You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 233 Building Materials Preparation (8k)

As Lyon stepped out of the alley, he had just put one foot on the curb when he felt his boot tip trip on something.

Bow down.

A half-wet newspaper was stuck to the top of his shoe.

The Seattle winter night wind, carrying moisture, pressed the newspaper firmly against the toes of his boots.

Lyon bent down and tore the newspaper off his shoe, preparing to crumple it up and stuff it into the nearby trash can.

But the title made him stop.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's front-page headline, in glaringly large font, read: "Mayor Reynolds issues Executive Order 47: Promises to completely resolve homelessness crisis within six months."

The accompanying photo showed the mayor being interviewed on the steps of City Hall, arms outstretched, with a sincere expression against a backdrop of a clear blue sky and a fluttering state flag.

Lyon stood under the streetlight, unfolded the newspaper, and scanned a few lines.

The mayor's office press release was beautifully written, piling up a bunch of glittering words like "humanitarian care," "systemic solutions," and "community empowerment programs."

He turned the newspaper to the back and found a line of small print: the Seattle City Council elections will be held the following April.

Six months, right before the re-election.

He stared at the words for a few seconds, then folded the newspaper and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

He suddenly remembered a detail: the so-called "Executive Order No. 47" announced by the mayor in the newspaper did not mention a single penny of budget allocation from beginning to end.

There is no amount specified, no source of funding, and no official seal from the finance department.

The only thing the entire executive order actually accomplished was issuing those six big words: "Resolve within six months."

Because the city council will be re-elected six months from now, and after voters cast their ballots, who the hell will remember what executive orders you signed?

Lyon opened the car door and sat in the driver's seat of the Ford Explorer, started the engine, and before the heater was on, the car was as cold as a freezer.

He placed his hands on the steering wheel and looked through the windshield at the dark building of the Psychedelic Cat nightclub. Faint lights shone from the windows of the dance floor on the first floor, and a reflective vest was gesturing something on the other side of the window.

With the staff and location chosen, what's next?

funds.

He still had some funds left for the Eastern operation, and he had stuffed the old banknotes under his bed in his apartment. Alex had told him that the Eastern leadership had approved unlimited support for the full operation funds.

At worst, I can just cover the costs myself first, and Alex will help me out later.

What really made him frown was the building materials.

The dozen or so private rooms on the second floor need to be separated into dormitories. Each room requires at least two partition walls. Plasterboard, wooden framing, fiber mesh, and expansion bolts are just the materials used for the partition walls.

The dance floor needs renovation. The hardwood floor, which has been there for over ten years, has warped at the edges from being soaked in beer and creaks when you step on it. It will have to be replaced with a cement floor sooner or later, which will require cement, sand, gravel, and maybe even a small mixer.

If the water pipe on the second floor rusts through, it will need to be replaced, and welding might be necessary.

Go to a reputable building materials market?

Lyon mentally went through the process: drive to the parking lot, enter the mall, get the shopping cart, move the plasterboard, and pay.

The cashier girl scanned his credit card, and the system immediately generated a transaction record: at 12:47 a.m., Leon Vance purchased forty sheets of plasterboard, thirty bundles of wooden joists, two tons of cement, and five cubic meters of sand.

This record will be stored in Home Depot's database, which is connected to the three major credit bureaus. Any investigator, including the FBI, the Department of the Interior, and the IRS, can trace this database through his spending records when he gets into trouble.

"Honorable jury, please note that the defendant purchased a large quantity of building materials from Home Depot in the early hours of the night of the incident in order to renovate a seized federal property —"

No.

What he needs is a batch of building materials with no records, no invoices, and no credit card tracking, preferably ones that have been directly taken from an abandoned construction site that has been repossessed by the bank, with even the production batch numbers worn away.

Go find Big T.

Lyon tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

Just then, Big T received a $5,000 deposit to go find the homeless engineer, and in theory, he should have already started taking action.

His gang of street kids roam the streets all day. If they can't even find an old man spouting technical jargon, then the intelligence level of these underage brats is truly worrying.

Lyon glanced at the time on the dial.

It was just past midnight.

From 12th Street to 4th Avenue, you'll pass right through the 6th block.

The mailbox that I arranged with Big T was in that abandoned blue newsstand on Sixth Street.

Let's go check on that fat guy first to see if he's found anything.

He shifted into D, and the Explorer glided out of the back alley, its taillights sweeping a dark red streak across the red brick wall of 12th Street.

Sixth Street is not far from Twelfth Street, less than two miles as the crow flies.

However, Sixth Street is older and more run-down than Twelfth Street. It's the kind of area that even gangs don't bother to fight over. Apart from the payday loan shops, the shops on the whole street have been dead for over ten years.

Lyon parked the car at the intersection of Sixth Street and Pine Street and turned off the engine.

Outside the windshield was a typical scene of urban decay in America, somewhat like a city from a zombie movie.

The shop shutters on both sides of the street were all rusted, and half of them were spray-painted so badly that their original color was no longer visible.

A 24-hour payday loan shop is still operating, offering loans with annual interest rates as high as 400%, but it's legal in the United States.

The stark white light shone through the glass door, making the three Black women queuing at the entrance look like zombies.

Two homeless men were huddled next to the hot air vent at the entrance of the loan shop, wrapped in sleeping bags, with only their messy hair and half-worn cotton shoes showing.

There's another one lying at the alley entrance.

He lay on his side in the corner next to the newsstand, his face toward the concrete ground, one arm under his body and the other draped over his stomach.

He was wearing an old military overcoat and two sneakers of different colors.

He looked like he was sleeping, but when Leon stopped the car and approached, he noticed that his fingers were grayish-white.

Lyon did not stop.

He only glanced at the man's face; he was in his fifties, with a gray beard, his mouth slightly open, his eyes half-open, and his pupils unfocused.

He had been dead for at least six to eight hours.

They didn't freeze to death; the temperature isn't that high yet, at least there's no freezing rain.

It's highly likely that it's organ failure, or some kind of chronic disease that has reached its end.

Someone will find him tomorrow morning, or the day after, and then Alex will come over.

Lyon pulled his hat down low, walked around the body, and headed toward the newsstand.

This newsstand used to be the busiest spot in Sixth Street.

According to information Lyon obtained from some veteran police officers, many years ago, an elderly Vietnamese man took over this tin-roofed kiosk and named it "Saigon Newsstand".

They open at four o'clock every morning to sell newspapers, coffee, and scratch-off lottery tickets.

Workers from nearby factories would stop on their way to work to buy a pack of cigarettes and chat with the old man about the weather.

The old man had a radio that was always on the sports channel. When a baseball game was playing, he would turn the volume up so loud that the whole street could hear it.

When school ended in the afternoon, the children would come to buy lollipops with coins in their hands, and the old man would always pretend he couldn't count the money and secretly give them an extra one.

Then smartphones came out, and nobody read newspapers anymore.

The factory moved away, nobody buys coffee anymore, and even the radio has been replaced with streaming media.

The old man persevered for two or three years, and the number of customers at the door went from dozens to a dozen, and finally to zero.

One Sunday afternoon, he pulled down the iron gate, posted a handwritten farewell letter in Vietnamese, and left with two boxes of unsold old magazines.

After that, this place became a haven for homeless people, with groups of people spending the night here, laying cardboard under the windows, setting up tents under the awnings, and burning garbage in iron buckets for warmth.

Some people died of illness, some froze to death, and some had blankets, but those blankets were taken away by drug addicts, and they still froze to death.

Every winter, a hearse picks up one or two bodies from here.

Finally, the municipal officials got fed up and nailed iron plates around the pavilion, even welding steel plates onto the window railings.

Lyon walked up to the newsstand.

The iron plate was sealed tightly, and several pieces of plywood were nailed to the original sales window, the nails rusted dark red.

He remembered clearly that when he made the rules with Big T at the barbershop last time, they didn't confirm exactly where to put the information, so Leon had to check everywhere.

The crevice on the side, close to the ground, was stuffed with cigarette butts and withered maple leaves. He squatted down and used his fingers to scoop the trash out of the crevice; it was empty.

He stood up and ran his fingers along the edge of the metal plate.

Move your fingers from left to right, pausing every few centimeters to press on the metal plate and check if there's anything underneath.

His imagination regarding how Big T would deliver the paper was very limited; the most likely method was to fold the paper strips and stuff them into the bend of the metal plate.

There really is nothing else.

He withdrew his hand and patted the dust off his gloves.

Big T still hasn't found anyone.

Lyon shrugged.

That's understandable.

The intellectual level of Big T's underage henchmen was probably only slightly better than that of the psychedelic cat who carried boxes. They may have actually been squatting in the homeless camp for several days, but to no avail.

Never mind. I was planning to go to Fourth Avenue anyway.

Lyon got back into the car and closed the door.

The engine restarted, and the heater finally came on. He placed his hands on the air vents to warm them for a few seconds, then gripped the steering wheel, but didn't immediately shift gears.

I need to talk to Sterling about the psychedelic cat thing sometime.

The building was eventually sealed off by the police, and now there are six homeless people inside, with more to be moved in later.

Sterling will find out sooner or later.

She may not find out tomorrow, or she may not find out in the next minute.

But when this building was transformed from an abandoned nightclub into a homeless shelter with security guards, a kitchen, a registration system, and hundreds of people coming and going every day, some patrolman, some social worker, or some nosy neighbor would inevitably leak the news to her.

He had already instructed the patrol officers to set up checkpoints at the mosque and had Mia cross-reference more than fifty sets of background information on homeless people.

Sterling knew all of these things.

Therefore, it is impossible for him to completely sever ties with the identity of RayFong.

If it can't be skimmed clean, there's no need to skim it clean.

The problem is how to talk to Sterling.

Two thoughts raced through his mind.

The first rule is to abandon the false identity of Ray Fong and come forward as Leon Vance, admitting that he set up a shelter to control the homeless in the West End.

The advantage is that it's legitimate and sounds quite responsible.

But if this location is registered under his own police identity, then it is official, because the use of this house ultimately requires Sterling's approval.

Sterling might register the project with the police department, or even put it under his own name, and put in three social workers, two administrative assistants, and a sociology master's graduate who has never slept on the streets to teach him how to manage the homeless, and then send a monthly "Homeless Relief Center Operation Report" to the city hall.

Most importantly, Lyon will no longer be in charge here.

In the future, when he takes a former Boeing engineer to the East at 2 a.m., he will need to fill out an application, wait five working days for approval, and then proceed under the supervision of a social worker.

The second method, which is what Leon plans to do, is to push Ray Fong out.

He pondered the idea for a while.

If Sterling asks, tell him that RayFong is a rising leader of a beggar gang.

This person has a group of subordinates, a base of operations, and the ability to execute orders. He has already gained some influence among the homeless in the western district.

He reached a cooperation agreement with him, and he was responsible for gathering homeless people in the West End, managing them in an abandoned nightclub, and using the power of the homeless to control other homeless people and prevent them from blocking the streets and affecting the business of the rich and shops.

In exchange, he would need to grant him some gray privileges, such as patrol officers not harassing his hideouts and his men being exempt from street checks.

Politically correct version: Police are working with community leaders to address the homeless crisis.

A politically incorrect claim: Gangs are helping the police maintain stability.

And who is Sterling?

She is the daughter of a former police union president and grew up in the gray areas of the Seattle Police Department. She knows better than anyone how common it is for police and gangs to cooperate.

As for RayFong, his identity is clean.

Or rather, it was dirty, but dirty in just the right way.

Big T knows this person, Pastor Thomas knows this person, Imam Hassan knows this person, Ray knows this person, and the six homeless men in Psychedelic Cat also know this person.

Everyone who knows him belongs to the gray area at the bottom of society. They don't actively deal with the police, and even if they do, they can't say anything of value.

No law enforcement agency has his photo, fingerprints, or any records.

This identity exists only through word of mouth.

If Sterling is intelligent enough—and Leon believes this is highly likely—she will, like she did with the unfinished building explosion last time, see through it but not say anything, and offer support without taking sides.

They knew the source of the explosives was questionable, but claimed it was a terrorist attack.

As long as he can provide the political achievements she wants, she will tacitly approve of all the shady dealings.

This time, the achievement she wanted was for homeless people to no longer block the streets and shops in the West District. As for who RayFong was, she didn't care.

All she had to do was give a heads-up to the patrol officers to stop knocking on the door of that building on 12th Street, and then she could elegantly slap Mayor Reynolds in the face at the next City Hall hearing, using data showing a decline in complaints about homelessness in the West Side.

However, if she wasn't smart enough to actually bring the building under official control, she wouldn't have been able to bypass Lyon and contact RayFong.

Because this person is Leon himself.

Lyon mentally reviewed the logic and then nodded.

no problem.

He shifted the gear to D, and the Explorer headed toward Fourth Avenue.

Fourth Avenue is almost exactly the same as when he last came here.

The sidewalks of the entire street were covered with sleeping bags and tents, and the trash cans had been overturned, their contents spilling out and glistening greasy under the streetlights.

Ray's Barbershop sign is still there, visible from afar. On the white roller shutter door below the sign, a huge penis has been spray-painted in red paint.

Next to it was a line of crooked little words, which could be roughly identified as "FUCKYOUTYOUPCOFSH".

It seems that after I helped Big T out last time, the group of homeless people only dispersed temporarily, and they came back as soon as I left.

The few thugs under Big T were no match for the hundreds of homeless men.

They may have tried to disperse them twice, but each time they did, people would surge back from other alleys.

Lyon parked his car and walked to the entrance of the barbershop.

He raised his hand and knocked on the roller shutter a few times.

Immediately, a sound of a chair being knocked over, the creaking of a spring mattress, and the footsteps of Big T cursing came from inside.

"Fuck you, how many times have I told you, Miguel, get that damn trash away from my door, okay? Get out of my way, you son of a bitch—"

The roller shutter door was violently lifted half a meter high, and the muzzle of a Glock gun protruded from underneath.

"damn it!"

Big T saw the black mask, the black brim of the hat, and the eyes under the brim.

"Damn, Ray Fong, bro!"

The gun barrel was instantly pulled back, and the roller shutter door was pushed up to the top with a whoosh.

Big T stood at the door, rubbed his hands on his pants, and forced a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"Brother, I didn't see clearly just now. I thought it was those street urchins coming to bang on my door again. You know, they've been doing this for the past couple of days—"

"Let's go inside and talk."

"Yes, yes, come in, come in, please come in, please come in quickly."

Big T made way for Leon to squeeze through, and he bent down and entered the shop. Two of his underlings were sleeping on cots in the corner. When they saw their boss bring in a stranger, one of them rubbed his eyes and reached under his pillow, but Big T stopped him with a look and he obediently withdrew his hand.

"Everyone out. Go to the back and have a smoke."

The two underlings exchanged a glance, got out of bed, wrapped themselves in their coats, and went out the back door.

Leon stood next to the barber chair without sitting down. He glanced at the cardboard box in the corner and then at the half-eaten, solidified cheese pizza on the table.

"Someone drew a diagram for your roller shutter door."

Big T's face twitched.

"I saw it. I saw it the fuck the morning before yesterday."

Big T sat down in the barber chair, crossed his legs, and straightened his collar.

"Let me tell you, bro, I asked someone to wash it out, and he washed it for half an hour but couldn't get it off. In the end, he told me it was oil-based spray paint, and the only way to get it off was with acetone. Do you even know how many gallons of acetone costs? —"

"Uh, wait, I'm getting off-topic. Bro, you came so suddenly, I wasn't prepared at all. Want something to drink?"

"Need not."

"So you're here to check on the progress?"

Big T rubbed his hands together. "My bunch of kids have been looking for you these past few days. We've searched every homeless encampment in the Sixth Street area, including the one near that blue newsstand—"

I went tonight.

Big T's hand froze in mid-air. "Huh?"

There's nothing there.

"I gave you five thousand dollars, and now you've planted a spy at a newsstand?"

There was a brief silence in the barbershop for about two seconds. Big T straightened up from the barber chair, put his legs down, and said, "Hey bro, you have to understand, this isn't as easy as you think."

"Um."

"I sent men. I really did. But you know, I only have a handful of guys under me, and their brains—you've seen them."

"Last time I asked them to find someone who 'speaks jargon I can't understand,' and they actually did."

"Among the homeless people who gathered on Sixth Street, they squatted in a tent for three hours. When they came back, they told me they couldn't understand anything. I said that's right, they can't understand anything."

"That kid was incredibly confident back then—"

"Then what."

"Then I went over and asked, and they were speaking Spanish inside."

Leon closed his eyes briefly.

Big T quickly added, "You can't entirely blame him. You know, Martin's mom is from California, and he doesn't speak Spanish at all. He's grown up without being able to distinguish between English and other languages. If you speak Spanish to him, he thinks it's English—"

"Go on."

"Then we kept searching, for another two days, bro, really, two days."

"I went there myself later. There were a lot of homeless people on Sixth Street. I searched around, but let me tell you, university professors or engineers are different from ordinary homeless people after they become homeless."

"Ordinary homeless people like to gather in groups, dozens of them together, looking out for each other, at least they won't be robbed."

"But those who have been educated are different. They feel that they are different from ordinary homeless people, that they are ashamed, and that they would rather die than go into crowds."

"Even if that kind of person goes bankrupt and sleeps on the streets, he still feels different from the person squatting under a bridge."

"They would sleep on the edge, in places no one goes, like behind the bus station, in the corners of abandoned factories, and some would even go to the public library during the day to pretend they weren't bankrupt, hiding from people all day long."

"So it's not that we can't find it, it's that it's inherently difficult to find, and it hasn't been that long since the last time—"

"Less than a week."

"Yes! Less than a week!"

Big T slammed his hand on the armrest of the barber chair, then timidly withdrew it under Leon's expressionless gaze.

Quiet.

The faint crackling sound of a homeless man burning trash in a metal bucket could be heard outside the barbershop.

The two underlings smoking by the back door muttered something under their breath, then quickly shut up.

Big T swallowed hard. The confidence he had when he said "less than a week" evaporated quickly. He started to shrink back, his back pressed against the back of the barber chair.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something more, but found that he didn't seem to have anything to add.

Lyon lowered his arms from his chest, placed his right hand on the edge of the counter, and leaned forward slightly.

"Don't make a sound."

Big T remained silent.

"Just listen to me when I say your work skills are lacking, and don't argue with me. Do you think I'm wrong?"

"Okay, right." Big T nodded.

"Okay, let's put that aside for now." Leon rested one hand on the armrest of the barber chair. "We have other things to do now."

Big T looked up, his eyebrow twitching. "Something else?"

"right."

"What is it?"

Do you want to make money?

Big T's confusion deepened.

He rubbed his hands on his pants again. "Make money—of course I want to make money, who wouldn't? But what kind of money are you talking about? Is it the kind I got last time—"

"That was the money for finding someone last time. Since the job wasn't done well, you don't need to return the money, because you still need to continue the search."

"Yes, yes, keep searching, definitely keep searching. I've already asked Martin—"

"listen to me."

"it is good."

Do you know any abandoned construction sites or unfinished buildings nearby?

"An unfinished building?"

Big T blinked twice, his mind racing.

"Brother, you should have said so earlier. There are plenty of abandoned construction sites in the West District."

"Let me tell you, from Sixth Street south all the way to Twelfth Street, this whole area, the previous mayor said he wanted to transform this area into some kind of cultural and creative industry belt, and approved a lot of land and started more than a dozen construction sites."

"It turned out that no cultural industry was willing to move here because there were too many homeless people in the area. Then the banks withdrew their investment, all the construction projects stopped, and now those construction sites are all sitting there abandoned."

"I need building materials: drywall, cement, sand, pipes, wiring, and tools. I'll give you 20% of the market price."

.

Big T's lips twitched.

He stared at Leon for a few seconds, then subconsciously reached behind his neck and scratched it before putting his hand back on his knee.

"Twenty percent of the market price?" He repeated those words, as if to make sure he hadn't misheard.

"Hmm, 20%. Can you even get into the construction site?"

"You can get in, you can get in. The guy who looks after the place is an old black guy named Frank. He used to hang out with us on Fourth Avenue, but he got older and quit, so he took a job as a security guard."

"The government contracting company hasn't paid him for more than half a year now. He just sits at the entrance of the construction site every day and dozes off. He's still there because he has nowhere else to go."

Big T's voice regained some confidence, "Give him two hundred dollars, and he can open all the container doors for you. He'd love for you to take everything away. He's been wanting to quit for a long time."

"Then let's go."

"But I still need to find more people."

Big T started counting on his fingers, "I know someone who works for a moving company. He has four vans, the kind where the back seats are all removed for hauling goods."

"If there's a lot of stuff, I can ask him to send two more trucks."

"And there's the gas money, which has to be paid upfront. That kid refuses to pay on credit. He was scammed once by a restaurant owner before, and now—"

Do you think 20% is too low?

Big T shut his mouth again.

His eyes darted back and forth between Leon's mask and the ceiling chandelier, finally returning to Leon's pupils, where he saw the moment he was almost killed.

"No, no, no, no, no."

From his first "no" to waving his hand and then standing up, Big T's entire movement was seamless, even causing the barber chair to slide half a meter away.

"Absolutely not. Twenty percent is perfect. Brother, I'll take it; I'll call people tonight."

"I told Frank to open the container and have the moving company bring the stuff over right away. Where are you taking it?"

"Put the stuff in your backyard first."

"backyard?"

Big T turned his head and glanced in the direction of the back door of the barbershop.

"My backyard isn't very big. It's okay to pile up some drywall, but if you're talking about cement and sand—right now all I have in my backyard are a few empty corrugated boxes and an old washing machine."

"Put the plasterboard and wooden frame in the yard first, and the cement and sand can be left outside. Someone will come to inspect the goods later. If it's useful, just take it away and pay on the spot."

"I understand, I get it, I'll go right away."

Big T sprang up from the barber chair, walked behind the counter, pulled out a dirty phone book, and started turning the pages.

Lyon took two steps toward the door, then stopped and turned around.

"There's one more thing."

Big T looked up from his phone book.

"If the police on this street don't bother you for now, how long would it take you to completely clean up Fourth Avenue?"

Big T lifted his finger from the phone book, his expression changing.

The patrol officers temporarily ignored the shooting; this is Ray Fong's background.

He only knew this person was rich, good at fighting, and generous. But now the meaning of those words has changed.

In his mind, Big T promoted Fong from "agent of a major organization" to someone as awesome as someone he didn't dare to say outright, and then he decisively decided not to think about it anymore.

Which patrol officers?

Both day shift and night shift workers will receive a notification.

"When?"

"I mean, if."

Big T paused for a moment, then closed his phone book and looked directly at Leon. "You mean, I can shoot a gun in the street and the police will pretend they didn't hear me?"

"It's best not to shoot. But if you need to shoot to drive people away, nobody will care."

"If no one intervenes, it'll only last one night. Two nights at most. If you can shoot them, they won't dare stay here. Just drive them away; you don't need to actually kill anyone."

Big T swallowed hard. "But if they really finish, I don't know where they'll go."

"That's fine, I'm off."

Lyon turned and lifted the roller shutter.

The sound of the iron gate sliding upwards was particularly jarring in the silence of the early morning. A head popped out of a sleeping bag in the next alley, glanced at him, and then pulled its head back in.

Big T followed behind, standing inside the doorway. Watching Leon's retreating figure walk a few meters, he suddenly spoke up: "Brother, I have some too. The fentanyl I get is different from the others; I add—"

Lyon turned around.

"I don't need your goods."

Big T seemed to have expected this answer. He shrugged, didn't say anything more, raised one hand, spread his fingers, and made a goodbye gesture: "Okay, take care, brother."

Lyon continued walking towards the parking spot.

Martin went back inside, his voice coming from the inner room: "He doesn't need it? He doesn't need sleep aids? He doesn't need relaxation? He doesn't need it—"

"Shut up," Big T hissed through gritted teeth.

The roller shutter door was pulled down again with a clatter.

From inside the door, a low, but still audible, mutter from Big T came through the metal sheet: "Can our stuff compare to his? Don't you know what he carries with him?"

"How would I know what he carries with him?"

So don't ask me anymore.

He couldn't hear what came after that, and Leon didn't want to hear it either.

He returned to the explorer's side, and just as he was about to open the car door, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Mia sent me several text messages, along with three PDF files.

"We've finished screening from over fifty applications."

"Three of them have prior convictions: one committed armed robbery and seriously injured someone, and two committed rape, one of whom also has a record of exposing himself in a park."

"The file has been sent, you don't need to reply. I'm sleeping, don't contact me before nine o'clock tomorrow morning, I'm serious, goodnight."

Lyon stared at the screen for a moment.

Then he opened the car door, got in, tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, started the engine, and rubbed his face.

The whole day has been filled with everything from registering homeless people at the mosque to psychedelic cat recruiting five idiots and one normal person, and from the empty newsstand in the sixth block to finally negotiating building materials with Big T.

He yawned, shifted into drive, and the Explorer slowly glided off Fourth Avenue, heading towards the apartment building.