Wheeler nibbled at his sandwich, looking like a slightly overstuffed beaver. "I don't make a damn thing out of it. It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before. What did you take it apart for?"
The building agent was a small, balding man with a taste for two hundred dollar suits and a Michigan Boulevard office. He looked guilty when Manning showed his credentials.
His last summer, Manning thought slowly. Take a good look and enjoy it while you can.
He walked slowly towards the Loop, looking at the scenery along the way as if he had never seen it before. It was a great world, he thought. But you didn't begin to appreciate it until you found out that one of these days you weren't going to be around any more.
He stopped in at a cigar store near Madison street.
"Some fine Havanas just came in, Mr. Manning."
There was a time when he had thought about cutting down on smoking. It didn't make much difference now.
The bottom drawer was something else again. Invoices between the Forsythe Company and the Timely Trading Corporation of Oswego City, New America. Shipments and receipted bills. Manning looked at them blankly.
There wasn't any Oswego City, New America.
And Forsythe didn't pay off in money. He paid off in refrigerators.
And electric stoves.
And furniture.
And sports cars.
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