward. Which was where she had gotten the name, Tapshaw had told him. You can spend a hundred grand on a branding firm to come up with horseshit and then focus-group the hell out of it for another hundred grand, or you can do it on your own for free. .