“Who is this Hemingway person at all?” “A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin… — Raymond Chandler

He had a battered face that looked as if it had been hit by everything but the bucket of a dragline. It was scarred, flattened, thickened, checkered, and welted. It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

We sneered at each other across the desk for a moment. He sneered better than I did.