own a cigar butt

A banging on the door woke me.

--------------------[excerpt from Playback, a book by Raymond Chandler. The "I" of the first-person narrative is private detective Philip Marlowe. Setting: California. Marlowe was hired by an attorney to follow and protect a young woman traveling alone. Attraction and aggravational tension between the private eye and the woman, who is nervous and fearful, leads to the two of them spending a night together in his motel room.]

----------------------- A banging on the door woke me. ...I got out of bed and pulled a bathrobe on and went to the door; I didn't open it.
"What's the matter? I was asleep."
"Captain Alessandro wants you at the office right away. Open the door."
"Sorry, can't be done. I have to shave and shower and so on."
"Open the door. This is Sergeant Green."

"I'm sorry, Sergeant. I just can't. But I'll be along just as soon as I can make it."

"You got a dame in there?"
"Sergeant, questions like that are out of line. I'll be there."

I heard his steps go down off the porch. I heard someone laugh. I heard a voice say, "This guy is really rich. I wonder what he does on his day off."

...
[later down at the police station]:
"Is this being recorded, Captain?"
He nodded. "Every word."
"All right, Mr. Cumberland. There's more, I take it."
"Naturally. I have a great deal of influence in Westfield. I own the bank, the leading newspaper, most of the industry. The people of Westfield are my friends.

["The people of Westfield are my friends."
LOL.
I'll bet.]

The people of Westfield are my friends. My daughter-in-law was arrested and tried for murder and the jury brought in a verdict of guilty."
"The jury were all Westfield people, Mr. Cumberland?"
"They were. Why shouldn't they be?"
"I don't know, sir. But it sounds like a one-man town."
"Don't get impudent with me, young man."
"Sorry, sir. Would you finish?"

"...The judge was senile.
...He voided the verdict and discharged the defendant.
I told her that she had murdered my son and that I would see to it that she had no place of refuge anywhere on this earth. That is why I am here."

I looked at the captain. He looked at nothing. I said: "Mr. Cumberland, whatever your private convictions, Mrs. Lee Cumberland, whom I know as Betty Mayfield, has been tried and acquitted. You have called her a murderess. That's a slander. We'll settle for a million dollars."

He laughed almost grotesquely. "You small-town nobody," he almost screamed. "Where I come from you would be thrown into jail as a vagrant."

"Make it a million and a quarter," I said. "I'm not so valuable as your ex-daughter-in-law."
Cumberland turned on Captain Alessandro. "What goes on here?" he barked. "Are you all a bunch of crooks?"
"You're talking to a police officer, Mr. Cumberland."
"I don't give a good goddam what you are," Cumberland said furiously. "There are plenty of crooked police."

"It's a good idea to be sure -- before you call them crooked," Alessandro said, almost with amusement. Then he lit a cigarette and blew smoke and smiled through it.

"Take it easy, Mr. Cumberland. You're a cardiac case. Prognosis unfavorable. Excitement is very bad for you. I studied medicine once. But somehow I became a cop. The war cut me off, I guess."

Cumberland stood up....He made a strangled sound in his throat. "You haven't heard the last of this," he snarled.
Alessandro nodded. "One of the interesting things about police work is that you never hear the last of anything. There are always too many loose ends. Just what would you like me to do? Arrest someone who has been tried and acquitted, just because you are a big shot in Westfield, Carolina?"

"I told her I'd never give her any peace," Cumberland said furiously. "I'd follow her to the end of the earth. I'd make sure everyone knew just what she was!"
"And what is she, Mr. Cumberland?"
"A murderess that killed my son and was let off by an idiot of a judge -- that's what she is!"

Captain Alessandro stood up, all six feet three inches of him. "Take off, buster," he said coldly. You annoy me. I've met all kinds of punks in my time. Most of them have been poor stupid backward kids. This is the first time I've come across a great big important man who was just as stupid and vicious as a fifteen-year-old delinquent.

Maybe you own Westfield, North Carolina, or think you do. You don't own a cigar butt in my town. Get out before I put the arm on you for interfering with an officer in the performance of his duties."

Cumberland almost staggered to the door and groped for the knob, although the door was wide open. Alessandro looked after him. He sat down slowly.
"You were pretty rough, Captain."
"It's breaking my heart. If anything I said makes him take another look at himself -- oh well, hell!"

"Not his kind. Am I free to go?"
"Yes. Goble won't make charges. He'll be on his way back to Kansas City today. We'll dig up something on this Richard Harvest, but what's the use? We put him away for a while, and a hundred just like him are available for the same work."

"What do I do about Betty Mayfield?"

"I have a vague idea that you've already done it," he said, deadpan.

"Not until I know what happened to Mitchell." I was just as deadpan as he was.

"All I know is that he's gone. That doesn't make him police business."
I stood up. We gave each other those looks. I went out.

------------------------------ [end excerpt]
{Playback, by Raymond Chandler. Copyright -- Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.}

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