Trouble Is My Business
Raymond Chandler
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0394757645
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the four long stories in this collection, Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist.
after a moment. I said: “Care for a drink? . . . Your brother is an old friend of mine.” He nodded slowly, gulped, moved his hand slowly, but finally got the bottle and curdled his coffee with it. He drank the whole thing down. Then I watched him dig up a crumpled pack of cigarettes, spear his mouth with one, strike a match on the counter, after missing twice on his thumbnail, and inhale with a lot of very poor nonchalance that he knew wasn’t going over. I leaned close to him and said evenly:
at me, calm, dry-eyed. She said in a low clear voice: “Will you help me carry him to the bed? I don’t like him here with these people.” I said: “Sure. What was that he said?” “I don’t know. Some nonsense about his fish, I think.” I lifted Sype’s shoulders and she took his feet and we carried him into the bedroom and put him on the bed. She folded his hands on his chest and shut his eyes. She went over and pulled the blinds down. “That’s all, thank you,” she said, not looking at me. “The
don’t—you’re gone.” He took one more step. Copernik’s mouth opened wide and made a gasping sound and then he sagged in the chair as if he had been hit on the head. His eyelids dropped. Ybarra jerked the gun out of his hand with a movement so quick it was no movement at all. He stepped back quickly, held the gun low at his side. “It’s the hot wind, Sam. Let’s forget it,” he said in the same even, almost dainty voice. Copernik’s shoulders sagged lower and he put his face in his hands. “O.K.,”
pearls out of my pocket and cut the knot at one end and slipped the pearls off one by one. When I had them all loose in my left hand I held them like that for a while and thought. There wasn’t really anything to think about. I was sure. “To the memory of Mr. Stan Phillips,” I said aloud. “Just another four-flusher.” I flipped her pearls out into the water one by one at the floating seagulls. They made little splashes and the seagulls rose off the water and swooped at the splashes.
shoot. He didn’t move. His eyes looked a little anxious, I thought, but I was too busy to make sure. I went down behind the little punk, still holding him, and got hold of his gun. That was wrong. I ought to have pulled my own. I threw him away from me and he reeled against a chair and fell down and began to kick the chair savagely. The tall man laughed. “It ain’t got any firing pin in it,” he said. “Listen,” I told him earnestly, “I’m half full of good Scotch and ready to go places and get