THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER by Raymond Chandler Copyright ...

his nose. He snickered darkly.
Steve said: "Miss Chiozza's not feeling so well tonight. She was hoping Agatha would come back and stay the night with her."
The milky-eyed man snickered again, sharply. The woman said: "We dunno where she is. She don't come home. Pa'n me waits up
for her to come home. She stays out till we're sick."
The old man snapped in a reedy voice: "She'll stay out till the cops get her one of these times."
"Pa's half blind," the woman said. "Makes him kinda mean. Won't you step in?"
Steve shook his head and turned his hat around in his hands like a bashful cowpuncher in a horse opera. "I've got to find her," he
said. "Where would she go?"
"Out drinkin' liquor with cheap spenders," Pa cackled. "Pantywaists with silk handkerchiefs 'stead of neckties. If I had eyes, I'd strap
her till she dropped." He grabbed the arms of his chair and the muscles knotted on the backs of his hands. Then he began to cry. Tears
welled from his milky eyes and started through the white stubble on his cheeks, The woman went across and took the handkerchief out
of his fist and wiped his face with it, Then she blew her nose on it and came back to the door.
"Might be anywhere," she said to Steve, "This is a big town, mister, I dunno where at to say."
Steve said dully: "I'll call back. If she comes in, will you hang onto her, What's your phone number?"
"What's the phone number, Pa?" the woman called back over her shoulder.
"I ain't sayin'," Pa snorted.
The woman said: "I remember now. South Two-four-fivefour. Call any time. Pa'n me ain't got nothing to do."
Steve thanked her and went back down the white walk to the street and along the walk half a block to where he had left his car. He
glanced idly across the way and started to get into his car, then stopped moving suddenly with his hand gripping the car door. He let go
of that, took three steps sideways and stood looking across the street tight-mouthed.
All the houses in the block were much the same, but the one opposite had a FOR RENT placard stuck in the front window and a
real-estate sign spiked into the small patch of front lawn. The house itself looked neglected, utterly empty, but in its little driveway stood
a small neat black coupe.
Steve said under his breath: "Hunch. Play it up, Stevie."
He walked almost delicately across the wide dusty street, his hand touching the hard metal of the gun in his pocket, and came up
behind the little car, stood and listened. He moved silently along its left side, glanced back across the street, then looked in the car's
open left-front window.
The girl sat almost as if driving, except that her head was tipped a little too much into the corner. The little red hat was still on her
head, the gray coat, trimmed with fur, still around her body. In the reflected moonlight her mouth was strained open. Her tongue stuck
out. And her chestnut eyes stared at the roof of the car.
Steve didn't touch her. He didn't have to touch her to look any closer to know there would be heavy bruises on her neck.
"Tough on women, these guys," he muttered.
The girl's big black brocade bag lay on the seat beside her, gaping open like her mouth--like Miss Marilyn Delorme's mouth, and
Miss Marilyn Delorme's purple bag.
"Yeah--tough on women."
He backed away till he stood under a small palm tree by the entrance to the driveway. The street was as empty and deserted as a
closed theater, He crossed silently to his car, got into it and drove away.
Nothing to it. A girl coming home alone late at night, stuck up and strangled a few doors from her own home by some tough guy.
Very simple. The first prowl car that cruised that block--if the boys were half awake--would take a look the minute they spotted the FOR
RENT sign. Steve tramped hard on the throttle and went away from there.
At Washington and Figueroa he went into an all-night drugstore and pulled shut the door of the phone booth at the back. He
dropped his nickel and dialed the number of police headquarters.
He asked for the desk and said: "Write this down, will you, sergeant? Brighton Avenue, thirty-two-hundred block, west side, in
driveway of empty house. Got that much?"
"Yeah. So what?"
"Car with dead woman in it," Steve said, and hung up.
SEVEN
Quillan, head day clerk and assistant manager of the Carlton Hotel, was on night duty, because Millar, the night auditor, was off for a
week. It was half-past one and things were dead and Quilian was bored. He had done everything there was to do long ago, because he
had been a hotel man for twenty years and there was nothing to it.
The night porter had finished cleaning up and was in his room beside the elevator bank. One elevator was lighted and open, as
usual. The main lobby had been tidied up and the lights had been properly dimmed. Everything was exactly as usual.
Quillan was a rather short, rather thickset man with clear bright toadlike eyes that seemed to hold a friendly expression without
really having any expression at all. He had pale sandy hair and not much of it. His pale hands were clasped in front of him on the marble
top of the desk. He was just the right height to put his weight on the desk without looking as if he were sprawling. He was looking at the
wall across the entrance lobby, but he wasn't seeing it, He was half asleep, even though his eyes were wide open, and if the night porter
struck a match behind his door, Quillan would know it and bang on his bell.
The brass-trimmed swing doors at the street entrance pushed open and Steve Grayce came in, a summer-weight coat turned up
around his neck, his hat yanked low and a cigarette wisping smoke at the corner of his mouth. He looked very casual, very alert, and very
much at ease. He strolled over to the desk and rapped on it.
"Wake up!" he snorted.
Quillan moved his eyes an inch and said: "All outside rooms with bath. But positively no parties on the eighth floor. Hiyah, Steve. So
you finally got the axe. And for the wrong thing. That's life."
Steve said: "O.K. Have you got a new night man here?"
"Don't need one, Steve. Never did, in my opinion."
"You'll need one as long as old hotel men like you register floozies on the same corridor with people like Leopardi."
Quillan half closed his eyes and then opened them to where they had been before. He said indifferently: "Not me, pal. But anybody
can make a mistake. Millar's really an accountant-- not a desk man."
Steve leaned back and his face became very still. The smoke almost hung at the tip of his cigarette. His eyes were like black glass
35