Velda had got me a little bottle of the stuff for my birthday—she thought the name was funny, considering my personality, plus she’d read in the Times that forest rangers in central India used the fragrance to lure a man-killing tiger out of the jungle, thanks to a certain pheromone used as an ingredient.

“I didn’t know,” she said, amused but her expression thoughtful, “that you’d started using it yet.”

“I haven’t,” I said. “Not after you told me the secret ingredient was scraped from glands near a civet’s anus.”

She chuckled, but got serious again. “And your attacker tonight was wearing the stuff?”

“Yeah, unless he’d been giving a civet a rim job.”

She almost did a spit take with the Manhattan.

But she managed to ask, “I don’t suppose you know anybody who uses that cologne.”

“Actually, doll, I do know of one.”

“Well?”

“Our client’s son.”

“Vincent Colby?”

“Vincent Colby.”

“Who,” she said, “is about your size and is proficient, his sensei says, in martial arts. For a beginner, anyway.”

“Roger that. Speaking of which, find out anything about the late, unlamented Roger Kraft?”

She nodded. “He had another profession, besides getaway car driver. He was a stuntman, working a lot of the films and TV shows shot in the city.”

“He had the build for it,” I said.

Velda glanced past me toward the front of the place, then patted the air with a palm. “Lily is just coming in the door. Be nice.”

“Who’s Lily? And I’m always nice.”

Velda gave me a look. “Lily is the other call girl who worked out of that suite with Jasmine Jordan. She agreed to meet with you. Here’s a picture of Jasmine Jordan, by the way. It tells a story.”

Velda slid a color 5” by 7” studio photo across to me. It told a story, all right—a full-figure shot of a handsome, voluptuous woman with a milk chocolate complexion that seemed light against a dark chocolate leather catsuit and very high-heeled black shoes. In her right hand was a riding crop.

I tucked it away.

Velda had gone to intercept the young woman, and they stopped at the bar to get the newcomer a drink. She was tall and appeared to be slender, but was wrapped up in a tan hooded raincoat with only a little showing of what seemed to be a lot of long, permed platinum hair. Only nylons and glittery red shoes showed, like she’d just arrived back from the Land of Oz. She had entered from a dark night that was getting wet enough to justify the raincoat, but her big-lensed, white-framed sunglasses were less explainable, unless she was a movie star. If so, I didn’t recognize her.