Early evening traffic was heavy as he pulled into the quiet, old-fashioned street where Ewing lived.
Sober brownstone houses, their front steps rising steeply to stain-glass paneled doors; heavily curtained bay windows; weather-stained and rotting gingerbread; an atmosphere of reluctant decay and genteel senescence. Ewing's house was like a dozen others in the same block.
Joey was not a man given to hunches, and yet, as he climbed out of his car and stood staring up at the silent house, he could not repress a shiver of apprehension.
He looked up the street. Nothing marred the quiet. A middle-aged woman hurried home with her armload of groceries. A man paraded an ancient dog on a leash.
Slowly, Joey climbed the steps. His apprehension was no more than the resentment he felt for the assignment. He yanked the old-fashioned bell and listened for its echoes dying deep in the house.
He fidgeted impatiently. Perhaps old Ewing wasn't at home. Or, maybe he was so eccentric he no longer answered the bell. Joey jerked it again.
On the traffic-noisy boulevard a block away, he heard a raw squealing of brakes.
Joey sighed and turned away. He'd wasted an hour. He started down the steps. And the door opened.
Jason Ewing was very old. His incredibly blue eyes seemed alien in the yellow parchment face. His clothing, his manner, even his speech were archaic.