The Simple Art of Murder

by Raymond Chandler

  Tony Acosta sat at the desk. His head was slumped forward on his left arm. Under the chair on which he sat, between the legs of the chair and his feet, there was a glistening brownish pool.

  Carmady walked across the room so rigidly that his ankles ached after the second step. He reached the desk, touched Tony Acosta’s shoulder.

  “Tony,” he said thickly, in a low, meaningless voice. “My God, Tony!”

  Tony didn’t move. Carmady went around to his side. A blood-soaked bath towel glared against the boy’s stomach, across his pressed-together thighs. His right hand was crouched against the front edge of the desk, as if he was trying to push himself up. Almost under his face there was a scrawled envelope.

  Carmady pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.

  “Tailed him . . . woptown . . . 28 Court Street . . . over garage . . . shot me . . . think I got . . . him . . . your car . . .”

  The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was on the floor. There was a bloody thumbprint on the envelope.

  Carmady folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his wallet. He lifted Tony’s head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony’s soft dark eyes were open and they held the quiet brightness of a cat’s eyes. They had that effect the eyes of the new-dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.

  Carmady lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly, his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked back and his eyes hardened.

  He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the floor outside.

  He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his coat on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the transom, heard it tinkle inside.

  He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blame. It still rained. He walked to the corner, looked along a tree-shaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Carmady wiped his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.

  Going back to the Carondelet he didn’t meet anybody. The hard slanting rain still pounded down into the empty streets.

  SEVEN

  There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Carmady knocked lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind the wood of the door.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Carmady, angel. I have to see you. It’s strictly business.”

  The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara had been rubbed into the skin. The girl’s strong little hand twitched on the edge of the door.

  “You,” she said wearily. “It would be you. Yes . . . Well, I’ve simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” Carmady asked casually, but his eyes were very sharp on her face.

  She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the basin.

  He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to nothing, emanating from nowhere.

  He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a snub-nosed automatic out of a suitcase and held it in his hand for a minute staring at it. Then he put it back in the suitcase, lit a cigarette and smoked it through.

  He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.

  The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut the door, went on into the living room and looked at Jean Adrian.

  She was sitting on the davenport with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness gives to the very young.

  Carmady said: “Drink?”

  She gestured emptily. “I suppose so.”

  He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.

  “Are they keeping Targo on ice?”

  She moved her chin an eighth of an inch, staring into her glass.

  “He cut loose again, knocked two cops halfway through the wall. They love that boy.”

  Carmady said: “He has a lot to learn about cops. In the morning the cameras will be all set for him. I can think of some nice headlines, such as: “Well-known Fighter Too Fast for Gunman.” “Duke Targo Puts Crimp in Underworld Hot Rod.”

  The girl sipped her drink. “I’m tired,” she said. “And my foot itches. Let’s talk about what makes this your business.”

  “Sure.” He flipped his cigarette case open, held it under her chin. Her hand fumbled at it and while it still fumbled he said: “When you light that tell me why you shot him.”

  Jean Adrian put the cigarette between her lips, bent her head to the match, inhaled and threw her head back. Color awakened slowly in her eyes and a small smile curved the line of her pressed lips. She didn’t answer.

  Carmady watched her for a minute, turning his glass in his hands. Then he stared at the floor, said: “It was your gun—the gun I picked up here in the afternoon. Targo said he drew it from his hip pocket, the slowest draw in the world. Yet he’s supposed to have shot twice, accurately enough to kill a man, while the man wasn’t even getting his gun loose from a shoulder holster. That’s hooey. But you, with the gun in a bag in your lap, and knowing the hood, might just have managed it. He would have been watching Targo.”

  The girl said emptily: “You’re a private dick, I hear. You’re the son of a boss politician. They talked about you downtown. They act a little afraid of you, of people you might know. Who sicked you on me?”

  Carmady said: “They’re not afraid of me, angel. They just talked like that to see how you’d react, if I was involved, so on. They don’t know what it’s all about.”

  “They were told plainly enough what it was all about.”

  Carmady shook his head. “A cop never believes what he gets without a struggle. He’s too used to cooked-up stories. I think McChesney’s wise you did the shooting. He knows by now if that handkerchief of Targo’s had been in a pocket with a gun.”

  Her limp fingers discarded her cigarette half-smoked. A curtain eddied at the window and loose flakes of ash crawled around in the ash tray. She said slowly: “All right. I shot him. Do you think I’d hesitate after this afternoon?”

  Carmady rubbed the lobe of his ear. “I’m playing this too light,” he said softly. “You don’t know what’s in my heart. Something has happened, something nasty. Do you think the hood meant to kill Targo?”

  “I thought so—or I wouldn’t have shot a man.”

  “I think maybe it was just a scare, angel. Like the other one. After all a night club is a poor place for a getaway.”

  She said sharply: “They don’t do many low tackles on forty-fives. He’d have got away all right. Of course he meant to kill somebody. And of course I didn’t mean Duke to front for me. He just grabbed the gun out of my hand and slammed into his act. What did it matter? I knew it would all come out in the end.”

  She poked absently at the still burning cigarette in the tray, kept her eyes down. After a moment she
said, almost in a whisper: “Is that all you wanted to know?”

  Carmady let his eyes crawl sidewise, without moving his head, until he could just see the firm curve of her cheek, the strong line of her throat. He said thickly: “Shenvair was in on it. The fellow I was with at Cyrano’s followed Shenvair to a hideout. Shenvair shot him. He’s dead. He’s dead, angel—just a young kid that worked here in the hotel. Tony, the bell captain. The cops don’t know that yet.”

  The muffled clang of elevator doors was heavy through the silence. A horn tooted dismally out in the rain on the boulevard. The girl sagged forward suddenly, then sidewise, fell across Carmady’s knees. Her body was half turned and she lay almost on her back across his thighs, her eyelids flickering. The small blue veins in them stood out rigid in the soft skin.

  He put his arms around her slowly, loosely, then they tightened, lifted her. He brought her face close to his own face. He kissed her on the side of the mouth.

  Her eyes opened, stared blankly, unfocused. He kissed her again, tightly, then pushed her upright on the davenport.

  He said quietly: “That wasn’t just an act, was it?”

  She leaped to her feet, spun around. Her voice was low, tense and angry.

  “There’s something horrible about you! Something—satanic. You come here and tell me another man has been killed—and then you kiss me. It isn’t real.”

  Carmady said dully: “There’s something horrible about any man that goes suddenly gaga over another man’s woman.”

  “I’m not his woman!” she snapped. “I don’t even like him—and I don’t like you.”

  Carmady shrugged. They stared at each other with bleak hostile eyes. The girl clicked her teeth shut, then said almost violently: “Get out! I can’t talk to you any more. I can’t stand you around. Will you get out?”

  Carmady said: “Why not?” He stood up, went over and got his hat and coat.

  The girl sobbed once sharply, then she went in light quick strides across the room to the windows, became motionless with her back to him.

  Carmady looked at her back, went over near her and stood looking at the soft hair low down on her neck. He said: “Why the hell don’t you let me help? I know there’s something wrong. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  The girl spoke to the curtain in front of her face, savagely: “Get out! I don’t want your help. Go away and stay away. I won’t be seeing you—ever.”

  Carmady said slowly: “I think you’ve got to have help. Whether you like it or not. That man in the photo frame on the desk there—I think I know who he is. And I don’t think he’s dead.”

  The girl turned. Her face now was as white as paper. Her eyes strained at his eyes. She breathed thickly, harshly. After what seemed a long time she said: “I’m caught. Caught. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Carmady lifted a hand and drew his fingers slowly down her cheek, down the angle of her tight jaw. His eyes held a hard brown glitter, his lips a smile. It was cunning, almost a dishonest smile.

  He said: “I’m wrong, angel. I don’t know him at all. Good night.”

  He went back across the room, through the little hallway, opened the door. When the door opened the girl clutched at the curtain and rubbed her face against it slowly.

  Carmady didn’t shut the door. He stood quite still halfway through it, looking at two men who stood there with guns.

  They stood close to the door, as if they had been about to knock. One was thick, dark, saturnine. The other one was an albino with sharp red eyes, a narrow head that showed shining snow-white hair under a rain-spattered dark hat. He had the thin sharp teeth and the drawn-back grin of a rat.

  Carmady started to close the door behind him. The albino said: “Hold it, rube. The door, I mean. We’re goin’ in.”

  The other man slid forward and pressed his left hand up and down Carmady’s body carefully. He stepped away, said: “No gat, but a swell flask under his arm.”

  The albino gestured with his gun. “Back up, rube. We want the broad, too.”

  Carmady said tonelessly: “It doesn’t take a gun, Critz. I know you and I know your boss. If he wants to see me, I’ll be glad to talk to him.”

  He turned and went back into the room with the two gunmen behind him.

  Jean Adrian hadn’t moved. She stood by the window still, the curtain against her cheek, her eyes closed, as if she hadn’t heard the voices at the door at all.

  Then she heard them come in and her eyes snapped open. She turned slowly, stared past Carmady at the two gunmen. The albino walked to the middle of the room, looked around it without speaking, went on into the bedroom and bathroom. Doors opened and shut. He came back in quiet catlike feet, pulled his overcoat open and pushed his hat back on his head.

  “Get dressed, sister. We have to go for a ride in the rain. Okey?”

  The girl stared at Carmady now. He shrugged, smiled a little, spread his hands.

  “That’s how it is, angel. Might as well fall in line.”

  The lines of her face got thin and contemptuous. She said slowly: “You—You——.” Her voice trailed off into a sibilant, meaningless mutter. She went across the room stiffly and out of it into the bedroom.

  The albino slipped a cigarette between his sharp lips, chuckled with a wet, gurgling sound, as if his mouth was full of saliva.

  “She don’t seem to like you, rube.”

  Carmady frowned. He walked slowly to the writing desk, leaned his hips against it, stared at the floor.

  “She thinks I sold her out,” he said dully.

  “Maybe you did, rube,” the albino drawled.

  Carmady said: “Better watch her. She’s neat with a gun.”

  His hands, reaching casually behind him on the desk, tapped the top of it lightly, then without apparent change of movement folded the leather photo frame down on its side and edged it under the blotter.

  EIGHT

  There was a padded arm rest in the middle of the rear seat of the car, and Carmady leaned an elbow on it, cupped his chin in his hand, stared through the half-misted windows at the rain. It was thick white spray in the headlights, and the noise of it on the top of the car was like drum fire very far off.

  Jean Adrian sat on the other side of the arm rest, in the corner. She wore a black hat and a gray coat with tufts of silky hair on it, longer than caracul and not so curly. She didn’t look at Carmady or speak to him.

  The albino sat on the right of the thick dark man, who drove. They went through silent streets, past blurred houses, blurred trees, the blurred shine of street lights. There were neon signs behind the thick curtains of mist. There was no sky.

  Then they climbed and a feeble arc light strung over an intersection threw light on a signpost, and Carmady read the name “Court Street.”

  He said softly: “This is woptown, Critz. The big guy can’t be so dough-heavy as he used to be.”

  Lights flickered from the albino’s eyes as he glanced back. “You should know, rube.”

  The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows. Across the street, a stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the sidewalk said: “Paolo Perrugini Funeral Parlors.”

  The car swung out to make a wide turn into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed into an open garage. They went in, slid to a stop beside a big shiny undertaker’s ambulance.

  The albino snapped: “All out!”

  Carmady said: “I see our next trip is all arranged for.”

  “Funny guy,” the albino snarled. “A wise monkey.”

  “Uh-uh. I just have nice scaffold manners,” Carmady drawled.

  The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights, got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a narrow flight of wooden steps in the corner. The albino said: “Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead of you. I’m behind with my rod.”

  Jean Adrian got out of the car past Carmady, without looking at him. She
went up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a procession behind her.

  There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed studding, a square window in front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a drop cord over a kitchen table and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.

  A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of furniture, a half-opened clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of a big old-fashioned bathtub standing up from the floor on iron legs.

  The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive face, a strong jaw. His thick lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in.

  He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette: “Park the body, sister. Hi, Carmady. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you boys drop down below again.”

  The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big man’s elbow on the kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.

  The big man touched the Luger, stared at Carmady, said sarcastically: “I’m Doll Conant. Maybe you remember me.”

  Carmady stood loosely by the kitchen table, with his legs spread wide, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his head tilted back. His half-closed eyes were sleepy, very cold.

  He said: “Yeah. I helped my dad hang the only rap on you that ever stuck.”

  “It didn’t stick, mugg. Not with the Court of Appeals.”

  “Maybe this one will,” Carmady said carelessly. “Kidnapping is apt to be a sticky rap in this state.”

  Conant grinned without opening his lips. His expression was grimly good-humored. He said: “Let’s not barber. We got business to do and you know better than that last crack. Sit down—or rather take a look at Exhibit One first. In the bathtub, behind you. Yeah, take a look at that. Then we can get down to tacks.”