Red Wind by Raymond Chandler

the scene were imprisoned in glass, and would never change. Then the dark woman screeched again, louder. Everything became a swirl of movement. People on all sides came to their feet. Two waiters put their arms straight up in the air and began to spout violent Neapolitan. A moist, overdriven bus-boy charged up, more afraid of the headwaiter than of sudden death. A plump, reddish man with corn-colored hair hurried down steps, waving a bunch of menus.
    Erno jerked his legs clear, weaved to his knees, snatched up his gun. He swiveled, spitting curses. Mallory, alone, indifferent in the center of the babble, leaned down and cracked a hard fist against Erno’s flimsy jaw.
    Consciousness evaporated from Erno’s eyes. He collapsed like a half-filled sack of sand.
    Mallory observed him carefully for a couple of seconds. Then he picked his cigarette case up off the floor. There were still two cigarettes in it. He put one of them between his lips, put the case away. He took some bills out of his trouser pocket, folded one lengthwise and poked it at a waiter.
    He walked away without haste, toward the five crimson-carpeted steps and the entrance.
    The man with the fat neck opened a cautious and fishy eye. The drunken woman staggered to her feet with a cackle of inspiration, picked up a bowl of ice cubes in her thin jeweled hands, and dumped it on Erno’s stomach, with fair accuracy.

II
     
    MALLORY came out from under the canopy with his soft hat under his arm. The doorman looked at him inquiringly. He shook his head and walked a little way down the curving sidewalk that bordered the semicircular private driveway. He stood at the edge of the curbing, in the darkness, thinking hard. After a little while an Isotta-Fraschini went by him slowly.
    It was an open phaeton, huge even for the calculated swank of Hollywood. It glittered like a Ziegfield chorus as it passed the entrance lights, then it was all dull gray and silver. A liveried chauffeur sat behind the wheel as stiff as a poker, with a peaked cap cocked rakishly over one eye. Rhonda Farr sat in the back seat, under the half-deck, with the rigid stillness of a wax figure.
    The car slid soundlessly down the driveway, passed between a couple of squat stone pillars and was lost among the lights of the boulevard. Mallory put on his hat absently.
    Something stirred in the darkness behind him, between tall Italian cypresses. He swung around, looked at faint light on a gun barrel.
    The man who held the gun was very big and broad. He had a shapeless felt hat on the back of his head, and an indistinct overcoat hung away from his stomach. Dim light from a high-up, narrow window outlined bushy eyebrows, a hooked nose. There was another man behind him.
    He said: “This is a gun, buddy. It goes boom-boom, and guys fall down. Want to try it?”
    Mallory looked at him emptily, and said: “Grow up, flattie! What’s the act?”
    The big man laughed. His laughter had a dull sound, like the sea breaking on rocks in a fog. He said with heavy sarcasm:
    “Bright boy has us spotted, Jim. One of us must look like a cop.” He eyed Mallory, and added: “Saw you pull a rod on a little guy inside. Was that nice?”
    Mallory tossed his cigarette away, watched it arc through the darkness. He said carefully:
    “Would twenty bucks make you see it some other way?”
    “Not tonight, mister. Most any other night, but not tonight.”
    “A C note?”
    “Not even that, mister.”
    “That,” Mallory said gravely, “must be damn’ tough.”
    The big man laughed again, came a little closer. The man behind him lurched out of the shadows and planted a soft fattish hand on Mallory’s shoulder. Mallory slid sidewise, without moving his feet. The hand fell off. He said:
    “Keep your paws off me, gumshoe!”
    The other man made a snarling sound. Something swished through the air. Something hit Mallory very hard behind his left ear. He went to his knees. He kneeled swaying for a moment, shaking his head