It was raining hard and the rain came through the soft top of my car.
I stuffed the magazines under the front passenger seat, put on my coat and went to buy some whisky. Then I sat in the car and drank while I watched Geiger’s store.
Business was good at Geiger’s. Very nice cars stopped, and very nice people walked in and came out with packets in their hands. Not all of them were men. At a quarter to five a white sports−car stopped in front of the store. The driver prised himself out and hoisted himself onto the sidewalk. He was wearing a Chinese silk coat. He looked like the kind of guy who dines at an ‘eat all you want’ restaurant and just loses track of time.
I saw the fat face and the moustache as he ran in out of the rain. Before the door could close, a tall, dark and very good−looking boy came out to park the car.
Just after five the store closed and the brunette left. Another hour passed and then another. The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.
It got dark. The rain eased and then stopped. I smoked more cigarettes than was good for me before the tall boy came out of the store. He brought the car back to the door, got out and opened the driver’s door as Geiger came out of the store. The boy went back into the store and Geiger drove off.
It was ten fifteen.
++++
I followed him thinking that he was going home to Laverne Terrace. But I thought wrong again. He headed east on Santa Monica, then took the freeway. It started to rain again. I turned on the wipers, straining to see Geiger’s tail-lights as he weaved through the traffic.
At the Chinatown exit he turned off and headed downtown.
The office buildings were deserted, their windows staring blankly. The streets felt dark with something more than night.
Fifteen minutes later, Geiger pulled up outside a grey six-storey building on West 7th Street. I stopped thirty yards behind him and watched as he entered through a set of double doors. A single porch light cast a sad glow on the slick sidewalk.
I opened the glove compartment, took out my revolver and slipped it into its holster.
I got out of the car and walked towards the double doors. A brass plaque on the wall said ‘Los Angeles Squash Club.’
I tried the door. It was open. I stepped into a lobby with faded black and white checkered tiles and a worn welcome mat that had seen better days. There was a second set of doors with frosted glass panels. Through them, I could see a light.
I stepped closer and watched for any signs of movement behind the doors, listening for any sounds. There were none. I pushed the left hand door open, slowly.
A large wood-panelled desk stood in the reception area, its surface lit by an anglepoise lamp. A telephone stood at its right-hand corner. I walked towards it across a threadbare carpet, treading softly. On the walls, signs pointed to the changing rooms, the courts, the bar.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere, in the distance, I heard the faint sound of voices in conversation. Male voices.
On the desk, a visitors book lay open beside the telephone. Geiger’s name wasn’t in it. The last entry was made three days ago. Next to it sat a large, thick ledger, bound in buckram with gold lettering on its cover. ‘Court bookings.’ I opened it and flicked through the pages. None of the names looked familiar.
I turned around. Behind the desk was a glass-panelled door labelled ‘Club Manager’s Office.’ It was dark behind the door. The door was locked.
I looked around the room. Glass cases contained silver trophies engraved with the names of tournament winners. Framed photographs hung from the walls showing smiling players, wearing white.
The clock on the wall showed eleven forty-five.
++++
I followed the sign pointing to the courts. It led to a corridor with a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.
After a few yards, the corridor opened out into a brightly-lit windowless room with seats and a water-cooler. To the left, a darkened corridor led to the courts. The walls of the lobby were lined with notice-boards filled with tournament announcements, competition rules, members’ names and telephone numbers, score-sheets, posters. At one end were the club’s ‘role of honour’ boards with their lacquered surfaces, carved frames and gilded letters.
I went up to them and read down the list of Men’s champions.
1930 D.Wilson
1931 L.Thornbury
1932 D.Wilson
1933 D.Wilson
1934 M.Regan
1935 M.Regan
Michael Regan. Rusty Regan.
A big red−haired Irishman with sad eyes and a wide smile.
Suddenly, somewhere behind me, I heard a scream. It was a terrible scream, a woman’s scream, a scream made by someone insane or heading that way. Coming from the squash courts. I cursed myself for not checking where the voices had been coming from, where they’d gone to.
Then, I heard three shots. I took out my revolver and turned into the corridor leading to the courts. I looked for the light switch. Before I could flick it, there was a flash of gunfire in the corridor ahead of me. I dropped to the ground and fired back, not seeing what I was aiming at. There was the sound of a crash.
Everything went quiet. I waited until I could see well enough to be sure that the corridor was clear, then hit the lights. The doors to the squash courts lined the right hand side of the corridor. I kicked them open and checked that nobody was hiding in them.
At the far end of the corridor, I could see an open fire door swinging in the breeze. I reached it and stepped quickly outside with my revolver raised. Whoever had fired at me was gone.
Back inside, the corridor turned sharply to the right.
The club’s fourth squash court lay at its far end, light blazing from its open door.
++++
I kicked the door hard and went in.
Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.
Geiger was sitting on the floor with his back resting on the bottom right hand corner of the front wall. He was still wearing his Chinese silk coat. The front of the coat was covered in blood. He was very dead.
The centre of the court had been transformed to look like a Chinese bordello. Bamboo screens formed the walls. There were Chinese paintings on the walls and a pink Chinese carpet on the floor. The chairs were covered in yellow silk.
There was a lot of silk in that room.
I saw some silk underclothes on the floor, too. The other thing I noticed was the smell. The sick smell of ether.
Carmen Sternwood was sitting on orange silk. She sat very straight, with her hands on the arms of the chair and her knees together. Her small teeth shone white in her open mouth. Her eyes were wide open, too. They stared crazily at nothing.
She was wearing a pair of long green ear−rings. They were nice ear−rings. She wasn’t wearing anything else.
She had a beautiful body, small and finely made, with skin like silk. I looked at her and felt no excitement at all. To me she was never really a woman. She was always just a stupid kid.
A camera on a tripod pointed at her. She was lit by studio lights positioned around the court.
The scream I’d heard had come from the drugged girl. The three shots were someone else’s idea.
++++
I took off my coat and picked up Carmen Sternwood’s clothes.
`Now, Carmen,’ I said. `Let’s get you dressed.’
She looked at me with empty eyes.
`G−g−go to hell,’ she said.
I hit her a couple of times. She didn’t mind, but it didn’t help at all. I managed to push her into her dress. She giggled and fell into my arms. I sat her in a chair and put her shoes on her feet.
`Let’s walk,’ I said. `A nice little walk.’
In the distance I could hear police sirens.
I lifted her onto her feet and looked over at Geiger, slumped in the front right-hand corner of the court.
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill. You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you weren’t bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
Me?
I was standing on a squash court with a dead man on the floor, a gun in my hand and a drugged blonde in my arms.
I was part of the nastiness now.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Rosalie Kerr for her masterly re-telling of ‘The Big Sleep’ and the ‘Good Reads’ website for its compendium of Raymond Chandler quotes. I’ve incorporated quotes from Chandler’s ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘The Lady in the Lake’ and ‘The Little Sister’ in this story.
, psychologist David Funder described personality as “an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour, together with the psychological mechanisms (hidden or not) behind those patterns.” So, an individual’s personality should show itself through the characteristics they typically exhibit, particularly when they’re in the presence of others. Furthermore, in most cases, the behaviours people display in one situation are similar to thosethey display in other situations.
