I handed them to him — all the evidence I had. As he unfolded them for a look I took him in. He was around my age and height, skinny but with muscles, with outstanding ears and a purple mole on his right jaw. If it was him I had a date with I sure had been diddled. “They look like it,” he said, and stuffed the notes in a pocket. From another pocket he produced a key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. “Follow me.”
I did so, to the stairs and up. As we ascended two flights, with him in front, it would have been a cinch for me to reach and take a gun off his hip if there had been one there, but there wasn’t. He may have preferred a shoulder holster like me. The stair steps were bare worn wood, the walls had needed plaster since at least Pearl Harbor, and the smell was a mixture I wouldn’t want to analyze. On the second landing he went down the hall to a door at the rear, opened it, and signaled me through with a jerk of his head.
There was another man there, but still it wasn’t my date — anyway I hoped not. It would be an overstatement to say the room was furnished, but I admit there was a table, a bed, and three chairs, one of them upholstered. The man, who was lying on the bed, pushed himself up as we entered, and as he swung around to sit, his feet barely reached the floor. He had shoulders and a torso like a heavyweight wrestler, and legs like an underweight jockey. His puffed eyes blinked in the light from the unshaded bulb as if he had been asleep.
“That him?” he demanded and yawned.
Skinny said it was. The wrestler-jockey, W-J for short, got up and went to the table, picked up a ball of thick cord, approached me and spoke. “Take off your hat and coat and sit there.” He pointed to one of the straight chairs.
“Hold it,” Skinny commanded him. “I haven’t explained yet.” He faced me. “The idea is simple. This man that’s coming to see you don’t want any trouble. He just wants to talk. So we tie you in that chair and leave you, and he comes and you have a talk, and after he leaves we come back and cut you loose and out you go. Is that plain enough?”
I grinned at him. “It sure is, brother. It’s too damn plain. What if I won’t sit down? What if I wiggle when you start to tie me?”
“Then he don’t come and you don’t have a talk.”
“What if I walk out now?”
“Go ahead. We get paid anyhow. If you want to see this guy, there’s only one way: we tie you in the chair.”