Nobody so much as acknowledges the effort and Faber mutters something else, possibly a fuck you. Still a little fire left in this attorney. I decide to extinguish it.

‘Take your ass home,’ I growl. ‘Before I hit you so hard you’ll be pressing charges from the afterlife.’

That’s not a bad line either, but it’s a little Hollywood. I’ve used it a dozen times and it’s all Connie can do not to groan when I trot it out again.

I crack my knuckles to make my point and Faber wisely decides to leave. He’s a bad loser, though, and tosses another two hundred at Connie from the doorway.

‘Here,’ he sneers. ‘Buy yourself a boob job.’

I fake a lunge and the attorney is gone, door swinging behind him. I feel like hurting this guy, I really do, but I know from experience that it won’t make me feel much better. So I swallow the instinct like it’s a ball of medicine and put on my funeral face for Connie.

‘You okay?’

Connie is on her knees, fishing for one of the fifties that has floated under the couch on the breeze of a flapping door.

‘Screw him, Dan. This is two nights with a sitter.’

I lever the couch with my boot so she can snag the note and avoid all the other crud under there.

‘Is that Al Capone’s missing rubber?’ I say, trying for some humour.

Connie sobs. Maybe it’s the bad joke; more likely it’s the last straw that this jerk Faber probably was, so I put my arm around her, raising her up. Connie is the kind of girl a man feels like protecting. She’s beautiful like she belongs in a fifties movie; Rita Hayworth hair that ripples when she walks like lava flowing down a mountain, and wide green eyes that still have some warmth in them in spite of a shitty job and shittier ex.

‘Come on, darlin’, he’s gone for good. You’ll never see him again.’

‘No one says darlin’ any more, Dan. Only in the movies.’