Time and Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

locked. But stenciled on the wet bricks above it in white paint so faded you could barely make it out was the number Rube had given me. I rapped on the door panel, and there was a silence except for the sky-high roar of the Thursday-morning city and the sound of the rain on the hoods and tops of the parked cars behind me. I had no belief that my knock would be answered, or that there was anyone on the other side to hear it.
    But there was. The knob rattled, turned, the door opened, and a black-haired young man in white coveralls looked out; in red stitching over a breast pocket it said Don, and he had a copy of Sports Illustrated in one hand. He said, "Hi; come on in. Boy, what a lousy day," and I walked in past him. As he closed the door I read, BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVERS, in red block-letters across his back.
    We were in a windowless fluorescent-lighted office no more than ten feet square, furnished with a desk, swivel chair, and a couple of yellow-oak straight chairs with most of the varnish worn off. On the wall hung a Beekey Brothers calendar and a lot of framed photographs of smiling crews posed alongside Beekey vans. "Yeah?" said the man in coveralls, sitting down behind his desk. "What can we do for you? Moving? Storage?"
    I said I'd come to see Rube Prien, half expecting him to look blank, but he asked my name, then dialed a phone, gesturing with his chin toward a couple of hooks on the wall. "Hang up your hat and coat," he said to me, then into the phone, "Mr. Morley to see Mr. Prien." He listened, said, "Right," and hung up. "Be down in a minute; make yourself at home." He lay back in his swivel chair and began reading his magazine.
    I sat there trying to wonder what was going to happen now, but there was nothing for my mind to work on, and I found myself examining the framed photographs: one of them, inscribed "The Gang, " 1921, in white ink, showed a Beekey van, an old Mack truck with metal-spoke wheels and solid rubber tires; half the crew wore big mustaches.
    There was a click from a door set flush in the wall at my right. I looked up as it swung open, noticing that there was no knob on this side. Rube stood holding the door open behind him with a foot. He was wearing clean wash pants and a short-sleeved white shirt open at the neck; his forearms were fuzzy with red hair and were as large as my biceps and more muscular. "Well, I see you found us." He put out his hand. "Welcome, Si. Glad to see you."
    "Thanks. Yeah, I found it. In spite of the disguise."
    "Oh, we're not really disguised." He beckoned me in, then let the door swing closed behind us; it made a quiet heavy thunk, and I realized it was painted metal. We were standing in a little concrete-floored hallway badly lighted by a bare bulb in a wire cage in the ceiling. A pair of green-enameled elevator doors faced us, and Rube reached past me to poke the button. "Actually the building is the way it's been for years. On the outside. Up to ten months ago this was a genuine moving-and-storage business, a family corporation. We bought it, and we still do some moving and a little storage in a walled-off section of the building; enough to maintain the pose." The elevator doors slid open, we stepped in, and Rube pressed 6. The only other visible button said 1; the other buttons were taped over with dirty adhesive.
    "The older employees were pensioned off, the others gradually replaced by our people; I was 'hired' and actually worked as a moving man for a month. Damn near killed me." Rube smiled; that nice genuine smile you couldn't help responding to. "Now our estimates tend to be a little high; not much, just a little. And the business generally goes to a competitor. We look busy as ever, though. In fact, we are. We've even added two new vans. One hell of a lot of stuff has been moved out of here in our own closed vans; the entire interior of the building, in fact. And I guess we've brought even more stuff in." The green doors slid open, and we stepped out onto a