kept up on who was running things out there. He had seen and been around all the shenanigans that had gone on out there for years; stuff that most outsiders didn’t know about. He knew about the girls and why there were rules against cameras in the VIP clubs. Russell still had access to his privileges, his badge, and his passes to the event and the VIP clubs, although he seldom used them. Even with his inactivity at the charity, his dad remained much too much a man of consequence for Russell to lose his benefits. Not that Russell wanted to pay for something he could get for free, but he would rather buy tickets than use the assets in the special club levels reserved for those esteemed charitable benefactors. So, yeah, Russell knows all the ins and outs of the Show.
“Where are you going next, Storm?”
”Back out to the Livestock Show offices, meet with the staff.”
“OK. Call me later to let me know how it went. I’ll go in and check with my old buddies at the station to see what they know and hey, by the way, us insiders just refer to it as the “Show” or the “Rodeo,” not by its full name.”
Russell smiled like the proverbial cat that ate the canary as he poured cups of coffee into clunky ceramic mugs for each of them.
After three more cups of coffee at Russell’s house Storm needed to pee real bad, but he hurried and controlled the desire till he could get back to the Dome. In a place that big he figured he could find at least one men’s room to get rid of the coffee overflow.
Chapter Five
Country Dog in the City
By the time Storm left Russell’s condo it was past midmorning and traffic on the 610 Loop had increased to a paralytic crawl consisting of both churchgoers and people heading to the trendy bistros in the Galleria for brunch. With expansion and growth in the city it was always repairing some main thoroughfare or building an extra lane and that always made the Loop an even bigger maelstrom of hindrances. The longstanding joke was that if you started to work on a road in Houston when you were eighteen, you could retire at age sixty-five from a road crew that’s working within ten miles of where you started. This seemed more fact then fiction.
At the Dome complex, Storm was directed back to the first entry he had tried that morning. The offices for the rodeo were in the new giant sparkling contemporary center on the north side of the new stadium. This time, after he showed his police credentials he was told where to park, with emphasis that he not park in any spaces reserved for members of Houston’s new football team—and one of those spaces was exactly where he pulled in. He put his police tag in the window in case someone had a problem; his police tag trumped jock parking.
The new center was huge. When you entered the massive hallway on the west end, you couldn’t see the east end—it was at least a quarter of mile long. To the left of the main hall was the exhibition area that ran the length of the building. The front of the exhibition area was occupied by vendors selling everything from Western clothing to artwork or farm equipment; you could get a turkey leg or sign up for college. Further back were the stalls and judging arenas for 4H and FFA animals to be exhibited: cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, rabbits and chickens.
Storm took an escalator up to the second floor of the building some fifty feet above the entry floor, which was composed of myriads of meeting rooms and offices for the Livestock Show, the National Football League, and the complex management company. Many of the rooms in the upper level were huge expanses of space that had sliding walls that could be configured as smaller rooms for meetings or large temporary members-only bars that dotted the entire complex during special events.
Storm walked halfway down the long hallway till he saw the Rodeo offices on his left with its elegant mahogany double-doored entrance that opened into an opulent reception area.
“Where are you going next, Storm?”
”Back out to the Livestock Show offices, meet with the staff.”
“OK. Call me later to let me know how it went. I’ll go in and check with my old buddies at the station to see what they know and hey, by the way, us insiders just refer to it as the “Show” or the “Rodeo,” not by its full name.”
Russell smiled like the proverbial cat that ate the canary as he poured cups of coffee into clunky ceramic mugs for each of them.
After three more cups of coffee at Russell’s house Storm needed to pee real bad, but he hurried and controlled the desire till he could get back to the Dome. In a place that big he figured he could find at least one men’s room to get rid of the coffee overflow.
Chapter Five
Country Dog in the City
By the time Storm left Russell’s condo it was past midmorning and traffic on the 610 Loop had increased to a paralytic crawl consisting of both churchgoers and people heading to the trendy bistros in the Galleria for brunch. With expansion and growth in the city it was always repairing some main thoroughfare or building an extra lane and that always made the Loop an even bigger maelstrom of hindrances. The longstanding joke was that if you started to work on a road in Houston when you were eighteen, you could retire at age sixty-five from a road crew that’s working within ten miles of where you started. This seemed more fact then fiction.
At the Dome complex, Storm was directed back to the first entry he had tried that morning. The offices for the rodeo were in the new giant sparkling contemporary center on the north side of the new stadium. This time, after he showed his police credentials he was told where to park, with emphasis that he not park in any spaces reserved for members of Houston’s new football team—and one of those spaces was exactly where he pulled in. He put his police tag in the window in case someone had a problem; his police tag trumped jock parking.
The new center was huge. When you entered the massive hallway on the west end, you couldn’t see the east end—it was at least a quarter of mile long. To the left of the main hall was the exhibition area that ran the length of the building. The front of the exhibition area was occupied by vendors selling everything from Western clothing to artwork or farm equipment; you could get a turkey leg or sign up for college. Further back were the stalls and judging arenas for 4H and FFA animals to be exhibited: cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, rabbits and chickens.
Storm took an escalator up to the second floor of the building some fifty feet above the entry floor, which was composed of myriads of meeting rooms and offices for the Livestock Show, the National Football League, and the complex management company. Many of the rooms in the upper level were huge expanses of space that had sliding walls that could be configured as smaller rooms for meetings or large temporary members-only bars that dotted the entire complex during special events.
Storm walked halfway down the long hallway till he saw the Rodeo offices on his left with its elegant mahogany double-doored entrance that opened into an opulent reception area.
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