The pranks compound: HELP WANTED confirmed, engraved invitations in the works

pivotal · prob. 19 Nov YDAU (reported)

• When: ~1100h at Gately's hospital bed, during the McDade/Diehl visit; the book's last sight of Minty.
• What: At Gately's bedside, McDade — "in what's either an intimate aside or a knife-twist at a Staffer who's in no position to enforce anything" — confides that "he and Emil Minty are arranging with Parias-Carbo," who works at All-Bright Printing, "for engraved-looking formal invitations for the agoraphobic folks in Unit #3" to come out to a crowded, noisy outdoor welcome bash: a prank engineered for people who by definition cannot come out. And the narration closes an earlier case: "now Gately knows for sure it was McDade and Minty that put the HELP WANTED sign up under the window of the lady in Unit #4 that shouts for Help." The book leaves Minty here: one offense from the Shoe, mid-conspiracy against the maximally helpless, wholly unreformed on the page.