I rang the bell and heard the elevator rattle its way downwards and come to a stop. The door opened and a guy with a week's growth of beard looked at me with rheumy eyes and waited for me to say something.
"Where can I find the super of this building?"
"Whatcha want him fer?" He spat a stream of tobacco juice between the grill of the elevator.
I palmed my badge in one hand and a fin in the other and let him see both. "Private cop."
"I'm the super," he said.
He reached for the fin and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "I'm listening."
I said, "I'm looking for an outfit called Quick Pix. They were listed as being here."
"That was a long time ago, buster. They pulled out in a hurry 'most a year ago."
"Anybody there now?"
"Naw. This place's a dive. Who the hell would want to rent here? Maybe another outfit like Q.P. They was a fly-by-night bunch, I think."
"How about a look at the place?"
"Sure, come on."
I stepped aboard and we crept up to the fourth floor and stopped. He left the elevator there and turned the lights on, pointing to the end of the hall. "Room 209."
The door wasn't locked. Where an ordinary house nightlatch should be was a round hole like an eye in a skull. The super did some trick with a switch box in a closet and the lights went on in the room.
It was a mess, all right. Somebody had packed out of there like the devil was on his tail. Finished proofs and negatives littered the floor, covered with spider webs and long tendrils of dust. The two windows had no shades, and didn't need them, that's how thick the dirt was. Hypo had blown or was knocked from a box, covering one end with once white powder. Even now a few heel prints were visible in the stuff.
I gathered up a handful of snaps and looked them over. They were all two-by-three prints taken on the streets of couples walking arm-in-arm, sitting on park benches, coming out of Broadway theatres grinning at each other. On the backs were numbers in pencil and scrawled notations of the photogs.
A large packing-box served as a filing cabinet, spilling out blank tickets with a slit built for a quarter. The back half of the box contained other tickets that had been sent in with the mailer's name and address written in the right spot. They were tied in groups of about a hundred, and, all in all, there was a couple thousand dollars represented in cash right there. Quick Pix had done all right for itself.
To one side was a shelf running around the wall lined with shoe boxes and inscribed with names. One said, "N. Sanford" and my interest picked up. In it were cards numbered to correspond with the film in the camera, which looked like a three-or four-day supply. A pencilled note was a reminder to order more film. Neat, precise handwriting. Very feminine. It was Nancy's without a doubt. I plucked it out and tucked it in my pocket.
The guy had been standing near the door watching me silently. I heard him grunt a few times, then: "You know something? This place wasn't like this when they moved out."
I stopped what I was doing. "How's that?"
"I came in to see if they left the walls here and all this junk on the floor was stacked in one corner. Looks like somebody kicked it around."
"Yeah?"
He spat on the floor. "Yeah."
"Who ran the business?"
"Forgot his name." He shrugged. "Some character on his uppers. Guess he did pretty good after a while. One day he packs in here with a new convertible, tells me he's moving out and scrams. Never gimme a dime."
"What about the people that worked for him?"
"Hell, they was all out. They came in here that night and raised a stink. What was I supposed to do, pay their wages? I was lucky I tagged the guy, so I got the rent. Never said nothing to nobody, he didn't."
I stuck a match in my mouth and chewed the end off it. When I gave one last quick glance I walked out. "That does it." He shut the door and played with the switch box again, then stepped into the elevator after me and we started down.
"Get what you come for?" he asked.
"I didn't come for anything special. I'm, er, checking on the owner. He owed some money and I have to collect--for films."
"You don't say! Come to think of it, there's some stuff down in the cellar yet. One of the kids what worked there asked me if she could park it there. I let her when she slipped me a buck."
"She?"
"Yeah, a redhead. Nice kid."
He spat through the grill again and it splattered against the wall. "Do you ever read the papers?" I asked him.
"Funnies sometimes. Just the pictures. Broke my glasses four years ago and never got new ones. Why, what's going on?"
"Nothing. Let's see that stuff downstairs."
Before he could suggest it I came across with another five and it went in the pocket with the other. His grin showed teeth that were brown as mud. We passed the main floor and jolted to a stop at the basement. The air was damp and musty, almost like the morgue, but here was the smell of dirt and decay and the constant whirr of rat feet running along the pipes and timbers. There weren't any lights, but the guy had a flashlight stashed in a joint and he threw the beams around the walls. Little beady eyes looked back at me and ran off, to reappear again farther down. I got the creeps.
He didn't seem to mind it at all.
"Down back, I think." He pointed the flash at the floor and we stepped over crates, broken furniture and the kind of trash that accumulates over a span of years. We stopped by a bin and he poked around with a broom handle, scaring up some rats but nothing else. Beyond that was a row of shelves piled to capacity and he knocked the dust off some of the papers with a crack of the stick. Most of them were old bills and receipts, a few dusty ledgers and a wealth of old paper that had been saved up carefully. I opened a couple of boxes to help out. One was full of pencil stubs; the other some hasty sketches of nudes. They weren't very good.
The light got away from me before I could shove them back and the super said, "Think this is it." I held the light while he dragged out a corrugated cardboard box tied with twine. A big SAVE was written across the front in red crayon. He nodded and pursed his mouth, looking for a rat to spit tobacco juice at. He saw one on a pipe and let loose. I heard the rat squeaking all the way to the end, where he fell off and kicked around in some papers. The stuff he chewed must have been poison.
I pulled the twine off and opened the top. Inside was another box tied with lighter cord that broke easily enough. My hand was shaking a little as I bent back the cover and I pulled the light closer.
There were pictures in this one, all neatly sorted in two rows and protected by layers of tissue paper. Both sides of the box were lined with blotters to absorb any moisture, and between each group of shots was an index card bearing the date they were taken.
Perhaps I expected too much. Perhaps it was the thought of the other pictures that were stolen from me, perhaps it was just knowing that pictures fitted in somewhere, but I held my breath expectantly as I lifted them out.
Then I went into all the curse words I knew. All I had was another batch of street photos with smiling couples waving into the camera or doing something foolish. I was so damn mad I would have left them if I hadn't remembered that they cost me five bucks and I might as well get something for my dough. I tucked the box under my arm and went back to the elevator.
When we got to the street floor the super wanted to know if I felt like signing the after-hours book and I scratched J. Johnson in it and left.
At eight-fifteen I called Pat's home. He still hadn't come in, so I tried the office. The switchboard located him and the minute I heard his voice I knew there was trouble. He said, "Mike? Where are you?"
"Not far from your place. Anything new?"
"Yes." His words were clipped. "I want to speak to you. Can you meet me in the Roundtown Grill in ten minutes?"