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“Willi might be hard to crack. It’s an axiom of my profession that the mark must have a larcenous soul. And she hasn’t. Willi’s all art and beauty. That’s why we need you.”
    “Why? How?”
    “You’re going to be the slant-head, the vulgar, stupid private investigator who Jean seems to be trusting too much. You’re the foil against which I will have to sparkle with my wit and urbanity. You’re the suspicious type and I’ll be the man with hope for the future, the forward thinker. Willi reads all the liberal magazines, all the arty magazines, the literary magazines. So you see what you should be to make her hate you.”
    “A lowbrow? That’s easy.”
    “No, a lower middlebrow, a pompous, opinionated ass.”
    “I’ll study the part,” I said. “Though it’s more in Deutscher’s line.”
    He chuckled. “Yes. Yes, indeed.”
    An opening, so I widened it. “What is his part by the way? If he’s in for a cut, just what does he contribute?”
    Charles Adam Roland’s fine forehead was creased in a frown. “I’ve been thinking along the same line. He wants to stay clear of everything that could nail him. He wants to be a sort of silent partner.”
    “That’s the way he usually operates. But how did he get into the pitch?”
    Roland looked uncomfortable for the first time. “Well, there was a client he had, to whom I was indebted.” He looked up and smiled. “I mean he had one of my marks for a client, and he found me for the mark.”
    “And now he’s blackmailing himself into the big money?”
    A pause while Roland looked thoughtful. “That puts it accurately enough.”
    “Well,” I said, “I’m just a Johnny-come-lately in this deal, so maybe I’m not entitled to an opinion yet, but I can’t see him in this. Do we need him?”
    Again Roland didn’t answer right away. Finally he smiled. “He serves no purpose in this pitch. But he does have connections; he’d be a hard man to shake. However, it’s a problem we can think about, isn’t it?”
    I nodded. And then asked, “What do you think this Willi Clifford can be touched for?”
    “That I’ve investigated. All I considered was her personal fortune, you understand, not her father’s. She has a little over three hundred thousand in cash and immediately negotiable securities and another half million in less fluid assets. She’s a really solvent mark, and Jean’s hold on her is tremendous.” He took a breath. “It is my opinion we can relieve her of nearly a quarter of a million.”
    A quarter of a million. … I said, “And that would be cut four ways?”
    “If Deutscher can’t be shaken, that would be cut four ways.”
    He was smiling at me and I’d bet he thought he could read my mind. He probably thought I was trying to figure it as a three-way cut. But he’d be wrong on that.
    I was thinking of how I could live on a quarter of a million dollars.

CHAPTER THREE
    A FTER DINNER WE WENT out together, and he left me in front of the hotel with a firm handshake and another flash of that winning smile. At any rate, he thought he left me. My office parking lot was only a block away, and I had my Chev back on Sunset by the time his Cad pulled out of the hotel garage. I gave him a half block lead, and trailed him. I didn’t have far to go. He headed toward the Hollywood Hills section and stopped just short of that.
    He stopped in front of Deutscher’s triplex, parking right behind Deutscher’s Plymouth. I drove by as he walked back along the walk toward Deutscher’s lighted apartment. They’d probably made the appointment before Roland met me. So Jean was right about them. A quarter of a million split down the middle is still a lot of money. And maybe Jean wouldn’t be hard to freeze out.
    I went right home and phoned her. I told her about my talk with her dad and about my following him after the talk.
    “There’s an off chance,” she said, “that it doesn’t mean anything.”
    “Way off,” I guessed.
    “Yes.” A