Pat Novak, For Hire — 1947

Broke after the Tahoe tables cleaned him out, Novak hires on as bodyguard to a jumpy little man making the drive to San Francisco. Somewhere along the road the man is gone; a woman is in the trunk.

A nervous woman phones asking for company. Novak arrives to find Hellman opening the door, a bookkeeper dead, the landlady gone, and a thousand dollars offered for one envelope.

A bad tip at Bay Meadows leaves Novak flat, so the rich woman in the fast car who wants a bodyguard looks like luck. It stops looking that way at the dead end, with a body behind him.

A man in a hurry wants his apartment watched overnight and cannot explain why he had to break into it. Novak's doubts arrive with two guns, a badge, and a year-old murder.