The foyer fed not the promised pretentious interior decoration but various doorless rooms furnished out of a Sears-and-Roebuck catalogue—an office with modern fixtures, a dining room, a living room, and a large well-stocked library indicating Buster might be the best-read gangster around (maybe the best-read Buster around, period).

A matching marble staircase with a black wrought-iron rail extended either to the afterlife or the second floor. The gun urging me on indicated it might be both. The rooms up here had doors and I was shown through one into what appeared to be a guest bedroom that might have been in a Holiday Inn. Pompous here, prosaic there, Buster Wortman’s moat castle definitely sent mixed signals, even if his gun-toting emissaries did not.

As he uncuffed me, Dutch Downey said, “Strip.”

“What?”

“See that towel on the bed?”

“I’m not blind.”

“Strip and put it on. We’ll collect you in ten minutes.” It sounded like I was a butterfly about to go into an album.

The door shut. The double bed had a towel neatly folded on the pink nubby spread. Above the bed was one big frame of shots of the house and moat under construction. A big picture window had its curtain drawn halfway back. I went over and looked out. Fish jumped in the moonlight. I watched this a while. One missed and hit the grassy shore and wriggled there, dying. Don’t ask me what kind of fish. I shut the curtain.

The bedroom had its own bathroom and I went in and bowed before the porcelain god and finally got rid of the Musial’s meal. Not near as good on the return trip. I sat on the edge of the tub and worked at feeling human, breathing like a guy who’d just been saved from drowning.

Then I was wearing the towel like Sabu in a picture with dolls in sarongs, not guys in baggy suits and revolvers. At just about ten minutes on the dot, Dutch and Mel returned for me. They walked me down the hall and into a big nightclub-ish room with a full bar along one wall and black leather upholstered sofas and chairs scattered around in little groupings, with glass-topped tables for ashtrays and drinks. The lighting was indirect but not dim, canceling any notion of me playing loin-cloth Tarzan on these fedora-sporting apes.

I was shown through a big bathroom, with a shower that would have accommodated enough chorus girls to keep any dumb-ass hood from getting bored, and into an adjacent steam room, which at least explained the towel.

This was no small sauna, however, but more like what the Sands or Flamingo in Vegas might offer—three tiers of slatted wooden seating in a tiled space big enough for the top Romans to gather and discuss how the Lions Vs. the Gladiators game came out.

One small moderately hairy man in a towel and a pearl-gray fedora on loan from George Raft sat perched on the middle row of the facing wall as I entered. He had his hands folded on his lap. He had a kind of long, deadpan face that made me wonder if he’d been nicknamed for a resemblance to a famous comedian.