About a month passes, until the end of February. During this time Rebecca is propositioned to join a fuzzily defined group, but turns it down, and is returned to the wild with vague warnings about ever telling anyone anything. The software company is dead, though its insurance is paying its investors something. Alexandra continues to work on her project with the red phone, and the Strausses begin to make themselves out as industrial artists in the local community. No great art has been produced yet, however. Angelina gets in a bar fight on Valentine's day, though it takes Esteban a few weeks to pry it out of her.
At the end of the month, Alexandra activates her project. "Graham" looks like a shiny robotic torso of a man embedded in a desk with many phones on it. She introduces him to the crew. He proves to have a sunny disposition with a bit of an old-fashioned touch to it. He's very helpful and can intercept and tap phone calls from phones he's seen or to numbers given to him. He may have other abilities as well. Graham quickly develops phone friends all over the world, but no one really asks about them.
Several messages come in after that. Angelina gets a letter from cousin Vinnie:
Dear Angie, The Network has been asking about you. The Antinellis are probably telling them everything - Papa isn't able to hold them down any more, but I guess you knew that. Things are very complicated, and the things which aren't complicated are falling apart. Call me. Vinny.
Angelina asks Graham to tap the Don's phone and listens to a couple of relevant conversations recorded on wax cylinder. In the first, the Don is complaining about needing the Antinellis to keep off the Columbians. In the second, he is receiving a phone call from a man who orders him to report in should Angelina contact anyone in the family. The man also asks some questions about Angelina's behavior as a child and her recent actions. The Don has little to say.
After learning this, Angelina fills in Damien and the rest of SILVER about this. The Network is apparently an organization to which all the New York crime syndicates pay a tithe to stay in business. The Network also provides them with a variety of services that they could not otherwise perform, including overseas connections. Angelina is fuzzy on that part. After some discussion, they keep Graham tapping the Don' s phone and the number the Network man called from (a private club in Manhattan). Damien also issues orders for the man Vinny's contact's contact in TNI New York to get relocated, in case the Network tries to trace the chain. They don't know anything about the Network and thus don't really want to try to mess with it.
"I hate it when crime is organized." - Angelina
Meanwhile Alexandra receives a call from Sam. He tells her that a friend of hers, Bud Flitch, is coming to Santa Fe and has a tendency to get into trouble. Would she keep an eye on him? She agrees to do so.
The next day is mainly occupied with Bud, who shows up in the morning in an SUV that he promptly flips over in the yard. It blows up. His complete haplessness and apparent danger-magnet properties prompt Orchid to use the Conclave Tarot on him. Only one card is needed - the Fool, which makes itself over to have his face. Everyone concludes that he must be an avatar of the Fool, and decide to throw him on the next train out of Santa Fe. It proves to be more of a chore than expected, but after a few false starts they get him on a train heading to Arizona.
After Bud goes, Damien tells them that vacation time is over (they weren't really aware they were having a vacation, but they've certainly been taking it fairly easy). He wants them to be researching anything magical they can find - they're one of TNI's two magical teams, and pretty much magic experts as far as TNI is concerned. As an interesting tidbit, he throws out that TNI has recently discovered that magic doesn't work in the Capitol building or the White House. Or at least, entropomancy (as performed by Uriel Sterne of the Weather Channelers) and plutomancy (as attempted by Violet) and a few minor rituals do not. No one has any guesses about why. Esteban speculates that his magic might work.
"If they are [suppressing magic] actively, I think your kind of magic is first on the list." - Gavin
"I dunno, have you heard about the president?" - Esteban