The Simple Art of Murder

by Raymond Chandler

  The light went off, went on. The swathed figure was upright on the floor, spinning, and one of the blacks was spinning the opposite way, winding the white shroud around his body. Then the shroud fell away and a girl was all tinsel and smooth white limbs under the hard light and her body shot through the air glittering and was caught and passed around swiftly among the four black men, like a baseball handled by a fast infield.

  Then the music changed to a waltz and she danced among the black men slowly and gracefully, as though among four ebony pillars, very close to them but never touching them.

  The act ended. The applause rose and fell in thick waves. The light went out and it was dark again, and then all the lights went up and the girl and the four black men were gone.

  “Keeno,” Tony Acosta breathed. “Oh, keeno. That was Miss Adrian, wasn’t it?”

  Carmady said slowly: “A little daring.” He lit another cigarette, looked around. “There’s another black and white number, Tony. The Duke himself, in person.”

  Duke Targo stood applauding violently at the entrance to one of the radiating booth aisles. There was a loose grin on his face. He looked as if he might have had a few drinks.

  An arm came down over Carmady’s shoulder. A hand planted itself in the ash tray at his elbow. He smelled Scotch in heavy gusts. He turned his head slowly, looked up at the liquor-shiny face of Shenvair, Duke Targo’s drunken bodyguard.

  “Smokes and a white gal,” Shenvair said thickly. “Lousy. Crummy. Godawful crummy.”

  Carmady smiled slowly, moved his chair a little. Tony Acosta stared at Shenvair round-eyed, his little mouth a thin line.

  “Blackface, Mister Shenvair. Not real smokes. I liked it.”

  “And who the hell cares what you like?” Shenvair wanted to know.

  Carmady smiled delicately, laid his cigarette down on the edge of a plate. He turned his chair a little more.

  “Still think I want your job, Shenvair?”

  “Yeah. I owe you a smack in the puss too.” He took his hand out of the ash tray, wiped it off on the tablecloth. He doubled it into a fist. “Like it now?”

  A waiter caught him by the arm, spun him around.

  “You lost your table, sir? This way.”

  Shenvair patted the waiter on the shoulder, tried to put an arm around his neck. “Swell, let’s go nibble a drink. I don’t like these people.”

  They went away, disappeared among the tables.

  Carmady said: “To hell with this place, Tony,” and stared moodily towards the band stage. Then his eyes became intent.

  A girl with corn-blond hair, in a white wrap with a white fur collar, appeared at the edge of the shell, went behind it, reappeared nearer. She came along the edge of the booths to the place where Targo had been standing. She slipped in between the booths there, disappeared.

  Carmady said: “To hell with this place. Let’s go Tony,” in a low angry voice. Then very softly, in a tensed tone: “No—wait a minute. I see another guy I don’t like.”

  The man was on the far side of the dance floor, which was empty at the moment. He was following its curve around, past the tables that fringed it. He looked a little different without his hat. But he had the same flat white expressionless face, the same close-set eyes. He was youngish, not more than thirty, but already having trouble with his bald spot. The slight bulge of a gun under his left arm was barely noticeable. He was the man who had run away from Jean Adrian’s apartment in the Carondelet.

  He reached the aisle into which Targo had gone, into which a moment before Jean Adrian had gone. He went into it.

  Carmady said sharply: “Wait here, Tony.” He kicked his chair back and stood up.

  Somebody rabbit-punched him from behind. He swiveled, close to Shenvair’s grinning sweaty face.

  “Back again, pal,” the curly-haired man chortled, and hit him on the jaw.

  It was a short jab, well placed for a drunk. It caught Carmady off balance, staggered him. Tony Acosta came to his feet snarling, catlike. Carmady was still rocking when Shenvair let go with the other fist. That was too slow, too wide. Carmady slid inside it, uppercut the curly-haired man’s nose savagely, got a handful of blood before he could get his hand away. He put most of it back on Shenvair’s face.

  Shenvair wobbled, staggered back a step and sat down on the floor, hard. He clapped a hand to his nose.

  “Keep an eye on this bird, Tony,” Carmady said swiftly.

  Shenvair took hold of the nearest tablecloth and yanked it. It came off the table. Silver and glasses and china followed it to the floor. A man swore and a woman squealed. A waiter ran towards them with a livid, furious face.

  Carmady almost didn’t hear the two shots.

  They were small and flat, close together, a small-caliber gun. The rushing waiter stopped dead, and a deeply etched white line appeared around his mouth as instantly as though the lash of a whip had cut it there.

  A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came from her. There was the instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems as if there will never again be any sound—after the sound of a gun. Then Carmady was running.

  He bumped into people who stood up and craned their necks. He reached the entrance to the aisle into which the white-faced man had gone. The booths had high walls and swing doors not so high. Heads stuck out over the doors, but no one was in the aisle yet. Carmady charged up a shallow carpeted slope, at the far end of which booth doors stood wide open.

  Legs in dark cloth showed past the doors, slack on the floor, the knees sagged. The toes of black shoes were pointed into the booth.

  Carmady shook an arm off, reached the place.

  The man lay across the end of a table, his stomach and one side of’ his face on the white cloth, his left hand dropped between the table and the padded seat. His right hand on top of the table didn’t quite hold a big black gun, a .45 with a cut barrel. The bald spot on his head glistened under the light, and the oily metal of the gun glistened beside it.

  Blood leaked from under his chest, vivid scarlet on the white cloth, seeping into it as into blotting paper.

  Duke Targo was standing up, deep in the booth. His left arm in the white serge coat was braced on the end of the table. Jean Adrian was sitting down at his side. Targo looked at Carmady blankly, as if he had never seen him before. He pushed his big right hand forward.

  A small white-handled automatic lay on his palm.

  “I shot him,” Targo said. He pulled a gun on us and I shot him.”

  Jean Adrian was scrubbing her hands together on a scrap of handkerchief. Her face was strained, cold, not scared. Her eyes were dark.

  “I shot him,” Targo said. He threw the small gun down on the cloth. It bounced, almost hit the fallen man’s head. “Let’s—let’s get out of here.”

  Carmady put a hand against the side of the sprawled man’s neck, held it there a second or two, took it away.

  “He’s dead,” he said. “When a citizen drops a redhot—that’s news.”

  Jean Adrian was staring at him stiff-eyed. He flashed a smile at her, put a hand against Targo’s chest, pushed him back.

  “Sit down, Targo. You’re not going any place.”

  Targo said: “Well—okey. I shot him, see.”

  “That’s all right,” Carmady said. “Just relax.”

  People were close behind him now, crowding him. He leaned back against the press of bodies and kept on smiling at the girl’s white face.

  FIVE

  Benny Cyrano was shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top of a big one that was his body. His small dapper legs and feet in patent-leather shoes were pushed into the kneehole of a dark sheenless desk. He held a corner of a handkerchief tightly between his teeth and pulled against it with his left hand and held his right hand out pudgily in front of him, pushing against the air. He was saying in a voice muffled by the handkerchief: “Now wait a minute, boys. Now wait a minute.”

  There was a st
riped built-in sofa in one corner of the office, and Duke Targo sat in the middle of it, between two Headquarters dicks. He had a dark bruise over one cheekbone, his thick blond hair was tousled and his black satin shirt looked as if somebody had tried to swing him by it.

  One of the dicks, the gray-haired one, had a split lip. The young one with hair as blond as Targo’s had a black eye. They both looked mad, but the blond one looked madder.

  Carmady straddled a chair against the wall and looked sleepily at Jean Adrian, near him in a leather rocker. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, rubbing her palms with it. She had been doing this for a long time, as if she had forgotten she was doing it. Her small firm mouth was angry.

  Gus Neishacker leaned against the closed door smoking.

  “Now wait a minute, boys,” Cyrano said. “If you didn’t get tough with him, he wouldn’t fight back. He’s a good boy—the best I ever had. Give him a break.”

  Blood dribbled from one corner of Targo’s mouth, in a fine thread down to his jutting chin. It gathered there and glistened. His face was empty, expressionless.

  Carmady said coldly: “You wouldn’t want the boys to stop playing blackjack pinochle, would you, Benny?”

  The blond dick snarled: “You still got that private-dick license, Carmady?”

  “It’s lying around somewhere, I guess,” Carmady said.

  “Maybe we could take it away from you,” the blond dick snarled.

  “Maybe you could do a fan dance, copper. You might be all kinds of a smart guy for all I’d know.”

  The blond dick started to get up. The older one said: “Leave him be. Give him six feet. If he steps over that, we’ll take the screws out of him.”

  Carmady and Gus Neishacker grinned at each other. Cyrano made helpless gestures in the air. The girl looked at Carmady under her lashes. Targo opened his mouth and spat blood straight before him on the blue carpet.

  Something pushed against the door and Neishacker stepped to one side, opened it a crack, then opened it wide. McChesney came in.

  McChesney was a lieutenant of detectives, tall, sandy-haired, fortyish, with pale eyes and a narrow suspicious face. He shut the door and turned the key in it, went slowly over and stood in front of Targo.

  “Plenty dead,” he said. “One under the heart, one in it. Nice snap shooting. In any league.”

  “When you’ve got to deliver you’ve got to deliver,” Targo said dully.

  “Make him?” the gray-haired dick asked his partner, moving away along the sofa.

  McChesney nodded. “Torchy Plant. A gun for hire. I haven’t seen him round for all of two years. Tough as an ingrowing toenail with his right load. A bindle punk.”

  “He’d have to be that to throw his party in here,” the gray-haired dick said.

  McChesney’s long face was serious, not hard. “Got a permit for the gun, Targo?”

  Targo said: “Yes. Benny got me one two weeks ago. I been getting a lot of threats.”

  “Listen, Lieutenant,” Cyrano chirped, “some gamblers try to scare him into a dive, see? He wins nine straight fights by knockouts so they get a swell price. I told him he should take one at that maybe.”

  “I almost did,” Targo said sullenly.

  “So they sent the redhot to him,” Cyrano said.

  McChesney said: “I wouldn’t say no. How’d you beat his draw, Targo? Where was your gun?”

  “On my hip.”

  “Show me.”

  Targo put his hand back into his right hip pocket and jerked a handkerchief out quickly, stuck his finger through it like a gun barrel.

  “That handkerchief in the pocket?” McChesney asked. “With the gun?”

  Targo’s big reddish face clouded a little. He nodded.

  McChesney leaned forward casually and twitched the handkerchief from his hand. He sniffed at it, unwrapped it, sniffed at it again, folded it and put it away in his own pocket. His face said nothing.

  “What did he say, Targo?”

  “He said: ‘I got a message for you, punk, and this is it.’ Then he went for the gat and it stuck a little in the clip. I got mine out first.”

  McChesney smiled faintly and leaned far back, teetering on his heels. His faint smile seemed to slide off the end of his long nose. He looked Targo up and down.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’d call it damn nice shooting with a twenty-two. But you’re fast for a big guy . . . Who got these threats?”

  “I did,” Targo said. “Over the phone.”

  “Know the voice?”

  “It might have been this same guy. I’m not just positive.”

  McChesney walked stiff-legged to the other end of the office, stood a moment looking at a hand-tinted sporting print. He came back slowly, drifted over to the door.

  “A guy like that don’t mean a lot,” he said quietly, “but we got to do our job. The two of you will have to come downtown and make statements. Let’s go.”

  He went out. The two dicks stood up, with Duke Targo between them. The gray-haired one snapped: “You goin’ to act nice, bo?”

  Targo sneered: “If I get to wash my face.”

  They went out. The blond dick waited for Jean Adrian to pass in front of him. He swung the door, snarled back at Carmady: “As for you—nuts!”

  Carmady said softly: “I like them. It’s the squirrel in me, copper.”

  Gus Neishacker laughed, then shut the door and went to the desk.

  “I’m shaking like Benny’s third chin,” he said. “Let’s all have a shot of cognac.”

  He poured three glasses a third full, took one over to the striped sofa and spread his long legs out on it, leaned his head back and sipped the brandy.

  Carmady stood up and downed his drink. He got a cigarette out and rolled it around in his fingers, staring at Cyrano’s smooth white face with an up-from-under look.

  “How much would you say changed hands on that fight tonight?” he asked softly. “Bets.”

  Cyrano blinked, massaged his lips with a fat hand. “A few grand. It was just a regular weekly show. It don’t listen, does it?”

  Carmady put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned over the desk to strike a match. He said: “If it does, murder’s getting awfully cheap in this town.”

  Cyrano didn’t say anything. Gus Neishacker sipped the last of his brandy and carefully put the empty glass down on a round cork table beside the sofa. He stared at the ceiling, silently.

  After a moment Carmady nodded at the two men, crossed the room and went out, closed the door behind him. He went along a corridor off which dressing rooms opened, dark now. A curtained archway let him out at the back of the stage.

  In the foyer the headwaiter was standing at the glass doors, looking out at the rain and the back of a uniformed policeman. Carmady went into the empty cloakroom, found his hat and coat, put them on, came out to stand beside the headwaiter.

  He said: “I guess you didn’t notice what happened to the kid I was with?”

  The headwaiter shook his head and reached forward to unlock the door.

  “There was four hundred people here—and three hundred scrammed before the law checked in. I’m sorry.”

  Carmady nodded and went out into the rain. The uniformed man glanced at him casually. He went along the street to where the car had been left. It wasn’t there. He looked up and down the street, stood for a few moments in the rain, then walked towards Melrose.

  After a little while he found a taxi.

  SIX

  The ramp of the Carondelet garage curved down into semi-darkness and chilled air. The dark bulks of stalled cars looked ominous against the whitewashed walls, and the single drop-light in the small office had the relentless glitter of the death house.

  A big Negro in stained overalls came out rubbing his eyes, then his face split in an enormous grin.

  “Hello, there, Mistuh Carmady. You kinda restless tonight?”

  Carmady said: “I get a little wlld when it rains. I bet my heap isn’t her
e.”

  “No, it ain’t, Mistuh Carmady. I been all around wipin’ off and yours ain’t here aytall.”

  Carmady said woodenly: “I lent it to a pal. He probably wrecked it . . .”

  He flicked a half-dollar through the air and went back up the ramp to the side street. He turned towards the back of the hotel, came to an alleylike street one side of which was the rear wall of the Carondelet. The other side had two frame houses and a four-story brick building. Hotel Blame was lettered on a round milky globe over the door.

  Carmady went up three cement steps and tried the door. It was locked. He looked through the glass panel into a small dim empty lobby. He got out two passkeys; the second one moved the lock a little. He pulled the door hard towards him, tried the first one again. That snicked the bolt far enough for the loosely fitted door to open.

  He went in and looked at an empty counter with a sign “Manager” beside a plunger bell. There was an oblong of empty numbered pigeonholes on the wall. Carmady went around behind the counter and fished a leather register out of a space under the top. He read names back three pages, found the boyish scrawl: “Tony Acosta,” and a room number in another writing.

  He put the register away and went past the automatic elevator and upstairs to the fourth floor.

  The hallway was very silent. There was weak light from a ceiling fixture. The last door but one on the left-hand side had a crack of light showing around its transom. That was the door—411. He put his hand out to knock, then withdrew it without touching the door.

  The doorknob was heavily smeared with something that looked like blood.

  Carmady’s eyes looked down and saw what was almost a pool of blood on the stained wood before the door, beyond the edge of the runner.

  His hand suddenly felt clammy inside his glove. He took the glove off, held the hand stiff, clawlike for a moment, then shook it slowly. His eyes had a sharp strained light in them.

  He got a handkerchief out, grasped the doorknob inside it, turned it slowly. The door was unlocked. He went in.

  He looked across the room and said very softly: “Tony . . . oh, Tony.”

  Then he shut the door behind him and turned a key in it, still with the handkerchief.

  There was light from the bowl that hung on three brass chains from the middle of the ceiling. It shone on a made-up bed, some painted, light-colored furniture, a dull green carpet, a square writing desk of eucalyptus wood.