He booked me in without fuss or interest. A sad-looking coloured boy took my bag and showed me to my room, overlooking a tenement block and on the third floor. We travelled together in an elevator that shuddered, creaked and jerked and I was thankful to arrive in one piece.
I looked around the room. At least it had four walls, a ceiling, a toilet and shower, but there was nothing else for it to boast about.
This was certainly a change of scene.
Paradise City and Luceville were as different as a Rolls-Royce is to a third-hand, beat-up Chevy... maybe that is insulting the Chevy.
I unpacked, hung my clothes in the closet, then stripped off and took a shower. Because I was determined to get to grips with myself, I put on a clean white shirt and one of my better suits. I looked at myself in the flyblown mirror and I felt a tiny surge of confidence. At least, I thought, I looked once again like someone in the executive bracket, maybe a little wan, but still, unmistakably someone with authority. It’s amazing, I told myself, what an expensive, well-cut suit, a white shirt and a good tie can do for a man, even such a man as myself.
Dr. Melish had given me his niece’s telephone number. Her name, he had told me, was Jenny Baxter. I called the number, but there was no reply. Slightly irritated, I prowled around the room for some five minutes, then tried again. Still no answer. I went to the open window and looked down at the street. There were a lot of people milling around: they all looked shabby, most of them dirty, most of them women, shopping. There were a lot of kids: they all looked in need of a bath. The cars that congested the streets were all covered with cement dust. I was to learn later that cement dust was the biggest enemy of this town: bigger than boredom that rated as enemy No. 2.
I called Jenny Baxter’s number again, and this time a rather breathless woman’s voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘Miss Baxter?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Laurence Carr. Your uncle, Dr. Melish...’ I paused. She either knew about me or she didn’t.
‘Of course. Where are you?’
‘The Bendix Hotel.’
‘Will you give me about an hour? Then I’ll be over.’
In spite of her breathlessness — as if she had run up six flights of stairs, which I found out later was exactly what she had done — she sounded crisp and efficient.
I wasn’t in the mood to hang around in this dismal room.
‘Suppose I come over?’ I said.
‘Oh yes... do that. You have the address?’
I said I had the address.
‘Then come as soon as you like,’ and she hung up.
I walked down the three flights of stairs. My nerves were still in a bad shape and I couldn’t face the creaking elevator. I asked the coloured boy directions. He said Maddox Street was a five-minute walk from the hotel. As I had found parking for my car after a struggle, I decided to walk.
As I walked down Main Street I became aware that people were staring at me. It gradually dawned on me they were staring at my clothes. When you walk down Main Street, Paradise City, you come up against competition. You just had to be well dressed, but here, in this smog-ridden town, everyone seemed to me to be in rags.
I found Jenny Baxter in a tiny room that served as an office on the sixth floor of a shabby walk-up block. I toiled up the stairs, feeling cement dust gritty around my collar. A change of scene? Melish had certainly picked me a beauty.
Jenny Baxter was thirty-three years of age. She was talclass="underline" around five foot nine, dark with a mass of untidy black hair pinned to the top of her head and that seemed to be threatening to fall down at any moment. She was lean. By my standards, her figure was unfeminine: her breasts, unlike those of the women I knew in Paradise City, were tiny mounds and sexually uninteresting. She looked slightly starved. She was wearing a drab grey dress that she must have made herself: there could be no other explanation for its cut and the way it hung on her. Her features were good: her nose and mouth excellent, but what hooked me were her eyes. Her eyes were honest, interesting and penetrating like those of her uncle.
She was scribbling on a yellow form as I came into the tiny room, and she looked up and regarded me.
I stood in the doorway, unsure of myself, wondering what the hell I was doing here.
‘Larry Carr?’ Her voice was low toned and rich. ‘Come on in.’
As I moved in, the telephone bell started up. She waved me to the only other chair, then took up the receiver. Her replies, consisting of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, were crisp and impersonal. She seemed to have the technique of cutting off what could have been a lengthy conversation had she not been able to control the speaker.
Finally, she replaced the receiver, ran her pencil through her hair and smiled at me. The moment she smiled she became a different person. It was a wonderful, open smile of warmth and friendliness.
‘Sorry. This thing never stops ringing. So you want to help?’
I sat down.
‘If I can.’ I wondered if I really meant this.
‘But not in those beautiful clothes.’
I forced a smile.
‘No, but don’t blame me. Your uncle didn’t warn me.’
She nodded.
‘My uncle is a wonderful man, but he doesn’t bother with details.’ She leaned back and regarded me. ‘He told me about you. I believe in speaking frankly. I know about your problem, and I’m sorry about it, but it doesn’t interest me, because I have hundreds of my own problems. Uncle Henry told me you want to get straightened out, but that is your problem, and in my thinking, it is up to you to straighten yourself out.’ She put her hands on the soiled blotter and smiled at me. ‘Please understand. In this dreadful town there is a lot of work to do and a lot of help to be given. I need help and I haven’t time for sympathy.’
‘I’m here to help.’ I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice. Who did she imagine she was talking to? ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘If I could only believe you really are here to help,’ she said.
‘I’m telling you. I’m here to help. So what do I do?’
She took from a drawer a crumpled pack of cigarettes and offered it.
I produced the gold cigarette case Sydney had given me for my last birthday. It was rather special. It had set Sydney back $1,500: a cigarette case I was proud of: call it a status symbol if you like. Even some of my clients gave it a double take when I produced it.
‘Have one of mine?’ I said.
She looked at the glittering case and then at me.
‘Is that really gold?’
‘This?’ I turned it in my hand so she could see every inch of it. ‘Oh, sure.’
‘But isn’t it very valuable?’
The cement dust felt a little more gritty around my neck.
‘It was a present... fifteen hundred dollars.’ I offered it. ‘Do you want to smoke one of mine?’
‘No, thank you.’ She took a cigarette from her crumpled pack and dragged her eyes away from the cigarette case. ‘Be careful with that,’ she went on. ‘It could be stolen.’
‘They steal things here?’
She nodded and accepted a light from my gold lighter one of my clients had given me.
‘Fifteen hundred dollars? For that amount of money I could supply ten of my families with food for a month.’
‘You have ten families?’ I put the cigarette case back into my hip pocket. ‘Really?’
‘I have two thousand five hundred and twenty-two families,’ she said quietly. She opened a drawer in her battered desk and took from it a street plan of Luceville. She placed it on the desk so I could see it. The plan had been divided up into five sections with a felt pen: each section was marked from 1 to 5. ‘You should know what you’re walking into,’ she went on. ‘Let me explain.’