2013/05/13 12:34
CHAPTER Nine
When I first saw him on his way through the door I thought he was a kid wearing his father’s clothes. He couldn’t have been more than five-three, and judging by the way he walked he already had lifts in his shoes. He had a very narrow face, as if it had gotten in the way when Mother Nature clapped her hands. His nose was long and narrow, his lips thin. His hair and eyebrows were black and his skin was very pale, almost translucent. There were patches of color on his cheeks, but they were more suggestive of consumption than radiant good health.
He was wearing a lime-green sport shirt with flowing collar points and he’d buttoned it all the way up to the neck. His pants were of high-gloss blue gabardine, and his shoes were wing-tip slip-ons of woven brown leather. He was wearing a hat, too, a straw panama with a feather in its band, and I think it must have been the hat that made him look like an overdressed child. It was the crowning touch, all right.
