***The
Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin-Lost
In The Rain
As
readers know Tyrone Fallon, the son of the late famous Southern California
private operative, Michael Philip Marlin (Tyrone used his mother’s maiden name
for obvious reasons), and private eye in his own right told my old friend Peter
Paul Markin’s friend Joshua Lawrence Breslin some stories that his illustrious
father told him. Here’s one such story.
From
The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler
Michael Philip Marlin often said
that he was not an introspective man, a man who thought long and hard before or
after he did something. He said that in his business, the trouble business, the
hard-nosed private eye racket, it was best not to mull things over, to brood
over things. That stuff was for the uptown intellectuals, the literati, or the
Hollywood swells that got paid good money to mull and brood. He emphasized that
it was bad business to do that stuff especially when things went south on you.
Went south on you from your own doing, or your client’s not levelling with you,
or maybe you got waylaid by some dame’s hard luck story and went over the edge
that way. So he didn’t sulk and moan as a general rule, got drunk or high or
went out with some on the loose dame and forgot about it. Then the next case
came along and all that stuff was old hat and hardly remembered anyway. Except
this one case, the one that he told me about where for once in his professional
life he actually caused more harm than good, and had gotten a couple of guys
dead, very dead because he overplayed his hand. That one caused him some weary,
sleep-less nights for a while.
Marlin had been having a string of
bad luck back in 1940, maybe early 1941 before the Nips blasted us at Pearl
Harbor and made luck, good or bad, take a back seat to killing every one of
those bastards that we could get our hands on.
His lady love of the time, Fiona Florin, had played the percentages and
forsaken him and his single ways for another speedier guy, Benny Sills. His
cherished 1932 Packard was giving out on him and he had no dough, no serious
dough coming in to fix the thing. He shortly would have to start pounding the
pavements of sunny Los Angeles if some business did not show up at his
doorstep. Even the doorstep was in doubt since he was three months behind in
his office rent and his room rent. He did not figure to do much business if he
was living out of some cardboard box down at the Southern Pacific Railroad
jungle, or sharing space in some woe-begotten ravine.
Then
L.A. Detective Lieutenant Bunky Pitts called him up and said he had a job for
him, maybe. He had known Bunky back in the days when they both worked out of
the D. A.’s office and Bunky after that experience would some work, some
non-police work his way. The maybe part came when Bunky told him who his client
might be- Duke Ravel. Yes, Duke Ravel who was known far and wide as Buster
Bogan’s right- hand man. Brogan the boss of bosses of all the West Coast
action, booze, broads, drugs, gambling you name it he had his fingers in it.
And Duke made sure those fingers stuck, struck gold too. Marlin could see why
Bunky would not touch the thing, no public cop, even those on the Brogan-Ravel
take couldn’t afford to be seen catering to Duke’s request. Marlin almost told Bunky
to forget it, no dice, nada, since he usually gave a wide berth in the
gangsters and mobsters around town when he thought for just a minute about his
pressing financial needs. So he told Bunky to send Duke over to at least talk
it over.
A
couple of days later Duke showed up at Marlin’s doorstep wearing a high-priced
suit and more gold on his fingers that he had ever seen on a man, or most women
for that matter. Duke lit a cigarette, Marlin offered some low-shelf Scotch
which Duke accepted with a grimace and he proceeded to tell his story, his
reasons for needing, what did he call Marlin, oh yah, “a cheapie gumshoe.” Naturally it involved a woman, a wild young
woman whom he had met at a Hollywood party. Now this woman, Shana Dove (Marlin assumed
that was her Hollywood name), had been around the block a few times since she
landed in L.A. from some Podunk town in the Midwest, Muncie, Indiana Duke
thought. But as will happen to guys, guys from those lowdown railroad jungle
denizens to the hard- shell Dukes of the world, will get skirt-crazy and do
things they ordinarily would not dream of doing.
Duke
wanted to marry this Shana but she had a problem, a recent problem that needed
investigation before he took action, if any. She had been a party girl, a Hollywood
party girl, paid to do, well, do anything that was needed at a party, a stag
party let’s say. Some guy, some smooth operator, a guy named Sam Shepard, some
kind of free-lance photographer had taken some photos of her while she was in
party mode and had sent a couple of samples to Duke once he knew the score.
Duke had paid him off once already to the tune of five thousand dollars. He,
mistakenly, had assumed he had stopped the problem. A few days before this
meeting in Marlin’s office he had received another lot of photos and another
request for dough. He fumed but after he settled down he called up his friend
Bunky Pitts to see if he knew anybody who on the QT could get a line on this
guy, and put an end to the problem before he murdered the bastard. Marlin thought
to himself that Duke had it bad, bad as a man can have it for a women, even if
she was some tramp, if he hadn’t already wasted this Shepard guy and left him
in some back alley. The biggest thing that impressed Marlin though was this
case seemed pretty straight forward despite his distaste for mixing and
matching with lowlife. That and the two Gs Duke left on his desk.
Strangely
the case actually did work out to be pretty easy, until that last day, the day
when everything blew up in Marlin’s face.
He had persuaded Duke at that first meeting to let him talk to this
Shana to see where she stood, see what she knew about this Sam Shepard and his
roving camera eye. So he met her one sunny afternoon over at her apartment at
the Longview Arms in Bunker Hill (when that section of town was a step-up for
those hordes who had descended on Hollywood to make that big silver screen and
had some measure of success, maybe as extras, behind the camera, or, um, a
starlet) where he learned later, later when it was too late that Duke was
footing the bill. Shana met him at the door and she certainly had some looks,
blonde, naturally, as was the style for everybody aspiring to any hope to be in
front of the camera, slender, long legs and well- turned too, blue eyes, eyes
that he would get back to in a minute. Flash looks though from Marlin’s experience,
working class Midwest minute glamor and then fast fade after children, life’s
grind or its sorrows for those not smart enough to get away from the low-life
scene of bars, salesmen, and cheap perfume. She welcomed him in, asked him to
take seat, offered him cigarettes, Scotch, or some snow (snow before it became
illegal and when you could purchase it at your local drugstore just like
aspirin). He cut to the chase quickly, wanted to know her background, what she
knew about Shepard and what he had on her, and why.
Shana
gave Marlin the litany, the song he had heard many, too many times before. She,
a small town girl, had few prospects except getting married to some farmer’s
son, having kids and fading gone. But she was restless like a lot of people who
went through the Great Depression and couldn’t, wouldn’t stand still just in
case something turned up somewhere and they could get out from under. She had
seen a movie (more than one but as the song went one was enough) with some
beauty who couldn’t hold a candle to her looks, decided that she would be the
next thing, left that Podunk town on the fastest Greyhound bus and arrived in
Hollywood ready to go set the night on fire.
Things
hadn’t exactly worked out as expected, she had run through all her dough and
was at her wits end when she met Sam Shepard at Snyder’s Drugstore over on Vine
(the same place where Lana or some screen beauty was “discovered”). He claimed
like a million other guys looking for some off-hand sex that he could get
her into pictures, if. Well, she did the “if” and he actually had gotten her in
films, blue films where he was the cameraman. She was so hungry to get into
films that it did not matter to her if that was her entrée. (Sam had told her
how more than one famous star, male and female, had started in the blues and
maybe it was true.) Of course part of being a “starlet” was to be available for
the Hollywood party circuit, to be available to show the guests a good time, a
high-class whore as she well knew once she started working that circuit. But it
paid the rent and that is where she met Duke, Duke who was crazy about her from
the first time he eyed her (and had her that night). When he talked of marriage
she finally thought she had made the big time (and would finally get her
“break” since the mob, or rather Buster Brogan was the behind the scenes
financier of many film productions). Then this Shepard stepped up for his cut,
or else (she had not told Duke of her prior sexual relationship with Shepard
and Marlin thought it best not to mention it to him when he reported back). The
story sounded familiar to Marlin, he could name actual parallel cases all
around town, and more importantly it sounded plausible.
Maybe
that is where the whole thing started to blow up, believing her. No, not
believing her for the usual hard luck story that dames will throw at you, and
tear at your heart, but because those blue eyes mentioned earlier were stoned,
stoned to the gills while she was
telling
her lying story. Shana “forgot” to mention that she had had a boyfriend back
home, a guy named Kenny Taft, who was supposed to marry her until she got
Hollywood stardust in her eyes. This Kenny decided after she dumped him to
follow her to the West Coast and they had been lovers and living together until
Duke started paying the rent. Moreover Shana had begged Duke pretty please to
give her friend from back home a job. Which he did. That is how Kenny wound up
being Duke’s driver and confidante.
Now
Kenny did not mind, or at least he went along with the idea of Shana being a
“party girl,” in fact he encouraged it to further her career. He did not mind
or went along with the fact that she was mobbed up but what got to him were
those old blue movies, some pretty raw. The way he found out about it was when
Duke confided in him that he was being squeezed by this Sam Shepard for
pictures taken of his fiancé. And showed Kenny those samples Shepard had sent
along as proof. Kenny saw red and decided to confront Shepard about it in order
to get all the prints. Well sometimes in this life people, in this case Shepard
get on their high horse especially when they see a goldmine ahead. Shepard
would not see reason and so Kenny Taft plugged him, plugged him dead.
That
is where believing Shana, doped-up Shana, led to some unintended consequences.
Shepard had a partner, a best boy, named Joe Simon, who had copies of the
prints for his own purposes and so he tried after Shepard’s untimely death to
squeeze Duke, squeeze him big time because he thought that Duke had killed his
partner. Duke informed Marlin and he set up a meet with this Joe.
What
Duke and Marlin did not know was that Joe was the guy who provided Shana with
her high-grade coke once she got a taste for that after the drugstore stuff
faded. She was at Joe’s place when the met occurred, stoned. Here is where Marlin
made his final mistake. He really believed that Duke had killed Shepard after
working through the possibilities that he knew so he wanted to set up the meet
in such a way that Duke would drop in if for no other reason than he was
hot-headed enough to come storming in with his own program, an off-hand .38
blaring away. He wanted to see if Duke was in a killing mode. He was, and one
Joseph Simon was shot by one Richard “Duke” Ravel. In the confusion though Marlin
realized something was wrong with the play, especially when Duke started firing
at him in his fury. And on that day one Richard Ravel bought his rest in
peace.
As
for Shana, like a million other Shanas, she walked away from the room after
perfunctory police questioning, walked away free and clear. For a couple of
years she traded in on her notoriety by commanding high prices as a “party
girl” and as her looks faded under the weight of the life and dope she too
faded, maybe went back to Muncie for all he knew. As for the Shepard case that was
never solved, the L.A. Police Department not desiring to spend much time on
some pervert cameraman, some low-rent grifter so Kenny Taft never faced the
gallows big step-off and for all Marlin knew he too could be back in Muncie. As
for Marlin he spent a few restless steamy nights figuring out why he figured
wrong, about as wrong as a man could figure.
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