I shook my head.
“No—not yet.”
“But you’re looking for him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe I could tell you how to find him, if I knew you were all right.”
“It doesn’t make any difference to me,” I said carelessly. “I’ve a few more minutes to waste, and if he doesn’t show up by then it’s all one to me.”
She cuddled against my shoulder.
“What’s the racket? Maybe I could get word to Ed.”
I stuck a cigarette in her mouth, one in my own, and lit them.
“Let it go,” I bluffed. “This Ed of yours seems to be as exclusive as all hell. Well, it’s no skin off my face. I’ll buy you another drink and then trot along.”
She jumped up.
“Wait a minute. I’ll see if I can get him. What’s your name?”
“Parker will do as well as any other,” I said, the name I had used on Ryan popping first into my mind.
“You wait,” she called back as she moved toward the back door. “I think I can find him.”
“I think so too,” I agreed.
Ten minutes went by, and a man came to my table from the front of the establishment. He was a blond Englishman of less than forty, with all the