"Unfortunately I've agreed to keep Sunday open for a meeting with the officers of SOCK. You see, I'm writing a book on the historic Casablanca." "Oh, really? I could tell you a lot about that. My grandparents had an apartment here back in the 1920s, when it was so exclusive. My grandmother used to tell me stories about it." "I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for the suggestion," he said, inwardly recoiling. "Has the mailperson been here?" Isabelle waved an envelope. "Yes, the mail just came in." She appeared quite happy about it. No doubt the envelope contained her subsistence check.
Qwilleran went to the mailroom and found the door blocked by Ferdie Le Bull, his imprinted T-shirt stretched across his enormous chest. He confronted Qwilleran with the menacing scowl that was his idea of social grace. "When you gonna take the pictures?" he demanded.
"Of Miss Plumb's apartment? Whenever she gives her approval." "Any time's okay. She never goes out." "All right. I'll notify the photographer, and he'll call you to make an appointment." "She's all het up about it," said the houseman. "Is he gonna take my picture, too?" He passed a hand over his bald head.
"Probably." "Does he play bridge?" "You'll have to ask him," said Qwilleran. Encouraged by this positive development he determined to go ahead seriously with the book. As he waited for the elevator he visualized about thirty-percent text and seventy-percent black- and-white photos: views of the opulent lobby and Palm Pavilion, pictures of celebrities, old cars, and residents in nostalgic fashions - from Edwardian to Flapper Era to Early Thirties. In the center, a color section would feature overall shots of the Art Deco rooms as well as close-ups of the rare vase containing Harrison Plumb's ashes, the Cubist rugs and pillows, a tooled copper screen inset with ebony, tables with angular legs, club chairs with voluptuous curves, and walls of framed French art photos of the 1920s. It was all lush and otherworldly. The frontispiece would be Adelaide St. John Plumb with her plucked and penciled eyebrows and her marcelled hair, sitting on the : overstuffed sofa and pouring tea, looking like a living relic of the Casablanca's dim past. For the text he would like to interview old- timers; surely there were such persons tucked away in odd corners of the building, living in faded splendor. It was a pity that Mrs. Button had not survived a little longer. Even Isabelle Wilburton might have to be interviewed.
As he pondered the possibilities, the door of Old Red opened, and the white-haired manager of Roberto's restaurant stepped from the car, accompanied by a pale-faced man who was much younger. He was the fellow with a bandage where his right ear should be.
Charlotte Roop was looking buoyantly happy. "Oh, Mr. Qwilleran!" she cried. "I want you to meet my friend, Raymond Dimwitty... Ray, this I is Mr. Qwilleran who I've told you so much about." Not believing what he had heard, Qwilleran said, "I didn't catch the last name. Spell it for me." "D-u-n-w-o-o-d-y," said the man.
Qwilleran made heroic attempts not to stare at the ear patch as they exchanged polite words.
Charlotte said, "We always go out to lunch on Saturday and then to a movie. There's a discount if you go early, and I don't have to be at the restaurant until four." "I hope you have an enjoyable afternoon. You have good weather for it," Qwilleran said courteously.
Old Red had gone up without him, and now he waited for Old Green, wondering how this unlikely couple had met: Charlotte with her fluttery, spinsterish manner and white hair like spun sugar, a woman well past retirement age, and Raymond Dunwoody with his ear patch and blank expression, a man not over forty-five. When the elevator arrived and opened its reluctant door, a cheerful passenger with a laundry basket, on her way up from the basement, crowed, "Oh, wow! We have somebody rich and famous living here now!" This was followed by a gusty laugh.
"If I were rich and famous, I wouldn't be living at Ye OIde Broken-down Casablanca," Qwilleran said with forced geniality that concealed his irritation. He disembarked at Three and walked.the rest of the way up to Fourteen, silently cursing Sasha what's her name for revealing his financial status. He enjoyed the role of a retired journalist; he did not enjoy the role of a millionaire. Briefly, he considered moving to the Penniman Plaza until he remembered that hotels did not accept cats.
On the way upstairs he heard an ambulance siren winding down in front of the building. Another casualty! Who was it this time?
Arriving at 14-A he found a newspaper clipping under his door with a note from Amber scrawled in the margin: "Did you see this?" It came from the business page of Saturday's Morning Rampage - an interview with one of the principals of Penniman, Greystone & Fleudd. Rexwell Fleudd stated that the proposed Gateway Alcazar was fifty percent leased, and ground would be broken sooner than expected. A one-column head shot of the developer showed a long narrow face with high cheekbones and blow-dried hair. Qwilleran crumpled it in disgust and tossed it in the wastebasket.
Immediately the delicate thud of velvet paws could be heard, bounding out of the bedroom, and Yum Yum, the sleeping beauty, made a nose-dive into the wastebasket to retrieve the crumpled clipping. The crumpling of paper was a sound she could hear in her dreams. Qwilleran took it away from her, not wanting her to chew it and ingest printer's ink.
As he did so, he had another look at that arrogant face and wondered where he had seen it before.
Yum Yum was peeved, and to assuage her ruffled feelings he stroked her fur and paid her a few lavish compliments on her pulchritude, her sweetness of disposition, and her nobility of character. She purred - and went back to bed.
Why does she loll around so much? he asked himself. Is it the smog? Or some kind of stress?
Meanwhile, Koko was waiting for action on the Scrabble table, and he won the first few draws so handily that Qwilleran changed the rules to permit proper nouns, slang, and foreign words. Even with a handicap the cat won, but the man had the satisfaction of spelling such words as IXION, MERCI, CIAO, and SNAFU. Toward the end of the game he spelled a word that proved to be prophetic: OOPS.
As it happened, he intended to spend the afternoon at the library, and on his way downtown he stopped at the Penniman Plaza for lunch. The coffee shop was on the mezzanine, and he was s1epping on the upward-bound escalator when he heard a cracked voice directly behind him crying, "Help me!" He half-turned and caught a glimpse of a dirty white beard. At the same moment someone grabbed his arm. What happened next seemed to be in slow motion: his hand reaching for the handrail... the handrail moving beyond his grasp.
.. his body sinking backward... his feet continuing to move upward... the steps behind him rising to meet his spine...
the whole escalator ascending relentlessly as he lay on his back, riding to the mezzanine feetfirst.
The absurdity of his position stunned him momentarily until screams from onlookers recalled the episode on the subway tracks and marshalled his wits. In a matter of seconds he had to swing his legs around in the narrow space, maneuver his feet lower than his head, scramble to his knees, stand up. Just as the moving steps telescoped into the floor above, he was upright, and hands were helping him step onto terra firma.
"Are you hurt, sir?" a security man asked.
"I don't think so," Qwilleran replied. "Only a trifle surprised." "Let me take you to the manager's office, sir." "First I want to sit down and have a cup of coffee and figure out what happened." "You can get coffee right here in the bar, sir.
Are you sure you're all right?" The uniformed guard conducted Qwilleran into a dimly lighted lounge. "I'll notify the manager, sir. He'll send someone down." "Mr. Qwilleran! What happened?" the bartender called out. He had a reddish moustache, and Qwilleran recognized the jogger from the Casablanca.