Raymond Chandler The Lady in the Lake Knopf: NY, 1944
"To the north was the cool blue sweep of the bay out to the point above Malibu. To the south the beach town of Bay City was spread out on a bluff above the coast highway." p. ?
" . . .
"We don't like peepers down here. We don't have one in town." (p. 17)
"Go on-beat it," he said. "Stay off our reservation, and you won't make any enemies." (p. 18)
-a Bay City detective-lieutenant to Marlowe
" . . .
"A siren whined far off, growing louder with great surges of sound. Tires screamed at a corner, and the siren wail died to a metallic growl, then to silence, and the tires screamed again in front of the house. The Bay City police conserving rubber." (p. 82)
[Laura Martin: this was during wartime-the book opens with a rubber sidewalk being dug up for the war effort]
" . . .
"People in your line make a lot of trouble," he said.
"Not necessarily," I said.
"He raised his voice. It had been sharp enough before. "I said they made a lot of trouble, and a lot of trouble is what I meant. But get this straight. You're not going to make any in Bay City."
"I didn't answer him. He jabbed a forefinger at me.
"You're from the big town," he said. "You think you're tough and you think you're wise. Don't worry. We can handle you. We're a small place, but we're very compact. We don't have any political tug-of-war down here. We work on the straight line and we work fast. Don't worry about us, mister." (p. 86)
[LM: Captain of the Bay City police to Marlowe (and of course the Bay City cops turn out to be just as crooked as any]
" . . .
"I thought they cleaned this town up," I said. "I thought they had it so that a decent man could walk the streets at night without wearing a bullet proof vest."
"They cleaned it up some," he said. "They wouldn't want it too clean. They might scare away a dirty dollar." (p. 102)
-a Bay City police officer to Marlowe
" . . .
"It was a very nice jail. It was on the twelfth floor of the new city hall. It was a very nice city hall. Bay City was a very nice place. People lived there and thought so. If I lived there, I would probably think so. I would see the nice blue bay and the cliffs and the yacht harbor and the quiet streets of houses, old houses brooding under old trees and new houses with sharp green lawns and wire fences and staked saplings set into the parkway in front of them. I knew a girl who lived on Twenty-fifth Street. It was a nice street. She was a nice girl. She liked Bay City.
"She wouldn't think about the Mexican and Negro slums stretched out on the dismal flats south of the old interurban tracks. Nor of the waterfront dives along the flat shore south of the cliffs, the sweaty little dance halls on the pike, the marijuana joints, the narrow fox faces watching over the tops of newspapers in far too quiet hotel lobbies, nor the pickpockets and grifters and con men and drunk rollers and pimps and queens on the board walk." (p. 103)