Philip Marlowe & The Piano Man Case
Sing us a song, Piano Man.
Saturday night at the bar and the clock on the wall said nine, if you who were that type who believed in those sort of things. I watched some more people shuffle in. You could tell they were regulars by the thirst in their eyes. The gin-blossoms on some of their faces were bright enough to stop a clock and I got the feeling that it might have been nine o’ clock Saturday night in this place forever, with the same song playing over and over again. Something didn’t sound right.
La la la, di da da, La la, di da da da dum, I thought to myself. I figured I’d probably be thinking it again, soon. It was a song I had heard before. I couldn’t refrain myself from thinking that The Piano Man had hooked himself. That was the thing about life, we were all playing solo and even if we crossed the bridge, life would make you sing. We were all in the chorus, one way or another.
I kept the Piano Man in the corner of my eye. He was pretty keyed up. Sometimes you could figure out a lot more things on a case if you didn’t look straight at them. Next to him was an old man having the kind of love affair with his gin and tonic that a G.I. had on his last night before being shipped out. No one likes to see anything that undignified. The old guy’s memory was all played out, same old song. There was a lot of that going around these…
