The Big Sleep

I had only twenty minutes sleep before the phone rang. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three of four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club - maybe.

The dame on the other end spoke of a murder, cold-blooded. She spoke as coldly as a toad's belly; colder than a cafeteria dinner; colder than the ashes of love. It was a voice that could have been used to split firewood. I told her to wait, hung up the phone, and lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber's handkerchief.

I went downstairs, walked to the curb and hailed a cab. It was big, big like a truck. It appeared as though the car drove itself, and the cabbie held the wheel just for appearances. The driver looked as if he was half asleep but he passed the fast boys in the convertible sedans as though they were being towed. They turned on all the green lights for him. Some drivers are like that. He never missed one.

We pulled in and I paid the fare. She was waiting, just like she said, back behind the building. She had a nice smile. She looked as if she had slept well. It was a nice face, a face you get to like. From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. But she had smooth ivory skin, and rather sever eyebrows and large dark eyes that looked like they might warm up at the right time and in the right place. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at.

"Hello, Mr. Cranky" she said. She put away her hand mirror and fed herself a cigarette.

I filled a pipe and reached for the packet of paper matches. I lit the pipe carefully. She watched that with approval. Pipe smokers were solid men. She was going to be disappointed in me.

I knew the deceased. A cold fellow in his own right. Had the nickname of Frosty. Some called him Junior. He always wore a hat that was at least two sizes too small and had been perspired in freely by somebody it fitted better than it fitted him. He wore it about where a house wears a wind vane. His nose was sharp and bent a little to one side, as if somebody had given it the elbow one time when it was into something. He had watching and waiting eyes, patient and careful eyes, cool disdainful eyes - the kind of eyes you might pick out of an olive barrel.

Something about this murder smelled. It smelled so bad you could build a garage on it. I didn't care about the fee. I just wanted to nail the cold-blooded sonofabitch that dropped him here on the pavement, like a cold wet snowball.

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The above passages were taken, with liberties, from various novels written by Raymond Chandler, who published the following works all in the month of January: "Try The Girl"; "Red Wind"; "Lady in the Lake"; "Guns at Cyrano's"; and "Killer in the Rain".