***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator - The October Of The Red-Eyed Moon

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman with kudos to Raymond Chandler

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As those who have followed this series know, and for those who don’t here is the skinny, these sketches are based on conversations that Joshua Lawrence Breslin, the old-time journalist for the East Bay Eye and half the other, mainly unread, radical journals and newspapers in this country, had with the late well-known Los Angeles private detective Michael Philip Marlin’s son, Tyrone Fallon, a while back. Mr. Fallon, who also is the private detection business, decided after a great deal of cajoling by Joshua to provide him with some of the stories that his father had told him as he was growing up in the 1950s about cases that he, or in some cases other well-known detectives, had been involved in. Marlin’s idea was to give his son some of the do’s and don’ts of the business in case he ever decided to try his hand at it. Joshua then told them to me over a long period when we met, usually at a bar when both of us were misty-eyed for some old time stories, and I have kind of run with them in my own way.     

Most of the stories stand on their own but this one, The October of The Red-Eyed Moon, requires some explanation since it involved Marlin warning Tyrone away from red-headed women, period. The odd part of that is that Tyrone’s mother, the famous 1940s femme fatale roles actress Fiona Fallon, who may or may not have married Marlin but who had this love child with him, was nothing but a flaming red-head who passed on that characteristic to her son. So I am not sure, and perhaps you are not as well, about taking Marlin’s advice on this one. Read on.           

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Don’t tangle with, don’t mess with, don’t, well don’t okay with red-headed dames, just move on, move on just as quickly as your two feet will carry you. This is not some shop-worn advice from some scolding mother looking out for her Johnnie or Jimmie, like mothers have been doing since Eve, maybe before, but straight from a guy who knows, a guy who almost tangled with, almost messed with a red-headed dame. A guy named Michael Philip Marlin. Marlin, a well-known Ocean City (just outside Los Angeles then, incorporated into the city now) gumshoe who had been around starlets, around their beds too, and movie people should have known from that first look she threw at him at Mindy’s Bar over on Wiltshire right over the line from Ocean City in Los Angeles one October night that she was poison. Should have known to walk away.

You know the look, that slinky dress, black, strap falling off the shoulder come hither look that red -flame hair falling off the other shoulder as was the fashion then, catching the eye of every man in the room. Saying without saying, “I need a man for some heavy lifting and you look like the type to handle it.” Something like that with the tag-line, the lure, “I will make it worth your while.” And it doesn’t take a real smart guy, a guy who has been around, hell all it takes is any guy over about twelve to know to know what that “make it worth your while” meant.

So Marlin tumbled, and maybe it was that dress or maybe it was that gardenia perfume of hers that hit him as she walked over to his stool at the bar, but he tumbled. And maybe you can’t blame the guy, any guy especially after a few drinks, a few scotches, but that tumble was a close thing too, a close thing, except the red-headed dame in question, Rita Alden, wound up dead, very dead on the bed in Marlin’s apartment and he laid very unconscious from a cold-cock blackjack on the floor beside her. Naturally the coppers, the public coppers, the Los Angeles coppers who had no love lost for keyhole peepers like Marlin had he ready for the big send-off, ready for Q if it came to that, when they arrived at that scene responding to an anonymous call. That too was a close call.        

But we had better step back to a couple of days before that fatal October night to explain why Marlin, a strictly Ocean City denizen, a guy who had had nothing but trouble in previous encounters with the cops in Los Angeles, hell, with anybody connected with L.A. wound up talking to a red-headed dame at Mindy’s and thinking, or half- thinking, silky sheets thoughts about this Alden woman. See Rita’s husband, better ex-husband, Jack, a private-eye himself, kind of, a real bedroom peeper, doing divorce work, Hollywood bedroom stuff, for his coffee and cakes, hired Marlowe, knowing that what he had was too big for a window-peeper to handle.

And what Jack had, on tape hidden in a safe spot, was that he had overheard some very interesting conversations between Ocean City Police Chief Warren Holmes and one Max Webber, a well-known West Coast gangster (previously from the East Coast before his luck ran out there and he headed west, and found gold) about making that fair city wide open for gambling, booze, drugs, and loose women. All the Chief wanted was a big cut of the profits ( the request granted, although less than he asked for) and that Max keep the gunsels and shoot-outs out of town (not granted since Max needed to take care of guys and protect his turf from poachers, deadly gun-carrying poachers). And smart Jack, wise from all those peeps got the whole conversation on tape, and photographs too.

What Jack wanted Marlin to do was act as an emissary to the two parties, Holmes and Webber, wanted to have him feel them out about a big pay-off for keeping quiet. Marlin, not normally interested in such work, at that moment was well behind in his office rent, room rent too, and so he swallowed, swallowed hard and agreed to do the talking when Jack flashed five one- hundred dollar bills his way. That and a case of Jack Daniels to tie the bow. Problem, big problem was that somehow Max, the Chief, or both, got wind of what Jack had and before Marlin could make his pitch one Jack Alden was fished out of the bay with two slugs through his heart. (Ocean City, snotty Ocean City, unlike L.A. had few dealings with low-life private eyes and so it was easy to gather information when one of them hit town.)                                    

Now you have to know Marlin a little like Jake Armor, former L.A. Detective Jake Armor, then the head of the Bunco squad in Ocean City did when Marlin was on the force back there in 1930, 1931, a guy full of the fight for some rough justice in this wicked old world to understand that he took Jack’s death, hell, murder personally. So, no Marlin was not going to take that dough Jack gave him and say good riddance. Marlin was not build that way. Jack was a client and so Marlin was going to stick his neck and his nose into this until somebody screamed uncle. And that was why he stepped into Mindy’s that red wind October night looking for a certain red-head, a red-head who had once been married to one Jack Alden.

See this Rita, ex-wife or not, was working the blackmail racket with her “ex” so she too would have a big pay-day and  drift back east where she was from. So they met as previously described, Marlin bought her a couple of drinks, had a couple himself and she loosened up enough to kind of come on to him straight and hard. Now Rita wasn’t a looker, no way, in fact she was kind of plain of face except that flaming red hair (courtesy of Irish forbears) but she had a figure that made up for that, a figure that had had many a man talking to himself  about how to get next to that. Frankly she knew what her appeal was, and also knew that to get anywhere in the world she would have to use every trick, every sexual trick in the book to get what she wanted. Marlin had her sized up as “easy,” that she had maybe spent some time doing street tricks and so she knew all the tricks. Still the scotch, the red wind night, her perfume, too much but working, had him thinking, no, what did I say before, half- thinking, bedroom thoughts as they talked about what she knew about Jack’s tapes and photographs. She, they agreed it would be better off to get out of Mindy’s and over to her place on Bayview in the city.              

Like I said Ocean City was a small town and after they left Mindy’s and went to get Marlin’s car in the parking lot they were waylaid by two thugs. That was the last Marlin remembered before he came to with coppers, including Jake Armor, sprawled all over his room. The first cops on the scene, a couple of patrol car goofs, didn’t believe Marlin’s story, and neither did Jake when he got the call on the squat box after he arrived on the scene, about Jack Alden and his schemes. But they didn’t have enough to hold him and so Jake figured, figured right as it turned out, that that cold-cock bump would lead him into desperate pursuit of whoever did it to him, and to Rita. So off Marlin went the next day looking for knock down drag out revenge. That is where he got some help from a copper over there, a guy named Albert Pina, a detective who was a straight shooter and who was disgusted by Max Webber and his crowd making his town a cesspool of vice and corruption (he was unaware of his chief’s agreement with Max at that time, or so he told Marlin).           

The first order of business was to find Rita’s killer and here Albert was a real asset. From his sources he found out that a free agent gunsel named Shorty Murphy had been seen around Rita’s apartment that dead night. Pina found out where Shorty hung out and they, he and Marlin, went to make the collar, and also find out, find out officially, who ordered the hit. They found Shorty hanging out at Jersey’s Pool Hall across the street from Ocean City Police Headquarters, Albert slammed him against the wall, cuffed him, and then placed him in his private automobile. Marlin thought that a little odd but said nothing as he got in the front passenger seat of Albert’s auto. Albert gunned the vehicle and headed for the far end, the secluded end of the Ocean City beach, around Squaw Rock, the local kids’ hangout during the day but quiet at night. He then proceeded to give Shorty the third-degree, and then some. Eventually Shorty cried uncle and named Max Webber as his man. He swore that on his mother’s grave. Then Albert just left Shorty there, left him to fend for himself, also a little odd.       

With Shorty’s forced confession Albert and Marlin headed to Max Webber’s Kit-Kat Club, a watering hole and casino up in the hills above town. They entered the club and were stopped by the head bouncer. Albert showed his badge and asked for Max. They were led to a back office where Max was counting receipts. Albert, gun drawn, confronted Max. Max naturally denied Shorty’s story, said why would he bother with some cheapjack private eye or red-headed whore when he had the town sewed up, sewed up tight and had all the politician and cops bought and paid for. He flicked his wrist saying, “Get out of here and don’t bother me anymore about red-headed whores only good for street tricks and going down on high- school boys down at Squaw Rock for quarters.”  Albert went crazy at that remark and fired a couple of shots in Max’s direction, one of them hitting him in the shoulder.       

As Albert got ready to fire another shot it finally hit Marlin that Max was right. Why would he ruin his whole operation for some petty blackmail scheme. And that is when Marlin remembered something about that night Rita was killed, as he was coming out of his unconsciousness. The smell of a man’s shaving lotion, a smell that the perspiring Albert was giving off just then. He took out his gun, directed Albert to stop shooting and Albert turned around ready to shoot. Marlin put two slugs near the heart. Albert died on the way to the hospital.

It came out later that Albert had been a lover scorned. He had been Rita’s boyfriend in high school and they were to be married. Rita backed out went out and went west and Albert followed. She eventually married Jack, it didn’t take since he had no dough, she went back to Albert for a while then dumped him again. Albert kept tabs on her though. When Jack offered to cut her in on the blackmail angle Albert thought she was going back to him and he went crazy. He killed Jack. Then when he saw Marlin with Rita he flipped out again. He had intended to kill Marlin as well except Marlin was coming out of his coma. And you wonder why Marlin told Tyrone don’t tangle, don’t mess with red-heads. Especially in the October red-eyed moon night.