“Suits me.  I’ll be glad to help you, and I’ll be glad for any help you can give me on recovering those pistols.  I haven’t made any formal report on that, yet, because I’m not sure exactly what’s missing, and I don’t want any of that kind of publicity while I’m trying to sell the collection.  It may be that the two matters are related; there are some points of similarity, which may or may not mean anything.  And, of course, I just may find somebody who’ll make it worth my time to get interested in this killing, while I’m at it.”

McKenna chuckled.  “That must hurt hell out of you, Jeff,” he said.  “A nice classy murder like this, and nobody to pay you to work on it.”

“It does,” Rand admitted.  “I feel like an undertaker watching a man being swallowed by a shark.”

“You want to stick around till this clerk of Rivers’s gets here?” McKenna asked.  “He should be here in about an hour and a half.”

“No.  I’d just as soon not be seen taking too much of an interest in this right now.  Fact is, I’d just as soon not have my name mentioned at all in connection with this.  You can charge the discovery of the body up to our old friend, Anonymous Tip, can’t you?”

“Sure.”  McKenna accompanied Rand to the front door, past the white chalked outline that marked the original position of the body.  The body itself, with ink-blackened fingertips, lay to one side, out of the way.  Corporal Kavaalen was going through the dead man’s pockets, and Skinner was working on the rifle with an insufflator.

“Well, we can’t say it was robbery, anyhow,” Kavaalen said.  “He had eight C’s in his billfold.”

“Migawd, Sarge, is this damn rifle ever lousy with prints,” Skinner complained.  “A lot of Rivers’s, and everybody else’s who’s been fooling with it around here, and half the Wehrmacht.”

“Swell, swell!” McKenna enthused.  “Maybe we can pass the case off on the War Crimes Commission.”

CHAPTER 11

Mick McKenna had put his finger right on the sore spot.  It did hurt Rand like hell; a nice, sensational murder and no money in it for the Tri-State Agency.  Obviously, somebody would have to be persuaded to finance an investigation.  Preferably some innocent victim of unjust suspicion; somebody who could best clear himself by unmasking the real villain....  For “villain,” Rand mentally substituted “public benefactor.”

He was running over a list of possible suspects as he entered Rosemont.  Passing the little antique shop he slowed, backed, read the name “Karen Lawrence” on the window, and then pulled over to the curb and got out.  Crossing the sidewalk, he went up the steps to the door, entering to the jangling of a spring-mounted cowbell.

The girl dealer was inside, with a visitor, a sallow-faced, untidy-looking man of indeterminate age who was opening newspaper-wrapped packages on a table-top.  Karen greeted Rand by name and military rank; Rand told her he’d just look around till she was through.  She tossed him a look of comic reproach, as though she had counted on him to rid her of the man with the packages.