It was hard to tell if it was early or late because the sky was that puke-nasty gray color, just like the slag-choked streams in a mining town. The message had come by private courier, as evidenced by the fact it had been haphazardly crammed under my door. It was bent in the middle and covered in grease. Service had not improved when the government was disbanded, though saying so aloud would make me a radical. The little errand boys the private firms hired wore irritating red jackets and always wanted a tip. I missed the old postmen, the ones with sedate blue jackets and no expectations of gratuity. The return address was a well-known bookie, which threw me. Then I remembered that Carelli had a reciprocal agreement with some heavy hitters in that racket, so it all kinda made sense. The scumbag bosses liked to ooze their tentacles into every possible nook and cranny, dominating or at least participating in all the illicit activity in every borough, what the Magnates called “horizontal integration.”
