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wicked-looking little slicer. Is your name really Corcoran like you said in there?”
    “Hell, no,” I said. “It isn’t Paul, either. But what do you care? Paul will do for one evening, won’t it?”
    She said, “I’m not a tramp, Paul. I mean, if that’s what you have in mind...”
    I said, “Miss Vail, sex is certainly important to me, and you’re a lovely girl, but I generally manage to satisfy my requirements without kidnaping young ladies at the point of a knife.”
    She hesitated, and said with a kind of compulsive honesty, “Of course, I’m not exactly a sheltered virgin, either. You’ve probably guessed that.”
    I said, “It’s a fascinating subject, but it could be pursued in a warmer place. Did you have a wrap?”
    “Yes. It was checked. It isn’t the kind of coat you want to flash in a high-class bar. My date will probably take it home with him. God knows what kind of a story I’ll have to tell to get it back. He’s the jealous type.” She hugged herself, shivering. “It is kind of chilly. You said anywhere ?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “And any price?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She hesitated again. Then she laughed and took my arm. “Well, you asked for it. Antoine’s is only a couple of blocks...”
    I’d had a hunch it would be Antoine’s if she could take her pick. I guess it usually is in New Orleans, although there are supposed to be some newer places with equally good food and atmosphere. Actually, the atmosphere at Antoine’s isn’t really plush, for all the reputation the place has got. The customers are well-dressed, the waiters know their business and look it, but the dining room itself seems kind of bare and disappointing to anybody who arrives expecting to wallow in the lap of old-fashioned southern luxury. You’re supposed to go there to eat, I guess, not to appraise the furnishings.
    We had to wait for a table, and the one we got was out in the middle of the floor. The delay bothered me, but I told myself there wasn’t really anything else for me to do back at the hotel. Olivia would be all right if she followed instructions, and it was better to let some time pass before we set up another meeting. I might as well be making sure this stray kid I’d involved in the game didn’t cause us any official trouble.
    “I’d like to go make repairs,” Antoinette said after the headwaiter had made us comfortable and departed. “There’s something about panic... I feel as if I’d come unraveled, just a little. Do you mind?”
    I looked at her across the table. She was really an extremely pretty girl, but pretty wasn’t quite the right word. It was an off-beat face, not quite symmetrical, with the heavy black eyebrows almost meeting over the straight little nose. I was betting on those individualistic eyebrows, and on the well-worn satin shoes. She probably wasn’t starving, but she was a kid to whom an expensive meal in a fashionable restaurant meant something beyond food; and she was a kid who’d gamble recklessly and high to get it.
    “No,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
    I watched her go off across the room, slim and straight in her shiny little dress. It was up to her now. There was nothing to be gained by wondering which way she’d turn; I’d know soon enough. There was not much to be gained by wondering what Olivia Mariassy was thinking after her humiliating experience in the Montclair bar, or what the bald man with the craggy face was doing. And there was certainly no profit at all in thinking about a woman who was dead, but I thought about her just the same. We’d had some good times together, Gail and I, even if she’d had too much money and Mac hadn’t approved of her. I was going to have to get used to the idea that she wouldn’t be around for me to call up when the job was over.
    Then Antoinette Vail was returning, her hair very smooth and her lipstick quite perfect, and I rose to manipulate her chair like a gentleman. She smiled up at me as she seated