“They just started shooting.”
He said: “We got a repair service here — do you want us to fix up your car?”
She nodded. “How long will it take?”
“Couple days. We’ll have to get a new windshield from the branch factory in Queens — an’ take off that tank...”
She took a card out of her bag and gave it to him, said: “Call me up when it’s finished.”
After a little while, a cab came out of the darkness of a side street, turned into the station. The woman got out of the car and went over to the cab, spoke to the driver: “Do you know any shortcuts into Manhattan? Somebody tried to hold me up on the main road a little while ago, and maybe they’re still laying for me. I don’t want any more of it — I want to go home.” She was very emphatic.
The driver was a big red-faced Irishman. He grinned, said: “Lady — I know a million of ’em. You’ll be as safe with me as you’d be in your own home.”
She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell to the three men around her car and got into the cab. After the cab had disappeared, the man to whom she had given the card took it out of his pocket and squinted at it, read aloud: “Mrs. Dale Hanan — Five-eighty Park Avenue.”
The short, middle-aged man bobbed his head knowingly. “Sure,” he said — “I knew she was class. She’s Hanan’s wife — the millionaire. Made his dough in oil — Oklahoma. His chauffeur told me how he got his start — didn’t have a shoestring or a place to put it, so he shot off his big toe and collected ten grand on an accident policy — grubstake on his first well. Bright boy. He’s got a big estate down at Roslyn.”
The man with the card nodded. He said: “That’s swell. We can soak him plenty.” He put the card back into his pocket.