Trouble Is My Business

Later that evening at the casino, Marlowe meets Harger’s date, a redhead named Miss Glenn. She plays the roulette table as Harger looks on. By the end of the evening, the couple wins $22,000. 

Outside in the parking lot, Marlowe tells Harger and Miss Glenn to drive away while he waits a few minutes beside his vehicle to give them a head start. Unexpectedly, he’s struck on the back of the head by an unseen assailant and blacks out.

When Marlowe revives, he finds his gun has been taken. He gets into his car and drives to a nearby drugstore that’s still open. Parked outside is Harger’s car. When Marlowe goes in to investigate, he meets a young cabbie named Tom Sneyd. Sneyd explains that Harger paid the cabbie to swap vehicles and keep the sedan outside the drugstore for an hour. Then he is supposed to drive the car to the Hotel Carillon where Harger will give him back his cab.

Marlowe agrees to follow Sneyd to the Carillon. They find the cab parked at the curb, and Marlowe dismisses the cabbie. When he goes inside the hotel, he learns that Harger and his girlfriend aren’t there. Marlowe tries calling his newspaper contacts to track down Harger’s whereabouts with no luck.

The following morning, when Marlowe arrives at his office, Miss Glenn is sitting in the waiting room. She says Canales’s men shot Harger the night before at her apartment. They never found the packet of money because Miss Glenn mailed it to herself, and she offers Marlowe half if he can get her safely out of town. He agrees to put the money in a safety deposit box for the time being and takes Miss Glenn to the Lorraine Hotel to hide her while he checks her apartment for evidence.

At the flat, Marlowe finds no body or indication of a struggle, which throws Miss Glenn’s version of the crime into doubt. He then goes to a drugstore to call his newspaper contact, who tells him that Harger’s body has been found and taken to the morgue. On the way back to his car, Marlowe is waylaid by two thugs who force him to drive to a cabin in the foothills outside of town. 

At the cabin, the detective meets fixer Frank Dorr. Dorr accuses Marlowe of killing Harger. The fixer says, “You made a deal with the girl […] but the deal didn’t stick. She got a cute idea. But that don’t matter, because the police got your gun along with Harger. And you got the dough” (89). Dorr says he won’t exert any pressure to have Marlowe arrested if the detective is willing to cooperate. He can keep the $22,000 if he will refuse to testify against Tinnen at his trial. Marlowe says he will think about the deal and leaves.

The detective then goes to the morgue to identify Harger’s body. The man was found dead around midnight on the outskirts of town and was shot with a thirty-eight, which matches Marlowe’s missing gun. Knowing that he’s been set up for the crime, Marlowe visits the D.A.’s special investigator, Bernie Ohls. He explains that Harger wasn’t killed in Miss Glenn’s apartment as she said and that there wasn’t time for Marlowe to commit the crime given his whereabouts at the time of death. Ohls believes his story and agrees to help him investigate. Ohls speculates that cabbie Sneyd’s involvement might be unknown to the real murderer, so the two men go to track down his address.

At Sneyd’s home, Ohls and Marlowe arrive in time to see two thugs shooting it out with Sneyd on his front lawn. The detectives join the fray, killing one thug and subduing the other. 

Afterward, Sneyd explains that the thugs threatened to harm his family if the cabbie spoke about meeting Harger on the night he was killed. Ohls says that Sneyd should make a statement to the police, and he takes the remaining thug into custody.

Marlowe goes home, where he’s contacted once again by Dorr. The fixer wants Marlowe to bring the gambling money to his home so that they can decide what to do next. Marlowe agrees but insists that Miss Glenn be present. Once he arrives at Dorr’s home without the money, Marlowe accuses Dorr of setting him up. Dorr blames Canales for Harger’s death. As accusations and counteraccusations fly among Dorr, Miss Glenn, and Marlowe, Canales bursts into the room. He’s armed with a gun and denounces Dorr for setting him up. Canales says to Dorr:

You killed Harger. Because he was a secret witness against Manny Tinnen. The D.A. kept the secret, and the dick here kept it. But Harger could not keep it himself. He told his broad—and the broad told you […] So the killing was arranged, in a way to throw suspicion with a motive on me. First on this dick, and if that wouldn’t hold, on me (113).

When one of Dorr’s henchmen tries to intervene, a gun battle ensues. Canales is shot but manages to shoot Dorr in the eye. Marlowe calls for the police. While waiting for them to arrive, Miss Glenn protests her innocence. She explains that Dorr coerced her into helping frame Marlowe. She had no idea that Harger would be killed. She slips away when the police arrive, and Marlowe is able to explain his way out of any charges. He says:

Miss Glenn made a clean getaway and was never heard of again. I think that’s about all, except that I had to turn the twenty-two grand over to the Public Administrator. He allowed me two hundred dollars fee and nine dollars and twenty cents mileage. Sometimes I wonder what he did with the rest of it (116).