Out In The Be-Bop Noir Night -The Red Wind

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-with kudos to Raymond Chandler

Old sailors, old tars who have roamed all the seas, seven at last count, who have been in every port, been in every port gin mill, whorehouse and greasy spoon, claim that the red wind, a wind coming from the land means nothing but trouble, trouble with a big T. Their take is this, and maybe they are right, that those red winds, the winds coming out of some Santa Ana enclave make people jittery, make them nervous, make them ready to do each and every thing they would not dream of doing in calmer times. Yes do screwy foul things right up to murder if need be Philip Marlowe, the tough old gumshoe, the seedy, has-been private eye, the shamus, found reason to believe those old seadogs were on to something when the winds, the red winds, no question, blew across the city of angels, disrupted the old time Los Angeles night, his night, one October week back in 1939, back before the war made the whole town crazy with or without winds.        

Hell, who would have thought that going out for a few cold ones, a few brews, to take the dust off the night at a newly opened corner bar in the neighborhood, the old Bunker Hill neighborhood where Marlowe called home would lead to murder. He had sat there minding his own business nursing his second beer when Warden came in, came in looking for a dame. No, not some bar girl or some street tart but an upscale woman looking like something out of Vanity Fair and smelling, well, smelling of sandalwood if anybody was asking, just a faint whiff of sandalwood just like it is supposed to be applied. And for his efforts old brother Warden was waylaid and shot point blank by a guy also nursing a few drinks at one of the tables.

Naturally, after the police, the cops, in the person of one hard-nosed Homicide Detective Smythe who had no love for private dicks as he called them, especially Marlowe since he had gotten his nose bent out of shape in the Gilbert murder case, finished rumbling him up, practically calling him the perpetrator, or in cahoots with the hard guy, our boy Marlowe was up for anything that would shed like on what the hell had happened before his eyes. See, not only did that lambster plug Warden but he wanted to put two between the eyes of one Philip Marlowe (and the newly minted bar owner too) to erase any witnesses to his dastardly deed. Marlowe, for professional pride took umbrage at that notion, and at the intriguing idea that some femme, some femme with that essence of sandalwood surrounding her was out in the red wind night. And so our boy traced Warden’s movement back, finally coming up with some clover.     

This is the way it went down. This Warden was nothing but a grifter, a ex-con with expensive habits, a dope thing. He had landed in jail up in Oregon and did some time with Richard Baxter, yes, the Richard Baxter who controlled the whole political machine on the sunny slumming angels streets of the town. This Baxter, obviously did not want that hard fact of hard time known around town, among the many other little things that he wanted kept secret. Warden’s grift though was to get to Baxter through his wife Lola, the woman of the sandalwood night. Baxter had picked her up on the rebound after her true love bit the dust down Mexico way flying stuff in and out. Warden, a resourceful sort in a crude way, stole a certain pearl necklace of hers to grab some dough. In any case the pay-off to Warden was dough, big dough, for the pearl necklace that this fly boy had given Lola as sign of undying devotion. Lola was the woman Warden was looking to meet at the bar before he died in a hail of bullets.         

Lola, still without her necklace after the aborted meet with Warden, then hired Philip to retrieve the item and keep it on the hush. Naturally Marlowe’s code of honor required that he adhere to that bargain, and find the necklace which he did. As well as a little off-hand romance with the lovely lonely, ethereal Lola. Baxter, who had his tentacles everywhere in his domain found out about Lola and the pearls, the potential expose of his jail-bird time, and her little tryst with Marlowe and was determined to do something about the matter.

Men like Richard Baxter do not get where they wind up without walking over a pile of corpses and so he confronted Lola and Philip in her bedroom one night, gun in hand. Somehow Lola diverted Baxter’s attention long enough to let Marlowe to take a shot at him, a fatal shot, taking a couple of slugs herself in the melee. She died in Philip’s arms clutching that necklace. As for the necklace that old time fly boy love told Lola it had been worth big dough. Philip found out it was glass, worthless. Yes, Marlowe mused those navies were right, those dry res winds meant nothing but trouble, trouble with a big T.