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sees one and I'd be what she wants." I slid my hand over my naked scalp. "With
a head of hair, I'd look my real age, which happens to be a year younger than
you, if you remember. She'd go for me they checked our emotional quotients and
we'd be a natural together. The only thing was that I was bald. They could
have grown hair on my head, which would have taken care of that, and then we'd
have gotten together like gin and tonic."
LOU arched his black eyebrows at me. "They really could grow hair on you?"
"Sure. Now you want to know why I didn't let them." I glanced out the window
at the smoky city.
"That's why. They couldn't tell me if I'd ever get back to the future. I
wasn't taking any chances. As long as there was a possibility that I'd be
stranded in my own time, I wasn't going to lose my livelihood. Which reminds
me, you have anything else to do here?"
"There'll be a guard stationed around the house and all her holdings and art
will be taken over until she comes back "
"She won't."
" or is declared legally dead."
"And me?" I broke in.
"We can't hold you without proof of murder."
"Good enough. Then let's get out of here."
"I have to go back on duty," he objected.
"Not any more. I've got over $15,000 in cash and deposits enough to finance
you and me."
"Enough to kill her for."
"Enough to finance you and me," I repeated doggedly. "I told you I had the
money before she sent me into the future "
"All right, all right," he interrupted. "Let's not go into that again. We
couldn't find a body, so you're free. Now what's this about financing the two
of us?"
I put my fingers around his arm and steered him out to the street.
"This city has never had a worse cop than you," I said. "Why? Because you're
an actor, not a cop.
You're going back to acting, Lou. This money will keep us both going until we
get a break."
He gave me the slit-eyed look he'd picked up in line of duty. "That wouldn't
be a bribe, would it?"
"Call it a kind of memorial to a lot of poor, innocent old people and a sick,
tormented woman."
We walked along in silence out in the clean sunshine. It was our silence; the
sleek cars and burly trucks made their noise and the pedestrians added their
gabble, but a good Stanislaysky actor like Lou wouldn't notice that. Neither
would I, ordinarily, but I was giving him a chance to work his way through
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this situation.
"I won't hand you a lie, Mark," he said finally. "I never stopped wanting to
act. I'll take your deal on two considerations."
"All right, what are they?"
"That whatever I take off you is strictly a loan."
"No argument. What's the other?"
He had an unlit cigarette almost to his lips. He held it there while he said:
"That any time you come across a case of an old person who died of starvation
with $30,000 stashed away somewhere, you turn fast to the theatrical page and
not tell me or even think about it."
"I don't have to agree to that."
HE lowered the cigarette, stopped and turned to me. "You mean it's no deal?"
"Not that," I said. "I mean there won't be any more of those cases. Between
knowing that and both of us back acting again I'm satisfied. You don't have to
believe me. Nobody does."
He lit up and blew out a pretty plume, fine and slow and straight, which would
have televized like a million in the bank. Then he grinned. "You wouldn't want
to bet on that, would you?"
"Not with a friend. I do all my sure-thing betting with bookies."
"Then make it a token bet," he said. "One buck that somebody dies of
starvation with a big poke within a year."
I took the bet.
I took the dollar a year later.
 H. L. GOLD
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