He had the flat, dead face of an item turned out by machines. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. Her voice was as dead as the summer before last. …the sun rose each morning to stare into my face with the blank but touching gaze of a lovely retarded child.. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. , Common sense always speaks too late. From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away. It was a dark, dismal afternoon, like they all seem to be these days, when I got this call. I could hear the rain battering the windowpane of my office when the phone rang.. Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. She had a pair of legs – so far as I could determine – that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted His clothes looked as if they had cost a great deal of money and had been slept in. There was a desert wind blowing that night. . He could beat a man insane or take it himself, and it didn’t mean a thing to him. To catch the bad guys, you’ve got to think like a bad guy – and that’s why all the best detectives have a dark side… His insides went with the surface. He had figured on cleaning up by selling the village girls in the Congo but found himself dodging spears, knives and related items of cutlery instead..