Read The Shadowers for Free Online Page B

herself.
    “Well, there was one,” she said.
    “One what? Oh, you mean a phone?” I went back and sat down deliberately. I said, “I figured there would be. Did you use it?”
    “Of course,” she said. “The police don’t want to make a fuss in here, but they’ll be waiting when we leave. I told them you were armed and dangerous, so they’ll probably shoot you down as you step into the street. But we can still have dinner first, can’t we?”
    “Sure,” I said. “All the more reason to enjoy ourselves while we can. Take your choice. The sky’s the limit.”
    She waved the menu aside. “I don’t have to look. I want steak and champagne,” she said. “It’s square, it’s corny, and they’re not as good with steak here as with fish, but that’s what I want. It makes me feel... luxurious. Paul?”
    “Yes?”
    “How did you know I wouldn’t use the phone?”
    I said, “You’re not a cop-calling girl, Miss Vail. If you were that stuffy and conventional you’d pluck your eyebrows and wear a girdle.”
    She thought that over for a moment. “Well, I guess it makes sense, vaguely.” She had another thought, and looked at me quickly across the table and grinned. “I was going to ask why you picked on me, back there at the Montclair. I guess you’ve just told me, indirectly, Mr. Paul Sharpeyes Corcoran.”
    “Sure. You have a beautiful little fanny, Miss Vail. It shows up particularly well on a bar stool. When I had to find a female companion in a hurry, who would I pick from that collection of bulging rumps? Who would any man pick? The corseted lady three stools down? Don’t be silly.”
    Toni laughed and started to speak, but the waiter was hovering nearby, and she changed her mind. We went through the serious formality of ordering dinner. When the waiter had gone again, she leaned forward on her elbows comfortably.
    “All right,” she said, “let’s hear them.”
    “Let’s hear what?”
    “The lies. About why you needed a female companion in a hurry. Make them good now.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Well, there’s the one about my meeting a married woman for a jazzy New Orleans weekend, and just as we were about to settle down for a drink, who should walk into the bar but her husband? He’s a big tough guy. I don’t want to tangle with him, and the lady doesn’t want any nasty publicity, so I had to act quickly to make it look as if I didn’t even know her.”
    Toni was wrinkling her nose distastefully and shaking her head. “That’s not very original. You can do better.”
    “What’s the matter with it?”
    “Well, if you were just a weekend Romeo, you’d hardly be flashing a knife like that. And then there’s the lady. I suppose you mean the dowdy one in tweed you pointed out as an amorous schoolteacher. She’s hardly the type to be stepping out on her husband, if she has a husband; and even if she did want to flip, I can’t see you as her partner in sin, Paul. I don’t know what you are, but you’re a little too smooth to fall for a creep in horn-rimmed glasses.”
    “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said. “I’m supplying only eats, drinks, and lies. Diamonds and furs you’ll have to get elsewhere.”
    She laughed. “It isn’t very nice to call a girl a gold-digger, even just by implication. You might hurt her feelings. No, I don’t think much of that story. Try again.”
    “Well,” I said, “how about this? You’ve heard of the Syndicate; I suppose. Well, I’m on the payroll, see, only I’m hiding out because the fuzz is after me, and I’m running short of the folding ready. So they send my moll with a fresh supply of green, and she’s all done up with glasses and a kooky hairdo so nobody’ll know her— she’s a real dish, normally—but just as she’s about to slip me the loot I see a cop come in and I know he’s been tailing her. He doesn’t know me by sight, and I’ve made a few changes since the descriptions went out, but I’ve only got a minute