Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t hear nothing, nor the servants at any of the four houses on the block. Frisky is lying in the street and somebody run over his foot, but what killed him was a forty-five slug smack in his face. West L. A. ain’t hardly started the routine when some guy calls up Central and says to tell Homicide if they want to know who got Frisky Lavon, ask a private eye named Philip Marlowe, complete with address and everything, then a quick hang-up.
    “O.K. The guy on the board gives me the dope and I don’t know Frisky from a hole in my sock, but I ask Identification and sure enough they have him and just about the time I’m looking it over the flash comes from West L. A. and the description seems to check pretty close. So we get together and it’s the same guy all right and the chief of detectives has us drop around here. So we drop around.”
    “So here you are,” I said. “Will you have a drink?”
    “Can we search the joint, if we do?”
    “Sure. It’s a good lead—that phone call, I mean—if you put in about six months on it.”
    “We already got that idea,” Finlayson growled. “A hundred guys could have chilled this little wart, and two-three of them maybe could have thought it was a smart rib to pin it on you. Them two-three is what interests us.”
    I shook my head.
    “No ideas at all, huh?”
    “Just for wisecracks,” Sebold said.
    Finlayson lumbered to his feet. “Well, we gotta look around.”
    “Maybe we had ought to have brought a search warrant,” Sebold said, tickling his upper lip with the end of his tongue.
    “I don’t
have
to fight this guy, do I?” I asked Finlayson. “I mean, is it all right if I leave him his gag lines and just keep my temper?”
    Finlayson looked at the ceiling and said dryly: “His wife left him day before yesterday. He’s just trying to compensate, as the fellow says.”
    Sebold turned white and twisted his knuckles savagely. Then he laughed shortly and got to his feet.
    They went at it. Ten minutes of opening and shutting drawers and looking at the backs of shelves and under seat cushions and letting the bed down and peering into the electric refrigerator and the garbage pail fed them up.
    They came back and sat down again. “Just a nut,” Finlayson said wearily. “Some guy that picked your name outa the directory maybe. Could be anything.”
    “Now I’ll get that drink.”
    “I don’t drink,” Sebold snarled.
    Finlayson crossed his hands on his stomach. “That don’t mean any liquor gets poured in the flowerpot, son.”
    I got three drinks and put two of them beside Finlayson. He drank half of one of them and looked at the ceiling. “I got another killing, too,” he said thoughtfully. “A guy in your racket, Marlowe. A fat guy on Sunset. Name of Arbogast. Ever hear of him?”
    “I thought he was a handwriting expert,” I said.
    “You’re talking about police business,” Sebold told his partner coldly.
    “Sure. Police business that’s already in the morning paper. This Arbogast was shot three times with a twenty-two. Target gun. You know any crooks that pack that kind of heat?”
    I held my glass tightly and took a long slow swallow. I hadn’t thought Waxnose looked dangerous enough, but you never knew.
    “I did,” I said slowly. “A killer named Al Tessilore. But he’s in Folsom. He used a Colt Woodsman.”
    Finlayson finished the first drink, used the second in about the same time, and stood up. Sebold stood up, still mad.
    Finlayson opened the door. “Come on, Ben.” They went out.
    I heard their steps along the hall, the clang of the elevator once more. A car started just below in the street and growled off into the night.
    “Clowns like that don’t kill,” I said out loud. But it looked as if they did.
    I waited fifteen minutes before I went out again. The phone rang while I was waiting, but I didn’t answer it.
    I drove towards the El Milano and circled around enough to make sure I wasn’t followed.
    SIX
    The lobby hadn’t