I asked him if his wife, Florence, liked funny stories. Sure, he replied, who doesn’t, and I could see the dawn of suspicion rising within his squinty sky-blue eyes. I asked him if Florence had ever heard the one about the trumpet player who’d been arrested for playing “St. James Infirmary” in the nude on the front porch of the nicest bordello in Decatur. Larry told me he’d leave the car keys under a potted palm on his front porch and asked me not to race the engine.

It was a rare treat to be sleeping under the same roof as where we were playing, even if my room was in a part of the Hotel Claremont originally intended for those servants who didn’t stay in the suite of their employers. Most venues merely offered us a rate at a businessman’s hotel, usually named the Warfield or the Warwick, but a lesser chamber in a swank hotel is a lot better than the best one in a former flophouse.

I entered my room and flipped on the light switch. “You took long enough,” Vera complained, looking up from the magazine she was reading upon my bed. She was fully dressed, except for her heels, and lying on top of the covers, but as far as propriety and my friendship with Jack went, she might just as well have been naked.

“How’d you get in here?” I asked, not taking another step.

“Bribed a maid who was turning down the beds. You were supposed to come up before the last set and leave the door unlocked for me. Can’t you read?”

“I didn’t look at your damn note,” I told her. “Jack saw you slip it into my pocket, just the way you meant him to, I’m sure.”

“Bet you five bucks he didn’t read it.” She gauged my reaction and murmured, “I should have made it twenty bucks.”

“How could you treat the guy like that, Vera? What has Jack ever done to you?”

“Not what you could do, Ray, I’m willing to bet,” she cooed, but Jack had been right; this had absolutely nothing to do with sex. She just needed someone to make a fuss over her. If I’d walked in holding the San Francisco Chronicle’s rotogravure section with a picture of her on the front page, I probably would have aroused her just as much.

“C’mon, Vera,” I said, picking up her silver ankle-strap heels from beside the bed. “You’re clearing out of here before Jack catches on. He’s always been square with me.”

She crouched on the bed. “You want to run away? We could run away, take a clipper down to Panama—I’ve got my passport with me.” She produced a green booklet from her bag and waved it at me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was carrying traveler’s checks as well.