An Encore
Presentation-When Film Noir Private Detectives Lit Up The Slumming Streets Of
Whatever Town Could Take Their Weight- Turnabout Is Fair Play-With The
Detective Fiction Writer Dashiell Hammett in Mind
With A New
Introduction By Sam Lowell
[Every guy
who dug the gold of film noir and reviewed the material and it was mostly guys
in the old days cut his eye-teeth on the film noir detective-guys like Philo
Vance, Phil Larkin, Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Jeff Culver, and Jack Dunne.
Including one Allan Jackson, who out of respect for a fallen comrade used the
moniker Peter Paul Markin for many years although I am not sure what he is
using now, maybe Mitt Romney or Madame La Rue, who knows. Allan, formerly the
head honcho at this publication and in the interest of transparency an old high
school friend of mine, got the big boot, got “retired” a while back partially
with my help. Others have written to eternity on this basically “inside the
Beltway-type” stuff about his demise, and about where he landed after falling
down so I don’t need to repeat that material here. Except the son of bitch is
trying to resurrect himself by stealth or by sucking up to current site manager
and his replacement Greg Green or both by portraying himself, partially through
me I admit, as the indispensable guy to introduce encore presentations of
various series produced under his leadership. (I will admit that Allan sweated,
perspired bullets editing, cajoling and squeezing every last writerly effort
out of those series, especially the hallmark The Roots Is The Toots rock and roll series.)
I guess Greg
has only himself to blame for the Allan creep. (I will take my share as well
insisting that Allan was the only one who could do justice to the rock and roll
series and dragging him back from exile out who knows wherever he was, Utah
with Mitt Romney, San Francisco with his old honey Madame La Rue helping run
her high -end whorehouse or slumming with Miss Judy Garland, aka Timmy Riley
our old high school friend now the doyen of the drag queens in that same town.
I will address my part in the publication shake-up below as the decisive vote
for his ouster below in passing.) Greg, maybe insecure in his new position anointed by only that single decisive vote of
no confidence in Allan and saddled with an Editorial Board which Allan would
never have put up with but which we insisted on to guard against a return of
one-person, one-man rule, had the bright idea that to appeal to the younger
crowd that the writers here should abandon their serious pursuits like in-depth
political, cultural and social analysis via books, art, cinema and music and go
full bore reviewing cinematic comic book character-derived films, video games
and tech gadgetry. Christ, for a guy who spent many years as the chief over at American Film Gazette what the hell was
he thinking. I won’t even mention that the thing was a total bust since the
kids don’t give a fuck about “high- brow,” middle brow,” any brow reviews from
a literary publication. They don’t read this kind of stuff however you doll it
up and get their tastes from social media-end of story.
What is not
the end of the story although almost sank this publication was the real
demographic that reads this material-the so-called baby-boomer generation and
what Allan specifically called the Generation of ’68 to ground the audience he
was gearing things to rebelled at comic book cinema, video games and tech
garbage. Aided by the writers, young and old, who had to write the swill and
who threatened murder and mayhem if that continued. So Greg did a “dixie,” did
an about face and decided to revive some of Allan’s series from the archives
which he thought were pretty good to retain the base. His first attempt at the
rock and roll series was to get Frank Jackman to do the introductions. Frank is
a good reporter, a crack journalist but knew nothing about the inner workings
of that series. I got fed up and after hearing that Allan was back East, back
in Maine, after being abandoned by Mitt Romney, getting tired of whorehouse
management or when doyen Timmy tired of him take your pick I contacted him with
an olive branch to come back to do the encore introductions. He did a bang- up
job and while Greg stated that he was worried about Allan hanging around he
consented to let him do the very popular Sam
and Ralph Stories about a couple of lifelong friends who met via the
anti-Vietnam War struggles and have kept the faith all these years. He is at
work on that series now.
Here is
where the Allan creep plays out. Greg at my suggestion (I am right now doing my
turn as the rotating chair of the Ed Board) has decided to renew, to do an
encore presentation on film noir private detectives which a number of readers
have asked for in the wake of these other encore presentations. Alan approached
Greg telling him that he, Allan, was the only one who could do justice to the
encore introductions. WTF. I am the guy who put film noir private detection on
the map, wrote the still definitive volume on film noir The Life and Times of Film Noir: 1940-1960. Yes, WTF. After I
settled down, after I mentioned to Greg that Allan might know maybe that
Humphrey Bogart played Sam Spade in The
Maltese Falcon that was probably the real extent of his knowledge whatever
he tried to con Greg with. So that battle won I am here to introduce the
various sketches which several writers have worked on over the years. Enough
for now though except to say that Zack James’ take on real-life private
detection is kind of interesting although not my cup of tea. Once we get rolling I will expand on that
idea.]
**********
By Zack
James
Fred Sims’
tales of his life as a real live private investigator, P.I., gumshoe, shamus,
private dick, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood depending on whether
you had been in thrall to the old time black and white detective films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep and picked the lingo there
or just heard it on the streets, could only be taken in small doses. So said
Alexander Slater, Alex, who for many years ran a print shop on the first floor
of the Tappan Building in Carver where Fred had his office on the fifth floor.
Many times the pair would run into one another at Dolly’s Diner across the
street from the Tappan and they would sit and have their coffee and crullers
together. Usually though the talk was on weather, of Alex’s children and
grandchildren, Fred’s troubles with his latest girlfriend usually picked up
from one of his cases since that was one of the few places where he would run
into women who might be interested in him, or how the town of Carver, once the
world famous hub of the cranberry industry, had gone to hell in a handbasket
over the past few decades who with the place turning into a vanilla no problems
need apply “bedroom community” for the young who had flowed to the high tech
industry on Interstate 495 about fifteen miles away. If Alex wanted to hear
some tale of Fred’s, maybe he had read some story in the Gazette or the Globe from
Boston and wondered if Fred had run up against that kind of situation, he would
go up to Fred’s office, plunk himself down in one of Fred’s drastically
mismatched chairs (old-timer Fred did not believe in putting up a front and so
his office did look like old Sam Slade’s cinematic one including the crooked
coat rack), Fred would pull out a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and Fred would
answer his question with a story, or if he had no story that would match up
with Alex’s inquiry then something from his files.
The story
about the Malone brothers was just such a story, one that Fred told Alex even
before he began to spin the thing was a prima facie case of turnabout is fair
place, although he would admit that something about not being your brother’s
keeper could have worked too. For this one Fred reached back into the 1950s
when he was first starting out in the business, first had gotten himself the
office in the Tappan Building and put up his sign, after he had gotten out of
the Army where he had served as an MP in Germany during those Cold War days.
Chester and Arthur Malone were financiers, or that is what they called themselves,
guys who bought and sold stock for various clients’ accounts or for themselves
if they saw a tidy profit in some hot stock. Strictly small potatoes around the
Boston stock exchange and going nowhere fast until Chester hit upon the idea
that he had read about that he, they could use one or more clients’ stock (or
bonds although that was dicey) to buy high risk stock but which if it panned
out would move them up the stock exchange food chain and into maybe some merger
with a larger firm. Who knows what they would have finally wound up doing. This
whole stock transfer idea aside from the questionable legal, moral and smart
questions was essentially a Ponzi scheme, a scheme that has been around one way
or another as long there have been suckers who have looked for high returns for
little risk, so they, the suckers, think.
Well the
long and short of it was that something went wrong, a few clients wanted their
assets cashed in, something like that, and the Malones couldn’t cover fast
enough. The clients squawked to the SEC and the boys went on the carpet, were
going to jail for a nickel anyway. All the paper transfers though were in
Arthur’s name and so they decided that since Arthur’s goose was cooked he wound
take the fall, he would cop a plea saying that the whole operation had been his
and Chester had nothing to do with his dealings. So he won the fiver, went down
for the nickel. Arthur did his time, most of it anyway, but something happened
in prison, who knows, maybe he became somebody’s “girl,” maybe he thought he
had gotten a raw deal from his brother, maybe he didn’t like that his brother
stole his wife away, stole her after she had divorced him when he went to
prison. Whatever it was something had been eating at him by the time he got
out.
Arthur
though had his own game plan, kept his own consul, and when he got out he
played the game so that Chester believed they were on good terms. Then Chester
started getting threatening telephone calls, calls telling him that the party
on the other line, a woman, but Chester though that was just a guy using a dame
as a front that they knew he had been watering stock all the time that Arthur
was in jail and that unless he forked up dough his life was worthless. Chester
was no fool though, had not been scamming for all those years to just fold up
when some caller called. That’s when he called me, called me to his office
saying that he had been getting threatening phone calls and wanted to know who
was behind it. I told him that would be
a hard nut to crack but he insisted he needed help, wanted me to pursue the
matter.
Here’s where
everything got squirrelly though. Arthur, as part of his plan worked in the
office after he got out, did his own hustling for accounts. While he had been
away Chester had hired a secretary, what they now call administrative
assistants but still are really secretaries with computer skills, Ms. Wyman,
Bess, a looker about thirty. Arthur made a big play for her, which she tumbled
too especially when he started dangling marriage in front of her. Of course,
aside from the fact that after prison he could use a few off-hand tumbles which
he considered a bonus, Arthur was using Bess to find out everything about
Chester’s operations since he had been gone.
It turned
out that Chester had been up to his old tricks, another Ponzi scheme of sorts.
So one day after he thought he had enough information on his brother he called
some of Chester’s clients and made them, a few anyway, believe that their
accounts would be in trouble if they didn’t pull out fast. They did and as you
might expect Chester couldn’t cover fast enough before the clients complained
to the SEC. And so in his turn Chester did his nickel since al the transfers
had his signature on them. It turned out that he had been the one who had sold
Arthur out to the SEC on the previous scheme to save his own neck. So turnabout
was fair play. As for me well I got paid off once the accounts were settled for
basically doing nothing except cover Chester from a fall which I couldn’t do.
Oh yeah, I got paid off too with a few tumbles with that Bess once she gave
Arthur the heave-ho when she figured out he was playing her for a patsy. People
are strange, right.
