Unable to sleep in his immaculate room, Tucker Rye Minnick was disturbed by the smell of mineral water from the fourth-floor font and nightmares of lethal mine gases from his West Virginia past. In the half-awake dark he considered fleeing his assignment but recommitted to excelling for the Bureau by locking down communications, generating exhaustive reports, and cultivating informants.

Stepping into the hall, he was addressed by an unseen “Consultant—411,” who briefly cracked her door, dismissed his approach as ill-timed, and shut him out. Taking a staff stairwell marked by graffiti reading “Listen, Tom!,” Tucker recalled a near-fatal chase years earlier in a brothel, when an abused girl had shot her captor with Tucker’s fallen gun; Tucker had shielded her by staging the shooting as his own.

Reaching a pre-dawn service corridor, he found the kitchen alive with music and labor. Staff took turns whispering to a sweetwater font as if in ritual, and when Tucker asked for coffee, cook René Durand curtly directed him upstairs and shut the door on him as well. Tucker reflected on the public’s conditional regard for the Bureau and his own memories of the brothel case.

At dawn, Tucker began interviews in the Glass Studio, meeting Toad Blankenship (also called Gladys Vance), head of housekeeping for twenty-five years. Toad rejected his push to have her staff report on guest-room contents, invoking Avallon norms—“Guests are guests”—and revealing personal losses after Pearl Harbor: her son Norm killed on the USS Oklahoma and her husband newly enlisted. Tucker tried to pry with personal questions, but Toad held the line, signaling the hotel’s internal hierarchy: Edgar Gilfoyle, June Hudson (“Hoss”), and powerful domain leaders like herself.

Later, Tucker visited the switchboard, overseen by Ulcie Leta Crites, a stern supervisor, and staffed by “hello girls.” Ulcie objected to Agent Hugh Calloway’s presence among the operators. June Hudson intervened and, in a private sound booth, pressed Tucker on whether moving Hugh would matter to the work. Tucker argued principle and capability; June emphasized practical compromises necessary to keep operations smooth, admitting she had long wanted to fire Ulcie but had been constrained by local consequences and legacy ties.

When Tucker retorted that “Francis Gilfoyle is dead,” June visibly struggled with loyalty and grief. Tucker then warned she would not like Agent Harris as a replacement and exited. Hugh, anticipating the decision, gathered his paperwork. As Ulcie settled smugly by her operators, Tucker and Hugh exchanged looks of disdain. Through the glass, June remained motionless, hand to her lips, eyes closed. Tucker left resolved that being disliked was irrelevant; he would do the job and be forgotten.