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

changed any. The blue carpet still tickled my ankles while I ambled over to the desk, the same pale clerk was handing a key to a couple of horse-faced females in tweeds, and when he saw me he put his weight on his left foot again and the door at the end of the desk popped open and out popped the fat and erotic Hawkins, with what looked like the same cigar stub in his face.
    He hustled over and gave me a big warm smile this time, took hold of my arm. “Just the guy I was hoping to see,” he chuckled. “Let’s us go upstairs a minute.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Matter?” His smile became broad as the door to a two-car garage. “Nothing ain’t the matter. This way.”
    He pushed me into the elevator and said “Eight” in a fat cheerful voice and up we sailed and out we got and slid along the corridor. Hawkins had a hard hand and knew where to hold an arm. I was interested enough to let him get away with it. He pushed the buzzer beside Miss Huntress’ door and Big Ben chimed inside and the door opened and I was looking at a deadpan in a derby hat and a dinner coat. He had his right hand in the side pocket of the coat, and under the derby a pair of scarred eyebrows and under the eyebrows a pair of eyes that had as much expression as the cap on a gas tank.
    The mouth moved enough to say: “Yeah?”
    “Company for the boss,” Hawkins said expansively.
    “What company?”
    “Let me play too,” I said. “Limited Liability Company. Gimme the apple.”
    “Huh?” The eyebrows went this way and that and the jaw came out. “Nobody ain’t kiddin’ anybody, I hope.”
    “Now, now, gents—” Hawkins began.
    A voice behind the derby-hatted man interrupted him. “What’s the matter, Beef?”
    “He’s in a stew,” I said.
    “Listen, mugg—”
    “Now, now, gents—” as before.
    “Ain’t nothing the matter,” Beef said, throwing his voice over his shoulder as if it were a coil of rope. “The hotel dick got a guy up here and he says he’s company.”
    “Show the company in, Beef.” I liked this voice. It was smooth quiet, and you could have cut your name in it with a thirty-pound sledge and a cold chisel.
    “Lift the dogs,” Beef said, and stood to one side.
    We went in. I went first, then Hawkins, then Beef wheeled neatly behind us like a door. We went in so close together that we must have looked like a three-decker sandwich.
    Miss Huntress was not in the room. The log in the fireplace had almost stopped smoldering. There was still that smell of sandalwood on the air. With it cigarette smoke blended.
    A man stood at the end of the davenport, both hands in the pockets of a blue camel’s hair coat with the collar high to a black snap-brim hat. A loose scarf hung outside his coat. He stood motionless, the cigarette in his mouth lisping smoke. He was tall, black-haired, suave, dangerous. He said nothing.
    Hawkins ambled over to him. “This is the guy I was telling you about, Mr. Estel,” the fat man burbled. “Come in earlier today and said he was from you. Kinda fooled me.”
    “Give him a ten, Beef.”
    The derby hat took its left hand from somewhere and there was a bill in it. It pushed the bill at Hawkins. Hawkins took the bill, blushing.
    “This ain’t necessary, Mr. Estel. Thanks a lot just the same.”
    “Scram.”
    “Huh?” Hawkins looked shocked.
    “You heard him,” Beef said truculently. “Want your fanny out the door first, huh?”
    Hawkins drew himself up. “I gotta protect the tenants. You gentlemen know how it is. A man in a job like this.”
    “Yeah. Scram,” Estel said without moving his lips.
    Hawkins turned and went out quickly, softly. The door clicked gently shut behind him. Beef looked back at it, then moved behind me.
    “See if he’s rodded, Beef.”
    The derby hat saw if I was rodded. He took the Luger and went away from me. Estel looked casually at the Luger, back at me. His eyes held an expression of indifferent dislike.
    “Name’s Philip Marlowe, eh? A