with what you have to do. Remember, Frank; the Plan has to come first,
always."

He walked with O'Reilly to the street door, talking about tomorrow's
election; after shaking hands with the saloon keeper, he crossed the
sidewalk and stepped onto the beltway, moving across the strips until
he came to the twenty m.p.h. strip. The tall office buildings of upper
Yonkers Borough marched away as he stood on the strip, appreciatively
puffing at Lancedale's cigar. The character of the street changed; the
buildings grew lower, and the quiet and fashionable ground-floor shops
and cafés gave place to bargain stores, their audio-advertisers
whooping urgently about improbable prices and offerings, and garish,
noisy, crowded bars and cafeterias blaring recorded popular music.
There was quite a bit of political advertising in evidence--huge
pictures of the two major senatorial candidates. He estimated that
Chester Pelton's bald head and bulldog features appeared twice for
every one of Grant Hamilton's white locks, old-fashioned spectacles
and self-satisfied smirk.

Then he came to the building on which he had parked his 'copter, and
left the beltway, entering and riding up to the landing stage on the
helical escalator. There seemed to have been some trouble; about a
dozen Independent-Conservative storm troopers, in their white robes
and hoods, with the fiery-cross emblem on their breasts, were bunched
together, most of them with their right hands inside their bosoms,
while a similar group of Radical-Conservative storm troopers, with
their black sombreros and little black masks, stood watching them and
fingering the white-handled pistols they wore in pairs on their belts.
Between the two groups were four city policemen, looking acutely
unhappy.