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

ose damask with a gold design in it.
Somebody lay on one of the beds. A woman. She didn't move. The hard, tight grin came back on Pete Anglich's face. He rose
straight up and walked softly on the balls of his feet over to the side of the bed. A door beyond was open on a bathroom, but no sound
came from it. Pete Anglich looked down at the colored girl on the bed.
He caught his breath and let it out slowly. The girl was dead. Her eyes were half open, uninterested, her hands lazy at her sides:
Her legs were twisted a little and bare skin showed above one sheer stocking, below the short skirt. A green hat lay on the floor. She
had four-and-a-half-inch French heels. There was a scent of Midnight Narcissus in the room. He remembered the girl outside the
Surprise Hotel.
She was quite dead, dead long enough for the blood to have clotted over the powder-scorched hole below her left breast.
Pete Anglich went back to the living room, grabbed up the gin bottle, and emptied it without stopping or choking. He stood a
moment, breathing hard, thinking. The gun hung slack in his left hand. His small, tight mouth hardly showed at all.
He worked his fingers on the glass of the gin bottle, tossed it empty on top of the daybed, slid his gun into the underarm holster,
went to the door and stepped quietly into the hall.
The hall was long and dim and yawning with chill air. A single bracket light loomed yellowly at the top of the stairs. A screen door led
to a balcony over the front porch of the building. There was a gray splash of cold moonlight on one corner of the screen.
Pete Anglich went softly down the stairs to the front hall, put his hand out to the knob of the glass door.
A red spot hit the front of the door. It sifted a hard red glare through the glass and the sleazy curtain that masked it.
Pete Anglich slid down the door, below the panel, hunched along the wall to the side. His eyes ranged the place swiftly, held on the
dark telephone booth.
"Man trap," he said softly, and dodged over to the booth, into it. He crouched and almost shut the door.
Steps slammed on the porch and the front door squeaked open. The steps hammered into the hallway, stopped.
A heavy voice said: "All quiet, huh? Maybe a phony."
Another voice said: "Four-B. Let's give it the dust, anyway."
The steps went along the lower hail, came back. They sounded on the stairs going up. They drummed in the upper hail.
Pete Anglich pushed the door of the booth back, slid over to the front door, crouched and squinted against the red glare.
The prowl car at the curb was a dark bulk. Its headlights burned along the cracked sidewalk. He couldn't see into it. He sighed,
opened the door and walked quickly, but not too quickly, down the wooden steps from the porch.
The prowl car was empty, with both front doors hanging open. Shadowy forms were converging cautiously from across the street.
Pete Anglich marched straight to the prowl car and got into it. He shut the doors quietly, stepped on the starter, threw the car in gear.
He drove off past the gathering crowd of neighbors. At the first corner he turned and switched off the red spot. Then he drove fast,
wound in and out of blocks, away from Central, after a while turned back toward it.
When he was near its lights and chatter and traffic he pulled over to the side of the dusty tree-lined street, left the prowl car standing.
He walked towards Central.
SIX
Trimmer Waltz cradled the phone with his left hand. He put his right index finger along the edge of his upper lip, pushed the lip out
of the way, and rubbed his finger slowly along his teeth and gums. His shallow, colorless eyes looked across the desk at the big Negro
in the checked suit.
"Lovely," he said in a dead voice. "Lovely. He got away before the law jumped him. A very swell job, Rufe."
The Negro took a cigar stub out of his mouth and crushed it between a huge flat thumb and a huge flat forefinger.
"Hell, he was out cold," he snarled. "The prowlies passed me before I got to Central. Hell, he can't get away."
"That was him talking," Waltz said lifelessly. He opened the top drawer of his desk and laid his heavy Savage in front of him.
The Negro looked at the Savage. His eyes got dull and lightless, like obsidian. His lips puckered and gouged at each other.
"That gal's been cuttin' corners on me with three, four other guys," he grumbled. "I owed her the slug. Oky-doke. That's jake. Now, I
go out and collect me the smart monkey."
He started to get up. Waltz barely touched the butt of his gun with two fingers. He shook his head, and the Negro sat down again.
Waltz spoke.
"He got away, Rufe. And you called the buttons to find a dead woman. Unless they get him with the gun on him--one chance in a
thousand--there's no way to tie it to him. That makes you the fall guy. You live there."
The Negro grinned and kept his dull eyes on the Savage.
He said: "That makes me get cold feet. And my feet are big enough to get plenty cold. Guess I take me a powder, huh?"
Waltz sighed. He said thoughtfully: "Yeah, I guess you leave town for a while. From Glendale. The 'Frisco late train will be about
right."
The Negro looked sulky. "Nix on 'Frisco, boss. I put my thumbs on a frail there. She croaked. Nix on 'Frisco, boss."
"You've got ideas, Rufe," Waltz said calmly. He rubbed the side of his veined nose with one finger, then slicked his gray hair back
with his palm. "I see them in your big brown eyes. Forget it. I'll take care of you. Get the car in the alley. We'll figure the angles on the way
to Glendale."
The Negro blinked and wiped cigar ash off his chin with his huge hand.
"And better leave your big shiny gun here," Waltz added. "It needs a rest."
Rufe reached back and slowly drew his gun from a hip pocket. He pushed it across the polished wood of the desk with one finger.
There was a faint, sleepy smile at the back of his eyes.
"Okey, boss," he said, almost dreamily.
He went across to the door, opened it, and went out. Waltz stood up and stepped over to the closet, put on a dark felt hat and a
light-weight overcoat, a pair of dark gloves. He dropped the Savage into his left-hand pocket, Rufe's gun into the right. He went out of the
room down the hall toward the sound of the dance band.
At the end he parted the curtains just enough to peer through. The orchestra was playing a waltz. There was a good crowd, a quiet
crowd for Central Avenue. Waltz sighed, watched the dancers for a moment, let the curtains fall together again.
He went back along the hall past his office to a door at the end that gave on stairs. Another door at the bottom of the stairs opened
on a dark alley behind the building.
Waltz closed the door gently, stood in the darkness against the wall. The sound of an idling motor came to him, the light clatter of
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