"But you're a damned fool to think a dish like that would have any part of you. I don't mean you're nothing a woman would go for, but she's more fang than female. You'd have to be richer and better-looking than her, for one thing--" "Not after my friends get through with her. She'll know a good man when she 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 Stanislavsky actor like Lou wouldn't notice that. Neither would I, ordinarily, but I was giving him a chance to work his way through 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?"