“Actually I?m interested in doing a piece on the social order in Dunetown. Movers and shakers, that
kind of thing.”
“For the Los Aghast Gazette or whatever it was?”
I would have bet my underwear that she remembered the name of the paper and everything else I had
said since joining her.
“Yeah, kind of a background piece.”
She said “Mm-hmm” again and didn?t mean a syllable of it. She lit a pink Sherman cigarette, leaned
back in her chair, and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Well, it was founded in 1733 by—”
“Not that far back.”
“Just what do you want, Wilbur whatever-your-name-is, and I don?t believe that for a minute, either.”
“Who would make up a name like Wilbur Rasmussen?” I said. She dipped her dark glasses at me
again but made no comment. “I hear it?s an old town run by old money,” I said.
“You?re looking at some of it, darling.”
“Accurate?”
“Fairly accurate.”
“They making any money off the track?”
“Honey, everybody?s making money off the track. If you own a bicycle concession in this town you
can get rich.” She sighed. “I suppose we are going to have to talk about this, aren?t we?”
“Sooner or later.”
The waiter brought my coffee and as I was diluting it with cream and sugar she made an
imperceptible little move with a finger toward the hostess, a pretty, trim young black woman, no more
than nineteen or twenty, who, a second or two later, appeared at the table.
“Scuse me,” she said. “You have a phone call, Ms. Babs.”
“My public is after me,” she said with mock irritation. “Excuse me for a moment, would you,
darling?”
I watched her in the row of mirrors at the entrance to the restaurant. She picked up the phone at the
hostess desk and punched out a number. That would be the desk she was calling, checking me out.
She said a few words, waited, then hung up and came back to the table, still smiling, but a little colder
than when I first sat down.
I smiled back.
“Jake Kilmer,” she said.
“Nice trick with the hostess. I could see you calling the desk in the mirrors.”
“That obvious, huh? Hmm. I wonder how many other people have caught me at it.”
