The party

It was about ten-thirty when the little yellow-sashed Mexican orchestra got tired of playing a low-voiced prettied-up rhumba that nobody was dancing to. (...) The room had been a ballroom once and Eddie Mars had changed it only as much as his business compelled him.


He started sensing an intrigue here. That guy was an obvious target.

He shrugged. "There would be the implication that the coin was illegally acquired."


She looked unconscious of what was going on, but she didn't have the pose of unconsciousness. She had a pose as if she was doing something very important and making a lot of it.



I nodded and smiled at her. Marlowe, one smile, cheerful.

'Who's he?' I put a cigarette in my mouth and stared at her. She looked a little pale and strained, but she looked like a girl who could function under a strain.

We were sitting in a room at the Berglund. I was on the side of the bed (...). It was my room. Rain beat very hard against the window.
Her head was against an ivory satin cushion.

The girl and I stood looking at each other. She tried to keep a cute smile on her face but her face was too tired to be bothered. It kept going black on her. the smile would wash off like like water off sand and her pale skin had a harsh granular under the stunned and stupid blackness of her eyes.



She shrugged. She said negligently: "He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country."

Her stockings were just as sheer as the day before, but she wasn't showing as much of her legs.

She laughed suddenly and sharply and went half-way through the door, then turned her head to say cooly: 'You're as cold-blooded a beast as I ever met, Marlowe. Or can I call you Phil?'

The door at the back opened with a bang and Moose Malloy came through it with a smooth heavy lunge and stopped dead, his feet planted and a wide pale grin on his face. A Colt Army.45 looked like a toy pistol in his hand.

It was a good punch. The shoulder dropped and the body swung behind it (...). He threw him clear across the room, spinning and staggering and flailing with his arms.

She fooled me. She laughed in my face. "So my husband hired you to spy on me," she said. "I might have known the whole thing was an act."

She flashed here eyes down, shivered, and put the gun back in her bag. She drank half the drink without stopping, put the glass down hard and picked the card up. "I don't give many people that liquor", I said. "I can't afford to". Her lips curled. "I supposed you would want money."

The door opened with a jerk and Finlayson and Sebold came in. Sebold looked as spruce and nasty as ever, but Finlayson looked older, more worn, mousier. "Guys like you get in a lot of trouble", Finlayson said sourly. "Trouble is my business", I said. "How else would I make a nickel?"


The two guns swiveled and the hard gray eyes were looking at me now. Madder went a little way towards Sype and pointed his Smith & Wesson at Sype's chest. The girl smiled, not a nice smile. "Bright boy, eh? You sure stick your neck out all the time, don't you?"


For more in technicolor: http://www.flickr.com/photos/veryveryquiet/sets/72157619132921809/


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All quotations from:
Trouble is my business, R. Chandler; Farewell, My Love, R. Chandler; The Big Sleep, R. Chandler; Killer in the Rain, R. Chandler.