This chapter starts out with Marlowe at home. He drinks “two cups of black coffee, bathe[s] the back of [his] head with ice-water and read[s] the two morning papers that had been thrown against the apartment door” (85). Nulty calls to say that they thought they got Moose Malloy, but they accidentally arrested some other large man. Nulty asks Marlowe if he can help with the case, but he says no because he’s too busy. Nulty takes this as a snub.

Marlowe then drives to his office and finds Anne Riordan sitting in the waiting room. Marlowe notes that:

[Anne is] about twenty-eight years old. She had a rather narrow forehead of more height than is considered elegant. Her nose was small and inquisitive, her upper lip a shade too long and her mouth more than a shade too wide. […] It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out (87).

Anne notices that Marlowe doesn’t have a secretary, and subtly implies that she could fill in, but he says no. She admits that her interest in the murder comes from the fact that her dad was “police chief of Bay City for seven years,” so she says it’s in her blood and “makes it easy for [her] to get along with policemen” (90).