Chapter 10 Chapter 10 Chasing Crime: Unisex

After half an hour, I left the arena.Dinah Brand was sitting in the driver's seat of a light blue Marmont talking to Max Thaler, who was standing on the road. The girl's angular chin was upturned, and the bright red plump lips spit out the words neatly, and the wrinkles around the corners of the mouth were distinct. Gambler looked as unhappy as she did.His handsome face was as sallow and rigid as oak bark, and his lips were as thin as paper when he spoke. The scene was like a wonderful family reunion.I wouldn't have attended if the girl hadn't seen me and called me over. "God, I thought you'd never come here in your life."

I go to the car.Thaler looked at me over the roof of the car, without a trace of friendliness. "Last night I advised you to go back to San Francisco." His whisper was harsher than anyone's growl. "Now it's your order." "Thank you very much." I said as I sat next to the girl. As she started the engine, Thaler told her, "This isn't the first time you've betrayed me, but it's the last." The car started, and the girl turned around and sang to him: "My love, go to hell!" We drove quickly into town. "Is Bush dead?" she asked as the car twisted onto Broadway.

"Apparently, when they turned him over, they could see the point of the knife sticking out." "He should have known what it would be like to betray them. Let's go get something to eat! I've done everything from a thousand years later tonight, and if the boys don't like it, I can only say sorry. How much did you win ?” "I'm not betting. So your Max is upset?" "No bet?" she yelled. "What kind of bastard are you? Who wouldn't bet after hearing such a sure-fire insider?" "I'm not 100 percent sure. So Max didn't like the subsequent transformation?"

"What do you think? He lost a lot, and then he showed me a face because I was smart enough to change the bet and win a ticket." She parked the car roughly in front of a Chinese restaurant, "Send him to hell Go! Self-righteous short melon!" Her eyes were full of tears and sparkled.When she got out of the car, she wiped her eyes vigorously with a handkerchief. "Holy shit, I'm starving." She pulled me across the sidewalk, "Can you buy me a ton of chow mein?" Although she didn't eat a ton, she ate a lot.After eating her own full plate, I added half of my plate.Then we drove the Marmon back to her house again.

Dan Rolfe is in the dining room, with a glass of water and an unlabeled brown bottle on the table in front of him.He sat upright, staring at the bottle.The whole room smelled of laudanum. Dinah Bland took off her fur coat, letting half of it hang over a chair and the other half slipping to the floor.She snapped her fingers at the tuberculosis patient and said impatiently, "Did you get the money?" Still keeping his eyes on the bottle, the tuberculosis patient took out a wad of banknotes from the inner pocket of his coat and threw them on the table.The girl snatched it away, counted it twice, smacked her lips, and stuffed the money into her handbag.

She went out of the room and went to the kitchen to chip ice.I sat down and lit a cigarette.Rolf was still staring at his bottle, and neither he nor I seemed to have anything to say to each other.A moment later the girl returned with gin, lemonade, soda and ice. We drank and she told Rolf: "Max is mad. He heard you bet the money on Bush at the last minute and that little monkey thought I betrayed him. What did I do I was just doing what a sane person would do — betting on the winning side. I’m as innocent as a baby, aren’t I?” she asked me, and then went on to say, “Obviously Max’s fear is that people will think He did it, because Dan staked his money with mine. It's a pity he's out of luck. I don't give a shit about the noisy squash if he jumps. Have another drink!"

She poured another glass for me and myself, Rolf hadn't touched his first glass yet.Still staring at the brown bottle, he said, "Why do you still think that he will be happy when this happens?" The girl retorted angrily: "What I think is up to me. Besides, he has no right to talk to me like that, and I don't belong to him. Maybe he wants to think that way, but I'm going to show him that's not the case Son." She drank the wine in the glass, slammed it on the table, twisted herself in the chair, and faced me, "You really need to use Elihu Wilson's ten thousand dollars to clean up The city?"

"yes." Her bloodshot eyes gleamed with longing. "Well, if I help you, you can share—" "You can't do that, Dinah." Rolf's voice was low, but gentle and firm, as if speaking to a child, "That's extremely dirty." The girl slowly turned her head to him, her mouth changing into the way she had spoken to Thaler. "I'm going to do it," she said, "and it'd make me pretty dirty, wouldn't it?" He didn't speak, and still didn't take his eyes off the bottle.She blushed, her expression became firm and cruel, and she said in a soft voice: "It's too unfortunate that a pure gentleman like you—although you have a little lung disease—has to associate with a filthy person like me."

"That can be remedied." He said slowly, standing up.The laudanum had eaten away at his brain. Dinah Brand jumped up from her chair and ran to the table.He looked at her, his drugged eyes empty.She put her face in front of him and asked, "So, I'm too dirty for you now, aren't I?" He said calmly, "I mean, if you betray your friends for this guy, it's nasty. Very nasty." She grabbed one of his bony wrists and twisted until he was on his knees, and with the other hand slapped his sunken cheek six times on each side, making his head toss from side to side.He could have raised his other arm to protect his face, but didn't.

She let go of his wrist, turned her back to him, and reached for the gin and soda.She's smiling, and I don't like that smile. He stood up, blinking, his wrist red from the scratch and his face bruised.He steadied himself and stood up straight, looking at me expressionlessly. He reached inside his coat, pulled out a black automatic, and aimed it at me, without changing the expression on his face or the vacant look in his eyes. But he was shaking too much, not fast enough and not accurate enough.I threw a glass at him just in time and it hit him in the shoulder and the bullet flew over my head.

I jumped over him before he fired the second shot - at him - close enough to knock his gun off.The second bullet hit the floor. I punched him in the jaw and he fell on his side, lying on the ground. I turn around. Dinah Bland was about to hit me over the head with a soda bottle, that glass siphon jug was big enough to blow my brains out. "Don't!" I yelled. "You shouldn't have hit him so hard!" she growled. "It's a pity it's done. You'd better help him up." She put down the siphon pot and I helped her guide Rolf into the bedroom.When his eyes were able to move, I left her to complete the follow-up work, and walked back to the dining room by myself.Fifteen minutes later, she came. "He's all right," she said, "but you don't have to go so far." "Yes, but I did it for his own good. Do you know why he wanted to kill me?" "So I can't sell Max to whom?" "No, because I saw you beat him too hard to fight back." "I don't understand," she said, "I'm the one doing it." "He loves you. It's not the first time you've done it, and he's acting like he knows it's useless to fight you back, but you can't expect him to enjoy having another man watch him slap you." "I always thought I understood men," she complained, "but, my God, I don't. They're nuts, all of them." "That's why I hit it so hard, to get him back a little bit of his self-esteem. You know, he wants to be treated like a man, not a wretch who gets beaten up all over the floor by women." "Whatever you say," she sighed, "I give up. We should have a drink for it." We drank.Then I said, "You said you'd be willing to work with me for a cut of Wilson's money. I'll take it." "How many?" "That depends on you, and how much you do is worth." "It's hard to judge precisely." "It's also difficult for me to accurately judge your help." "Really? I can give you a lot, man, a lot, don't think I can't. I'm a woman who knows everything about drugs." She looked down at the knee of the gray sock, shaking a leg at me, rudely Say, "Look, another strip off. Have you ever seen anything worse? I swear, I'm going to be barefoot." "Your legs are so thick," I said to her, "that they stretch your socks." "It's none of your business. How are you going to purify our village?" "If I'm not deceived, then there is no doubt that Thaler, Pete, Lu Yard and Noonan took the lead in turning the drug town into a mess. Old Elihu did have a part, but it wasn't all his fault. Besides, he is my client - although he doesn't want to be - so I'm going to let him go. "My latest plan is to unearth all the hideous events I can, one after the other, and eventually wipe them all out. Maybe I should post an ad--Criminals: Male and Female. If they're as evil as I think, It shouldn't be hard to find a thing or two to convict them." "Is that why you messed up the fight?" "That was just an experiment—see what happens." "So that's how you scientific detectives handle cases. My God! As a middle-aged obese, hard-hearted, stubborn old guy, I have never even heard of your way of doing things." "Sometimes it's good to plan ahead," I said, "and sometimes it's okay to improvise—if you're tough enough to survive and keep your eyes open enough that when things surface See what you want." "We should have another drink for this," she said.