The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.
Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.
It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.
She put a hard-boiled sneer on her face and gave me plenty of time to get used to it.
After a moment I pushed my chair back and went over to the french windows. I opened the screens and stepped out on to the porch. The night was all around, soft and quiet. The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find.
Thick cunning played on her face, had no fun there and went somewhere else.
A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.
The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: “Philip Marlowe... Investigations.” It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with same legend which is not locked. Come on in – there’s nobody here but me an a big bluebottle fly. But not if you’re from Manhattan, Kansas.
Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.
Guns never settle anything, I said. They are just a fast curtain to a bad second act.
I wouldn’t say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors.
Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood.
All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.
I’m a copper,” he said. “Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it’s out of style.
The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume.
Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.
Kind of smart guesser, ain’t you, young man? Can’t wait for folks to get their mouth open hardly.” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Morrison. This is an important matter to us – ” “This here young man don’t seem to have no trouble keepin’ his mouth in place.” “He’s married,” I said. “He’s had practice.
My God, you big dark handsome brute! I ought to throw a Buick at you.
I’m rich. Who the hell wants to be happy?
She’s a nice girl. Not my type.” “You don’t like them nice?” He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. “I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.” “They take you to the cleaners,” Randall said indifferently.