***The Life And Times Of Michael Philip Marlin, Private Investigator – Leave It To The Professionals 

 

 

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

Those who have been following this series about the exploits of the famous Ocean City (located just south of Los Angeles then now incorporated into the county) private detective Michael Philip Marlin (hereafter just Marlin the way everybody when he became famous after the Galton case out on the coast) and his contemporaries in the private detection business like Freddy Vance, Charles Nicolas (okay, okay Clara too), Sam Archer, Miles Spade, Johnny Spain, know that he related many of these stories to his son, Tyrone Fallon, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Tyrone later, in the 1970s, related these stories to the journalist who uncovered the relationship , Joshua Lawrence Breslin, a friend of my boyhood friend, Peter Paul Markin, who in turn related them to me over several weeks in the late 1980s. Despite that circuitous route I believe that I have been faithful to what Marlin presented to his son. In any case I take full responsibility for what follows.        

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Dick and Dora Francis were strictly amateurs, very strictly amateurs, if there is such a term, in hard-nosed, rough-edged, seen-it-all professional private investigator Michael Philip Marlin’s eyes. Yes, they were in way over their heads by the time Marlin stepped in to try to unravel what they had knotted and then trace the cold leads to figure out what the hell happened, and who did it. The “what the hell happened” being an unsolved murder, maybe. The jury, no, not the court-room kind, but those who knew what went down, those aficionados who follow such things is still out that one. The only thing for sure was that Dick and Dora didn’t do it, and of course Marlin, otherwise everybody else had reason, had the chance, and the desire to do the deed. And to keep you from suspense the suspected deed was the killing of Charles Wyatt, yes, that Wyatt who invented half the stuff that goes into airplanes and make them passenger- friendly, and who made and lost fortunes in doing so. Lately the former and therefore entered the Francis duo.     

Marlin and Dick Francis had gone back a long way, back to the time that he was a Detective Sergeant on the robbery detail for the Los Angeles Police Department and Marlin was just getting kicked off , or left, the force depending on whose story you wanted to believe. He had set himself up as a private- eye and thereafter every once in a while would wind up working in tandem with Dick on some tough case that the department was ready to put in cold storage. Dick in his turn had left the force, walking away without a regret. The reason for that “no regret” was that he had landed one Dora Sweeney, heiress to the Sweeney lumber fortune started up in Oregon winding up the next generation in California, after investigating a robbery at Dora’s home, that second generation in high style home, in Bel Air. The robbery was never solved but as Dora said “she liked the cut of his jibe” and that was that. He left the force to “suffer” the tough life of the rich. And that was how Dick and Dora lammed onto (and fouled up) the Wyatt case.   

Dora had been boarding school friends with Elizabeth Wyatt (no Betty or Liz stuff strictly Elizabeth here), Charles Wyatt’s daughter and had kept in touch over the years especially the years before Dora’s marriage. When Charles Wyatt went missing, or had fled the home scene, or had been murdered, or any number of other possibilities once he disappeared without leaving word, or a trance Elizabeth frantically called Dora to see if she and Dick could find some information out, find it out on the quiet. Especially on the quiet since the current Wyatt fortune was at stake, and Wyatt Industries was just then in a precarious position in the markets and such new made public might tip things the wrong way.    

The reason that Elizabeth beseeched Dick and Dora was because in their little rarified circle Dick and Dora had developed a reputation for solving some society crimes, you know, which servant ran off with the family china, or who crashed the Smith’s automobile, or other little squabbles like that. Kid stuff really, even though Dick had once been a pro, stuff to do while they were waiting to have children to take up their spare time. Dick and Dora agreed, agreed too that the important thing was to keep the thing hushed up, hushed up big time. No sense in letting the riffraff in on the family problems.

Of course while you are trying to hush things up, and not offend anybody by being so crass as to ask pointed questions of one’s social set, you are going wind up with dust. For example there had been a rumor, a persistent rumor, that Wyatt was having an affair with his secretary, Gladys Pitts. They had been seen together at odd working hours hanging around Spider Greb’s Club Deluxe over in Malibu, and at other watering holes. Gladys had also not been seen for a couple of weeks, although she had cashed a check at her bank drawn on Wyatt’s account a couple of days before Dick and Dora were handed the case. Naturally nobody wanted to upset his long-suffering, unknowing wife, Liz (not Elizabeth, just Liz, in that more democratic generation) and so no question was directed that way and none answered, period.         

So the weeks passed and Dick and Dora were spinning their wheels, trying with might and main to not get to Charles’ whereabouts, or what might have happened to him despite the mounting evidence that he had either fled the country, alone or in company, or somebody had done him harm. That last part was not excluded when another sizable check was drawn from Wyatt’s account the day after he was last seen. They were at an impasse and that is when Dick cried “uncle” and called in his old pal Marlin.

Marlin, to his credit, agreed to work the case but with no promises and with the right to walk away if he got stonewalled by the society crowd. But even Marlin could not work miracles, except one. He found Gladys out in Fresno in about two days just by looking up her employment application information. Yes, I know. What he found out was that Gladys had quit Wyatt a few days before his disappearance and gone back to her husband the next day, all verifiable. As for the affair she mockingly laughed at the idea since Charles Wyatt was a drunk, crazy, and obsessive about his work. That was why they had spent time at the Club Deluxe and other watering holes. Overtime that she bitterly complained he never paid her before she left. As for Charles Wyatt there is a reward out for information about his whereabouts but Marlin has walked away from the case muttering under his breathe “leave this stuff to the professionals.” Yeah, that’s right.