“We have to stop meeting like this,” Sandy O’Day said. The wide mouth, lipsticked candy-apple red, mocked me. She looked younger than her nearly forty years—probably rough years at that. Wearing flats, she could damn near greet me eye-to-eye.

“I’m only inviting you in,” I said, opening the door wider, “because you’ll go nicely with the room.”

She brushed by, noting the nine millimeter in my right hand and said, “Is that any way to welcome an old friend? Maybe I should’ve worn the Marilyn wig.”

“I’m going to take a wild stab and say Carr sent you.”

She shook her head, pixie strands bouncing. “No. Jack called and said you were here. Sort of warned me. I took it upon myself to play Miss Welcome Wagon. So…welcome.”

She went over and set the ice bucket and two bottles on the low-slung modern coffee table in front of the red vinyl couch. She went into the bathroom and fetched two water glasses. Then she sat, curling her legs up under her, running an arm along the couch’s upper cushion; her red lacquered nails went well with the room, too.

“You pour,” she instructed me.

I sat next to her and set the nine mil on the coffee table beside the ice bucket and built us a couple of drinks. She was wearing Arpège by Lanvin again. I was surprised that she looked so good, and maybe it showed.

“I don’t turn tricks anymore,” she said defensively. “I’m not in that business these days.”

“Sure you are, Sandy. You’re a madam.”

She sipped her drink, shivered. “Isn’t that an awful word? Makes me sound old and fat. Do I look old and fat?”

“No, but you are a madam, aren’t you? Working out of the Coral Court?”

“I work out of a little house of Jack’s across Watson Road. Three girls live with me over there, and the rest are in town for me to simply phone. I’m not a madam, goddamnit. I make… referrals. Arrangements. Appointments. It’s an escort service.”

I swallowed Seagram’s and Seven-up. “I don’t care either way.”

She set her glass down, harder than necessary. “Well, I do. And anyway, this madam shit is only for the time being. I have plans.”

“You always were an ambitious girl.”

“‘Always’! We knew each other one night, Heller!”

“But it was memorable.”

She sighed and put her hand on my leg. “Not as memorable as it could have been…”

I stiffened and not the way she hoped for. “What do you want from me, Sandy?”

She reared back. “What do I want from you? You’re the one who wants to talk to me.”

“I do?”

She moved closer. Very close. Her arm came down around my shoulder and the red-lipsticked mouth drew close to my right ear. She seemed to be putting the make on, but I was wrong: she whispered, “Not safe to talk.”

Then she moved back. “Let’s not bicker. Hey, Heller, what would you say to a moonlight stroll, for old time’s sake?”