The familiar California sun beat down lazily as I swung my sky-blue 1970 Olds into the last open parking space at the Fullerton Public Library. The building sat under a shield of ficus trees in the oldest part of town, surrounded by modest brick churches, faded white storefronts and simple, one-story houses facing the main drag I used to like this place once, back when you could drive for miles and still feel like you were in the same quaint oil painting. Now it’s just a big, noisy labyrinth … an endless parade of nameless faces crowding out your private thoughts. The people multiply like crazy, but every year the place seems less and less alive.
Normally, tiptoeing around a dusty tomb with a bunch of old ladies on their third pension and pimply-faced teenagers spending puberty studying for the big math test is not my idea of how to spend a nice warm day with plenty of booze in the icebox. But I was there for a reason. I needed to find out all I could about a Mr. Raymond Chandler. He was a writer. A hack. A scribe. All the dirt, she wanted.
The “she” would be Ms. Barbara Belroy, my English 100 teacher at the nearby community college. Ms. Belroy was 5-feet-4 inches of tightly packed heat. One of those cute little blond numbers, all prim and Elizabethan on the outside, but with eyes that told you when she’s not making with the poetry she’d just as soon be lying on a beach next to a hunk of beef with no name.
I was having fun coasting through the course on my third-rate drivel, mixing in a metaphor every now and then to impress her, but the term paper had to be done and done right if I wanted an “A.” I like “A”s.
The inside of the place was nothing to brag about, tall shelves of books and beige carpeting. A circular information desk occupied the middle of the floor. Inside the circle were several employees: some women and some of what I deduced were men. I approached the woman working the desk. She was fiftyish, cold and unpleasant. Not your perfect picture of the blue-haired librarian from hell, but close enough.
“How can we help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for some information on a Mr. Raymond Chandler.”
She fired back six rounds of blank stare.
“And what, exactly, does this have to do with us?”
I kept calm. “This information might be in written form,” I said. “You know, biographies, critical essays, that sort of thing.”
Her lips pursed so hard I was afraid she might chip a tooth.
“I don’t think we have any books about Mr. Chandler here.”
“Find some,” I said.
“Now look here, you … just a minute.” She turned to fetch one of the men. He must have sat out the war. Flat feet, probably. He gave me his best club soda sneer. 
“What’s the problem here?”
“No problem,” I said. “The Duchess of Dust here was just about to tell me where I can find the dope on Raymond Chandler.”
The sneer cleared its throat.
“Look, I don’t know who sent you here, but…”
“Maybe I need to speak with someone higher up,” I said.
“That can be arranged.”
He made some sort of gesture with his hand that I didn’t quite catch, so I turned to see behind me and there she was. Two hundred pounds of bespectacled polyester nightmare, with hair bluer than my Olds. And she wasn’t empty-handed, either. She was packing an encyclopedia — Britannica, S volume.
Something about a library drains the blood out of you. Either that or I was getting old, because I wasn’t ready for her move. I turned just in time to see the big “S” coming in low and hard. It hit me like a Led Zeppelin bass line, and I was doubled over before I knew it. She tried to finish me off with a left but my right was quicker and better, and I sent her to the floor with a thud they must have heard in the children’s section.
Flatfeet turned to the Duchess. “We could call the police,” he blurted.
“You could, but you won’t,” I said. “You’d have some explaining to do about that Britannica, that is if they still have serial numbers on those things. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to turn around and quietly walk out of here, and you’re going back to counting your nickel-and-dime fines and cutting dirty words out of Fanny Hill.”
I turned my back on the whole scene and slowly walked outside. The sun was starting to set now. A few crows were drifting languidly above, silhouetted against the golden sky. They were in no hurry and neither was I. I was going home to get good and drunk. I like to drink. Besides, if Kukla, Fran and Ollie back there were any indication, this case was going to be tougher than I thought.
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