"Why dead?"
"General, sorry, warden—no, I'll go back to the way I know you best—General Bennington, Clarens simply isn't the business of any kind of normal living.
"You take a guy who cracked a safe, knocked off a payroll, robbed a bank, he's like any good business man taking a risk; he has insurance, he's got an out.
"He can buy me, he can talk to the D.A., he can get the court to go along if he's caught. He just says, I'll tell you where the stuff is if I get the minimum.
"O.K., we're wrong, we should go black-and-white, we should say no to any kind of deal, I shouldn't let a little guy go just because I'd rather grab the big one. Only, unconditional surrender doesn't work any better in my job than it does in yours on a battlefield."
"We've learned it doesn't work too well," Bennington agreed, "but what has this to do with Clarens?"
"General, you did the right thing up at Duncannon when you decided to talk to Musto. He was a man in business, with something to buy and something to sell. He could be dealt with.
"Now think this through: Suppose everybody in that Administration Building had been a Clarens. And I heard that you said this, General Bennington, that there has to be some sort of mutual trust for bargaining. You could deal with Musto because he is, and I'll make the point again, a sort of business man even though his business isn't legal.
"But Clarens...."