Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.
Her eyes ate me.
A slice of spumoni wouldn’t have melted on her now.
The latter think the shortest distance between two points is from a blonde to a bed.
Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten – when Larry Cobb was sober.
His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.
I was as empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets.
I wasn’t doing any work that day, just catching up on my foot dangling.
She’s a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge’s second term I’ll eat my spare tyre, rim and all.
Her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution.
He was California from the tips of his port wine loafers to the buttoned and tieless brown and yellow checked shirt inside his rough cream sports jacket.
He opened the rear door and I got in and sank down into the cushions and George slid under the wheel and started the big car. It moved away from the curb and around the corner with as much noise as a bill makes in a wallet.
He reached for the card without excitement, read it, turned it over and read the back with as much care as the front. There was nothing on the back to read.
Oh sure, I’m her husband. That’s what the record says. I’m the three white steps and the bug green front door and the brass knocker you rap one long and two short and the maid lets you into the hundred-dollar whorehouse.
I suppose you do this to all the clients,” she said softly.
She wore a steel gray business suit and under the jacket a dark blue shirt and a man’s tie of lighter shade. The edges of the folded handkerchief in the breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread.
She was wearing a brown tailor-made and from a strap over her shoulder hung one of those awkward-looking square bags that make you think of a Sister of Mercy taking first aid to the wounded.
There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.
To say goodbye is to die a little.
The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.