Page 41 of The 6:20 Man

When the lights came up and the curtain came down for the final time after the actors had performed their bows and filed off the stage, Devine remained where he was sitting and looked around the theater. The seats and the trimmings and the carpet and all the other hundreds of details clearly showed the place had been given some serious TLC. It was good they kept these old structures around instead of knocking them down. Some people would knock down everything given the chance. Including other people.

But with respect to the reason he had come here, the results were disappointing. Why Ewes had mentioned the play to Stamos, he still didn’t know. He knew that Ewes had walked into Stamos’s office and told her about Waiting for Godot, encouraging her to check it out. Well, Devine had checked it out. And he still understood not one damn thing about why it was important to Ewes, or whether it was connected to her death or whatever was going on at Cowl and Comely.

But the more he thought about his conversation with Stamos, the more he homed in on her vague response and her reluctance to go into detail about what Ewes had told her about the play.

Maybe she does know, but just didn’t want to tell me the truth? She said Sara was scared. Maybe Stamos is scared, too.

Something dawned on him. Maybe she thinks I’m spying on her for Cowl for some reason. And if Cowl had something to do with Sara’s death, that would be a reason for Stamos to be afraid, and also not reveal the truth to me.

But if she was scared of Cowl, why sleep with him?

To keep on his good side? To avoid ending up like Sara?

With these troubling thoughts in mind, he rose and left, taking his official program with him, hoping that there might be a clue in there as to why Ewes was so interested in the play. He stood in the lobby and read through it twice. But it was simply a program for a play. This wasn’t some obtuse code-breaking movie where the villain intent on global domination conveniently left a trail of inscrutable clues behind so the forces of good could figure them out and vanquish him.

He left the air-conditioning and walked out into the heat.

He had one hour before his meeting with Campbell. He got a Coke and a hot dog with ketchup, mustard, and onions from a street cart and ate while sitting on a raised wall along with a million other sunseekers. After he finished, he checked his watch and gauged the time to get there. When that deadline hit, he rose and headed off.

He was no longer waiting for Godot. He was going right to the source, in a manner of speaking.

And Emerson Campbell sure as hell would be there.