The taxi pulled up in front of a big, blank-faced apartment complex on New York’s upper West Side. The single passenger, a striking blond girl named Michele Guerin, leaned forward, puzzled by the reading on the meter.

She was wearing a beige suit, a good copy of an original from one of the Parisian dress houses, not much jewelry and little makeup. She was in her middle or late twenties. Her eyes were smoky blue and humorous, as if she considered her good looks and elegance a lucky accident which might just as well have happened to someone else.

“One dollar thirty,” she said, too precisely. “I must give you one seventy-five. No?”

“OK,” the driver said with a smile. “I’ll let you get away with one seventy-five.”

He took the two singles she handed him, made change, and leaned across to unlatch the door, a service New York taxi drivers don’t do for everybody. He had been wondering about her. He couldn’t quite fit her into any pigeonhole. Her accent was French, and her slowness in reading the meter probably meant that she hadn’t been long in this country. Nevertheless, she had none of the earmarks of a tourist. He had checked her for rings. She was unmarried. Maybe a professional model, he thought, except that those girls tend to be skinny, and in her case there was no question at all that there was a real woman inside the expensive clothes. Another thing he had noticed about models-their expression was often vaguely dissatisfied and sulky, as though they didn’t like having to show off clothes they couldn’t afford to own. And there was nothing sulky about this girl’s expression. An actress, he thought? But no, that didn’t seem to fit either.

He watched her click up to the big glass double doors. She was just as attractive going as coming. He sighed heavily, a reasonably contented married man with three small children, put the cab in gear and drove away.