“What do you want?” Slim asked, and just then a car appeared on the ramp, coming down to the reducer.
“I’m the building inspector. I’m checking on the weight you’re putting in this building. It’s an old building, you know.” And all the time his eyes were darting everywhere.
“Did LaBombard send you?” asked Slim. The car was halfway down.
“Well, not exactly; we’re interested in this from the safety angle.”
A second car’s nose showed around the curve. I began to sweat.
“Okay,” said Slim. “Look us over. We do the parking upstairs.”
“What do you do down here?” The inspector stared at the reducing stall.
“That’s a newfangled washing apparatus.”
“What are all these toy cars on the floor down here?”
I practically swallowed my tongue. I had known that was coming.
But Slim said casually, “Oh, we’re making Christmas presents in our spare time.” The first car was about to enter the reducing stall.
The inspector stared at the two thousand cars on the basement floor. “They look plenty real.”
I held my breath. If he should ever try to pick up one of those cars, it would be all over for us. I could just imagine what two thousand owners would say if they should find out their cars had been reduced to six inches. People are not too broad-minded about such things.
But Slim had him by the elbow. With the savage shake of his head at me and the reducing stall, he said, “I’ll take you up and show you around.” They rode the ramp upstairs.
Right then I wanted to lie down and pass out with sheer relief, but the cars were beginning to pile up. I worked like a horse for half an hour, doing double duty. Then Slim came back with a haunting sadness in his eyes, and a faraway look that was not encouraging.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “He knows too much. Too many parking-lot people are putting on the heat.”
“You mean he knows how we are packing them in?”
“No, but he knows that we are taking in as many as three thousand cars a day, while half the parking lots in town are begging for customers.”
I sighed. “When are we leaving?”
Slim’s eyes were looking far away. “At the end of the week,” he said. “We’ve got enough money in the bank to pay all our bills. We’ve got a couple thousand in the safe, and we’ll take in three or four more. Tomorrow’s Friday. The next day will be Saturday and we should handle four thousand cars. We blow Saturday night. We’ll go to the coast.”
“Will I have time to get a haircut?” I asked hopefully.
“No. Get your hair cut in L.A.” He went on dreamily, “We should have five thousand. We can start up again, and this time we’ll start off right, so we can run indefinitely without anybody catching on. We’ve got some capital to work with now.”
Friday was a good day. Slim only chuckled when I told him there was a man sitting across the street with a pad of paper and a pencil, tallying the cars that came in and those that went out.
“We’re good for tomorrow,” said Slim, “then they can have it. I’ve got plane reservations for two a.m.”
He didn’t say so, but I think he was getting as tight inside as I was. We were close—thirty hours from five thousand dollars—enough to go through college in good shape.
Saturday was a bell-ringer. By six o’clock in the evening we had parked over four thousand cars, and they were still coming. The safe was full of tens and twenties, all nicely wrapped and labeled, and our two suitcases were beside it. Still the money was pouring in. Nine cars a minute. One every seven seconds. Two hundred and fifty dollars an hour. It was better than a mint. The basement floor was beginning to fill up.
At six thirty Slim was bringing a car back to full size and saying to me, “Watch this one. This is the building inspector’s car; he’s trying to get a clue.”
At that exact moment a voice spoke behind us. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen.” It was one of those clear, soft voices with little tinkling bells in it. Know what I mean?
Slim turned and stared. “Madam,” he said, “don’t you know the sign says ‘No Admittance’?”
She looked repentant. “I’m sorry.” She looked hurt. “I didn’t think you gentlemen would mind.” She turned as if to go.
I saw Slim melting down. I didn’t blame him. That girl could have melted tungsten. Yes, I recognized her from her pictures in the society section—the mayor’s wife.
Slim was apologizing. “I beg your pardon, Madam. It’s quite all right. Your loveliness and radiant beauty just startled us. We—”
While Slim was laying it on thick, the building inspector’s car was expanding. Now it became considerably too big for the stall and split it like a stick of dynamite going off in a shoebox. It split it into a thousand pieces and then stood there, a passenger car seven feet tall.
The mayor’s wife gave a little scream of delight. Slim gave a horrified gasp. I tried to faint.
“Oh,” she said, “such a big car!”
Slim moaned. “Please, Madam, will you leave now?”
She looked hurt again. “Yes, but will you please put this package in my car?”
“I will,” said Slim, through tight jaws. “But—”
“Why, that looks just like the building inspector’s car,” she said, wide-eyed. “It’s his number, too.”
“Madam,” begged Slim, “you’re no dummy; please leave now and let us get on with our work.”
She walked upstairs dubiously. Slim was studying the enormous car with a hopeless look on his face. Orders for cars to be taken out were pouring down the chute.
“What are we going to do now? We can’t run that car into the other stall, because it’s too big. It
