"All right, if you wish," he said. "But I will have to go back to the shop within an hour—Nick has not had his lunch."
"I won't keep you that long," Ferguson said.
They turned at the corner and walked down Washington, past Town Hall to The Little Bear. Beyond this point, everything was Ferguson's: the dance hall, the casino, the bawdy house, the two cafes and three bars, and the two huge warehouses at the end of the avenue. But it was the casino that Ferguson meant when he said "my place".
A white-aproned boy got up hurriedly and opened the heavy doors when they approached. Ferguson strode past without looking at him, and Cudyk followed across the long, empty room. Dust covers shrouded the roulette table, the chuck-a-luck layout, faro, chemin-de-fer, dice and poker tables. The bar was deserted, bottles and glasses neatly stacked.
Ferguson led the way up a short flight of stairs to the overhanging balcony at the end of the room. He opened the door with a key—a rarity in the Quarter, since cylinder locks were available only by scavenging on Earth, and had to be imported, whereas a mechanism used by the Niori as a mathematical toy could be readily adapted into an efficient combination lock.
The low-ceilinged room was furnished with a blond-wood desk and swivel chair, a long, pale green couch and two chairs upholstered in the same fabric: all Earth imports, scavenged from stocks manufactured before the Collapse. The carpet was a deeper green. There were three framed pictures on the walls: a blue-period Picasso, a muted oyster-white and grey Utrillo and a small Roualt clown.
Ferguson was watching him. "Just like my place in Chicago," he said. "You never saw it before, did you?"
"No," Cudyk said. "I have never been in the Casino until now."
"Sit down," said Ferguson, pointing to one of the upholstered chairs. He pulled out the swivel chair and leaned back in it. He nodded toward the glass which formed the entire front wall of the room. "Sittin' up here, I can see everything that goes on downstairs. I got a phone—" he laid his hand on it—"that communicates with the cashier's booth in every room. I can handle the whole place from here, and I don't have to be bothered by the goofs if I don't want to. Also, that glass is bullet proof. It's Niori stuff, ten times better than anything we had back home. They tell me you couldn't get through it with a bazooka."
Cudyk said nothing.