Essay: Private Eye, Public Conscience

I lit another cigarette and looked at the dental-supply company's bill again. The minutes went by with their fingers to their lips. Then there was a small knocking on wood. It was a blond. A blond to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looked by moonlight. She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. "Cops are just people," she said irrelevantly. "They start out that way, I've heard."

The lines above come from four different novels by Raymond Chandler. Yet all of them seem to issue...