Just past Hayvenhurst, everything stopped. “You lying son of a bitch!” Nicole snarled at the car radio. It was too much. Everything was going wrong. It was almost as bad as the day she woke up to a note on her pillow, and no Frank. Dear Nicole, the note had said, on departmental stationery yet, Dawn and I have gone to Reno. We’ll talk about the divorce when I get back. Love, Frank. And scribbled across the bottom: PS. The milk in the fridge is sour. Remember to check the Sell-By date next time you buy a gallon.

Remembering how bad that day was didn’t make this one feel any better. “Love, Frank, “ she muttered. “Love, the whole goddamn world. “

Her eye caught the flash of her watch as she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Almost time for the KNX traffic report. She stabbed the button, wishing she could stab the reporter. His cheery voice blared out of the speakers: “ – and Cell-Phone Force member Big Charlie reports a three-car injury accident on the westbound 101 between White Oak and Reseda. One of those cars nipped over; it’s blocking the number-two and number-three lanes. Big Charlie says only the slow lane is open. That’s gonna put a hitch in your getalong, folks. Now Louise is over that jackknifed truck on the Long Beach in Helicop – ”

Nicole switched stations again. Suddenly, she was very, very tired. Too tired to keep her mad on, too tired almost to hold her head up. Her fingers drummed on the wheel, drummed and drummed. The natives, she thought dizzily, were long past getting restless. Her stomach tied itself in a knot. What to do, what to do? Get off the freeway at White Oak and go back to surface streets? Or crawl past the wreck and hope she’d make up a little time when she could floor it again?

All alone in the passenger compartment, she let out a long sigh. “What difference does it make?” she said wearily. “I’m screwed either way.”

She pulled into the parking lot half an hour late – twenty-eight minutes to be exact, if you felt like being exact, which she didn’t. Grabbing her attache case, she ran for the entrance to the eight-story steel-and-glass rectangle in which Rosenthal, Gallagher, Kaplan, Jeter, Gonzalez Feng occupied the sixth and most of the seventh floors.