When Dean telephoned the office of World Wide Insurance Company, his luck was no better. No one was available to speak with him until 2:00. A Mr. Edwin Mayer hoped to be able to sneak him in at that time, or so squeaked his nasal-voiced secretary. Dean, unable to concentrate further on his files, pushed closed his desk drawer, packed a tape recorder in his briefcase, and left the office.
The Byrne address was on the east side of town, but as Dean had time to kill, he decided to drive west to what the locals called the beltway, a loop road around the city. The route more than doubled the distance, but Dean needed little incentive for a drive in the country. Maybe the rural air would dispel his blahs. He only wished he were on his bicycle instead of the stuffy Chevrolet pool car he was assigned to drive.
Dean left the parking lot on Elm Street, turned left on Church, and after dutifully pausing for a calico cat to stalk a pigeon, he continued out Yoder Avenue, watching the city slowly dissolve in his rearview mirror.
Police Headquarters was located in the center of town between the City Hall and the library, across from a well-kept park that contained the obligatory statue of a civil war hero. Parkside had held up well, faring much better than some of its sister cities in eastern Pennsylvania. Many of the older homes dating back to the last century were still owned by families with sufficient money to maintain them in at least some semblance of their prior grandeur. A few had been converted to apartments, but a recent wave of historical consciousness had temporarily halted the decay. Parkside's economy was less than spectacular, but at least it didn't require dependency on the fickle business of mines, steel or manufacturing for its fiscal survival.
While Parkside was officially beyond the limits of sensible commuting, enough hardy souls made the long daily trek into Philadelphia to label the town an outlying bedroom community. Most of these commuters lived on the eastern perimeter, as if the extra mile or two made their daily trek somehow more acceptable. Clusters of sixties and seventies-style subdivisions had blossomed during the post-war era of rush to the 'burbs. These look-alikes that originally carried names like Camelot or South Pacific were at first scorned by Parkside's gentry but had slowly gained a level of respectability. Untold hours of do-it-yourself-manship and emergency repair had finally overcome poor septic design and generally shoddy workmanship to create communities of adequate comfort and living.
Sherwood Forest, where Dean headed, was one of these communities, and the best of the bunch in his opinion. Dean remembered reading about Adolph Messner, a craftsman of the old school who was a stickler for perfection, if not business acumen. His company went belly up only days after he dropped dead spackling the front hall of his 87th house, a bi-level on Friar Tuck Drive. But old Adolph could rest in peace beneath the crabgrass in Pine Grove Cemetery, content in the knowledge that his handiwork had held up well while more than quadrupling in value.