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dead.”
    Tom Sixte lit a cigarette. “I haven’t got a lot of money, but I could cash a check for five thousand dollars. If I tried to get more they’d make inquiries and you might get suspicious and shoot me. I’m going to play it smart.
    “So I draw five thousand. You take it and put me on the plane. I don’t know who you are…what exactly am I going to tell them? You could be out of town, in Las Vegas or Portland before they started looking—but that’s not all. I wouldn’t squawk because I’d be called back as a witness. If I wasn’t here there’d be nothing to connect you with the job—and brother, I can make money in Bolivia. I’ve got a big deal down there.”
    There were plenty of fallacies in his argument, but Tom Sixte would point out nothing they could not see. He drew deep on his cigarette and ran his fingers through his dark hair. He was unshaved and felt dirty. If he got out of this, it would be by thinking his way out, and he was tired. He wanted a shower and sleep.
    “I got to think about it.” Kurt got up. “I don’t like it much.”
    Sixte leaned back on the divan. “Think it over. If I was in your place, I would think a lot.” Kurt leaned back and lit a cigarette. His face was expressionless but Sixte was remembering the padded shoulders in Kurt’s jacket. “Your girlfriend, for instance. She’d look mighty pretty in a new outfit, and you two would make a pair, all dressed to the nines.”
    Kurt ignored him, looking around and speaking past his cigarette. “Phyl, fix some sandwiches, will you?”
    “As long as I’m paying for this,” Sixte grinned at them, “why not some steaks? The condemned man ate a hearty meal….” He met Kurt’s cold eye and added, “Maybe you’ll soon have five thousand dollars, so why not enjoy yourself?” Keeping his voice casual, he added, “And while you’re at it, why not a bottle of wine? Some of that Madeira?”
             
    D ETECTIVE L IEUTENANT M IKE F ROST SAT behind the scarred desk. It was 10:00 A.M . and he had just checked with the morgue…nobody that could be Sixte had been brought in yet. But if he was dead they might never find him.
    Joe stuck his head in the door. “Nothing on the prints. The man’s were Sixte himself, a major in combat intelligence during the war. The woman was the landlady, who does her own cleaning up. And we drew a blank on the girl. Nothing on file.”
    There had been nothing on the bars, either. Nobody remembered any such couple. Frost was thinking…the other man had come at once, and it could not have taken him longer than ten minutes. It took time to get outside, get a car started and into the street…at most he would not be more than twenty blocks away. More likely within half that distance. Frost picked up the phone and started a check on bars and possible loafing places. Looking for a tall dark young man who answered a phone and left hurriedly.
    Surprisingly, the break came quickly. Noonan called in. Frost remembered him as a boyish-looking officer who looked like a college halfback. A man answering the description took a call in a public booth at three minutes after ten. He paid for his drinks and went out.
    Why so sure of the time? The bartender’s girl was late. She usually came in at quarter to ten, so he was watching the clock and expecting a call.
    “This guy didn’t talk,” Noonan said. “He nursed one drink for more than an hour, had just ordered the second. The bartender heard him say on the phone, ‘Yes, this is Tommy Hart.’”
    They ran a check on Hart…nothing. Noonan called back. “A guy in that bar, he says that guy Hart, if that was his name, used to hang out at a bar on Sixth Street. The Shadow Club.”
    It fit. A lot of hoods came and went around there. A lot of good people, too. Frost had Hart figured as small time—working through a woman—but even the small-time boys have big ideas, delusions of grandeur. And he might be afraid to turn Sixte loose.
    At noon