Battledore and Shuttlecock Page 4

Cafes and small shops were interspersed between the banks, investment houses, the stock exchange, and trading houses. It was like a miniature New York, only cleaner and friendlier.

The street traffic was thick. Lots of people were out enjoying the spring sun in their roadsters and touring cars. The added traffic annoyed the taxi drivers, who impatiently honked their horns, warning pedestrians to get out of the way and other cars to make way. Working stiffs, driving beer trucks, ice wagons, and the like would often as not stop in the middle of the avenue to make their deliveries, causing minor traffic snarls. Out in the midst of traffic, newspaper hawkers lined the street island flashing the paper and shouting out the headlines.

The sidewalks were crowded too. Cart vendors occupied the corners, the aroma of their street fare a beckoning call to an iron stomach. Between the corners, abused by the street’s hustle and bustle, harried businessmen and

snobbish bankers mingled with peddlers and panhandlers. Gaggles of secretaries hurried to a cheap and speedy lunch. Here and there a lady of means strolled among them, twirling a Japanese paper umbrella in company to her step. Maneuvering between the walkers, uniformed messengers on bicycles and afoot scurried up formidable concrete stairways to grand entries, or if matters of note were involved, they might disappear through unseen doors in nondescript buildings.

Joseph turned north on Montgomery Street. As they came even with the Wells Fargo Bank, startling bangs of repeated gun shots rang out; and a woman's terrified scream caused both men to jerk their heads around — Joseph slowing the car. A short skinny pug with a bandanna around his face, clutching a white canvas bag in one hand and a pistol in the other, was backing away from the bank entrance. A blue uniformed guard was down on the sidewalk, a revolver clasped in his unmoving hand. Bystanders were huddled up against the building or bouncing off each other in