“You’re still a private eye,” she said.

“You’re still a dish,” I noted.

“You told me I shouldn’t sleep with strange men.”

“I waited till the next morning to give you that advice, though.”

Her smile closed over those white teeth and settled in one dimple; she gestured to a chair, which I pulled up, and she sat behind her desk.

“I was a pretty wild kid,” she said, echoing her uncle’s words.

“I remember.”

“I never did sleep around much, Nate. You were one of a select few.”

“It was my honor. My pleasure, actually.” I felt awkward about this, but was immediately taken with this older version of the fresh young girl I’d once bedded and then lectured and sent on her way.

I’d met her at a party at a fifth-floor suite in the Sheraton. My boxer friend Barney Ross, who’d grown up on the West Side with me, and some other big shots in the sporting world were going to a wingding tossed by Joe Epstein, who ran the biggest horse-race betting commission house in Chicago. Epstein was an overweight, meek-looking little guy in his early thirties, with hornrimmed glasses and a disappearing hairline; but he was a sucker for the night life, and when he wasn’t hitting the local night spots he was throwing his own bashes.

Epstein had a girl friend who’d been around town since the World’s Fair in ’33. She’d danced a pretty fair hootchiekoo for a kid from the sticks-an Alabama girl with a sultry lilting accent and lots of chestnut hair and baby-fat curves and a full pouty mouth. Her name was Virginia Hill and she was looking pretty sophisticated these days, greeting Joe’s guests with a smile and giving them a look at a couple of yards of creamy white bosom; her clingy black gown didn’t leave much of the rest of her to the imagination, either.

“You’re Nate Heller, aren’t you?” Virginia had said, taking my hand. You could’ve camped out on this girl’s tits.