Somebody had organized it pretty well. I had to admire them. I mean I don’t like New York—wouldn’t live there if you gave me the place—but it showed a sort of go-getting spirit. It was no easy job getting a full staff together to run a department store operation, when any city the size of New York must have a couple thousand stores. You know what I mean? It’s like running a hotel or anything else—how are you going to get people to work for you when they can just as easily walk down the street, find a vacant store and set up their own operation?
But Macy’s was fully manned. There was a guard at every door and a walking patrol along the block-front between the entrances to make sure nobody broke in through the windows. They all wore green armbands and uniforms—well, lots of people wore uniforms.
I walked over.
“Afternoon,” I said affably to the guard. “I want to pick up some stuff. Typewriter, maybe a gun, you know. How do you work it here? Flat rate for all you can carry, prices marked on everything, or what is it?”
He stared at me suspiciously. He was a monster; six inches taller than I, he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. He didn’t look very smart, which might explain why he was working for somebody else these days. But he was smart enough for what he had to do.
He demanded: “You new in town?”
I nodded.
He thought for a minute. “All right, buddy. Go on in. You pick out what you want, see? We’ll straighten out the price when you come out.”
“Fair enough.” I started past him.
He grabbed me by the arm. “No tricks,” he ordered. “You come out the same door you went in, understand?”