know somebody in the market for one?”

“Wel-l-l,” she said slowly, “I might be. I’ve been thinking of buying a car.”

“You could go farther and do worse,” I said. “It’s a two-tone job, white sidewalls, radio, seat covers—”

She was studying my face again with that curious intensity. “Is it worth twenty-five hundred dollars, really?”

“Every nickel of it,” I said, ready to go into a sales pitch. Maybe we could make a deal. Then I got the impression that she wasn’t even listening to what I said.

She took off the glasses and stared thoughtfully at me. Her eyes were large and self-possessed, and jet black, like her hair. The hair was long, drawn into a roll at the back of her neck. She looked Spanish, except that even with the faint tan her skin was very fair.

“There’s something about your face,” she said. “I keep thinking I should know who you are.”

So that was it. It still happens once in a while. “Not unless you’ve got a long memory,” I said.

She shook her head. “Not too long. Four years? Five?”

“Make it six.”

“Yes. That’s about it. I was quite a football fan in those days. Scarborough, wasn’t it? Lee Scarborough? All-Conference left half.”

“You should be a cop,” I said.

“No. You were quite famous.”

“They get new ones every year.” I wished we could get back to the car trade. You can’t eat six-year-old football scores.

“Why didn’t you join the pros?” She took a puff on the cigarette she was smoking and tossed it into a flower bed without taking her eyes from my face.

“I did,” I said. “But it didn’t jell.”

“What happened?”

“Bum knee.” I squatted on my heels. “How about the car? You really want to buy one?”

“I think so. But why do you want to sell it?”

“I need the money.”

“Oh,” she said.

“It’s out front, if you’d like to drive it.”

“All right,” she said. “But I’d have to change. Would you mind?”

“Not at all. I’ll wait in the car.”

“Oh, come on up. It’s cooler inside.”

“O.K.,” I said. We stood up. She was tall, all right. I picked up the suntan lotion and the book and towel.

“I’m Diana James,” she said.

She saw me glance down at her left hand, and smiled. “You’ll only have to make one sales talk. I’m not married.”

“I’d have given you odds the other way.”

“I was, once. But, as you say, it didn’t jell.”

We went up the outside stairs at the rear of the building and in through the kitchen. She pulled a bottle of bourbon out of a cupboard and set it on the drain.

“Mix yourself a drink, and go into the living room. Soda and ice cubes in the refrigerator.”

“I hate to drink alone this early in the day,” I said. “It scares me.”

She smiled. “All right. If you insist.”

I mixed two and handed her one. We went on through to the living room, looking out over the Gulf. She took a sip of her drink and put it on the coffee table.

“Just make yourself at home,” she said. “I think this month’s True is in the rack there. I won’t be long.”

I watched her walk back across the dining room to the short hall that led to the bedroom and bath. It seemed to take her a long time.

The car, I thought. Remember? Don’t louse it up.

I sat down and glanced around the room. It had the anonymous look of any furnished apartment, but it wasn’t cheap. Hundred or a hundred and fifty a week during the season, I thought. It was odd she didn’t already have a car, and that, not having one, she wanted to buy a secondhand one.

Her purse was on the table at the end of the couch. I glanced at it, thinking she must be careless as hell or convinced all ex-football players were honest, and then I shrugged and started to take another sip of my drink. I stopped, and my eyes jerked back to the table.

It wasn’t the purse. It was the alligator key case lying beside it. The zipper was open and the keys dangled loose on the glass. And one of them was that square-shouldered shape you recognize anywhere. It was the ignition key to a General Motors car. Just who was kidding whom?

Well, I thought, she didn’t say she didn’t have one. Maybe she wanted two, or she was selling the other one. It was her business.

When she came out she had on a short-sleeved white summer dress and gilt sandals without stockings. She was tall and cool