The room above the bank had been leased to a pretended tradesman.

While today the courts on the fifth floor sport a fresh Yale Blue coat of paint and glass backboards, in the 1970s they were drafty, completely wooden and nearly uninhabitable in the hotter months.

He had a very square face whose sharp angles were accentuated by short, wiry black hair, cut en brosse and without side-whiskers.

Now the grime-filmed upper-level windows of their facades peered sadly across at each other over gape-mouthed loading bay entrances whose shutters were all jammed somewhere uncommitted between open and closed.