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He pushed the tray of dishes aside, got up from the edge of the bed where he’d been sitting and eating, and went to the bureau where he took out a dark yellow short-sleeve Banlon and pulled it on. He got a brown sports jacket out of the closet and put it on.

“Doesn’t go with your slacks,” Sherry said.

His slacks were black.

Nolan nodded, took off the coat, and hung it back in the closet. He found a charcoal gray sports jacket and climbed into it. He turned to Sherry, who was still eating her eggs, for approval.

“That’s better,” she said.

“One thing,” he said, “I can’t figure out.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“What are you, my mother, sister, or daughter?”

She grinned, cheeks puffed with food. “Whichever’s dirtiest,” she said, not too distinctly.

He grinned at her, feeling affection for her against his best judgment. “See you later,” he said.

“How long you going to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll be at the pool.”

“I kind of figured that.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Your bikini.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I’m not going to swim, just going to sun.”

“You get much more sun you’re going to have to ride in the back of the bus.”

“I will? Why?”

“That was a joke.”

“Really? Must’ve been before my time or something.”

He sighed. “Everything’s before your time.”

“Don’t belittle me, Logan. I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

“Yes you were. Yesterday. Just yesterday.”

“Give us a kiss.”

He went over and pecked her forehead.

“A kiss, dammit.”

“You got egg on your mouth.”

“I’ll wipe it off.”

She did, and he kissed her, but it still tasted like eggs. Maybe it was just his imagination. He kissed her again. No, he thought, eggs, all right.

“Sorry I didn’t get your joke,” she said.

“It wasn’t much of a joke,” he said.

“Well, you can’t expect me to be looking for jokes from you. You don’t make jokes that often. Next time tell me first.”

“Are you saying I don’t have a sense of humor?”

“Let’s just say it wasn’t what attracted me to you.”

“I must have a sense of humor.”

“Why?”

“I put up with you, don’t I?”

She made a mock-angry face and said, “Happy birthday, you S.O.B.”

“How’d you know it was my birthday?”

“You told me last night, or I mean this morning. You were pretty drunk. You sang yourself the ‘Happy Birthday’ song.”

“Told you I had a sense of humor. Did I really do that? After a certain point things get a little hazy. Did I do it in front of anybody, for Christ’s sake?”

“Just me. We were back in the room by then, with the champagne.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

She pointed toward the corner by her side of the bed and sure enough, there was an empty bottle of champagne, lying on its side like a casualty of war. Two water glasses had in them each a quarter of an inch or so of by now very flat champagne. It was, unfortunately, all coming back to him.

“Do me a favor,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Don’t ever tell me what else I did. I got a certain self-image to maintain.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re a tough guy. You told me that, too.”

“Please,” he said. “You’re twisting the knife.”

“Okay, okay. Logan?”

“What?”

“Are you?”

“Are I what?”

“A tough guy?”

“Sure. I eat babies.”

“I hope that’s another joke.”

“Well, it is. Sort of.”

“I been wanting to ask you something for a long time.”

“Ask.”

“Where’d you get all the funny scars?”

“Don’t ask.”

She accepted that graciously, taking a swallow of milk and smiling at him with a milk mustache. “See you later, Logan. I’ll be sunning.”

“At the pool.”

“Right.”

They said goodbye to each other.

When Nolan knocked at Felix’s door, somebody else answered. It was a balding, baby-face guy in a light green coat with a dark green tie. There was a dull hardness to the guy’s matching light green eyes, and he was packing a gun under his left arm, though the coat was cut to hide it. The guy looked familiar but Nolan couldn’t place him.

“Come in, come in,” Felix’s silky voice said, from somewhere behind the gunman.

Nolan came in and found Felix sitting on the edge of the big double bed, at its foot. Felix was wearing a lemon sports coat and lemonade tie. His trousers were tan. His face wasn’t gray this time, but brown, as brown as Sherry’s. Felix had evidently been to Miami recently. His graying hair was styled, covering one fourth of his ears, and he looked overall very with it. Beside him on the bed was an ashtray and a pack of Gauloises Disque Bleu and the ashtray had half a dozen of the cigarettes stubbed out in it. Though Felix wasn’t smoking at the moment, chain smoking probably explained the flaw in Felix’s well-groomed looks: his teeth were as yellow as his sportscoat.

To Felix’s left, sitting on a straightback chair, was another bodyguard, a tall guy with a round face that didn’t quite go with the rest of him. The tall gunman was wearing a pink coat and red tie, which made him look like a fag or something. Felix’s idea of class, probably.

“Shut the door and sit down, Greer,” Felix told the baby-face. Greer did as he was told. “Nolan, my friend, make yourself comfortable. Angelo, give Mr. Nolan your chair.”

Angelo did so.