“You want what?” I asked natty as we left the Flamingo and headed back to the Mirage.

“Chocolate cake,” he said.

“It’s ten-thirty at night.”

“What, chocolate cake disappears at ten?” he asked. “There’s a law, all chocolate cake has to become angel food cake by ten-fifteen? We’re run by chocolate-cake Nazis now?”

I wasn’t sure I even wanted to contemplate the image of a chocolate-cake Nazi, so I just sighed. “Where can we get chocolate cake?”

“You’re the detective,” Nate snapped. “Find some.”

“I’m not a detective.”

“No, you’re an ‘escort’ with no bazookas.”

I was about to say, given the cantilevered architecture of Hope White’s build, that he had more than filled his bazooka quota for the day, but I decided he’d have a punch line for that and I didn’t want to hear it.

I decided to take a professional approach.

“Look,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go get your damn chocolate cake. Then we’re going back to the Mirage and then we’re going to bed. Then we’re going to get up early and catch the first flight back to Palm Springs. No booze, no broads, no pastry. Got it?”

He looked at me with those little bird-eyes.

“No breakfast?”

It did sound a little harsh.

“We can have breakfast,” I relented.

“What?”

“What ‘what’?”

“What ‘what what’?” he asked. “What’s for breakfast?”

“I don’t know,” I moaned. “Bacon and eggs.”

“Eggs?!” he snapped. “What, are you trying to kill me?”

I hadn’t been, but the concept didn’t entirely lack appeal at the moment.

But assuming it was a rhetorical question, I didn’t answer.

“And bacon?” he asked indignantly.

“What’s wrong with bacon?”

Apparently giving up on talking directly to me Nate mumbled to no one in particular, “He wants to feed bacon and eggs to an old Jew with a heart condition.”