Video from Detroit, where it had all started, showed police officers in full riot gear spread across a street, clear plexiglass shields protecting them from rocks and glass bottles, inexorably pushing the mob backward.

I was incredulous, knowing I had at least some responsibility for this. But even as I watched this happening, I couldn’t keep myself from wondering, Where the heck are people getting glass bottles from these days?

The White House continued testing different strategies to change the narrative. Initially Wrightman had halted the Trumpist efforts to elevate the alternative media into respectability, ignoring unregulated sites like QAnon, TTT3, and 4chan. These conspiracy sites allowed anyone to anonymously post stories, but during the Trump years, on occasion these bizarre claims slithered into legitimate media, like sludge seeping out of grease traps. Initially when that happened, the government editor gave them the O for opinion, although in fact they deserved a B for bullshit. But Munchmeyer’s propaganda office understood the value of these sites in getting out stories that supported the administration agenda to gullible people. While they still published an abundance of the usual Zombies Are Real and Voting Illegally in Wisconsin and Proof Found That Hillary Is an Extraterrestrial, more stories supporting administration initiatives began appearing: for example, Administration Adding Safeguards as China’s 100-Year Plan to Conquer America Enters Final Decade. Several stories about the Detroit raid appeared on these sites; what was chilling is that the editor gave them an N, news, which made them more believable.

The administration also continued its efforts to distract and distort. The Defense Department announced that three more people involved in planning the 7/11 attacks had been killed in a missile attack outside Mogadishu. The raid was a joint exercise of American and Somalian Special Operators, acting on information supplied by unnamed allies. “For those people keeping score at home,” Chris Wallace reported, “that brings the number of terrorist leaders killed in the last six weeks to seventeen, although at least two of them purportedly have been killed multiple times.”

I did note that the administration had completely given up trying to tie any retribution to information taken from the house on Stratford Road. That effort had ended.

I was watching Wallace losing the fight to prevent himself from smirking as he read this report when Jenny called. In a voice infused with an odd mix of resignation and anxiety, she said, “Two guys from Homeland Security just left my office. They were asking all about you.”

Homeland Security? That was interesting. “Not FBI?”

“That’s what they said. They were…” She paused and obviously read from a note or card: “Jackson and Devine.”

Jackson and Devine? “They sound like they should be on late-night TV advertising for people who slipped on fruit in a supermarket.”

“This isn’t funny, Rollie.” I was Rollie when she wanted to make a point. “They asked me a lot of questions about our relationship.”

“What’d you tell them?”

She sighed. “Basically, that you’re a rotten dancer.” She knew it was a cute line, but there were no smiles in her tone. This visit had shaken her up. “I mean, what could I tell them? I don’t even know how to describe it.”