“That old goat won’t get you anywhere,” Kerman said scornfully. “He wrote all the nifty bits in Latin.”
“And you’d be surprised at the number of guys who learned Latin just to find out what he said. That’s what I call killing two birds with one stone.”
“That brings us right back to my blonde,” Kerman said, stretching out his long legs. “I ran into her last night in Barney’s drug store…”
“I’m not interested in blondes,” I said firmly. “Instead of sitting around here talking about women, you should be out trying to hustle up new business. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I pay you for.”
Kerman considered this, a surprised expression on his face.
“Do you want any new business?” he asked eventually. “I thought the idea was to let Paula do all the work, and we live on her.”
“That’s the general set-up, but once in a while it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to do something to earn your keep.”
Kerman looked relieved.
“Yeah; once in a while. For a moment I thought you meant now.” He sipped his highball and closed his eyes. “Now this blonde I keep trying to tell you about. She’s a cute trick if ever there was one. When I tried to date her up she said she didn’t run after men. Know what I said?”
“What did you say?” I asked, because he would have told me anyway, and if I didn’t listen to his lies, who was going to listen to mine?