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

"To hell with you, angel. I like you," he said softly.
He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy
smile on her face.
TWO
Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little
mouth. He stood in the doorway and said: "Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Carmady. This Deacon Werra ain't bad and
Duke Targo's the next light heavy champ."
Carmady said: "Come in and have a drink, Tony." He went over to the window, stood looking out at the rain. "If they buy it for him," he
added over his shoulder.
"Well--just a short one, Mister Carmady."
The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his
drink carefully, tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.
"Targo's a lu, Mister Carmady. He's fast, clever, got a sock in both mitts, plenty guts, don't ever take a step back."
"He has to hold up the bums they feed him," Carmady drawled.
"Well, they ain't fed him no lion meat yet," Tony said.
The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed down the pane in tiny waves.
Carmady said: "He's a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a bum."
Tony sighed deeply. "I wisht I was goin'. It's my night off, too."
Carmady turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired,
drawling.
"So that's it. What's stopping you?"
"I got a headache,"
"You're broke again," Carmady almost snarled.
The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.
Carmady clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.
"Just ask Carmady," he sighed. "Good old Carmady. He leaks dough. He's soft. Just ask Carmady. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back
and get a pair together."
He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.
"Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I wouldn't have you think--"
"Skip it! What's a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your girl. To hell with this Targo."
Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment. Then his voice was very softly, saying: "I'd rather go with
you, Mister Carmady. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He's got a peachy blonde right on this floor, Miss Adrian, in 914."
Carmady stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the desk. His voice got a little hoarse.
"He's still a bum, Tony. Okey, I'll meet you for dinner, in front of your hotel at seven."
"Jeeze, that's swell, Mister Carmady."
Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.
Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on the floor. He stood like that for a long time.
"Carmady, the All-American sucker," he said grimly, out loud. "A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads.
Yeah."
He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of
914 he stopped, lifted his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.
He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.
The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Carmady parked around the corner, went in at the employees' entrance and rode to the
fourth floor in a rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a rolled magazine which he held six inches
from his nose while he ran the elevator.
On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.
Carmady tapped on the desk, said: "Adams. Carmady calling."
The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.
Carmady went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row of small desks at which typewriters were being
banged. At the far end a lanky red-haired man was doing nothing with his feet on a pulled-out drawer, the back of his neck on the back of
a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.
When Carmady stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other part of his body and said around the pipe:
"Greetings, Carmady. How's the idle rich?"
Carmady said: "How's a glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway? State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise."
Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it
out of his mouth and spit into a wastebasket. He said: "That old icicle? When was he ever news? Sure." He stood up wearily, added:
"Come along, Uncle," and started along the end of the room.
They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged make-up who was typing and laughing at what she was writing.
They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was
a small table and a chair.
Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.
"Park yourself. What's the graft?"
Carmady leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not
front page. Senator Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest, addressed this and that meeting, went or
returned from this and that place. It all seemed very dull.
He looked at a few halftone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank, composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no
light or warmth. After a while he said: "Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean."
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