(Note: more spoilers follow.)
A lot of what goes on (and went on) is implied.
Before the story begins, Lisa (Samantha Jones) was part of a scam racket with Mike (Richard Crenna) and Carlino, a corrupt ex-cop (Jack Weston). Their scam was to swindle people out of money by making up theses elaborate stories. Mike and Carlino eventually went to jail, while Lisa escaped. (Note: in Fredric Knott's play, it is revealed that Lisa actually turned them in so she could keep all of the money.)
So, while Mike and Carlino were in prison, Lisa unfortunately became partners with the far more dangerous Harry Roat (Alan Arkin). Their criminal career involved importing and exporting - and selling - drugs to and from Canada. As the movie begins, Lisa is hurriedly rushing out of an accomplice's apartment after he has sewn up small bags of heroin in a fancy little doll. Lisa leaves. The accomplices goes to the phone and dials a number (probably Roat).
Lisa arrives at JFK Airport only to find Roat standing above the tarmac, waiting. Then she cons Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) into holding onto the doll. Roat grabs Lisa and they walk off, while Sam looks at them go (with an uneasy look on his face).
Then...Mike and Carlino, fresh out of jail, make their way to an apartment which Lisa has presumably told them to visit. They think she has a new scam to start up (or pay back their money). They settle in, but Mike puts a few facts together that this is not her place, and she did not leave the note on the outside door. ("Since when can Lisa type?")
Just as they are about to leave, they hear noise in the hallway. They then shortly meet Mr. Roat, a complete stranger to the both of them, but who they find, as the action continues, set the entire meeting up (even typing up the notes that were supposedly from Lisa).
Through off-screen persuasion, Roat got Lisa to tell him everything about her former partners so that he could devise a similar scam by which he could enlist them to help con the lady of the home, Suzy (Audrey Hepburn), into giving up the doll. And enlisting eventually turned into blackmailing them...as their fingerprints were all over the apartment and a dead lady, Lisa, is hanging in the Hendrix's closet. She was murdered by Roat for trying to double-cross him in stealing the doll. ("She was trespassing...poaching...going into business for herself. Bad news. Things like that keep up, and what do you have? Anarchy. Bad news.")
So, the Lisa-Mike-Carlino-Roat ring was sort of a six degrees of separation for criminals (some worse than others).
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