奥尔斯一声不出地望着他，两条淡白色的眉毛弯弯的、一根根地扎扎着，像富勒尔制刷公司免费赠送的两把刷瓜果的小刷子。
Ohls looked at him silently, his pale eyebrows bristling and stiff and round like the little vegetable brushes the Fuller Brush man gives away. (查看原文)
"What are you getting for it all?"
"Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses."
"That would make fifty dollars and a little gasoline so far."
"About that."
He put his head on one side and rubbed the back of his little finger along the lower edge of his chin.
"And for that amount of money you're willing to get yourself in dutch with half the law enforcement of this country?"
"I don't like it." I said. "But what hell am I to do? I'm on a case. I'm selling what I have to sell to make a living. What little guts and intelligence the Lord give me and a willingness to get pushed around in order to protect a client. It's against my principles to tell as much as I've told tonight, without consulting General. As for the cover-up, I've been in police business myself, as you know. They come a dime a doze... (查看原文)
"You have wicked eyes," I said. "What's Eddie Mars got on you?"
She looked at me in the mirror. "I took plenty away from him tonight at roulette—starting with five grand I borrowed from him yesterday and didn't have to use."
"That might make him sore. You think he sent that loogan after you?"
"What's a loogan?"
"A guy with a gun."
"Are you a loogan?"
"Sure," I laughed. "But strictly speaking a loogan is on the wrong side of the fence."
"I often wonder if there is a wrong side."
"We're losing the subject. What has Eddie Mars got on you?"
"You mean a hold on me of some sort?"
"Yes."
Her lip curled. "Wittier, please, Maelowe. Much wittier."
"How's the General? I don't pretend to be witty."
"Not too well. He didn't get up today. You could at least stop questioning me."
"I remember a time when ... (查看原文)
I strained her against me until the shivering of her body was almost shaking mine. I kept on kissing her. After a long time she pulled her head away enough to say: "Where do you live?"
"Hobart Arms. Franklin near Kenmore."
"I've never seen it."
"Want to?"
"Yes," she breathed.
"What has Eddie Mars got on you?"
Her body stiffened in my arms and her breath made a harsh sound. Her head pulled back until her eyes, wide open, ringed with white, were staring at me.
"So that's the way it is," she said in a soft dull voice.
"That's the way it is. Kissing is nice, but your father didn't hire me to sleep with you."
"You son of a bitch," she said calmly, without moving.
I laughed in her face. "Don't think I'm an icicle," I said, "I'm not blind or without senses. I have warm blood like the next guy. Yo... (查看原文)
"……When you hire a boy in my line of work it isn't like hiring a window-washer and showing him eight windows and saying: 'Wash those and you're through.' You don't know what I have to go through or over or under to do your job for you. I do it my way. I do my best to protect you and I may break a few rules, but I break them in your favor. The client comes first, unless he's crooked. Even then all I do is hand the job back to him and keep my mouth shut. After all you didn't tell me not to go to Captain Gregory." (查看原文)
"…… I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it. If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops. It's not things like that they overlook, if they overlook anything. I'm not saying they often overlook anything when they're really allowed to work. But if they do, it's apt to be something looser and vaguer, like a man of Geiger's type sending you his evidence of debt and asking you to pay like a gentleman—Geiger, a man in a shady racket, in a vulnerable position, protected by a racketeer and having at least some negative protection from some of the police. ……" (查看原文)
"Uh-huh. I'm a very smart guy. I haven't a feeling or a scruple in the world. All I have the itch for is money. I am so money greedy that for twenty-Eve bucks a day and expenses, mostly gasoline and whiskey, I do my thinking myself, what there is of it; I risk my whole future, the hatred of the cops and of Eddie Mars and his pals, I dodge bullets and eat saps, and say thank you very much, if you have any more trouble, I hope you'll think of me, I'll just leave one of my cards in case anything comes up. I do all this for twenty-five bucks a day—and maybe just a little to protect what little pride a broken and sick old man has left in his blood, in the thought that his blood is not poison, and that although his two little girls are a trifle wild, as many nice girls are these days, they are n... (查看原文)
