Litsky put the scrap in his hat and his hat on his head. Then he put another nickel in the phone. He didn’t need to look up this number. He knew every crummy digit by heart. After sixteen rings, Humpty got around to hefting the receiver.

—It’s me, Litsky—Yeah, I know what time it is. Everybody knows what time it is—What’s so important? I quit, that’s what—Wait a second. Can you say that slower? So I can write it down? It’s one for the history books—Yeah. Same to you.

Litsky hung up and exited the booth. When he got back to his stool, his drink was waiting for him.

And so was the ravaged blonde.

She was sitting alone at the opposite end of the bar.

He couldn’t believe it. She must have seen him saluting the boys from Shepherd Avenue and ordered the kid to follow in hot pursuit. And now here she was, giving him the nod of a solid citizen who’s just happened to happen into a bar.

When she ordered a Scotch and soda, Litsky told O’Malley to put it on his tab. She gave a neighborly smile of thanks, then she walked her drink down the bar.

—Hi, she said. I’m Katey. Katey Kontent.

—Jeremiah Litsky.

She gestured to a table for two in the middle of the room.

—Would you like to join me, Mr. Litsky?

—Sure, said Mr. Litsky.

As he was reaching for his bag, she picked up his drink and carried it to the table on his behalf. It was only when they’d both taken their seats that he could see what a knockout she’d been. All blonde and blue with a spunky little hourglass figure to boot. She wasn’t Litsky’s type, but without the scar and the limp she would have been everybody else’s.

Tough break, he thought to himself, feeling a tremor of something that might have been mistaken for sympathy.

She raised her glass and they drank without taking their eyes off each other.

Or maybe he had it all wrong . . .

Maybe in this town the scar was just the ticket. In Hollywood, when a good looker gets off the bus, every dame for twenty miles grits her teeth. And when the boys in the business meet a pretty face, they’ve got good reason to be wary—because they’ll never really know what she’s after until she’s after it. But with that scar, there weren’t going to be any screen tests for the likes of Katey Kontent.

Which made you sort of wonder what she was doing here in the first place.

As Litsky was thinking this through, she was sitting with her legs crossed, sipping at her drink and flipping her shoe off her heel—letting it hang on the tip of her toe for a beat before flipping it back on.