Recktall Brown reminds me of "The Big Sleep"

[Jed Kelestron]

"Here, in a space of hexagonal flags, an old red Turkish rug was laid
down and on the rug was a wheel chair, and in the wheel chair an old
and obviously dying man watched us come with black eyes from which all
fire had died long ago, but which still had the coal-black directness
of the eyes in the portrait that hung above the mantel in the hall.
The rest of his face was a leaden mask, with the bloodless lips and
the sharp nose and the sunken temples and the outward-turning earlobes
of approaching dissolution. His long narrow body was wrapped-in that
heat-in a traveling rug and a faded red bathrobe. His thin clawlike
hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of
dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life
on a bare rock."