The Annotated Big Sleep

by Raymond Chandler

  Foothill Boulevard is the black line to the north (courtesy of the Prelinger Library)

  13. Marlowe has crossed paths with another favorite trope of 1930s crime: the bank heist. John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson used the brass tacks routine in their 1934 crime spree. It was a standard way to slow down pursuers. In 1929, a heist in the Los Angeles suburb of Rivera was foiled when robbers scattered tacks behind them as they drove up a blind alley, then punctured their own tires as they tried to escape. “Just like a movie,” the bank clerks remarked. The tacks-in-the-road motif has been used in many films since, including Thunder Road (1958), where the trick sends a moonshiner played by Robert Mitchum skidding to his death.

  14. For the first time we see Marlowe’s own gun, though he opts for one with “more practice.” “I hardly ever shoot anybody,” he jokes in Farewell, My Lovely. Both comments will be painted black by the ensuing action.

  15. The first ghostly apparition of Harry Jones. Of course, Marlowe isn’t seeing a “real” ghost, as, for example, the Danes do in Hamlet (a connection that becomes clearer at the end of the novel).

  16. The hero as borderline hysteric. See note 28 on this page and note 9 on this page for more about Marlowe’s hysterical tendencies.

  17. If Marlowe were a mile east of the actual town of Rialto he’d be close to San Bernardino, but of course he isn’t; he’s up in the foothills of an imaginary scene beyond the border of reality.

  18. The return of the gangster patois.

  19. bo: American slang, generic for male, akin to “man,” “buddy,” “dude.” Shortened from “hobo,” a common word (and person) during the Depression.

  20. The undertaker in front, and death in the shadows.

  21. The beginning of the novel enveloped Marlowe in the cloying smell of the orchids in General Sternwood’s hothouse; he winds up within the artificial, menacing scent of the garage.

  22. More gangster patter.

  23. Outnumbered and outgunned (as Walter Mosley puts it), Marlowe still belittles his opponent.

  24. Evidence that Agnes was right about Art Huck’s stolen-car operation.

  25. Canino cultivates the nonchalant gangster style.

  26. Chandler has commented throughout on his characters’ devotion to style and simulated identity. It’s an early critique of what Guy Debord would later call “the society of the spectacle,” in which representations determine reality. It should come as no surprise that such a critique began at this time: the era from 1930 to 1948 is referred to as the Golden Age of Hollywood, during which period moviegoing became the dominant form of entertainment. As the style and language of the studios inspired imitation, imitation spurred commentary that life itself was increasingly being scripted by Hollywood. Chandler was not the first to make the point in crime fiction: “You’ve seen too many gangster pictures—that’s what’s wrong with you,” Paul Cain’s Granquist says in Fast One. “By God—just like they do in the movies,” marvels a gangster’s bodyguard in the same novel, after a stylish piece of violence.

  27. In the first half of the twentieth century, Santa Rosa was still a small town. It is located in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, some fifty miles north of San Francisco itself. In The Long Goodbye, we learn that Marlowe actually is from Santa Rosa.

  28. Even if he were headed to LA after a stint in Reno, Marlowe wouldn’t be passing through the real Rialto unless he wanted to make a sweeping semicircle that would take him through the mountains. Not a terribly believable story.

  29. Recall Chandler’s fondness for the understated threat (see note 24 on this page). Here, the threat doesn’t even have to be stated; it exists in its silence.

  30. sou’wester: A traditional thick oilskin rain hat with clasps under the chin and flaps that protect the ears and the back of the neck.

  31. Why doesn’t he? The classically educated Chandler seems to be playing with two central Greek concepts: one proper to classical tragedians, fate; and one proper to the poets and philosophers, kairos: the opportune moment, or “right time” (sometimes personified as Opportunity). Call it the moment when the soldier or hunter lets the arrow go upon prey or foe. Marlowe, for some reason, holds back here. Fate? Or simply not the right time?

  32. Not long ago, Marlowe thought he was where he wanted to be. Now the moment seems to be overmastering him. Or perhaps he is becoming drugged by the paint fumes to which Art and Lash have built up a resistance?

  33. The second metaphorical apparition.

  34. In the 1932 dramatization of Al Capone’s life, Scarface, the Capone figure’s henchman Guino Rinaldo (played by George Raft) has a habit of flipping a coin. The gesture became an iconic symbol of gangster cool.

  35. don’t make a song about it: Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English gives “very unimportant” for “song about, nothing to make a”; as Chandler said, such explanations smack of an “ear to the library” rather than to the street. The usage here is vividly self-explanatory. Compare this exchange from Chandler’s “Goldfish”: “ ‘Like the idea?’ he glanced at me. ‘Yeah, but don’t make a song about it,’ I said.”

  36. See note 31 on this page.

  37. We know that the heavies are armed. Pulling a gun would have been easier, but not as much fun.

  38. The impressionistic imagery embroiders a scene left fairly stark in “The Curtain”: “I went out like a puff of dust in a draft.”

  Marlowe takes a beating throughout the novels and is frequently knocked unconscious. In Playback he comes to with ice cubes wrapped in a towel nesting on him. “Somebody who loved me very much had put them on the back of my head. Somebody who loved me less had bashed in the back of my skull. It could have been the same person. People have moods.”

  In conversation with Ian Fleming, Chandler joked that he allowed Marlowe to recover too quickly. “I know what it is to be banged on the head,” Chandler quipped. “The first thing you do is vomit.”

  Of course, Chandler inherited the stylized violence of the hard-boiled genre. In 1949, writer and critic James Baldwin called the “multitudinous, hard-boiled” novels of the period nothing more than catalogs of violence. He had a point. A literary step up from its pulp also-rans, Hammett’s Red Harvest is named for its blood-spattered climax. And his comparatively calm The Dain Curse has, besides bullets flying through faces, necks, and chests (at times simultaneously), throat-slitting, strangling, and two different types of mangling (from falling off a cliff and a bomb exploding). There’s also ritualistic murder, matricide, and cannibalism. Chandler toned down the volume of violence-for-effect, even as he registered more sensitively the psychological effect of violence.

  The many moods of pulp

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It seemed there was a woman and she was sitting near a lamp, which was where she belonged, in a good light.1 Another light shone hard on my face, so I closed my eyes again and tried to look at her through the lashes. She was so platinumed2 that her hair shone like a silver fruit bowl. She wore a green knitted dress with a broad white collar turned over it. There was a sharp-angled glossy bag at her feet. She was smoking and a glass of amber fluid was tall and pale at her elbow.

  I moved my head a little, carefully. It hurt, but not more than I expected. I was trussed like a turkey ready for the oven.3 Handcuffs held my wrists behind me and a rope went from them to my ankles and then over the end of the brown davenport on which I was sprawled. The rope dropped out of sight over the davenport. I moved enough to make sure it was tied down.

  I stopped these furtive movements and opened my eyes again and said: “Hello.”

  The woman withdrew her gaze from some distant mountain peak. Her small firm chin turned slowly. Her eyes were the blue of mountain lakes. Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else’s rain.

  �
�How do you feel?” It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll’s house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it.4

  “Great,” I said. “Somebody built a filling station on my jaw.”

  “What did you expect, Mr. Marlowe—orchids?”5

  “Just a plain pine box,” I said. “Don’t bother with bronze or silver handles. And don’t scatter my ashes over the blue Pacific. I like the worms better.6 Did you know that worms are of both sexes and that any worm can love any other worm?”7

  “You’re a little light-headed,” she said, with a grave stare.

  “Would you mind moving this light?”

  She got up and went behind the davenport. The light went off. The dimness was a benison.

  “I don’t think you’re so dangerous,” she said. She was tall rather than short, but no bean-pole. She was slim, but not a dried crust. She went back to her chair.

  “So you know my name.”

  “You slept well. They had plenty of time to go through your pockets. They did everything but embalm you.8 So you’re a detective.”

  “Is that all they have on me?”

  She was silent. Smoke floated dimly from the cigarette. She moved it in the air. Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays.

  “What time is it?” I asked.9

  She looked sideways at her wrist, beyond the spiral of smoke, at the edge of the grave luster of the lamplight. “Ten-seventeen. You have a date?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.10 Is this the house next to Art Huck’s garage?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are the boys doing—digging a grave?”11

  “They had to go somewhere.”

  “You mean they left you here alone?”

  Her head turned slowly again. She smiled. “You don’t look dangerous.”

  “I thought they were keeping you a prisoner.”

  It didn’t seem to startle her. It even slightly amused her. “What made you think that?”

  “I know who you are.”

  Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of a sword.12 Her mouth tightened. But her voice didn’t change.

  “Then I’m afraid you’re in a bad spot. And I hate killing.”

  “And you Eddie Mars’ wife? Shame on you.”

  She didn’t like that. She glared at me. I grinned. “Unless you can unlock these bracelets, which I’d advise you not to do, you might spare me a little of that drink you’re neglecting.”

  She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes. She bent over me. Her breath was as delicate as the eyes of a fawn. I gulped from the glass. She took it away from my mouth and watched some of the liquid run down my neck.

  She bent over me again. Blood began to move around in me, like a prospective tenant looking over a house.13

  “Your face looks like a collision mat,” she said.14

  “Make the most of it. It won’t last long even this good.”

  She swung her head sharply and listened. For an instant her face was pale. The sounds were only the rain drifting against the walls. She went back across the room and stood with her side to me, bent forward a little, looking down at the floor.

  “Why did you come here and stick your neck out?” she asked quietly. “Eddie wasn’t doing you any harm. You know perfectly well that if I hadn’t hid out here, the police would have been certain Eddie murdered Rusty Regan.”

  “He did,” I said.

  She didn’t move, didn’t change position an inch. Her breath made a harsh quick sound. I looked around the room. Two doors, both in the same wall, one half open. A carpet of red and tan squares, blue curtains at the windows, a wallpaper with bright green pine trees on it. The furniture looked as if it had come from one of those places that advertise on bus benches. Gay, but full of resistance.15

  She said softly: “Eddie didn’t do anything to him. I haven’t seen Rusty in months. Eddie’s not that sort of man.”

  “You left his bed and board. You were living alone. People at the place where you lived identified Regan’s photo.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said coldly.

  I tried to remember whether Captain Gregory had said that or not. My head was too fuzzy. I couldn’t be sure.

  “And it’s none of your business,” she added.

  “The whole thing is my business. I’m hired to find out.”16

  “Eddie’s not that sort of man.”

  “Oh, you like racketeers.”

  “As long as people will gamble there will be places for them to gamble.”

  “That’s just protective thinking. Once outside the law you’re all the way outside.17 You think he’s just a gambler. I think he’s a pornographer, a blackmailer, a hot car broker, a killer by remote control, and a suborner18 of crooked cops. He’s whatever looks good to him, whatever has the cabbage19 pinned to it. Don’t try to sell me on any high-souled racketeers. They don’t come in that pattern.”

  “He’s not a killer.” Her nostrils flared.

  “Not personally. He has Canino. Canino killed a man tonight, a harmless little guy who was trying to help somebody out. I almost saw him killed.”

  She laughed wearily.

  “All right,” I growled. “Don’t believe it. If Eddie is such a nice guy, I’d like to get to talk to him without Canino around. You know what Canino will do—beat my teeth out and then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.”

  She put her head back and stood there thoughtful and withdrawn, thinking something out.

  “I thought platinum hair was out of style,” I bored on, just to keep sound alive in the room, just to keep from listening.

  “It’s a wig, silly.20 While mine grows out.” She reached up and yanked it off. Her own hair was clipped short all over, like a boy’s.21 She put the wig back on.

  “Who did that to you?”

  She looked surprised. “I had it done. Why?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Why, to show Eddie I was willing to do what he wanted me to do—hide out. That he didn’t need to have me guarded. I wouldn’t let him down. I love him.”

  “Good grief,” I groaned. “And you have me right here in the room with you.”

  She turned a hand over and stared at it. Then abruptly she walked out of the room. She came back with a kitchen knife.22 She bent and sawed at my rope.

  “Canino has the key to the handcuffs,” she breathed. “I can’t do anything about those.”

  She stepped back, breathing rapidly. She had cut the rope at every knot.

  “You’re a kick,” she said. “Kidding with every breath—the spot you’re in.”

  “I thought Eddie wasn’t a killer.”

  She turned away quickly and went back to her chair by the lamp and sat down and put her face in her hands. I swung my feet to the floor and stood up. I tottered around, stiff-legged. The nerve on the left side of my face was jumping in all its branches. I took a step. I could still walk. I could run, if I had to.

  “I guess you mean me to go,” I said.

  She nodded without lifting her head.

  “You’d better go with me—if you want to keep on living.”23

  “Don’t waste time. He’ll be back any minute.”

  “Light a cigarette for me.”

  I stood beside her, touching her knees. She came to her feet with a sudden lurch. Our eyes were only inches apart.

  “Hello, Silver-Wig,” I said softly.

  She stepped back, around the chair, and swept a package of cigarettes up off the table. She jabbed one loose and pushed it roughly into my mouth. Her hand was shaking. She snapped a small green leather lighter and held it to the cigarette. I drew in the smoke, s
taring into her lake-blue eyes. While she was still close to me I said:

  “A little bird named Harry Jones led me to you. A little bird that used to hop in and out of cocktail bars picking up horse bets for crumbs. Picking up information too. This little bird picked up an idea about Canino. One way and another he and his friends found out where you were. He came to me to sell the information because he knew—how he knew is a long story—that I was working for General Sternwood. I got his information, but Canino got the little bird. He’s a dead little bird now, with his feathers ruffled and his neck limp and a pearl of blood on his beak. Canino killed him. But Eddie Mars wouldn’t do that, would he, Silver-Wig? He never killed anybody. He just hires it done.”

  “Get out,” she said harshly. “Get out of here quick.”

  Her hand clutched in midair on the green lighter. The fingers strained. The knuckles were as white as snow.

  “But Canino doesn’t know I know that,” I said. “About the little bird. All he knows is I’m nosing around.”

  Then she laughed. It was almost a racking laugh.24 It shook her as the wind shakes a tree. I thought there was puzzlement in it, not exactly surprise, but as if a new idea had been added to something already known and it didn’t fit. Then I thought that was too much to get out of a laugh.

  “It’s very funny,” she said breathlessly. “Very funny, because, you see—I still love him. Women—” She began to laugh again.

  I listened hard, my head throbbing. Just the rain still. “Let’s go,” I said. “Fast.”

  She took two steps back and her face set hard. “Get out, you! Get out! You can walk to Realito. You can make it—and you can keep your mouth shut—for an hour or two at least. You owe me that much.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.25 “Got a gun, Silver-Wig?”

  “You know I’m not going. You know that. Please, please get out of here quickly.”

  I stepped up close to her, almost pressing against her. “You’re going to stay here after turning me loose? Wait for that killer to come back so you can say so sorry? A man who kills like swatting a fly. Not much. You’re going with me, Silver-Wig.”