Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 41 continues: JUST BEFORE I began reading “The Art of Obvious Subtlety,” episode forty-one of Dead Air, a guest arrived from out of the past. He slipped into the back of the room — as well as a big man with a face familiar to millions can slip into a room — and settled himself into a wing chair. He gave me a wave, and I returned it, and then I read.