It was a wonder Kipper and he didn’t get along better. After all, it was Cesky putting a couple of hundred of his workmen onto the street, armed with sledgehammers and crowbars, that had added enough muscle to the popular uprising against Blackstone to see the fascist little prick tipped off his throne back in April ’03. But Kip, like Marilyn, just didn’t like the man. He hid it well enough, though. And that’s all Jed could ask. Henry Cesky was a fucking cash cow.

The reception room at Dearborn House wasn’t so crowded that people were being jostled – unless they’d been in Cesky’s way when he moved across the room to see Kipper. But it was crowded enough that people were beginning to raise their voices to be heard over each other. A string quartet borrowed from the city’s Symphony Orchestra kept it light with a bit of Vivaldi, while waiters circulated with more food than drinks. For now.

‘How’s business, Henry?’ the President asked. ‘I was in KC a couple of weeks ago with Barney. He said the power grid over there was working almost perfectly now, thanks to your guys and the work they did at the plant.’

Brooklyn-based before the Wave, and Polish-born long before that, Cesky was a short but powerfully built man. You could see him levitating an inch or two with the compliment.

‘That’s good to hear, Mr President,’ he roared back, altogether too loudly.

Kip’s Secret Service detail momentarily switched their attention from scanning the room to focus in on the loudmouth. As soon as they saw it was Cesky, however, their interest evaporated.

‘Anything my guys can do to help, we’re there,’ the construction tsar added, raising his glass in salute.

‘And I’m sure anything the government can do to help one of our biggest employers and taxpayers,’ said Jed, ‘well, I’m sure we’ll be there, too.’

Cesky snagged a beer from a passing waiter, causing the President’s face to crumple in naked envy. He sipped at his sparkling apple juice with no pleasure at all.

‘Well, on that, I gotta tell you, Mr President – Kip – I’m looking forward to this tax review you got going on. And I’m hoping your people are going to listen to my idea about one simple flat rate that everyone pays. No deductions. No paperwork. No fucking around with any of that stuff. We just hand over, say, twenty per cent. And the government gets off our backs. What do you say?’

‘I’d say it sounds like the sort of idea I would’ve come up with when I had an honest job,’ replied Kipper, giving Cesky cause to float another inch off the carpet. ‘But like all my best ideas, Henry, I bet yours would hit the brick wall of the bureaucracy and splatter like an egg.’