Muldoon hated the pirate prices of midtown parking lots, and so was late. It had taken him ten minutes to find parking space for the Plymouth. As he started to open the door of room 657 he heard the voice of one of the twins. The words or sounds were in a language completely foreign to him. He thought to knock, but changed his mind. To knock would have made it obvious he had been listening. He barged right in.
The twins were in the anteroom. Muldoon got the impression they knew he had heard them, and an even stronger impression, that the fact was of no importance. That bothered him, for some reason.
"Ah, there you are," the twin to the left said. "Evin was wondering whether you would show up, but I told him he was putting himself to useless aggravation."
That damned mixed-up phrasing again, Muldoon thought. "Took a little time to find parking space," he said.
"Shall we be off, then?" Robert asked.
"All right with me," Muldoon replied. There was another odd thing. Evin Reeger seemed to have so very little to say.
Their destination was a place halfway down the Island. Muldoon's brow had lifted when they gave him the area. So far as he knew there hadn't been any development in the area. It was just a bit too far off the highways and rail lines for housing developments, and even more badly located for industrial requirements. He wondered what the devil they had in mind out there.
Traffic was light and the drive took little more than an hour and a half on the main highway, and another fifteen minutes of blacktop side road before Evin told him to "Turn left here," onto a rutted path off the blacktop. The path led through some scrub growth that ended on the edge of an acre or so of dump heap. Rusted heaps of broken cars were scattered about. A foul odor came from the left as though garbage, too, had been dumped and left to rot. There was a flat one-storied wooden shack close by to which Evin directed him to drive up to.