“Does she really own a Cadillac?” Axinya, impressed despite herself, asked in Russian.
“She is not feeling well,” I explained to Axinya. “ ‘Pass the Cadillac’ is Lilliputian for ‘throw up.’ “
“That’s the second time you have mentioned Lilliputian,” Axinya noted irritably. “What is it, a local upstate New York dialect?”
God knows how I would have explained Lilliputian if we had not been distracted by the siren. Its pitch changed as it turned into the alleyway, a result, as any schoolchild knows, of the Doppler effect on sound waves. Axinya, who happened to be standing next to the kitchen window, stared at the flashing light on top of the police car as it skidded to a stop in front of the wooden staircase. I remember Raymond Chandler using the expressio
