Old Acquaintance [antikvár]

CHAPTER 1 In the airport gift shop, next to the glass display case where they kept the cigarette lighters and the sunglasses and the enameled key ehains, there was a eircular rack of postcards, garish and glittering, - like a science-fiction Christmas tree. Guinness ran his hand down a row of shining pictures of girls on water skis and mansions dripping with bougainvillea, went on to the next row, and the next, and finaily picked one out, a full-coíor glossy of a brick building that might have been anything, anywhere. He turnéd it over. "U.S. Post Office, Greenville, South Carolina." The description was printed in the upper left-hand corner. Yés, that would do. It would give all the humorless boobies in Coding something upon which to exercise their ingenuity. He scribbled a Washington postai address on the back and put the card down on the blue tufted pad, like a square of Astroturf, next to the cash register, along with a pack of gum, a little foil envelope of smoked almonds, and a five-doliar bili. "fd like a stamp for that, please," he said, smiling as if the woman behind the counter were in on the joke. She didn't answer, didn't even look up. She just made him his change and pitched out a tiny chip of greenish paper from a compartment in the register drawer, exactly as if she were part of the mechanism. So much for southern hospitality. Guinness slipped the postcard into his coat pocket, along with the gum and his change, and tore open the packet of 1