From Out Of Nowhere I
Get Waylaid By The Executor Of The Estate Of Dotty Malone The Famous Hollywood
Screen-Writer For Not Paying Copyright Fees- With Famous California Detective
Philip Marlowe In Mind-And Throw In Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler And Adele
Saint John As Well
By Seth Garth
I am mad as hell and I
am not going to take it anymore. That familiar old ditty has taken on a new
meaning for me since I got a notice to appear in court, or have my
representative in court in California to answer charges that I had violated the
copyright laws when I did a combination obituary/ “tell all” story about the
relationship between Dotty Malone, the famous Hollywood screen-writer who
passed away a couple of years ago in 2017 at the age of 99 and the late equally
as famous, then if not now, California private detective Philip Marlowe who
passed on in the 1970s. It seems that back in the 1970s when I interviewed Ms.
Malone after Phil passed away I “cribbed” some of the information she passed on
to me to write a story about her take on the great Sternwood case which made
Marlowe’s reputation, and made him a place in Ms. Malone’s bed after it was all
over (make that marriage bed since to everybody surprise she was “doing the do”
with Marlowe during the case while he was doing silky sheet duty with the young
nubile Sternwood sisters marrying the older one, Vivian, after the case closed
and while they were married). That bed like I said included a few years of
marriage between the pair which was kept hush-hush so that Phil’s ex-wife that Vivian
Sternwood, yes, General Sternwood’s Marlowe’s employer at the time of the case
daughter would not throw daggers at Phil, Dotty, or both once she found out
Phil had been sleeping with Dotty while on that case. Would break-up the
settlement she laid on him to get a divorce to marry some Bel Air swell (and
former New York underworld figure Carmine Dorio who when he came blood-drenched
red turned “legit” with all the trimmings although knew he was the guy tied to
eight million rackets) when Phil and she decide to call it quits. That
information unknown to me after the interview was the basis for Dotty writing
her own story about the Sternwood case and about the weird ways of high society
Hollywood and environs doings.
But that unpublished
although copyrighted story is not the real sticking point since that was too
long ago to drag anybody into court for their come-uppance. What dragged me into
court was that I had essentially retailed the same story when she passed on a
couple of years ago. The cause of “my mad as hell and not going to take it
anymore” though has more to do with some idea I have that using a little
literary license did not really have all that much to do with her original
story, my original story based on that series of 1970s interviews or my
post-mortem story. So rather than go into that dreary foreboding court out West
humbly to beg forgiveness of the lord high executor of Dotty’s estate I am
going in to contest their contentions. With a lawyer provided by this
publication. I will let you know what happens the million years down the road
when this case gets an airing in the meantime though let me give you a rundown
on what happened in that very famous case back in the late 1930s when the world
was going to hell in a handbasket. If I mention Dotty Malone who was part of
the story, tell information that she claims as her own, case so be it .
As I prepared for that
Malone interview back in the late 1970s at her big corner window office
befitting a famous and successful screen-writer on the Metro studio lot in
Hollywood I went back into the records out in California concerning that famous
Sternwood case. (Dotty made me laugh when she mentioned that when she started
at Universal she was hunkered down with four other young writers at three desks
in a room with no windows. So, yes she had come a long way although that was
not the cause of my laughter which was enflamed by the hard fact that then, as
today, I shared office space with three other writers although we did have
windows out in Oakland.) The Sternwood case, theone that made Philip Marlowe’s
reputation as a hard-boiled detective in the tradition of those created by
writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (mentioned in the title in
case anybody did not know who they were), maybe later the late Lew Archer who
had a few cases under his belt before he fell down and wind up doing
keyhole-peeping, repo work and other undignified make work. Later still when
female private investigators got a hearing the great Adele Saint John.
A case that would wind
up as a film, a successful film made a few years after the events although the
producers took many liberties with the facts. Like leaving the fate of the younger
Sternwood sister, Carmen’s, chauffer lover unsolved event though one Pharoah Jack,
Eddie Mars’ hit man was seen at the pier where that Sternwood car “skidded” off
the tracks. Like the fact that Vivian
had had a clandestine affair with Eddie when his wife was away touring with the
Artie Shaw Band so that it was no happenstance that Eddie helped Vivian out of
the Carmen problem over her ex-husband Rusty Regan. Like Marlowe, that damn
alley cat when you think about although
Dotty claimed she tamed his sexual excesses down a bit while they were married going
down the pillows with Rita, Eddie’s wife, after he, Marlowe, found out where
she was hiding out nad why, after Eddie fell down to his ploy. And other facts
that sometime when I get out from under this frivolous law suit I will more
fully expose. (This would be a good point to say that the original film called The Big Sleep was remade in the 1980s
starring Robert Mitchum where even more liberties were taken with the facts so
a look back at the real facts of the case are even more necessary now as I
defend myself and my take on the events. I might add that one Dotty Malone,
uncredited by her request, was the technical adviser/screen-writer on that remake
although this was after I had interviewed her. Axes to grind, axes to grind)
I admit that I have been
a fan of hard-boiled private detective books cadged from the Thomas Lane Public
Library in town and films since I was a kid reading about them in those lonely
late night hours when with no money I would read and fantasize about their
fascinating lives and spending what little money I made caddying for the local
Mayfair swells on Saturday afternoon double-bill matinees on the big screen at
the Majestic Theater in downtown Adamsville. So I had an idea about the gist of
the case if not all the facts when I prepared myself for the interview.
Whatever happens with this current legal situation I will be forever in Dotty
Malone ‘s debt for giving me so much information that was not available either
through the newspaper reports or the police and court records. To speak nothing
of the insights into the lifestyle and working relationships in the Hollywood
and Los Angeles of the pre-World War II era before everybody with five cents
and enough stamina headed west to seek their dreams in the warm California
nights. Dotty told me plenty about the bad guys too and the changing of the
guard among the bad guys after World War II when things got too hot with the
coppers in the East and Midwest and they went so-called legit.
I have to admit as well that
in the old days, now a bit as well I took what I knew of the Sternwood case as
mainly a high-end well-protected, meaning plenty of police “cooperation,”
meaning plenty of graft sliding down the food chain, and very profitable pornography
and prostitution operation that Marlowe had to break to keep the Sternwood name
out of the scandal sheets and the wild wind daughters out of jail. A very tall
task now and then not easy despite the place they had in the community. That
part about maybe today my thinking that a lot of it was about the pornography and
prostitution operation being key is centered on looking at the court records
and finding that those two “revenue streams,” an anachronistic term but useful today, funded
all the other Mars Enterprises operation from the casinos, on and off-shore to
the shakedowns of local businesses for “protection” to the drug trade and arson
for hire stuff. According to Dotty in 1979, the last link to the case still
standing Marlowe had half a belief in that idea himself although it never made
the screen (although if a third remake was done today that might be the lynchpin
to the plotline which unfortunately Dotty would not be here to write.)
Marlowe had picked up
the Sternwood case of the fly, got a referral from his old LA DA’s officemate
Bernie Olms when General Sternwood was looking for private eye, shamus, gumshoe
whatever you call it in your neighborhood when somebody doesn’t believe the
public coppers are up to the task or want something other than bull- in-
a-china-shop discretion. Before I describe what the old man and he was an old
man wanted Marlowe to do for him I better explain who this Sternwood was, how
much water he pulled around Old California. And this is strictly a story out of
Old California before the Okies and Arkies got dust-bowled out in the East and
headed west looking, well looking for something and before World War II made
California the main depot for all kinds stuff for the Pacific War being fought
not far from its doorsteps. Neither the Tom Joad Okies, Barron Stallworth
Arkies or the factory workers making good wages ever looked back but that is
another story which only marginally plays in this saga. The Sternwood name
might not mean much now, might not have been the subject of some chapter in
American history class or Mister Wells’ history but you cannot understand early
20th century California without knowing about what the Sternwood
name meant any more than what Hollywood meant.
General Sternwood and a
couple of other guys lost to history once things started to jump was the La
Brea tar pits oil well operator, meaning oil, meaning rich when America went
from horse and buggy to cars and fossil fuels to run them. The Sternwood
mansion by Marlowe’s time was far away from the even then forgotten oil wells
making their noises and stinking up the planet but the dough was still coming
in regularly enough to keep the General and his unwisely begotten late in life
wild ass daughters, Vivian who at least had some brains if no morals and Carmen
who lacked both and much more. In those days all the General had to do was make
a couple of telephone calls, or rather have Morris his long-time butler/valet
accountant and fixer man do it and whatever rain threatened stopped. Stopped
hard and fast. For the matter he wanted Marlowe to attend to though a fine sense
of what was going to happen in a fast-changing situation was required.
Here is where Dotty
Malone was so helpful. (How she entered the story and how she wound up with
Marlowe in her wedded bed I will get to in a minute). The film and the and both
court and police records had it that this stumblebum Art Geiger, actually
Arthur Gilroy Geiger from a big time Sonoma Valley ranching family which he
wanted nothing to do with and we will see why in a minute) was looking for
payment on some loans he had made to Sternwood’s younger daughter Carmen, some
gambling debts to the tune of five thousand dollars even if they were
unenforceable under California law. That was all bullshit though since what
Geiger had was some very naughty photographs of Carmen doing all kinds of
suggestive sex acts while naked as a jaybird. He needed to blow town, or that
is what his message said so five K would work. Naturally since the General had
been a playboy in his time and an old rascal having those dangerous daughters
so late in life knew that the squeeze would be on forever. Enter Marlowe to see
what “was what” with this grift.
You have to know
something about pre-war Hollywood, hell, maybe now too except it seems highly
unlikely in the Internet Age when your average eight- year old knows more about
sex than we knew in adulthood. Also that there is more pornography than you can
shake a stick at a lot of it free and a lot available in to anybody looking for
any sexual act or perversion on the Internet. Back before the onslaught introduced
to the mainstream public by publications like Playboy in the 1950s getting what in the end is usually harmless
scenes of nudity, female nudity mostly but male as well or of sexual acts by
both sexes getting lurid materials was a hard dollar. Although with the right
connections and cash in hand you could satisfy whatever lust or perversion
drove you mad with desire. That is where a guy like Geiger came in despite the
stricter laws against obscenities then (and against even the idea of prurient
interests).
Geiger would cater to
the upscale crowd who didn’t want to be seen at what were called “girlie shows”
(at least called so by Edward Hopper in a famous painting of his) using his
antique and rare books operation as a front. Right out in public. Right on
Sunset Boulevard. Which meant two things he was well protected, meaning
somebody had the local coppers in their pocket and paid off to keep away from
this exchange trading operation. Meant also that Geiger was not operating
alone, no way. He was fronting for somebody, somebody who had the dough to pass
around and to keep his hands in every crooked thing in town in those days. The
days when Eddie Mar (real name Eddie Marston but these bigwig crooks like to do
one syllable surnames for some reason some sociologist can figure out) was
running everything illegal in Los Angeles County which meant a big tent area. (It
may seem hard to believe today but the sex book trade was run like a lending
library except you paid serious money to indulge your fantasies and generally
harmless perversions turning the books in and getting another. The guys who ran
this hustle like Geiger and Mars knew that their customers could only get off
on their copies so long before they tired of the same old, same old and needed
new stimulus for their lusts. Like finding money on the ground. Not only that but the temptations of
black-mail to keep the lids on was there for the taking just like that money
already found on the ground.)
Geiger was the perfect
“front” for Mars’ girlie book operation. Everybody knew he was, as they said
then, a fag, a fairy, light on his feet, a homo and to keep protected he had to
do Mars’ bidding which was not hard since this sex book stuff was not solely of
females. Hot boys were available. One of his young lovers had started out doing
photoshoots with Geiger and had a room in his house which it turned out was
owned by and rented out to Geiger by one Eddie Mars. Dotty told me that Marlowe
had all the ancient prejudices against gays and lesbians, called them every
name in the book, would affect a feminine demeanor when he wanted information,
for example, about rare books when he wanted to get his hooks into Geiger.
Marlowe had been appalled despite his years in Hollywood and knowledge of the
various undergrounds tolerated there, some protected like the child pornography
circle around one of the major producers when he saw Geiger’s set up which
reeked of fag couture and was even more appalled when he saw that lover’s room
with its heavy masculine façade along with whips and chains.
Hollywood was the stuff
of dreams for any good looking female or guy and drew young people like lemmings
to the sea looking for the main chance to get out of places like Butte, Boise,
Grand Junction and every point between east or west. Plenty came, some went
back home defeated or wised-up but some kept their daggers in, kept clawing
their way around town. Working as waiters and waitresses, hatcheck girls,
chauffeurs (that was what Geiger’s then current lover Carol was officially on
the books as doing for work), gas station jockeys, department store clerks
waiting for the big chance, the chance that never came. Others and this maybe
the sad part either were conned into, fed dope and developed a nice jones, or
freely did the job expecting to get into film via this method posing nude for
books, films or “live shows.” The so-called “blue books and movies” of the time
that no commercial theater would run and no Mom and Pop corner variety store or
drugstore would stock on its magazine racks. When counted up Gieger’s operation
had something like five hundred books filled with women doing every possible
sex act and or just posing all doped up so he needed a huge supply of new faces
to keep the cash flow moving along. The women got a couple of bucks, some dope,
or nothing except a “promise” of future cinematic considerations.
(By the way Geiger’s
operation was strictly a female swap shop which was part of its charms for the
high-end clientele knowing where Geiger was on the sexual charts. What Dotty
did not learn until a few years later was that the owner of her own bookstore, more on that when we connect her
to Marlowe the first time, the “front man” Bill Cadger was a known “lady’s man”
who was running the “male” side of the operation for as you might guess one
Eddie Mars, sole owner and operator of Eddie Mars Enterprises. Additionally,
despite the tough guy act and it was real, at least Eddie had the stooges to enforce his play until the
end and he knew how to call the rough play when warranted was either gay
himself or was bisexual. Had actually “dated” some of Hollywood’s leading men
(those who were gay like Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, Jim Bell, Sam Devine, etc.)
which gave him the male side lead into the tons of hard-pressed guys who needed
dough to avoid those Boise, Butte, Grand Island horrors where maybe broken
young women could go back home and go forward but not to the shackled
“closeted” life, not after Hollywood wild boy shows.
This is probably as good
a place as any to point out why Eddie Mars was able to run everything dirty and
scandalous in Southern California before the war and how he was able to get his
claws into the Sternwood circle via his entrapment of young nymphomaniacal Carmen and as it would turn out later Vivian
who had her own vices to hone. It might also help explain why I, and Dotty told
me she was had been bothered by it as well, had originally thought the whole
thing had been about wayward sex among the upper-crust and their toadies. Eddie
had been born in California, born in Valley boy Fresno, yes, they had Valley
boys even then, you know guys who had souped-up jalopies, grease under their
fingernails and the choice of Valley girls, read easy girls then since that car
was an irresistible lure for even the more virginal among the female portion of
youth nation tribe of the times. Eddie hung around with that crowd to learn
toughness and distain, learn too who could be trusted to do whatever needed to
be done to move up the ladder.
Yes, Eddie was an
original bright boy with big plans and big ideas. After the war he would have
been lucky to be running numbers on Bunker Hill, maybe a go-fer for some of the
really tough guys who descended on LA following the suckers to the golden land.
They would have had Eddie for lunch and had time for a nap it would have been
that easy for serious leg-breakers to bust his play. We all know that he never
survived the war, never survived even the start of the war so we will give the
devil his due and good luck. Before the
war he had it all figured out though, had his rise all figured and he knew
maybe from day one it would center on drugs (big time drugs like cocaine much
easier to get and legal then) and the sex trade (a growth industry since about
the Whore of Babylon times and manna from heaven when the big cinema guys
decided to blew New York and head west to make their films, and big bags of
money with girls and boys with more good looks that brains following as sure as
night follows day).
All those skills and you
would be surprised how few people actually could conger up the assortment of
skills, fair or foul, to get to the top of the heap counted a lot in those days
and Eddie rose through Pat Scanlon’s ranks before taking over himself when Pat
got waylaid one night, rumor had it by one of Eddie’s minions. What Eddie
brought to the table was fresh ideas about how to increase the revenue stream
via this blue book, blue move grift to go along with the traditional white
slave trade, the drugs, the fencing of stolen goods, funding armed robberies, and
the numbers running and bookie operations. All fronted by the casino, Club Nana,
which was the perfect money laundering vehicle. Eddie, according to Dotty
already mentioned above, half pansy himself, would troll the Hollywood
underworld looking for fairy queens like Art Geiger (sorry but those were the
words of abuse used, some like “queen” even used by the gay community if we
could call the closeted situation that then as coded references) to set up
bookshops as vehicles to make the blue book trade look respectable. In Geiger’s
case he was already running an antiques operation on his own cadging black-
market objects for upscale clients looking for the odd and unusual as party
talk material.
Eddie, pretty boy Eddie,
either seduced Art himself or had one of his stable, Carol Lundgrund probably,
do his bidding since Art liked them young. (While Dotty was working that
bookstore across the street she would notice young guys, seemingly younger and
younger as time went on, leave with Art and show up the next morning in tow.
Dotty could put two and two together.) This Carol guy, Art’s last lover and
while very pretty in leather was a loose cannon and a simpleton too who wound
up killing the wrong guy when his man Art took a few slugs by parties unknown.
Whatever their respective fates Eddie had Art by the claws since he would then
threaten to expose Art’s homosexuality which had legal implications and Art
caved in to Eddie’s operations. Nice people, right.
So much for that though
since it is now story time, time to tell the tale although as Dotty pointed out
to me a lot of stuff will never see the light of day because somebody in high
places was protecting the Sternwood name when that mattered. Or the coppers
screwed up the investigation so badly that they buried plenty of the details.
Or and this grieves me to say Marlowe played his hand too close to the vest,
decided to get too cute and messed up stuff that he had to bury and leave Dotty
out in the dark on. We already know that Marlowe took the job of figuring how
to get Geiger off the Sternwood back and as part of that process went to the library
and read up on rare books, real rare books, to see if the operation was legit.
For his efforts he had been stonewalled by a blonde twist named Agnes who
worked for Geiger or rather worked for Eddie to keep an eye on Geiger and
provide a pleasant front of the house person when the salacious gents came to
get their lusty blue books. Her knowledge of rare books was inverse to her good
looks (and Marlowe would later take a run at her himself winding up under some
Agnes sheets but she was a high maintenance type and always looking for the
next best thing, some sugar daddy).
That led to the Marlowe
meeting with Dotty since he did not have a clue as to what Geiger looked like.
He noticed the bookstore across the street and went in to find Dotty busy
stocking books and looking kind of bored. After checking her out from head to
toe (according to Dotty’s less than modest recollections although in her late
forties when I interviewed her she still looked good, still had that something
that guys from six to sixty would crawl on their hands and knees for) he asked
her to describe Geiger, she did and ever curious asked why Marlowe asked. He
told her about the run-in with Agnes and one thing led to another and she
closed up the shop for a few hours while she and Marlowe drank some convenient
whiskies and did the tango, the male-female tango. What nobody knew then and
this is important Dotty and Marlowe would remain lovers (on occasion all
through the case, while Marlowe was married to Vivian Sternwood and as already
known would eventually marry Marlowe herself.)
Dotty, not only because
she subsequently became a very famous and much in demand screen-writer but
because of that affair/marriage with Marlowe, knew as much as any living soul
about the interior of the Sternwood story. Dotty had headed west after Bryn Mawr
looking for a job in the film industry (much against her parent’s objections
since they had at some sacrifice paid the freight for her education and wanted
her to write serious novels-in the East). As a million before her did and after
too she hit town at the wrong time when nobody was hiring and determined to
stick it out she looked for work where she could find some first as a cocktail
waitress which she left quickly since as a virginal somewhat naïve young woman she
could not handle being man-handled and propositioned constantly. She would
shortly thereafter lose that virginity to a wannabe actor who called himself
Jim Fisk as a stage name then but who would earn lasting fame as the legendary Robert
Maslow. It was Fisk who told Dotty “what was what” about getting into the film
business, male or female, via the casting couch. That is how she learned about
guys, stars, like Randy Davis, Bill Connors and Rory Calvin who “earned” their places
in the sun at first on those hard couches for some odd characters with pull.
Doty confirmed the
obvious. Geiger had tried to put the bite on General Sternwood with the cover
story about gambling debts figuring to replicate a guy named Joe Brody’s trick
of hitting pay dirt the first time he tried that hustle. Working under the tried
and true principle burglars use of hitting the same house twice (and fast)
since the homeowner figured he or she was in the clear as victim and let down
their guard. The burglar-con artist figured differently, figured better –“soft
touch.” This Joe Brody, the soon to be late Joe Brody, figures twice here,
first as already mentioned fall guy for Geiger’s boyfriend Carol’s unwise
choose of him as Geiger’s murderer and secondly as that twit blonde twist
Agnes’ boyfriend who put Geiger on to the soft touch gag to pay for her coffee
and crullers. Enter Marlowe to clean the decks of unwanted trash accumulating
around the Sternwood name. Geiger, maybe Joe too, made the wrong decision to
work a scam they were not experts at. Geiger though was ready and able to hit
pay dirt with his beautiful con of young, impressible women looking for
Hollywood glitter. He grabbed Carmen into the play with a little dope but it
really wasn’t all that hard to convince any man’s woman Carmen into taking her
clothes off for the cameras.
Carmen, unlike her older
sister, was a brainless bimbo by all accounts and if it wasn’t Geiger it would
be somebody else who would catch her naked on camera and exploit that
advantage. Trying to say anything positive about Carmen Dotty was hard-pressed
to think of anything except when Marlowe showed her the suspect photos she
whistled that many a Beverly Hills professional man would be crying in his
sleep for not being able to leer over that body in his dreams. (By the way
don’t believe all that stuff about seeking rough justice, tilting at windmills
Marlowe he had kept the photos of Carmen which he told Vivian he had destroyed
for his own pleasure which is how Dotty wound up seeing them and making her sassy
comments. Also don’t believe Marlowe was impervious to Carmen’s out-front
charms after he had been in the Sternwood mansion about five minutes and she
did a lap dance on him. After his interview with the General and a job and
after an unsuccessful interview with Vivian he headed up to Carmen’s room for a
one-time romp, one time being enough for any sane man.)
Whatever Carmen’s charms
or lack of morals her escapades set off all the subsequent actions-and wasted
bloodshed. Once the chauffer Owen heard that Geiger was having Carmen under
that lovely dope head and brain do whatever sex acts including off-hand blow jobs
with one of his protégés he coaxed her to perform he went crazy, went out to
the Geiger house in secluded Bel Aire and blew him away. That in turn led to
Art’s enraged rough trade lover Carol (a pretty boy’s name for sure all leather
pure) acting foolishly and blowing Joey B away and which led parties still
unknown to waste Owen (although Marlowe always maintained that one of Eddie
Mars’ goof boys, a free-lancer named Pharaoh Jack who specialized in such
tactics did him in at the famous Lido Pier dunking which got poor Owen all wet
and very dead with a sap to the side of the head). After that it was all downhill,
mostly with Marlowe acting as clean up man like in baseball. The cops for their
own purposes, once Marlowe gave them Carol to whet their appetites, clamped the
whole thing down as lovers’ quarrels and homo bullshit. Case closed. Nothing to
lose sleep over.
No way not if you knew
Marlowe and his funny justice jag. He knew that General Sternwood could have given
a damn about standing for a squeeze from grifters like Joe Brophy or even Carol
Lundgren (who planned to parlay the Geiger estate into his nest-egg with those
Carmen (and others) luscious photos). What the General worried his old tired
head about was whether the legendary IRA commander Rusty Regan who made the
Black and Tan cry their fill and who had fled Ireland after the troubles subsided
on the advice of a couple of irate husbands looking for greener pastures in
lush America had been involved in the soft touches. Rusty had landed on the
General’s front floor via a tryst and marriage to older daughter Vivian who’s more
discriminating than her sister’s motto was that she was every other man’s
woman. The marriage did not take but the
eternal bonding between the two men could not be broken by time or women. Then
Rusty fell down, left for parts unknown allegedly with one tough guy Eddie
Mars’s torch-singer wife Rita by all accounts a very beautiful woman who caused
many a man a restless night (and who “fronted” for those bisexual and gay
rumors about Eddie which in those days was enough to keep that noise down).
The whole Rusty Regan
search is what confused what was a simple sex and drugs case that went awry
when some holy goof didn’t realize that high society girls like Carmen (or
Vivian) were as capable of getting down in the mud as any wrong side of the
tracks tramp. This is where I still think it is better to keep the theme along
that sex and drugs track even if the play from here on in goes in the other
direction. Goes to covering up what happened to our man Rusty Regan. By now
everybody should know that Carmen was nothing but a man trap (men trap is maybe
better). Even when Vivian was married to Rusty he was sharing Carmen’s bed
whenever Vivian was out of town (and a few times when she was in the house, ouch).
But as Marlowe found out a little more quickly a little of Carmen is enough,
nothing but high maintenance. When Rusty tried to get out from under Carmen did
what Carmen always did pout and suck her thumb-and place two bullets in Rusty’s
blood red heart. Once Vivian found that out everything else makes sense. She
went to Eddie for a big blanket cover-up- and got it. For an Eddie price (her
losing at his stinking gambling tables as the form of payment and rumor had it
a few nights under the silky sheets when Eddie was in what was his hetero
mood). To put a big tent over the whole thing Eddie had that ravishing wife
blow town as if she had bene Rusty’s mistress.
The pact with the devil
would have probably worked forever except Marlowe had that quirky nature and
kept pushing for answers for his client. He got them too the hard way when some
little punk got wasted by that Pharaoh Jack who liked the sap to the head but
also tricky little poisonous drug potions. When that harmless punk fell down
Marlowe decided to bust the whole crummy Mars operation (which when the Chicago
boys led by Whitey Tiller came through after the war they greatly appreciated
and took good care of Marlowe as a result). Willowy Rita, Eddie’s wife was
hanging out about twenty miles outside of town at Art Hunk’s garage waiting for
the call back to Eddie’s loving arms. She was being looked after by Pharaoh
Jack, or held hostage is better. Marlowe found her location and wasted Jack.
Done, not quite. Eddie had to fall and he did when Marlowe planned a meet at
Geiger’s house (remember really Eddie’s) where he got there before the lost boy
Eddie who brought those two goofs with him. Eddie figured, figured wrong he had
the upper hand and would finally take down the bothersome Marlowe. No way since
Eddie had told his dumbos to shot whoever came out the door first. Eddie fell
down and nobody cried about it from police department headquarters to the
Sternwood estate.
After that Vivian and
Marlowe played house for a while but as with Carmen a little Vivian went a long
way and after a nice settlement they were divorced. Then the secret arrangement
between Dotty and him could go public. As everybody now knows that is not the
end, will not be the end until I duke these estate executors of hers. Done
