The crime fiction genre has some fun and colourful expressions.
Here are a few faves:
Chicago lightning: Gunfire
Chicago overcoat : Coffin
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
