…funny, not comic laugh funny, not joke on the street funny, but maybe just plain old ordinary human nature funny, the strangest kind, how lust for revenge, hell, let’s call it by its right name, bloodlust for revenge, will twist a man or woman up inside so much they, well, they will not hesitate at the crime of crimes, murder. Take Ben Sheppard, successful California real estate developer, whose family had been in California since practically before those stinking bracero conquistador Aztec days and he had the land grants to prove it. He had been successful beyond his wildest dreams as he hit the post-war (post- World War II to not confuse anyone on which war) California real estate god gold rush before most people could even identify that august state on a map (and given three chanced to boot).
Yes, he was selling dream, California-blessed fading orange sun-sized dream of cozy little sea-side inlet bungalows and other prime new world a-borning valley housing tracts to those eager G.I.s back from the Pacific war and then welded to the California coast that they had noticed when they embarked on those leaky troop transports headed on to ancient island battlefields. To those who had prospered, war prospered, in the great okie/arkie dust bowl migration and eager to shake the dust off, the sod off, and the from hunger off with some little California modern to replace the trailer park digs. And Ben could look forward to selling, once they settled down from the boom-boom pacific coast highway chicken runs and the late night abandoned sex in their hot rods, those very sons and daughters of that eastern migration.(Ben, realistic to the core when it came to real estate, if not in other matters, knew that he would never capture the serious white trash market, the guys and their mamas who were burning up the highways and scaring the bejesus out of honest citizens on their boom-boom-boom Harleys and Indians. He would leave that market to the stinking braceros. ) So Ben Sheppard, well respected, well- connected Ben Sheppard was on easy street.
Oh sure he had had some problems like we all do. A wife, a wife who came from good old Spanish land grant family, and knew senor this and senora that, going back to Cortez and Balboa, who had run off one night with his gabacho stinking building site foreman, some low mex bato loco as it turned out when he tried to trace them later. Run off in one of his brand new Hudson coupes, she waving some silky mex-colored scarf trailing in the wind as she, half- drunk as usual, kissed him off as he watched them in the driveway of his hacienda, yelling “Adios, gusano, adios,”leaving him with his young daughter. His private detectives never did find her (or him) although he had them search the whole west coast and right down into fellaheen Mexico.
Of course, as one would expect as that daughter, Vivian, came of age, he had his problems with her, her and the boys, those hot rod boys who were thrilling all the young coast girls with their dare-devil antics, their golden boy good-looks and their ,ah, bedroom eyes. One incident at a LaJolla road house had cost him plenty to hush up, hush up about her age (under age for drinking) , hush up about what she was caught doing in some tar paper back lot joy shack and with whom, and hush up those guys involved too. She certainly had some of her mother’s spitfire whorish ways in her, for a while anyway, until he sent her away to school in the east. And until Jeff (played by Robert Young), his main dream house and dream California architect, caught her fancy when she came back from the east cured of her wildness. And so things stood until the war came, and Jeff was off to the Pacific.
After Jeff got back from the Pacific wars they were to be married. Ben, who had treated Jeff like a son and had pushed hard for his projects before the banks and other interested parties, was the happiest he had been had been since that whorish wife left him. Then the very night before the wedding, Jeff, Jeff drunk as a skunk had taken one of Ben’s Hudson coupes, and taken his Vivian for a coast ride, a fatal, fatal to Vivian, high speed coast ride. Jeff had murdered, there was no other word for it in his mind, none, his only daughter. The cops said accident, everybody else just said it was tragic and moved on. Even Jeff was eaten up by what he done, eaten up to the core and consumed himself in work. But when a man murders, and the more Ben thought about it the more that word really was the only word for it, a man, a father if he was really a father must avenge that death, and avenge it anyway he could. And that is when he began to hatch his nefarious plots.
Meanwhile Jeff, starting to have the fog lift a little from his traumatic involvement in Vivian’s dead, began to have a very odd string of bad luck. A favored horse came up lame and had to be put away. A favorite dog died under mysterious circumstances, a favored rose bush too. Things, very strange things kept happening and as they did those around him began to sense that Jeff’s wheels were coming off. When his house (a very Frank Lloyd Wright-ish house) nettled atop an inlet rock cove burned to the ground he almost went over the edge. And those around him looked twice when he approached them.
But see not all Jeff’s luck was bad, not by any means, because during this time a niece house guest of a neighbor, Ellen (played by Betty Drake), came his way, they fell for each other big, and she, a trained CPA (Certified Public Accountant, no other meaning for those in steeped in cyberspace lingo) while not cooing with Jeff, stood by her man, big time as well, and helped to find out why Jeff was having some very bad days against all the laws of probability, luck- wise that is. Needless to say no CPA (remember what that means) would fall for a murderer so she/he/they began to unravel the details that led up to those pieces of bad luck. Guess who they zeroed in on. Yes, Ben. And guess what Ben found out to his misfortunate. Well I will leave that to your viewing. But here is a hint. Vivian had a little more of her mother’s laughing brown eyes whore still left in her that old Ben realized. Still that revenge thing, that bloodlust revenge thing, well it was pretty strong. And has been part of the human condition for a while.
