23

they never gave a thought to somebody who could just climb up the smooth walls of a building.

Remo didn't feel like working that hard that morning so he took an elevator to the twenty-second floor and knocked on a door.

"Who is it ?" called out a woman's voice.

"Gas man. Problem with hotel gas. Got to fix it."

"Problem with gas? This hotel doesn't have gas. I don't have gas. Try the kitchen."

"You've got gas now, lady, and it might be dangerous. I've got to go outside and check your gas."

"Are you from the hotel?"

"Check the desk, lady," said Remo with that sort of bored surliness that for some .peculiar reason bred trust in most people.

"Oh, all right," said the woman and the door opened. She was in her early fifties and her face glistened with creams fighting their losing battle in a retreating action from youth, whose only victory was not getting worse for another day. She wore a floppy pink muumuu and had her hair in some sort of plastic device.

"Anything you want," she said with a lewd grin when she saw Remo.

She was suddenly awake and happy. She adjusted one pink device in her reddish hair and smiled again. This time she licked her lips invitingly. Remo wondered how much creamy gook got attached to her tongue when she did that.

"Just the gas, lady."

"I want you and I'll pay you for it," she said.

"All right," said Remo, who knew never to argue with someone obsessed. "Tonight."

24

"Now," she said.

"Lunch," said Remo.

"Breakfast."

"Danish snack," he said, seeing the years of pastry in the woman's face and assuming it meant 10 A.M.

"Not now?" she whined.

"Got to check the gas," he said. He would be out way before 10 A.M. He would be out of the whole thing in ten minutes and out of this career in thirty.