Doolin leaned forward and spoke to the driver: “Is that Dreamland joint at Sixth an’ Hill open in the afternoon?”
The driver thought a moment, shook his head.
Doolin said: “All right, then — Fontenoy Apartments — on Whitley in Hollywood.”
Nelson Halloran looked like Death. His white face was extremely long, narrow; his sharp chin tapered upward in unbroken lines to high sharp cheek-bones, great deep-sunken eyes; continued to a high, almost degenerately narrow, forehead. His mouth was wide, thin, dark against the whiteness of his skin. His hair was the color of water. He was six-feet-three inches tall, weighed a hundred and eighty.
He half lay in a deeply upholstered chair in the living room of his apartment and watched a round spot of sunlight move across the wall. The shades were drawn and the apartment was in semi-darkness. It was a chaos of modern furniture, books, magazines, papers, bottles; there were several good but badly hung reproductions on the pale walls.
Halloran occasionally lifted one long white hand languidly to his mouth, inhaled smoke deeply and blew it upward into the ray of sunlight.
When the phone buzzed he shuddered involuntarily, leaned side wise and took it up from a low table.
He listened a moment, said: “Send him up.” His voice was very low. There was softness in it; and there was coldness and something very far-away.
He moved slightly in the chair so that one hand was near his side, in the folds of his dressing gown. There was a Luger there in the darkness of the chair. He was facing the door.
With the whirl of the buzzer he called: “Come in.”