- Mike Hammer: [narrating] Maybe Jack Cordell had just come back from South America. Maybe - anything's possible - even to spend three sunny years in the South America and come back looking like boiled white sauce, but I could think of a place where it would be more likely to spend three years and come away with a pallor. If I was right, I could learn a lot more about my client in the ID section of headquarters than I could sitting talking to him for hours.
- Mike Hammer: [narrating] I was in luck, his files paid off - Celeste Ryan was now Tempest Flame and was featured in a girly-girly show in the fifties. Her dance, he added, wasn't likely to be seen in drawing rooms this season... or any season.
- [Anderson was just shot in the back]
- Mike Hammer: [narrating] My client was nowhere in sight. He said he intended to ask Andy Anderson why he was tailing him. From the looks of things, I judged he wasn't satisfied with the answer.
- Mike Hammer: [narrating] There's a saying that the show must go on. Nobody ever bothered to explain why but everybody lives up to it. Out in the alley, the police were removing the remains of a little fat guy who didn't have a chance. Out front, an audience who didn't even know about the shooting was enjoying the show. On stage, Tempest Flame was doing the dance that wouldn't be seen in living rooms this season.
- Mike Hammer: [narrating] Butler Tilton had a penthouse in one of the fabulous cliff dwellings that line the river on New York's fashionable East Side. I had never been a particular fan of his form of journalistic egomania, but I'd be the last to deny that he packed a lot of weight.