Description: Pike Setter drags Julie up to the top of the Empire State Building to find a place to talk "secretly" without prying ears. Will what he have to say be the revelation that Julie has been looking for?
Eve Goes to New York. PART 18.
To Juliet Jones, the proximity to the clouds was a much shorter distance than to the street, high up on top of the Empire State Building. As she gazed out over the horizon, she saw barges hooting along the Hudson River and modern skyscrapers like the Hotel Star and others dotting the landscape in miniature. Trucks, buses, and yellow cabs scurried about like matchbox cars on the crisscrossing boulevards and avenues below.
Pike Setter asked her if she had ever visited the famous building, in which the legendary King Kong had once climbed up the side and hung off the top spire, growling to the world. He spoke as if King Kong were an actual monster that did exactly what the movie had portrayed in real life and even added that if King Kong hadn’t rescued that gorgeous blonde “dame”, as he called her, the world would never have known of the true story behind the legend: that King Kong was actually just the name of a baby chimpanzee who had escaped from the Brooklyn Zoo. Julie would have laughed at his joke if she wasn’t watching his eyes that showed absolute seriousness through his cigarette-induced smoggy haze.
It was time to get down to business. This wasn’t a pleasure call, and if it weren’t for Mr. Setter dragging her up here, she never would have come. So why did he take her here in the first place? As the breeze on the open-air observation deck of the 86th floor ruffled Julie’s hair, she asked him as politely as she could.
“I talk better from dizzy heights, mayor,” he responded, lighting yet another cigarette with which to smoke his life away. “Besides which, this is my town, sort of the personal Bailiwick of Pike Setter.”
He was about to say something else completely inconsequential when Julie cut him off at the pass. “Mr. Setter, you started something back at the coffee shop,” she reminded him, “and then you dragged me up here. Well, we’ve arrived. Now go on, please.”
Setter eased back into relaxation mode, stuffing his hands into his pants pockets and giving Julie a long awkward scrutinizing gaze, squinting and nodding like he was fitting her for a dress. “You don’t look the impetuous type, but a guy can’t go by appearances.”
This was followed by another stretch of silence as he turned away from her and leaned on the railing to stare at the city view below. “O.K., here it is,” he announced, flicking his half-lit cigarette over the railing and turning back to face her. He moved with exaggerated sluggishness, like rehearsing for a Clark Gable stand-in. He was casual, he was cool, he was the epitome of imbecilic nonsense.
“Glenn Sabine’s strictly a blowhard,” he said. “A nothing looking for a home.” He stared at his fingernails while sucking his tobacco stick. “Do I elaborate?”
This was news to Julie, perhaps what she had suspected all along. If it was the truth, Eve was in big trouble.
She turned to him with a gaze that could cut steal with ice. “Yes,” she said in a low voice.
