"But this Hemingway stuff is what really has me down." "A gag," I said. "An old, old gag." "Who is this Hemingway person at all?" "A guy that keeps s… - Raymond Chandler

“Who is this Hemingway person at all?”
“A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.”
“That must take a hell of a long time,” the big man said.

The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons - and are also lucky - justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.

I didn't have anything really exiting to drink, like nitroglycerin or distilled tiger breath.

She had a lot of face and chin. She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak and moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.