The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler Read Free Book Online

had given me the lead to General Sternwood.
    “Well, how’s the boy?” he began. He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn’t owe too much money.
    “I’ve got a hangover,” I said.
    “Tsk, tsk.” He laughed absently and then his voice became a shade too casual, a cagey cop voice. “Seen General Sternwood yet?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Done anything for him?”
    “Too much rain,” I answered, if that was an answer.
    “They seem to be a family things happen to. A big Buick belonging to one of them is washing about in the surf off Lido fish pier.”
    I held the telephone tight enough to crack it. I also held my breath.
    “Yeah,” Ohls said cheerfully. “A nice new Buick sedan all messed up with sand and sea water. . . . Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a guy inside it.”
    I let my breath out so slowly that it hung on my lip. “Regan?” I asked.
    “Huh? Who? Oh, you mean the ex-legger the eldest girl picked up and went and married. I never saw him. What would he be doing down there?”
    “Quit stalling. What would anybody be doing down there?”
    “I don’t know, pal. I’m dropping down to look see. Want to go along?”
    “Yes.”
    “Snap it up,” he said. “I’ll be in my hutch.”
    Shaved, dressed and lightly breakfasted I was at the Hall of Justice in less than an hour. I rode up to the seventh floor and went along to the group of small offices used by the D.A.’s men. Ohls’ was no larger than the others, but he had it to himself. There was nothing on his desk but a blotter, a cheap pen set, his hat and one of his feet. He was a medium-sized blondish man with stiff white eyebrows, calm eyes and well-kept teeth. He looked like anybody you would pass on the street. I happened to know he had killed nine men—three of them when he was covered, or somebody thought he was.
    He stood up and pocketed a flat tin of toy cigars called Entractes, jiggled the one in his mouth up and down and looked at me carefully along his nose, with his head thrown back.
    “It’s not Regan,” he said. “I checked. Regan’s a big guy, as tall as you and a shade heavier. This is a young kid.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “What made Regan skip out?” Ohls asked. “You interested in that?”
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    “When a guy out of the liquor traffic marries into a rich family and then waves good-bye to a pretty dame and a couple million legitimate bucks—that’s enough to make even me think. I guess you thought that was a secret.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okey, keep buttoned, kid. No hard feelings.” He came around the desk tapping his pockets and reaching for his hat.
    “I’m not looking for Regan,” I said.
    He fixed the lock on his door and we went down to the official parking lot and got into a small blue sedan. We drove out Sunset, using the siren once in a while to beat a signal. It was a crisp morning, with just enough snap in the air to make life seem simple and sweet, if you didn’t have too much on your mind. I had.
    It was thirty miles to Lido on the coast highway, the first ten of them through traffic. Ohls made the run in three quarters of an hour. At the end of that time we skidded to a stop in front of a faded stucco arch and I took my feet out of the floorboards and we got out. A long pier railed with white two-by-fours stretched seaward from the arch. A knot of people leaned out at the far end and a motorcycle officer stood under the arch keeping another group of people from going out on the pier. Cars were parked on both sides of the highway, the usual ghouls, of both sexes. Ohls showed the motorcycle officer his badge and we went out on the pier, into a loud fish smell which one night’s hard rain hadn’t even dented.
    “There she is—on the power barge,” Ohls said, pointing with one of his toy cigars.
    A low black barge with a wheelhouse like a tug’s was crouched against the pilings at the end of the pier. Something that glistened in the morning sunlight was on its