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ANITA ROGERS considered herself pretty damned hard-boiled. That is to say, she could stand plenty of punishment and still keep smiling. But Ken Gracey got on her nerves.

The fault was as much hers as Ken's. She had no business letting herself in for it. Trouble was, he caught her on a down-beat. Ordinarily, in the old days, she'd never given a tumble to a high school kid. That stuff went when she was fourteen years old up in Watertown, Oregon, when she wanted to know the facts of life and the right name for things and stuff.

Men were—men. Any one of them could do as well as any other, dancing around a Maypole. That was her credo when she left Watertown, dad having hardening of the arteries and softening of the brain all at the same time. A party girl she was the minute she hit 'Frisco. Up all night every night, cock-eyed plenty, but always feeling good by the next evening when the old merry-go-round would start twirling again.

The high spot in those days when when Ike Rosenstone hired her to model gowns for him at a hundred per because she happened to know where the body was buried and could show its last resting place to Ike's wife. The poor fat-headed cheater flopped over one day with a stroke and Anita found herself out in the cold … and it was plenty cold.