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you.”
    “Yes, Mr. Tiger.”
    “One more thing ... if there’s any rough stuff, stay out of it.”
    “Please ...”
    “What?”
    “I am quite capable, sir. I have fought in an army several times.”
    “This isn’t a desert war, feller.”
    “All killing is alike. It is merely a matter of location and method. I would rather you thought of me as not being helpless.”
    “You bought it, Harry.”
    We finished the sandwiches George brought us and split up there. I let them go out first, then followed after I finished my coffee. The noon crowd was just beginning to filter in and I went out through the bar, waving so long to big Jim.
     
    At two-fifteen a messenger service delivered a manila envelope to my hotel. I tipped the boy and went back to look at the photos Virgil Adams sent over. They were eight-by-ten blow-ups of Malcolm Turos but had been taken out of focus with an apparently cheap camera at least ten years ago. In one he was standing outside the stage-door entrance of a theater shaking hands with some admirers, a bouquet of flowers in his hands, an unimposing man in topcoat and homburg with a heavy mustache and a thin smile. The other was a summertime shot taken when he was about to enter a car with a woman. He had no mustache here and wore a light-colored suit. Neither picture could be used for positive identification and unless Virgil came up with something from Brazil I had to rely on the hazy glimpse of the guy going down in front of my gun during the shoot-out there. And all I could recall was an ill-fitting white suit, a floppy panama hat and a nondescript face going down in a heap with the blood spurting from his neck.
    I stuck the photos in the bottom of my suitcase, snapped it shut and got into the shower to soak off the stain I had bathed in. By the time I had toweled myself back to normal the phone rang and when I picked it up Charlie Corbinet said, “Smart move, Tiger.”
    I grinned, but he couldn’t see it. “I like to see the face of the enemy.”
    “You have more than you think. Some of them are domestic.”
    “Great,” I said. “Thanks for the warning, but why?”
    “Because some of them are on their way up right now. If you have a rod get it out of sight. They’ll pull you in with any excuse right now. Why the hell you register in your own name I’ll never know. I thought I taught you better.”
    “You did, that’s why I did it this way. Thanks.”
    “Get some good lies ready.”
    “I’m an expert.” I hung up quickly, took off the rig with the .45 and looked around for a place to ditch it. I didn’t want to lose the piece, not that it couldn’t be replaced, but it was fitted to my own hand and sighted in for accuracy, too much a part of me to lose. In this state I wasn’t licensed to carry it and they could hit me with a Sullivan charge without even listening to an explanation.
    You don’t hide guns inside TV sets or air conditioners. These boys would check out every inch of the place, every ledge outside the window, every spot in the bathroom and closet, and unless I figured something out in a hurry I had it.
    I opened the window and looked out Two floors down a spiked iron grillwork divided the terraces between apartments, the grill running up the side of the building, jutting out two feet to discourage access from one side to the other. I took off my belt, strung it through the trigger guard, buckled it and held it out in a wide loop. As the buzzer sounded I dropped it, and for a second, thought I had missed, but the belt caught a spike of the grill and stayed there. I grinned again, lowered the window and went to the door.
    Hal Randolph stood there with another big guy, behind them a pair of young, gray-suited guys who could have just come from Madison Avenue. I said, “Come on in, gentlemen.”
    He put the warrant in my hand first, his mouth forcing a smile of pleasure. “Shakedown, Mann. Hope it doesn’t inconvenience you.”
    “Not a bit. Mind if I finish