The word nigger estranged him. Where before they were divided by a woman, now they were separated by race. Neither of the colored men moved or spoke.

Down below in the Paris Bar someone had put a coin in the juke box, and the slow hypnotic beat of an oldtime platter called Bottom Blues came faintly through the floor.

The second colored man decided to act as peacemaker. “Ain’t no need of you two falling out about a woman,” he said. “Let’s consider it.”

“Consider what?” the white man said. His big, sloping shoulders beneath the loose blue coat seemed suspended in motion.

Moving inch by inch, Leila played the lookout with eyes that promised a thousand nights of frenzied love. All of her life she had played sex for kicks; now she was playing it for her life and it didn’t work the same; she felt as sexless as a leg of veal. But everything depended on it, and she forced words through her numb trembling lips.

“Don’t let him kill me, please, I beg of you. I’ll give you money—all the money you want. I’ll be every kind of woman you can think of; just don’t let him—”

“Shut up, whore,” the white man said.

“Let’s talk it over,” the lookout mouthed. Lust was shaking him like electric shocks, half choking him, draining his stomach down into his groin.

“We’ve talked too much already,” .the white man said, moving into Leila and raising the knife.

Leila’s hand flew to her mouth but she didn’t dare scream.

The lookout moved forward and stuck the gun muzzle against the small of the white man’s back, then pulled it back a few inches so it could breathe; it was an automatic, and if he had to shoot it needed air.

The white man got the message. He froze with his hand raised. “You ain’t going to shoot me,” he said. His voice sounded as dangerous as a rattlesnake’s warning.

“Just don’t hurt her is all,” the lookout said in a voice that sounded equally as dangerous:

The second colored man drew his own .38 police special, holding it down beside him in his left hand.

“This is getting too tight for me,” he said. “I got fifteen grand wrapped up in this deal myself, and if it gets blown away we’re all going to go.”

“Chicken feed,” Leila whispered, holding the lookout with her eyes.

Sweat had filmed on her temples and upper lip; a vein in the left side of her throat was throbbing. She breathed as though she couldn’t get enough air; her breasts in the jersey-silk pullover were rising and falling like bellows. She was playing a sex pot if there ever was one; but all she wanted in this world was to get to the window, and it seemed like ten thousand miles away.

Unseen by the lookout, the white man turned the knife in his hand and gripped the point.

“This bitch is going to scream any minute,” he said.