After what seemed an age, the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid back. My wrist-watch showed me that it was exactly seven o’clock.
Facing me was a small lobby stacked with wooden cases, and waiting, a cigarette hanging from his thin lips, was the character Greaves had told me about: Harry Bennauer. He was a pint-size hunk of humanity, wearing a white coat and black trousers. His face was something a headhunter from Borneo would have been proud to have added to his collection. The sunken eyes, the thin lips and the flared nostrils were arresting but scarcely beautiful.
I stepped out of the elevator and smiled at him.
“Let’s have the dough, bud,” he said, “and snap it up.”
I produced five five-dollar bills and offered them to him.
His face hardened.
“What’s this? Greaves said fifty.”
“Greaves also said you weren’t to be trusted, bud,” I said. “Half now, half later. I want to look this joint over. On my way out you collect the other half.”
“You go beyond that door and you’ll walk into trouble,” he said, putting the bills hurriedly into his hip pocket.
“You’re the boy who is going to keep me out of trouble,” I said. “What do you think you’re getting fifty bucks for? Is there anyone around out there?”
“Not right now, but they will be in about ten minutes. The boss is in his office.”
“Cordez?”
He nodded.
“The wine waiter here yet?”
“He’s in his office too.”
“Well, okay, you go ahead and I’ll follow you. If we run into trouble I’m here on business with the wine waiter. I’ve got a sample for him.”
Bennauer hesitated. I could see he didn’t like this set-up, but he wanted the other twenty-five bucks. I had an idea greed would win, and it did.
He went through the doorway. I gave him a few seconds start, then I went after him. We went down a passage to another door and into a vast cocktail lounge that was really something. It was the most elaborately equipped bar I have ever been in. There was seating for about three hundred people. The bar, shaped like the letter S, ran the length of two of the walls. The floor was made of black glass. Half the room had no roof and overhead I could see the stars. There was a terrace overlooking the sea and the ten-mile promenade. Banana and palm trees grew in enormous tubs. Flowering creepers covered the roof and the walls with a multitude of red, pink and orange blossoms.
I joined Bennauer by one of the palm trees.
“The offices are through there,” he said, pointing to a door behind the bar. “The restaurant is thataway. What else do you want to see?”
“I’d like a souvenir to take away,” I said. “Get me some of those match folders you hand out to the boys and girls.”
He looked as me as if he thought I was crazy, but he went over to the bar, went behind it and produced a handful of the folders.
“This what you mean?”
I joined him. I took three from him, opened them and checked the back of the matches. There were no ciphers printed on them.
“This all you’ve got?”
“What do you mean? They’re match folders, ain’t they? That’s what you asked for, isn’t it?”
“Is there any other type: the ones the boss gives away?”
“Look, Joe, cut it out, will you?” His face was beginning to grow shiny with sweat. “I’d lose my job if you were found in here. Take your goddamn matches and beat it.”
“Any chance of looking in some of the offices?” I asked. “I’d spring another fifty if I could.”
I could see he was rapidly losing his nerve by now.
“You’re nuts! Come on, get the hell out of here!”
Then the door behind the bar, the one Bennauer had told me led to the offices, opened, and a fat man wearing a white coat on which was a badge bearing a beautifully embroidered bunch of grapes to tell me he was the wine waiter came into the bar.
He was a Latin type with thick, heavily oiled hair and a Charlie Chan moustache. His small black eyes moved from Bennauer to me and the muscles of his face, under their covering of fat, tightened.
Bennauer didn’t entirely lose his head. He said, “Here’s Mr. Gomez now. You’ve got no business to barge in here without an appointment.” He turned to Gomez. “This guy wants to talk to you.”
I gave the fat Latin a servile smile.
“Could you spare me a moment of your time, Mr. Gomez? I’m O’Connor: Californian Wine Co.”
As Gomez moved over to me, I produced the trade card and laid it on the bar. He picked it up with fat fingers and studied it: his face was as expressionless as a hole in a wall. I could smell the pomade with which he had soaked his hair: it wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell.
Having read the card, he turned it on its edge and began to tap with it on the counter while he looked me over.
“I have no account with your people,” he said.
“That’s something we want to put right, Mr. Gomez. We have several lines that would interest you. I’ve brought a bottle of our very special brandy for you to try.”
His black eyes moved to Bennauer.
“How did he get in here?” he asked.
Bennauer had got his second wind by now. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I was here and he just walked in and asked for you.”
“I came up in the goods elevator. The guy on the door downstairs told me to come up,” I said. “Did I do wrong?”
“I don’t see any salesman without an appointment.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gomez. Maybe you could give me a date for to-morrow.” I put the parcel on the counter. “If you could look at this in the meantime, we might be able to talk business to-morrow.”
“We’ll talk business now,” a voice said behind me.
Both Gomez and Bennauer became as rigid as marble statues. Okay, I admit my heart did a back flip. I looked over my shoulder.
A dark man in a faultless tuxedo, a white camellia in his button-hole, stood about twenty feet from me. He bad the face of an eagle, narrow with a big, sharp nose, a thin mouth and black restless eyes. He was thin and tall; the South American type that women rave about and men watch uneasily when they are raving.
I was pretty certain this was Cordez. These other two wouldn’t be behaving as if they were in the presence of a real hot shot unless he was.
The tall man moved up to the bar, held out a brown, thin hand for the card Gomez was holding. Gomez gave it to him. He stared at it, then with no change of expression he bent it in two and flicked it behind the bar.
“That...” he said, and pointed to the brown-paper parcel on the counter.
Gomez hurriedly stripped the wrapping off the bottle and laid the bottle on the counter so Cortez could read the label.
He read it, then he turned sleepy black eyes on me.
“I said no to this a month ago,” he said. “Don’t you know what ‘no’ means?”
“Why, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m new to this territory. I didn’t know someone had shown it to you before.”
“Well, you know now. Get out of this club and stay out!”
“Why, sure. I’m sorry.” I made out I was pretty confused. “Maybe if I leave the bottle... it’s pretty good brandy. We could supply it on very favourable terms.”
“Get out!”
I stepped away from the bar, turned and started across the vast acreage of black glass. I hadn’t taken six steps when I became aware that three men in tuxedos had appeared. They stood in a semi-circle, blocking the way out.
Two of them I had never seen before. They were big, beefy Latin-Americans. Their faces were hard and expressionless.
The third man, standing between them, a snarling grin on his broken face, made me feel suddenly a little weak at the knees.