overhead garage door, graffiti-smeared in a language
that hadn’t been seen on Earth since the glory days of the Maya. To the immediate left of this was a vertical series of bell
buttons, each with an identifying label. These were what Dortmunder was copying onto a cash register receipt from a chain
drugstore.
Reading the labels directly, since Dortmunder’s handwriting was about as legible as the Mayan graffiti, Kelp saw:
5 GR DEVELOPMENT
4 SCENERY STARS
3 KNICKERBOCKER STORAGE
2 COMBINED TOOL
The building, broad and old, was made of large rectangular stone blocks, time-darkened to a blurry charcoal. On the street
floor, to the left of the garage, were two large windows, barred for security and opaque with dirt, and beyond them at the
farther end a gray metal door with a bell mounted in its middle at head height. The upper floors showed blank walls above
the garage entrance and three windows each, all looking a little cleaner than the ones down here.
Putting paper and pen away, Dortmunder acknowledged Kelp’s presence for the first time: “Harya doin?”
“I wanna see the inside of the place,” Kelp told him.
“We can do that,” Dortmunder said, and pushed the button for five.
They waited less than a minute, and then a mechanical voice from somewhere said, “Yeah?”
“It’s John and Andy,” Dortmunder told the door.
“And Stan,” Stan said, having just walked up from farther downtown.
“And Stan.”
“I’ll be right down.”
They waited about three minutes this time, while beside them the slow-moving traffic of southbound Varick Street oozed by,
the two nearer lanes headed for the Holland Tunnel and New Jersey, the farther happier lanes not. Then, with a lot of metallic
groaning and creaking, the garage door lifted and there was Doug Fairkeep with the grin he wore like a fashion statement,
saying, “Right on time.”
They boarded. The elevator, big enough for a delivery truck, was just a rough wooden platform, with no side walls of its own.
Ahead of them the building was broad and deep, and this level was used as a garage, for a great variety of vehicles. There
were cars and vans and small trucks, but also what looked like a TV news truck, a small fire engine, an ambulance, a hansom
cab without the horse, and a lot more. If it had wheels, it was in here.
Doug stood next to a compact control box attached to the building’s front wall, and when he pressed a button on it the door
began noisily to lower. The elevator started up before the door finished coming down, which was a surprise, though nobody
actually lost his balance.
The platform they rode rose slowly through the building, too noisily for conversation. On the second floor—Combined Tool—a
clean off-white wall stood at the side, but no front wall. Out there a hall extended to the left, also off-white, with one
closed office door in the part they could see.
Third floor: Knickerbocker Storage. On this level too there was a wall to their left, not recently painted anything. This
wall extended straight back to the rear of the building, with double doors spaced along the way. Apparently the idea was,
a truck or a van could come up the elevator to this floor, then drive along that hall and stop to unload at one or another
set of doors.
Four: Scenery Stars. No wall either left or straight ahead, and no interior walls either except in the far right corner; probably
a bathroom. In the far left corner a flight of black iron stairs rose up from rear to front, and thick black iron columns
stood at intervals to bear the weight. The large space was full of stacks of lumber, piles of paint cans, tables covered with
tools, tall canvas stage flats. A bald man in sunglasses sat at a slanted drafting table near the stairs, drawing on a large
pad with pen and ruler under a bare bulb with a broad tin shade like the one in the back room at the OJ. He didn’t look toward
them as their platform rose up
that hadn’t been seen on Earth since the glory days of the Maya. To the immediate left of this was a vertical series of bell
buttons, each with an identifying label. These were what Dortmunder was copying onto a cash register receipt from a chain
drugstore.
Reading the labels directly, since Dortmunder’s handwriting was about as legible as the Mayan graffiti, Kelp saw:
5 GR DEVELOPMENT
4 SCENERY STARS
3 KNICKERBOCKER STORAGE
2 COMBINED TOOL
The building, broad and old, was made of large rectangular stone blocks, time-darkened to a blurry charcoal. On the street
floor, to the left of the garage, were two large windows, barred for security and opaque with dirt, and beyond them at the
farther end a gray metal door with a bell mounted in its middle at head height. The upper floors showed blank walls above
the garage entrance and three windows each, all looking a little cleaner than the ones down here.
Putting paper and pen away, Dortmunder acknowledged Kelp’s presence for the first time: “Harya doin?”
“I wanna see the inside of the place,” Kelp told him.
“We can do that,” Dortmunder said, and pushed the button for five.
They waited less than a minute, and then a mechanical voice from somewhere said, “Yeah?”
“It’s John and Andy,” Dortmunder told the door.
“And Stan,” Stan said, having just walked up from farther downtown.
“And Stan.”
“I’ll be right down.”
They waited about three minutes this time, while beside them the slow-moving traffic of southbound Varick Street oozed by,
the two nearer lanes headed for the Holland Tunnel and New Jersey, the farther happier lanes not. Then, with a lot of metallic
groaning and creaking, the garage door lifted and there was Doug Fairkeep with the grin he wore like a fashion statement,
saying, “Right on time.”
They boarded. The elevator, big enough for a delivery truck, was just a rough wooden platform, with no side walls of its own.
Ahead of them the building was broad and deep, and this level was used as a garage, for a great variety of vehicles. There
were cars and vans and small trucks, but also what looked like a TV news truck, a small fire engine, an ambulance, a hansom
cab without the horse, and a lot more. If it had wheels, it was in here.
Doug stood next to a compact control box attached to the building’s front wall, and when he pressed a button on it the door
began noisily to lower. The elevator started up before the door finished coming down, which was a surprise, though nobody
actually lost his balance.
The platform they rode rose slowly through the building, too noisily for conversation. On the second floor—Combined Tool—a
clean off-white wall stood at the side, but no front wall. Out there a hall extended to the left, also off-white, with one
closed office door in the part they could see.
Third floor: Knickerbocker Storage. On this level too there was a wall to their left, not recently painted anything. This
wall extended straight back to the rear of the building, with double doors spaced along the way. Apparently the idea was,
a truck or a van could come up the elevator to this floor, then drive along that hall and stop to unload at one or another
set of doors.
Four: Scenery Stars. No wall either left or straight ahead, and no interior walls either except in the far right corner; probably
a bathroom. In the far left corner a flight of black iron stairs rose up from rear to front, and thick black iron columns
stood at intervals to bear the weight. The large space was full of stacks of lumber, piles of paint cans, tables covered with
tools, tall canvas stage flats. A bald man in sunglasses sat at a slanted drafting table near the stairs, drawing on a large
pad with pen and ruler under a bare bulb with a broad tin shade like the one in the back room at the OJ. He didn’t look toward
them as their platform rose up
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