Red Wind by Raymond Chandler Read Free Book Online

Then she tried to smile. It wasn’t very successful.
    “A reward,” she said softly. “You weel wait ’ere? Ten dollars it is fair to pay, no?”
    “No,” I said.
    I reached a finger towards her slowly and added: “He’s dead.”
    She jumped about three feet and let out a yell.
    A chair creaked harshly. Feet pounded beyond the bead curtain, a large hand plunged into view and snatched it aside, and a big hard-looking blond man was with us. He had a purple robe over his pajamas His right hand held something in his robe pocket. He stood quite still as soon as he was through the curtain, his feet planted solidly, his jaw out, his colorless eyes like gray ice. He looked like a man who would be hard to take out on an off-tackle play.
    “What’s the matter, honey?” He had a solid, burring voice, with just the right sappy tone to belong to a guy who would go for a woman with gilded toenails.
    “I came about Miss Kolchenko’s car,” I said.
    “Well, you could take your hat off,” he said. “Just for a light workout.”
    I took it off and apologized.
    “O.K.,” he said, and kept his right hand shoved down hard in the purple pocket. “So you came about Miss Kolchenko’s car. Take it from there.”
    I pushed past the woman and went closer to him. She shrank back against the wall and flattened her palms against it. Camille in a high-school play. The long holder lay empty at her toes.
    When I was six feet from the big man he said easily: “I can hear you from there. Just take it easy. I’ve got a gun in this pocket and I’ve had to learn to use one. Now about the car?”
    “The man who borrowed it couldn’t bring it,” I said, and pushed the card I was still holding towards his face. He barely glanced at it. He looked back at me.
    “So what?” he said.
    “Are you always this tough?” I asked, “ or only when you have your pajamas on?”
    “So why couldn’t he bring it himself?” he asked. “And skip the mushy talk.”
    The dark woman made a stuffed sound at my elbow.
    “It’s all right, honeybunch,” the man said. “I’ll handle this. Go on in.”
    She slid past both of us and flicked through the bead curtain.
    I waited a little while. The big man didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t look any more bothered than a toad in the sun.
    “He couldn’t bring it because somebody bumped him off,” I said. “Let’s see you handle that.”
    “Yeah?” he said. “Did you bring him with you to prove it?”
    “No,” I said. “But if you put your tie and crush hat on, I’ll take you down and show you.”
    “Who the hell did you say you were, now?”
    “I didn’t say. I thought maybe you could read.” I held the card at him some more.
    “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “John Dalmas, Private Investigator. Well, well. So I should go with you to look at who , why?”
    “Maybe he stole the car,” I said.
    The big man nodded. “That’s a thought. Maybe he did. Who?”
    “The little brown guy who had the keys to it in his pocket, and had it parked around the corner from the Berglund Apartments.”
    He thought that over, without any apparent embarrassment. “You’ve got something there,” he said, “Not much. But a little. I guess this must be the night of the Police Smoker. So you’re doing all their work for them.”
    “Huh?”
    “The card says private detective to me,” he said. “Have you got some cops outside that were too shy to come in?”
    “No, I’m alone.”
    He grinned. The grin showed white ridges in his tanned skin. “So you find somebody dead and take some keys and find a car and come riding out here—all alone. No cops. Am I right?”
    “Correct.”
    He sighed. “Let’s go inside,” he said. He yanked the bead curtain aside and made an opening for me to go through. “It might be you have an idea I ought to hear.”
    I went past him and he turned, keeping his heavy pocket towards me. I hadn’t noticed until I got quite close that there were beads of sweat on his