Read Online Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online

tasted it, will it?”
    He started to get hard again, then relaxed. “Hell, I guess you’re just a kidder.” He finished the drink, put the glass down, patted his lips with a large and very crumpled handkerchief and sighed.
    “O.K.,” he said. “But we’ll have to leave now.”
    “All set. I guess she won’t be home for a while. You see them go out?”
    “Her and the boy friend. Yeah, long time ago.”
    I nodded. We went towards the door and Hawkins saw me out. He saw me downstairs and off the premises. But he didn’t see what was in Miss Huntress’ bedroom. I wondered if he would go back up. If he did, the Scotch bottle would probably stop him.
    I got into my car and drove off home—to talk to Anna Halsey on the phone. There wasn’t any case any more—for us. I parked close to the curb this time. I wasn’t feeling gay any more. I rode up in the elevator and unlocked the door and clicked the light on.
    Waxnose sat in my best chair, an unlit hand-rolled brown cigarette between his fingers, his bony knees crossed, and his long Woodsman resting solidly on his leg. He was smiling. It wasn’t the nicest smile I ever saw.
    “Hi, pal,” he drawled. “You still ain’t had that door fixed. Kind of shut it, huh?” His voice, for all the drawl, was deadly.
    I shut the door, stood looking across the room at him.
    “So you killed my pal,” he said.
    He stood up slowly, came across the room slowly and leaned the .22 against my throat. His smiling thin-lipped mouth seemed as expressionless, for all its smile, as his wax-white nose. He reached quietly under my coat and took the Luger. I might as well leave it home from now on. Everybody in town seemed to be able to take it away from me.
    He stepped back across the room and sat down again in the chair.
    “Steady does it,” he said almost gently. “Park the body, friend. No false moves. No moves at all. You and me are at the jumping-off place. The clock’s tickin’ and we’re waiting to go.
    I sat down and stared at him. A curious bird. I moistened my dry lips. “You told me his gun had no firing pin,” I said.
    “Yeah. He fooled me on that, the little so-and-so. And I told you to lay off the Jeeter kid. That’s cold now. It’s Frisky I’m thinking about. Crazy, ain’t it? Me bothering about a dimwit like that, packin’ him around with me, and letting him get hisself bumped off.” He sighed and added simply, “He was my kid brother.”
    “I didn’t kill him,” I said.
    He smiled a little more. He had never stopped smiling. The corners of his mouth just tucked in a little deeper.
    “Yeah?”
    He slid the safety catch off the Luger, laid it carefully on the arm of the chair at his right, and reached into his pocket. What he brought out made me as cold as an ice bucket.
    It was a metal tube, dark and rough-looking, about four inches long and drilled with a lot of small holes. He held his Woodsman in his left hand and began to screw the tube casually on the end of it.
    “Silencer,” he said. “They’re the bunk, I guess you smart guys think. This one ain’t the bunk—not for three shots. I oughta know. I made it myself.”
    I moistened my lips again. “It’ll work for one shot,” I said. “Then it jams your action. That one looks like cast-iron. It will probably blow your hand off.”
    He smiled his waxy smile, screwed it on, slowly, lovingly, gave it a last hard turn and sat back relaxed. “Not this baby. She’s packed with steel wool and that’s good for three shots, like I said. Then you got to repack it. And there ain’t enough back pressure to jam the action on this gun. You feel good? I’d like you to feel good.”
    “I feel swell, you sadistic son of a bitch,” I said.
    “I’m having you lie down on the bed after a while. You won’t feel nothing. I’m kind of fussy about my killings. Frisky didn’t feel nothing, I guess. You got him neat.”
    “You don’t see good,” I sneered. “The chauffeur got him with a Smith & Wesson