Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler & Robert B. Parker (ed)

Author:Raymond Chandler & Robert B. Parker (ed)
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: detective, mystery, noir, hard-boiled, anthology
ISBN: 1588240010
Publisher: ibooks, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When I got into the car, I noticed a dusty black Packard parked way back in the shade of a pepper tree. The driver was slumped over the wheel. Asleep. Maybe dead. I was too hot to care that much.

I drove down the coast road, hungry for sea breezes. There weren’t any. The sky was uniform blue, the sun dealing out its punishment to everyone rich enough to live on the coast. The road ahead sparkled and fragmented jeweled layers in the haze.

Suddenly I remembered who the sugar daddy was. A face seen in the papers as often as hers. Bud Cone, head of Ingot Pictures. Rich enough for the Malibu house to be among his small change. Good fish for an ambitious actress to leech onto.

I had given up on sea breezes by then and was on Wilshire, driving into the city. The traffic was heavy, hot, and angry. In the mirror I saw the dusty black Packard three cars back. The driver had woken up or been resurrected. Either way he was tailing me.

When I took a left onto Highland he was still three cars back. At the intersection with Santa Monica I tried to dust him off at the lights, but he stayed with me. So I cut a little square dance I’d done before around Yucca and Vine. That lost him.

The gods were smiling—there was a space to park outside the Cahuenga Building. I remembered the office bottle was empty. Five minutes later I had a pint under my arm and the virtuous, exercised glow of a man who’s walked to the liquor store and back.

I don’t know where he’d lost the Packard, but he was waiting for me in the lobby with a Colt automatic. It wasn’t there to persuade me to do anything. It was there to kill me.

His dim outline flashed on the glass of the door as I entered, and I hit the carpet at the moment the gun spoke.

It barked a couple more times. I heard the slugs bite the floor as I rolled towards him. I caught his shin hard with the bottle and hooked my legs round his. He came crashing down.

I was up first and kicked at the hand along which he was sighting the Colt. The automatic skittered across the lobby. He grunted in pain. I planted a second kick firmly in his gut.

Another grunt, but he was tough. And quick. On his feet again, huge as a windmill, he swung a fist at my head. I felt its wake on my hair as I dropped to one knee.

I lunged a right to where his belt was, then, as the square chin came down, caught its edge with a left hook so sweet it should have been in a box with red ribbons on top.

His head clicked back. His eyes rolled blank. He thudded against the wall and trickled down to a heap on the lobby floor.

His face was only a little blanker than when he was conscious.

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