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

Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He came back with a shiny black and white photograph,
tossed it down on the table.
"You can keep it," he said. "We got dozens. The guy lives forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?"
Carmady looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. "It's right," he said slowly. "Was Courtway ever married?"
"Not since I left off my diapers," Adams growled. "Probably not ever. Say, what'n hell's the mystery?"
Carmady smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table beside the folder. Adams' face brightened swiftly and his
long arm reached.
"Then he never had a kid," carmady said.
Adams leered over the flask. "Well--not for publication, I guess. If I'm any judge of a mug, not at all." He drank deeply, wiped his lips,
drank again.
"And that," Carmady said, "is very funny indeed. Have three more drinks--and forget you ever saw me."
THREE
The fat man put his face close to Carmady's face. He said with a wheeze: "You think it's fixed, neighbor?"
"Yeah. For Werra."
"How much says so?"
"Count your poke."
"I got five yards that want to grow."
"Take it," Carmady said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white
fur was below the glassily waved hair. He couldn't see the face. He didn't have to.
The fat man blinked his eyes and got a thick wallet carefully out of a pocket inside his vest. He held it on the edge of his knee,
counted out ten fifty-dollar bills, rolled them up, edged the wallet back against his ribs.
"You're on, sucker," he wheezed. "Let's see your dough."
Carmady brought his eyes back, reached out a flat pack of new hundreds, riffled them. He slipped five from under the printed band,
held them out.
"Boy, this is from home," the fat man said. He put his face close to Carmady's face again. "I'm Skeets O'Neal. No little pGwders,
huh?"
Carmady smiled very slowly and pushed his money into the fat man's hand. "You hold it, Skeets. I'm Carmady. Old Marcus
Carmady's son. I can shoot faster than you can run--and fix it afterwards."
The fat man took a long hard breath and leaned back in his seat. Tony Acosta stared soft-eyed at the money in the fat man's pudgy
tight hand. He licked his lips and turned a small embarrassed smile on Carmady.
"Gee, that's lost dough, Mister Carmady," he whispered. "Unless--unless you got something inside."
"Enough to be worth a five-yard plunge," Carmady growled.
The buzzer sounded for the sixth.
The first five had been anybody's fight. The big blond boy, Duke Targo, wasn't trying. The dark one, Deacon Werra, a powerful,
loose-limbed Polack with bad teeth and only two cauliflower ears, had the physique but didn't know anything but rough clinching and a
giant swing that started in the basement and never connected. He had been good enough to hold Targo off so far. The fans razzed
Targo a good deal.
When the stool swung back out of the ring Targo hitched at his black and silver trunks, smiled with a small tight smile at the girl in
the white wrap. He was very good-looking, without a mark on him. There was blood on his left shoulder from Werra's nose.
The bell rang and Werra charged across the ring, slid off Targo's shoulder, got a left hook in. Targo got more of the hook than was
in it. He piled back into the ropes, bounced out, clinched.
Carmady smiled quietly in the darkness.
The referee broke them easily. Targo broke clean, Werra tried for an uppercut and missed. They sparred for a minute. There was
waltz music from the gallery. Then Werra started a swing from his shoetops. Targo seemed to wait for it, to wait for it to hit him. There
was a queer strained smile on his face. The girl in the white wrap stood up suddenly.
Werra's swing grazed Targo's jaw. It barely staggered him. Targo lashed a long right that caught Werra over the eye. A left hook
smashed Werra's jaw, then a right cross almost to the same spot.
The dark boy went down on his hands and knees, slipped slowly all the way to the floor, lay with both his gloves under him. There
were catcalls as he was counted out.
The fat man struggled to his feet, grinning hugely. He said: "How you like it, pal? Still think it was a set piece?
"It came unstuck," Carmady said in a voice as toneless as a police radio.
The fat man said: "So long, pal. Come around lots. He kicked Carmady's ankle climbing over him.
Carmady sat motionless, watched the auditorium empty. The fighters and their handlers had gone down the stairs under the ring.
The girl in the white wrap had disappeared in the crowd. The lights went out and the barnlike structure looked cheap, sordid.
Tony Acosta fidgeted, watching a man in striped overalls picking up papers between the seats.
Carmady stood up suddenly, said: "I'm going to talk to that bum, Tony. Wait outside in the car for me."
He went swiftly up the slope to the lobby, through the remnants of the gallery crowd to a gray door marked "No Admittance." He went
through that and down a ramp to another door marked the same way. A special cop in faded and unbuttoned khaki stood in front of it,
with a bottle of beer in one hand and a hamburger in the other.
Carmady flashed a police card and the cop lurched out of the way without looking at the card. He hiccoughed peacefully as
Carmady went through the door, then along a narrow passage with numbered doors lining it. There was noise behind the doors. The
fourth door on the left had a scribbled card with the name "Duke Targo" fastened to the panel by a thumbtack.
Carmady opened it into the heavy sound of a shower going, out of sight.
In a narrow and utterly bare room a man in a white sweater was sitting on the end of a rubbing table that had clothes scattered on it.
Carmady recognized him as Targo's chief second.
He said: "Where's the Duke?"
The sweatered man jerked a thumb towards the shower noise. Then a man came around the door and lurched very close to
Carmady. He was tall and had curly brown hair with hard gray color in it. He had a big drink in his hand. His face had the flat glitter of
extreme drunkenness. His hair was damp, his eyes bloodshot. His lips curled and uncurled in rapid smiles without meaning. He said
80