I grabbed up my hat and made for the door.
II
247 Jefferson Avenue was an apartment house at the Fairview end of the avenue: a big, square shaped concrete building with green shutters at the windows and a gaudy canopy over the main entrance.
The lobby of the apartment house was dim and soothing. There were no murals or statues or violent colours to give the homecoming drunks a fright. The carpet was laid over rubber blocks and gave under my feet as I crossed to the automatic elevator.
Hidden behind a screen of tropical palms in brass pots were the desk and switchboard. A girl with a telephone harness hitched to her chest was reading the funnies. She was cither too bored to bother or didn’t hear me come in, for she didn’t look up, and that’s unusual in a joint like this. As a rule they head you off from the elevator until they have called whoever you’re visiting to make sure you’re wanted.
But as I slid back the elevator door, a man in a shabby dark suit and a bowler hat set straight and square on his head appeared from behind a pillar and plodded over to me.
‘Going some place or just taking the ride for the hell of it?’ he growled.
His face was round and fat, and covered with a web of fine veins. His eyes were deep-set and cold. His moustache hid a mouth that was probably thin and unpleasant. He looked what he was: a retired cop, supplementing his pension by bouncing the unwanteds.
‘I’m making a call,’ I said, and gave him a smile; but he ‘didn’t seem impressed by my charms.
‘We like callers to check in at the desk. Who do you want to see?’ He sounded no tougher than any other cop in Orchid City, but tough enough to have hair on his chest.