“You can’t eat your hat in this weather,” Ken said. “It’s too cold. You’ll need it.”
The taxi driver, skillfully edging his way through the traffic, spoke over his shoulder. “Any special number on Chatham Square?”
“No,” Sandy told him. “Just drop us off when you get there.”
A few minutes later the driver was saying, “O.K. Drop off. You’re here—and fast, like you ordered.”
“Swell. Thanks.” Sandy added a tip to the fare registered on the meter.
When the taxi started back uptown the boys stood uncertainly for a moment on the sidewalk. Chatham Square was a junction point of several streets and alleys, all radiating out from its open area like the spokes of a crazily designed wheel. Evidence of New York’s large Chinese population was everywhere.
The window of the drugstore just behind them was so covered with Chinese characters that no street number was visible. A sign on the adjoining building announced—in English—that tattooing was done on the premises, next door was a Chinese grocery whose windows were heaped high with strange items of food including a variety of dried fish and meat. A few steps beyond the grocery a blank wall was covered with large sheets of paper bearing freshly inked Chinese characters. Beneath them, in a cluster on the sidewalk, stood several Chinese huddled in warm coats.
“They’re reading the news bulletins,” Ken murmured, as Sandy stared. He let his eye wander farther around the square until finally he saw a street number on the front of a souvenir shop. “The Tobacco Mart must be down that way,” Ken decided, gesturing toward the right. “Let’s cross the square and try to sight it from there.”
They dodged through the square’s congested traffic, walked past a motion-picture theater whose lobby was decorated with stills from Oriental pictures, and then backtracked quickly into the protection of the theater’s posters. They had found what they were looking for—a weathered sign atop a dilapidated three-story building on the other side of the street. The sign read TOBACCO MART—Smokers’ Supplies and Novelties—WHOLESALE ONLY. The two upper floors of the building were pierced by dusty blank-staring windows, the top ones dingily curtained. The street floor was fronted by glass display windows, but they had been painted black to a line above eye level, so that the passer-by could see nothing of what was beyond them.
Sandy shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other. “Well, there it is,” he said unnecessarily. “Now all we have to do is see if my hunch—” He broke off because Ken had grabbed his arm.