The Malthus Falcon (Chapter 1)
June 28th, 2006 Jemmy Button
IT WAS AN HOUR before lunch, but I didn’t have a client and there was nowhere to look for one. So I put my feet on my desk, pulled a bottle out of the bottom drawer and poured a slug of bourbon into my coffee cup. From the window, the Golden Gate was half-hidden in the dirty fog, the thin sunlight falling on my desk was sliced to ribbons by the Venetian blinds. I lit up a Camel, watched the smoke rise languidly until it hit the ceiling fan, then started to study the racing form. I was thinking about placing a punt on a filly in the 12:40 Santa Anita Handicap when the door opened.
She was blonde and slim and her legs held my eyes like two long strips of flypaper curling out from a little black cocktail dress they’d ban in Boston. This was a doll with the kind of looks to give you the KO punch in the first round.
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