"End of the line!"

"Oh, yeah. Right."

He waved at the guy, and got off the bus. The walk down to Third Street was just as long as he'd been afraid it would be, but then that wasn't even the end of it. Not knowing how long it would take to get to such an out-of-the-way location, he'd given it an hour, which turned out to be fifteen minutes too long, so he had to walk around the block a couple times so he wouldn't be ridiculously early.

But at least that did give him the opportunity to case the place. It was a narrow dark brick corner building, a little grungy six stories high. The ground floor was a check-cashing place, with neon signs saying so in many languages in windows backed by the kind of iron bars they use for the gorilla cages in the zoo.

Around the side on Third Street was a green metal door with a vertical row of buttons next to names on cards in narrow slots. Some of the names seemed to be people, some businesses. There were two apartments or offices per floor, labeled «L» and "R." EPPICK — that's all it said — was 3R.

Stepping back, Dortmunder looked up at the windows that should be 3R, and they were covered by Venetian blinds slanted up to see the sky, not the street. Okay; fifteen minutes. He went for a stroll.

It was still five minutes before the hour when he'd completed the circuit twice, wondering what the proper word was for a Mongolian bodega, but enough was enough, so he pressed the button next to EPPICK and almost immediately the door made that buzz they do. He pushed it open and entered a tiny vestibule with a steep flight of stairs straight ahead and a very narrow elevator on the right. So he took the elevator up, and when he got off at three there were the stairs again, flanked by two doors, these of dark wood and marked with brass figures 3L and 3R.

Another button. He pressed it, and another door gave him the raspberry. This door you had to pull, he soon figured out, but the buzz was in no hurry, it kept buzzing at him until he got the idea.