Read Online The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler - Free Book Online Page A

me what Dad—”
    “I’d have to see him first.”
    She took the photo out and stood looking at it, just inside the door. “She has a beautiful little body, hasn’t she?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She leaned a little towards me. “You ought to see mine,” she said gravely.
    “Can it be arranged?”
    She laughed suddenly and sharply and went halfway through the door, then turned her head to say coolly: “You’re as cold-blooded a beast as I ever met, Marlowe. Or can I call you Phil?”
    “Sure.”
    “You can call me Vivian.”
    “Thanks, Mrs. Regan.”
    “Oh, go to hell, Marlowe.” She went on out and didn’t look back.
    I let the door shut and stood with my hand on it, staring at the hand. My face felt a little hot. I went back to the desk and put the whiskey away and rinsed out the two pony glasses and put them away.
    I took my hat off the phone and called the D.A.’s office and asked for Bernie Ohls.
    He was back in his cubbyhole. “Well, I let the old man alone,” he said. “The butler said he or one of the girls would tell him. This Owen Taylor lived over the garage and I went through his stuff. Parents at Dubuque, Iowa. I wired the Chief of Police there to find out what they want done. The Sternwood family will pay for it.”
    “Suicide?” I asked.
    “No can tell. He didn’t leave any notes. He had no leave to take the car. Everybody was home last night but Mrs. Regan. She was down at Las Olindas with a playboy named Larry Cobb. I checked on that. I know a lad on one of the tables.”
    “You ought to stop some of that flash gambling,” I said.
    “With the syndicate we got in this county? Be your age, Marlowe. That sap mark on the boy’s head bothers me. Sure you can’t help me on this?”
    I liked his putting it that way. It let me say no without actually lying. We said good-bye and I left the office, bought all three afternoon papers and rode a taxi down to the Hall of Justice to get my car out of the lot. There was nothing in any of the papers about Geiger. I took another look at his blue notebook, but the code was just as stubborn as it had been the night before.

 
    TWELVE
    The trees on the upper side of Laverne Terrace had fresh green leaves after the rain. In the cool afternoon sunlight I could see the steep drop of the hill and the flight of steps down which the killer had run after his three shots in the darkness. Two small houses fronted on the street below. They might or might not have heard the shots.
    There was no activity in front of Geiger’s house or anywhere along the block. The box hedge looked green and peaceful and the shingles on the roof were still damp. I drove past slowly, gnawing at an idea. I hadn’t looked in the garage the night before. Once Geiger’s body slipped away I hadn’t really wanted to find it. It would force my hand. But dragging him to the garage, to his own car and driving that off into one of the hundred odd lonely canyons around Los Angeles would be a good way to dispose of him for days or even for weeks. That supposed two things: a key to his car and two in the party. It would narrow the sector of search quite a lot, especially as I had had his personal keys in my pocket when it happened.
    I didn’t get a chance to look at the garage. The doors were shut and padlocked and something moved behind the hedge as I drew level. A woman in a green and white check coat and a small button of a hat on soft blond hair stepped out of the maze and stood looking wild-eyed at my car, as if she hadn’t heard it come up the hill. Then she turned swiftly and dodged back out of sight. It was Carmen Sternwood, of course.
    I went on up the street and parked and walked back. In the daylight it seemed an exposed and dangerous thing to do. I went in through the hedge. She stood there straight and silent against the locked front door. One hand went slowly up to her teeth and her teeth bit at her funny thumb. There were purple smears under her eyes and her face was gnawed white