Part I, The Prosperteer: Chapters 7 - 9 Summary

Sweat asks Rooney's professional opinion of the three blimp corpses. Sweat is being pressured by unnamed federal agencies to give up the bodies; and he finds this to be very mysterious. Rooney believes the corpses froze to death. Sweat cannot buy this as the three men disappeared when the temperatures were in the 90s. Rooney then informs Sweat that the three corpses are not any of the three men who disappeared. He believes them to be foreign nationals. Their last meal consisted of dark bread, fruit and beets. The bodies are stolen while Sweat and Rooney are out on the boat. Rooney is not as upset as Sweat, primarily because they did not get the one piece of evidence that he withheld from his report; that the men died one or two years...