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Fulmar looked out the front windshield.
In front of the car was a two-story building almost the size of a high school gymnasium. It was built of cinder blocks and had been painted completely hot pink. It had a flat r
oof and no windows. The front wall had two steel doors at street level, one labeled ENTRANCE and one labeled EXIT.
Painted on at least three sides, as well as illuminated on the pink neon sign atop the twenty-foot-tall steel pole near the curb, was LUCKY’S PINK PALACE.
The very top edge of the walls, just below the lip of the rooftop, had GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! repeated over and over in lettering three feet tall.
Fulmar noted that the parking lot was packed and that the crowd had a disproportionate number of work trucks.
“Looks like the place,” he said.
The driver grunted, then drove around to the back side of the building.
There were two steel doors in the back wall, one at ground level and one on the second floor, at the top of a set of rusty steps that served as a fire escape. The lower door read: NO DELIVERIES 11A.M.–2P.M. The upper door: NO ADMITTANCE! FIRE EXIT! KEEP CLEAR!
When the cabbie nosed the car into a parking place, the car’s bumper tapped the bumper of the one parked in front of it.
He shut off the engine.
“I’ll wait here for you.” He pointed to the top door. “Just knock on the office door up there.”
As the cabbie tuned the dash radio and adjusted the volume, Fulmar opened the back door, got out, and walked toward the steel steps. He could hear loud music coming from the inside of the building.
At the top of the stairs, he looked at the steel door. It had three industrial locks and one peephole.
They don’t want anyone getting in this way….
He knocked. There was no reply for a moment, then he heard one of the locks open, then a second, then the third.
The door opened a crack and a thick Italian accent said, “Yeah?”
“I’m looking for Christopher,” Fulmar said. “Joe Socks says he’s expecting me.”
After a moment, the door opened just enough for Fulmar to squeeze through.
Once inside, he saw the guy who had opened it—a really fat guy, easily two-forty, probably two-sixty, in baggy slacks and a dark shirt, its tail untucked—slam the door shut, then start throwing the dead bolt locks.
There was nothing at all exceptional about the office. It had two standard gray steel desks with wooden swivel chairs on casters, half a dozen regular wooden chairs scattered around the room, a couple of pictures of the Jersey shore on one wall, a large four-by-four calendar for the year 1943, with the days to date crossed out, on another. There was a dartboard hung on a wooden interior door. And one tall tin trash can, overflowing with old discolored newspapers.
A big, hairy guy sat behind one of the desks and a thin, dark-skinned guy with a thin mustache was behind the other.
The fat guy stared at him.
The thin guy got up and came out from behind his desk.
“You Fulmar?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Christopher,” he said, his tone of voice flat.
He offered his right hand.
Fulmar shook it and was impressed by the strong grip.
“Why don’t you give us ten minutes?” Christopher said to the really fat guy.
