The Endless Sleep- Under the Watchful Eyes Of Philip Larkin, Private Detective

The Endless Sleep- Under the Watchful Eyes Of Philip Larkin, Private Detective 

By Bartlett Webber

Phil Larkin had a dream one night. Phil Larkin, the now semi-retired loner private detective who at one had plenty of say in the outcome of cases big and small in the city of angels, in what one latter-day crime writer called the slumming streets of LA. Drew plenty of water as they used to say out there in water dry country before LA became a hub, back in the days when you could live in the sleepy town and not be bothered by much because guys like Larkin drew that water. Lugged it up the hills. Now that dream that Phil dreamed that night was something that had always bothered him about a closed case, an apparently closed case from back in the late 1930s before LA was even made up of those slumming streets that he cut his private investigation teeth on, a case that his hero, if he had a hero and if you asked him if he had a hero he would say no, Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe had it all back then, grabbed every big headline case before it became a headline, squelched a few that were headed for the headlines too, if that the way the case drifted. A big muscular guy built for heavy lifting, built to take a punch or seven, built to give a punch or seven and pretty handy with a gun out in the West where even in  gentrified LA that skill got you respect, kept you alive too. But one case always bothered Larkin, one case that as he looked back at his own less that heroic career he thought Marlowe took the wrong turn on, sat down on, even might have gotten bought off on.       

Yeah, Marlowe muffed it, took a dive on the Sternwood case, maybe you remember the case, all about an old rich guy who lived above the hills out there, out away from the dregs in the valleys, having feasted of the oil boom n in the 1920s and never looked back. The way Marlowe got involved was that the old man was looking for some personal retainer of his, a friend, a husband of one of his wild-eyed daughters who had disappeared. If you don’t remember it from the headlines, if you weren’t old enough, maybe you read about in school if you took some criminology courses because the way it got solved, supposedly solved was always used as a classic case of how not to wrap up a real live criminal case, public or private cop.

Maybe you heard about it through a guy named Raymond Chandler, the famous crime detection writer who lived out in La Jolla about one hundred miles south of LA and who followed the case in all its details, and wrote it up. Wrote it up and they made two big time movies out of it, back in the 1940s with made-for-the- part Humphrey Bogart as intrepid Philip Marlowe and drop-dead beautiful Lauren Bacall as one of the Sternwood daughters, Vivian, the one who was married to missing Rusty Regan whom old Sternwood wanted found and in the 1980s transporting the whole tale to England with also made-for-the part Robert Mitchum as Marlowe and Sarah Miles as Vivian. The whole thing was wrong, wrong from the headlines, wrong from Chandler who after all was trying to sex the thing up a little for the guys who read his stuff in the men’s magazines and crime periodicals, and later wrong on the films trying to entice the ladies in the audiences. At least a lot wrong was Phil’s thinking on the matter as he went over the material again and again to find out where Marlowe fell down on the job, had been, frankly, bought off, paid in full from any one of three or four sources.

That was why Phil Larkin was having that dream one night. Why the dead ass cold case had him stirred up in his old age. The part about Philip Marlowe grabbing the Sternwood case on Bernie Riley’s say so was right, everybody knew Bernie would give his old pal from the DA’s office some work which the public cops couldn’t or wouldn’t handle, would feed him what information they had, would act like a high-priced errant boy when Marlowe called looking for vehicle identification numbers or photographs of hard guys with records to see who he was up against. The part about him going out into the Hollywood hills, the part of the hills in those days where movie people dare not set foot in for living purposes, maybe not even as tourists, to see old man Sternwood and see what he wanted was straight too as well as the fact that they got along. The old man seeing something in Marlowe, something of courage and stubbornness which he had had in his own youth. The part about what the old man, and only the old man, wanted done, to find his personal retainer/confidante/bosom friend and son-in-law was right, right as rain. And that Marlowe had accepted the job for the duration was right as well but from the minute he left the old man’s presence in that sweated orchid-engulfed greenhouse where he spent most of his waking hours to keep awake the story was hooey.              

This is the way the public fairy tale got told, got told by guys and gals who should have known better, and maybe did but the “fix” must have been in pretty far down the line as Phil laid it out in his head that night. And don’t say reporters and crime novelists like Chandler couldn’t be bought, or sold a bill of goods and just made it up from there. No question the Sternwood daughters were wild ones, were out there in edge city somewhere, the older seemingly more sensible one, Vivian, who married, her third marriage at age twenty-five to give you an idea   of what she thought about convention, loved her liquor, maybe a little ether cocktail on the side, and men, the other, Carmen, she just like men, or maybe sex, the kinkier and rougher the better perhaps a better way to put the matter without being too delicate and excitement, “kicks” is what she called it, kicks in whatever form she could find it.

The immediate issue of “kicks” was gambling, and gambling debts, owed to the well-known nightclub owner, the hard-nosed mobster Eddie Mars. Also a matter of some blackmail over some dirty photographs from some cheap hood Carmen had spent the night with and who had taken the photos of her nude and in sexually explicit positions with nothing but blackmail in mind. Sweet crew. What the General wanted to know really, what he wanted Marlowe to find out, since he knew his daughters well and having married and fathered late in life knew what to expect was if his pal Rusty was behind the shake-downs. Smart old geezer, and pal or no pal, even a wizened old rich man knew enough to keep his head when dough was concerned. That was how guys like him made their millions in the old days when oil was there for the taking and got to live up in the cooler hills and not face the heat waves down in the valleys. Got to sweat out their own lifetimes of excesses in stinking orchid-strewn greenhouses and private sauna bath houses.      

So Marlowe made the rounds, tried to find out who the cheap gunsel was who was flashing Carmen’s naked ass around. Checked in on Eddie Mars and gave him the bad news that gambling debts were not enforceable in the great state of California. Eddie didn’t take it well, didn’t take it well not because of the loss of revenue but since he had been hanging around Vivian’s face ever since Rusty had gone south someway, was willing to grant her certain favors for her favors with the  ultimate idea of getting into bed with serious Mayfair swell money. See, not only had Rusty taken a powder, but Eddie’s wife, Mona, had flown the coop too. The story was that Rusty, tired of the ball and chain life and Mrs. Mars had blown town together. That was the story anyway, that was Eddies’ favor for Vivian.  

Then weird things started happening, things come to a head over both the blackmail of those photos of Carmen who loved her “kicks” probably if she had a Polaroid camera or digital today would take nude “selfies” and flood the Internet with them and the so-called gambling debts to soldier Eddie Mars. Of course the rich and famous, at least back then, tried might and main to keep their dirty linen out of the public eye. So every Tom, Dick and Harry was ready to blackmail anybody who could rub two quarters together in the Great Depression 1930s. A goof “light on his feet,” you know homosexual, today gay, pornographic book-seller took a run at it. As did that cheapjack date Carmen had. The net effect though for the blackmailers was two deaths, two murders by a  party or party’s unknown, quick and easy and nothing out of pocket for old man Sternwood. Good work Marlowe and see you around. Case closed and the Sternwood name not dragged through the mud too badly. Marlowe took a hefty piece of change from that case, over fifteen hundred dollars American, not much today hardly walking around money but a lot for a twenty-five a day and expenses low overhead P.I. then, for no heavy lifting, no shooting,  and no freaking police ready to give him the third degree. That inflated fee was the first inkling that Phil Larkin had that his hero might have had feet of clay, or had his claws into something unsavory.  

But see there were still a couple of missing pieces, a few things Marlowe couldn’t figure about the set-up so whatever financial settlement he had on what amounted to part one of the case was just that, part one payment. He liked the old man, no question so through his butler Norris, who seemed to be much more than a butler he put out feelers to see if the General wanted more done. Yeah, like where was fair weather, hail fellow, well met Rusty (and Mona to boot) and what about the real story with hot to trot Eddie Mars and Vivian. What hold did Eddie Mars way out of his league have over Vivian that had her eating out of his hand. As it turned out the General still was interested in that first question, the Rusty whereabouts question now that it was clear that he had nothing to do with any shakedowns, he could “give a fuck” about the second one (the General’s exact his expression concerning his older daughter’s situation according to Norris who blushed when he conveyed the message to Marlowe). Marlowe was back on the job.

This time though Marlowe got more than he bargained for, got that sapping that seemed to accompany every serious case he ran into (and some not so serious like the time he got waylaid by an irate missing strongman husband who got peeved not a little that Marlowe was taking out his pay in trade with his wife, Marlowe’s client, when she ran out of money trying to find the guy. A guy who was shacked up for a week with some honey he met at a bar and whom with he blew town for a while). He took his fair share of sappings, heavy lifting, shootings at and to, and more damn paperwork with the coppers after a serious third degree by them just for old times’ sake.

Marlowe’s strategy, at least this was the way he told it to the coppers after they began that famous third degree, good cop, bad cop, bright lights in the cellar of the precinct grilling they especially loved to give key-hole peepers, the ones who used be public coppers even better, was to follow Eddie Mars around. Reason: Rusty and Mona’s running off to Vegas or someplace like that was just too, too convenient. Rusty out of the way Eddie could just fall into Vivian’s waiting lap and her piece of the fading old man’s fortune which would make his hard hoodlum days a thing of the past. East street. Yeah, just too convenient, especially when one night Vivian, a notorious loser at the roulette wheel, grabbed a big chuck of Eddie’s dough. She passed it off as pay back for her previous losses, a girl couldn’t loss forever, and Eddie uncharacteristically said it was good advertising for the club. Sure, Eddie. 

That incident made Marlowe dig deeper. He had already found out that Eddie had a connection with that dead gay pornographer, had a slight connection with that cheapjack blackmailer too. But the biggest piece of news he got was that Eddie had been boffing Carmen, or really she was boffing him since as she said to him the first night she was “into” gangsters that season and there Eddie was visiting Vivian right there in the mansion. Yeah, that Carmen had a screw loose no way about it.

As it turned out Carmen was the key to the whole mess. Carmen and her weird wild as the wind appetites. Carmen was so spoiled that she could not take a “no” for an answer, not from a man. That did any man who crossed her, or tried to cross her, in. Carmen, jealous as hell of Vivian for having a rugged Irishman like Rusty on her chain tried her charms on him, tried to take him behind the bushes down by an old abandoned oil well on the property where he was supposed to show Carmen how to shoot a small gun she wanted to carry for her protection. Feeling frisky that day she made her bush league play for Rusty. He said “no go,” he knew he had his meal ticket with Vivian and after the old man died who knows what. Carmen didn’t like that answer so with five bullets in that silly little gun and no brain in her head she put all five in Rusty. Made him fall down.

Of course up in the hills above Hollywood or in any high-end town such little matters as a young socialite going “bang, bang” on the hired help gets hushed up, and hushed up fast. One way or another. Vivian, as Marlowe explained it while he was sweating under the hot lights, once she found Carmen with Rusty’s bloody body beneath her feet and in a daze, after hearing those gunshots decided quickly that she needed “another” route to keep her sister off of death row. The “another” ready at hand one Edward Mars, Mister “Fix-It Man.” He was the genius who thought of the idea of having Rusty and his estranged wife Mona run away together. And you had to hand it to Eddie it worked for a while, Eddie’s schemes always worked for a while. But he forgot about intrepid Marlowe.       

After grabbling some information from a “snitch” that Marlowe knew from around the newspaper stand where he bought his cigarettes and… he followed one of Eddie’s thugs out to a deserted road when according to that snitch Mona was held up. Whether being held captive or on her own volition he did not know. As it turned out she was being held there against her will. Marlowe ever the errant knight charger decided to free her. Did so after being held as a prisoner himself which is how he found out Mona was subject to such imprisonment. After a running gun battle with that bad ass Eddie assassin who wound up very dead, they escaped. Marlowe later, after the dust had settled and he know had some idea of what had been going on with Vivian, Eddie, Carmen then made a cardinal mistake late in the game when he was giving Carmen her little gun back down by the same oil sump where Rusty bought it. She, man hungry as ever made her simple-minded play for him. Remember though Carmen’s rejection threshold was very low and once Marlowe rejected her advances she went blood simple, started to try to “bang, bang” at him. He disarmed her, she had a fit, literally a fit, and after getting her back in the house and sedated told Vivian that she had better get her younger sister some much needed help, get her to some sanatorium, some mental health institution. Or else he would have to report the whole mess.

Vivian, thankfully, agreed. Marlowe out of respect for the dying old man wanted to spare him one last indignity before he went to the big sleep. The whole last part naturally he neglected to tell the coppers under the bright lights but his having gotten rid of one trash gangster put paid to whatever else he had done and they let him go. Saying to him next time he would take the big step off before his own big sleep.              

So that story, most of it anyway, is what has come down to us from the headlines, from word and story crazy Chandler and those whitewash movies that made it all seem like Marlowe was always a stand-up guy. And all of it bullshit, pure bullshit in a bucket almost from the beginning. Here’s the real story that Phil Larkin was able to piece together from the scanty records left behind:          

Go back to the day when Marlowe ambled up the steps of the mansion, knocked on the door and sly as a fox Norris, who in charge of the household budget was skimming like crazy, answered. Brought Marlowe into the General’s suffocating greenhouse where the old man laid out his silly ass story about being blackmailed by nefarious unknown parties and wondering too about some drunken Irishman who had married his older daughter and then blown town. Hired Marlowe on the spot because he was desperate to keep the thing on the backburner, keep his name out of the public prints, knew from Bernie Riley that he could be counted on to keep it on the low. Marlowe accepted the case which seemed to him blowing after the wind because he hadn’t had a serious money case in a while and because he was flat ass broke if it came right down to it. Behind on rent, just ahead of the “repo” car man on his jalopy, not a pot to piss in as the Irish say. From hunger like he had been from time to time over the years he grabbed the retainer and figured to milk the thing for all it was worth. Private detection was that kind of up and down business. That we know from headlines, book and film, the days when a shamus, good or bad has his feet up on the desk sipping low-shelf whiskey from the bottom of his desk drawer and chain-smoking until something turns up.  .

What had gotten buried, buried deep, what the headlines, book and films didn’t tell anybody, didn’t until Phil talked to Vivian’s daughter, her daughter from her fifth marriage if anybody was asking, when he found out that Vivian had told her daughter the facts of life about the so-called Sternwood case after some girls at the boarding school she attended had taunted her about sex-crazed Carmen, about drunken Rusty and Marlowe too, was the truth. Norris, who as it turned out was no friend of the General’s not only stealing from the funds under his day to day control as would be expected of a servant with that much power, was knee-deep in love with Vivian and Carmen. The exact nature of that love is anybody’s guess, although who knows what Carmen might have given up to the old servant when she was on the “hot seat” for Rusty’s murder and Norris knew, literally knew, where the bodies were buried. In any case after Marlowe left the old man in the greenhouse sly old Norris stopped him before he could leave that front door and told him Vivian wanted to see him. During their interview, sealed over scotches, high shelf scotches, neat, no low shelf bottom of the desk in that precinct Vivian gave Marlowe cause for pause.

Vivian pointed out over a second then a third scotch, neat, that Rusty was an old Irish bastard not worth the time to hunt him down, had put his fists to her on more than one occasion after sucking up the old man’s brandy out in the sweaty greenhouse, told him that Carmen needed protection from a guy named Geiger, who ran a smut bookstore in Hollywood, and another guy named Brody, a cheap grafter, who were squeezing her dry to keep Carmen’s name and nude photographs out of the scandal sheets. She told Marlowe that she would double down on whatever her father was paying him not to find Rusty, not to find out anything but a way to finish off the pair just mentioned. Any way he saw fit.

Now this Vivian was attractive, as the photograph her daughter showed Phil Larkin attested to, maybe even beautiful, with a big head of long hair, blues eyes, ruby-red lips, a good shape and legs to die for. But the kicker, the thing that brought Marlowe around was when she practically disrobed him there in her boudoir, showed him around the world, showed him she might give from what he had heard about Carmen’s exploits a run for her money if things came to that pass. So a couple of hours later with three thousand bucks in his sack, sex satiated, and scotch sober he emerged from milady’s bedroom to do what looked like very little heavy work on the case. Check around, sent in reports, grab some dough from Norris after the kick-back and easy street.   

Sure he did the usual, grabbed Bernie Riley and got a ton of information about that pornography ring this old sissy, this old fag, today gay, Geiger was running and about this cheapjack hood Brody. Get rid of those guys and he would be home free, maybe having found himself a new bed partner and easy street for a while but in any case three thou ahead for no real work. Bernie told him Geiger operated out of a bookstore over on high number Wiltshire where the swells went to get their “kicks,” get to look at naughty pictures, shame, shame. His office had been watching the operation for a while and they were ready to pounce but if Marlowe wanted to shake things up that was okay too. And he did, figured with an old fag who had plenty to hide he could just bluster his way into the bookstore and confront him publically. See what shook out. When Marlowe made his move Geiger turned to jello, started screaming that it was all Brody’s deal since he had met Carmen at one of Eddie Mars’ casinos, had loaded her up on some exotic dope, bedded her and then had taken a few photos while she was sleeping, a few later too when he asked if she would like to pose nude for his so-called private collection. She lapped that up like a puppy dog, showed from her poses that she had been around that block before.

That confrontation with Geiger had its intended effect, a few night later Geiger was found dead in his apartment, found in bed with votive candles all around him, alone, with two serious slugs in his heart. One bad guy gone. A few days later when he drew Brody’s tag, found him living in a rooming house about six blocks from his own run-down place in the Talbot Apartments while trying to give him some good advice about laying off the Sternwoods a person not then known but who turned out to be Geiger’s young boyfriend, shot old Joe Brody dead, dead as a doornail. The young fag had assumed that Joe had double-cross his lover. It turned out later that one of Eddie Mars’ boy did Geiger in when he tried to go “independent,” tried to cut Eddie out of the pay-off loop. Nice guy Eddie one of nature’s noblemen. So no heavy lifting on this one. Mission accomplished. He reported directly to the old man that he would have no more troubles from blackmailers. Case closed, and he walked away with that extra thou promised by the old man (really Norris, and only nine hundred after the kick-back) for not doing a damn thing except being in the right place at the right time. Four thou and easy street for a few months.

The old man still tried like hell to get Marlowe to work on the Rusty Regan disappearance, wanted to know why he blew town, see if he needed money. See if he was coming back. After a while Marlowe relented, asked for another thou up front and a guarantee of another thou if he found Rusty. Agreed. He then went to Vivian’s room, looked in to see that she was up and drinking her supper, invited himself in and drew another trip around the world from that fair lady. And two thou to not look too hard for Rusty. Like taking candy from a baby. Easier. Seven thou in real American and no end in sight if he worked it right.                                 

So he would sent in reports, fake stuff, stuff Norris knew was fake but would read to the General anyway, about how Marlowe had found out that Rusty had blown town with poor gangster Eddie Mars’ wife, a looker named Mona, and more his speed, a girl from hunger who wasn’t so sex-obsessed as Vivian, or class conscious either. Marlowe did a damn rotten thing though to the old man by saying that Rusty had sent word that he needed dough, a couple of thou for a new life with Vivian in some other town and pocketed another couple of thou off of that. Got a few more trips around the world with Vivian, took a couple of tours with Carmen while he was at it (who unlike Vivian who was good in bed was rather average when it came to the downy billows, maybe she liked the kinkier stuff Marlowe wasn’t into better).

Of course Marlowe figured out before too long that Carmen had done poor Rusty in since she almost killed him one night when he was too tired for sex and she got angry, seething angry, you don’t say no to Carmen, but by that time the General had gone to the big sleep that awaits us all. Had bled the case for all it was worth anyway. Especially when Eddie Mars was putting the heat on him to back off, and he sent one of his boys around to deliver the message and cold-cocker him with his revolver just for kicks.  Eddie Mars figured into the mix a couple of ways. Once Carmen went bang, bang on old Rusty and Vivian had to clean up the mess, keep the damn thing out of newspapers for as long as possible she went to Eddie to do the clean-up, to provide that silly Rusty running off with his wife story. And Eddie obliged seeing big dollars signs in his future with his name on the Sternwood calendar. No more cheap hood for him. Mister Edward Mars for then on. He paid Mona off to have her skip, he was tired of her anyway and she of him. Moreover he was smitten by Vivian and saw in lover boy Marlowe a competitor and Eddie Mars brooked no competitors when he had his wanting habits on. So the friendly call from one of Eddie’s tough guys. That was enough. Yeah, Marlowe laid down on the Sternwood job. Case closed.