Some Private Eye Slang

The crime fiction genre has some fun and colourful expressions.  

Here are a few faves:

Chicago lightning: Gunfire
Chicago overcoat : Coffin 

Chicago typewriter: Machine gun  (Wow - Chicago offers a lot to the hardboiled lexicon!)

Flivver: A Ford automobile 

Giggle juice: Liquor

Hammer and saws: Police (rhyming slang for laws)  

Harlem sunset: Fatal injury caused by knife

Have the bees: To be rich 

Highbinder: Corrupt politician or official

Johnson brother: Criminal  

Kicking the gong around: Taking opium   

Lullaby cocktail: Drugged drink

Orphan paper: Bad cheques 

Oyster fruit: Pearls 

Portrait of Madison: Five hundred dollars

Rats and mice: Dice (more rhyming slang)

Roundheels:  A woman of easy virtue  

Soup job: To crack a safe using nitroglycerin

Sunday School picnic: What this caper isn’t turning into

Sources for above:  

http://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html and

http://comedyu.com/20091017/parodying-the-film-noir-detective-film/ and 

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/hardboiled-slang.htm