“If it’s no good, we can always go somewhere else,” she argued.
We found Joe’s down a side street. There was nothing gaudy nor deluxe about the place; no doorman to help you out of your car, no one to tell you where to park, no awning, no carpet. It was just a door in the wall with a neon sign: JOE’S.
“Well, here we are, sweetheart,” I said “Do I leave the car here or do we take it inside?”
“You knock on the door and ask,” Clair said severely. “The way you behave you’d imagine you’d never been to a joint before.”
“Not in a tuxedo I haven’t,” I said, getting out of the car. “It makes me kind of shy.” I rapped on the door, waited.
The door was opened by a thickset man with a tin ear, and a broken nose. He had squashed himself into a boiled shirt, and he looked no more comfortable in it than if he’d been wearing a hair shirt.
“Good evening,” I said. “We have come to eat. Patrolman O’Brien recommended this place. How about it?”
“That jerk always recommends us,” the thickset man said, spat past me into the street. “As if we want his lousy recommendations. Well, now you’re here, you’d better come in.”
“What do I do with the car?” I asked, a little startled.
He stared at the Buick, shrugged.