- Henry Polle: Be smart, Mister. Get out of here or I'll call the cops!
- Frank Otto: Better make it an ambulance. It'll do you more good.
- [a beautiful woman enters Mike's office]
- Mike Hammer: Well, whatever you're sellin', honey, we're buyin'. Come on in!
- Mike Hammer: [narrating] Traditionally, 42nd and Broadway is the gateway to the world of glamor. Actually, it's a street living in the past. Its once famous theaters which housed the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals had been transformed into second run houses; its restaurants into frankfurter and orange juice stands; it's cabarets into penny arcades. But to the glamor-struck youngster, it wasn't a tired old street with little to remind it of past glory; it was still a street touched with stardust.
- Dora Church: Oh, yes yes, I remember her, yes. We never should have taken her, she didn't have the qualifications.
- Mike Hammer: Yeah, you were right the first time, honey. You should never have taken her 200 clams.
- Dora Church: I don't know what you're up to, Mr. Hammer, but if you're trying to build up a defense for this killer...
- Mike Hammer: I'll do more than that, honey. I'm going to find the *real* killer.
- Mike Hammer: The newspapers said your files had been ransacked. Do you have any idea what's missing?
- Dora Church: Only Mr. Poley could tell you that... and he's dead.
- Mike Hammer: Yeah, that's right. Well, if he isn't, he's going to have a real yuck coming, because they're going to bury him in the morning.
- Mike Hammer: Somebody must have come in after you left and finished off the job.
- Elsa Webber: Yes, but who?
- Mike Hammer: Yeah, who?
- [Mike picks up a thick telephone directory]
- Mike Hammer: Here's a partial list of possible suspects.
- Sergeant Maureen Hurley: Mr. Hammer? I'm Sergeant Hurley.
- Mike Hammer: *Sergeant* Hurley? Boy oh boy oh boy, when I think of how unpleasant that word used to sound to me when I was a PFC.
- Mike Hammer: Look, I am not going to go through life calling a woman Sergeant... especially when I think of the synonyms I used to have for that word.