I looked it up to refresh. The ending is just ‘80s Walk Street absurdity, It fits with all the crazy characters that were in the headlines back then, Sharpton, Trump, Goetz, Imus, Stern, the ‘86 Mets…
Wolfe has a way of capturing different places, the people and the environment.
He nailed the new south in “A Man in Full”. And even in one of his weakest novels “I Am Charlotte Simmons” he nailed the elite southern college experience.
I actually read A Man in Full at night on a cot in Iraq in 2003. I was pretty easily entertained. I even read two Dune prequels which are critically panned. So the bar was pretty low.